strange malady of sleeping sickness. The plan was to provide transportation for the patients to neighboring churches. The trip would be an exhiliarating experience and the enforced integration of personalities in sharing sessions would be a healing treatment. At first, it seemed to be the answer, but parents and leaders soon found that most of the churches visited were plagued by the same malady, and, after the novelty wore off, there was a subsequent lapse into a belated boredom. Worse than this, however, was the alarming discovery that several of the group had discovered that “misery loves company” and had joined forces with others from the host churches in an “ escape” to parked cars in lovers’ lanes or the shadowy recesses of the balcony at the Bijou theatre. At long last, after having found the above remedies (and others too numerous to mention) had failed, and that the toll among the youth was almost 90%, there has been a response to bona fide, laboratory-tested cures: 1. A Controlled Diet Rather than allowing the young person to select his own diet (which would invariably run to ecclesiastical eclairs and carbonated mayhem), or foisting any of the adult menus (spiritual sawdust and warmed-over pulpit pizza) on them, wise leaders are selecting controlled diets prepared by specialists in the field of youth work. Only carefully graded meat of the Word is selected for the various age-groups, with the young people them selves aiding in the serving of the food. The secret of this diet is that it is controlled by careful supervision and its Biblical vitamins are expertly adminstered to graded groups. Little sister need never worry about being forced to take the same dose as big brother (and, incidentally, big brother is no longer irked by the taste of puerile pablum, or by the eschatalogical escarolle that suits and satifises his uncle or father). There is nothing wrong with either of these mentioned foods, if included in the diet for proper group, under the control of a dedicated dietician. 2. Occupational Therapy The controlled diet will do much to restore the loss of “ sensory perception” and the lack of “mental control,” but what about Noah Webster’s diagnostic description of “ the absence of voluntary activity for any rational object or purpose” ? This can be best counteracted by a sensible occupational therapy which involves the patient in participation for his own recovery. Applying this to the epidemic that threatens the life of our youth, it simply means less “ spectator Christianity” and more p. lgram participation on the part of our young people. Of course, this therapy includes the usual activity of “ taking the offering” and “ leading in prayer,” but more than this, it includes a definite program of training. Any youth material must prescribe the active involvement of the young person in meaningful, articulate study and the application of this study in life, inside and outside the youth meeting. Variety and Vitality must be the basic features of this occupational therapy. Variety of subject matter from the Word; variety of presentation; variety of participa tion will result in a restoration of the vitality that was the intention of Jesus Christ when He promised “ life, abundantly” as well as eternally. In these ways, not only shall the sickness be cured and the recurrence prevented, but a healthy growth resulting in divine multiplication according to the Biblical princi ple of “ reproducing after its own kind,” in the salvation of souls and the enlistment of our youth in full-time Christian living. END 15
desired cure, more drastic measures were taken, in the form of homiletic hypodermics. These are usually handled, straightforwardly, if not expertly by well- meaning older Christians who were often frustrated preachers. These often would mistake Scriptural authority for ignorance shouting at the top of his voice, or bigotry with fire in his eye. This tragic, unsuccessful attempt in group therapy, tended to aggravate, rather than help the conditions contributing to the epidemic. The young people, after submitting to a thirty or forty-five minute treatment of hectic homiletic hammering, would leave the room, glassy-eyed and uncommunicative. Of course, they would absent themselves from the evening preach ing service, being in no condition to distinguish between the good and the bad, or the genuine and the counterfeit in things homiletical—and they couldn’t care less. 3. A Change of Scenery The value of travel to more conducive climates is universally recognized, so some felt that such would prove to be “ just the thing” for the youth suffering from the SEPTEMBER, 1960
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