April 15, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Monday, April 15.
Yesterday, at First Baptist Center, we welcomed a new Youth Minister. This gives our church a full staff for the first time in five years. We are thankful and give God the glory for what He is doing in His church.
As we took a step forward in ministry to teenagers, I found myself thinking about youth music. In 2024, the songs that church young people sing in their meetings and camps are often the same ones that their churches sing on Sunday morning. But it wasn't always that way. When I was growing up, in the last century (!), youth music and church music were completely different. After all, our youth songs weren't in the hymnal.
And then, in 1975, I opened a book and got a nice surprise. The book was a new Baptist Hymnal, the first one in twenty years, and it contained a "youth song". I was a teenager at the time, and when I saw that song, and realized that we could sing it on Sunday mornings, it made me feel, for the first time, that I was a full fledged member of my church.
Here's that song -
It only takes a spark to get a fire going
And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing
That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it
You want to sing, it's fresh like spring, you want to pass it on.
We sang that song in our service yesterday. After all, it's in the hymnal.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
