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If We Don't Teach

Written By Timothy Fish

Published 2/22/2009

I grew up in an around small churches. So small, in fact, that when out church was running over twenty-five in worship service I thought we were doing pretty good. We rarely had special music, so no one ever taught me what should be considered a common courtesy among musicians. When a musician is performing, you shouldn’t be up moving around the auditorium. It is disruptive and I agree with it completely, but I didn’t even think about it until I heard a music director complaining to other music directors about some musicians he had seen fail to observe this courtesy. He was offended by their actions and I couldn’t help but think that they may not have been that much different from me.

One of the things I have noticed about the youth who play in the ensemble at South Park is that they observe this courtesy. Who taught them? I don’t know, but someone did. There must be other examples of things that people don’t do properly because no one ever taught them. It is so easy for us to assume that the people around us have had the benefit of the same teachers as we have, so when we see them doing something wrong we assume they are rude and inconsiderate.

The older generations often talk about how much worse the younger generation is. People enjoy talking about how self-centered the world is. If that is true, the solution is for the older generations to teach what they have been taught.

But speak thou the things which befit sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, serious, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed. – Titus 2:1-5