This happened two Saturdays ago, i brought my Jovial's friends to their youth church, whilst i attended my adult's service with my lovely wife.
These wonderful friends of my Jovial came up to see me in the adult church when their youth service ended, almost all of them complained that they were hungry and my adult service was still in progress thus i could not take them out for supper.
Spread before my eyes, were some foods covered with plastic foils intended for the adult church attendees. Covered !!! meaning can't touch them yet, so when i looked at these boys' faces, i could not help but to break the rules, so i did.
I opened the plastics foils and invited them to help themselves, i thought it was all right to do after all it was only less than 10 minutes before the drop of curtain on the adult service, so they were happily munching away.
Suddenly they were balked at by one guy working for the church with unfriendly tone and uncompromising eye contact with the boys and i heard him saying, " the service not over yet, don't eat the food" there were no friendly reminders, no pleasantry accorded.
The guy was right in telling them to stop eating but the way the message sent was much less deisrable, in actual fact i wanted to walk up to him and telling him it was me that asked the boys to eat, but his fiery demeanour set me back from apologizing, i was wrong in that account.
The boys were stunned and felt kind of ashamed as if they just stole the foods and quickly i told the boys that it was all right, after all it was not their fault, it was me who got them into " stealing" the foods, right?
In retrospect, i remember the first time going to the church as a kid, all i felt was happy, warm, accepted and longing to go there week after week.
You know everyone wants to be respected that includes the teens as well, they might be naugthy and rules breaking sometimes, if we show them respect, i bet they will reciprocate in the same gesture.
Sometimes i wonder how often we use the words PLEASE and SORRY.
P/S : Have a heart when someone loses one
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ReplyDeleteWell, some ppl have no tact. Even though in church. I just experience the same (not taking food) at the church cafe yesterday with the unpleasant si tau poh... pay her money also she so grumpy.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, thanks for reminding me to appreciate my kids coz sometimes we take them for granted and want them to grow up faster... admittedly I HATE to grow old too... Cannot bear to see wrinkles on my face.. Yikes.
May be he just wanted the young to be more disciplined in the church, but he used the wrong tone.
ReplyDeleteSome people are just not tactful. Reflects on their upbringing... And some when put in charge, it gets into their head - acting like they're so great, so important and throw their weight around. Just tell the fella: Jesus said, "Bring forth the children unto Me!"
ReplyDeleteSometimes, the adults in church see the youths as nusiance.
ReplyDeleteSorry, no pun intended, this is how I feel.
This was just a misunderstanding. Perhaps he had a bad hair day too. :/
ReplyDeleteI so agree with you on the respect thing. No matter how the kids misbehave, we as adults should also respect them when discipline them.
ReplyDeletesome people go by the book to much
ReplyDeletePity you and the kids, the worker didn't have to be so harsh on you guys!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, cheer up and enjoy your weekend!
hope this incident wont dampen the kids' hearts to come to church..
ReplyDeletesalah, salah lar....always self-righteous.
ReplyDelete