Bet you didn't expect a title like that from me! Let me explain by first quoting from the article: "why not do as US presidential candidate John Kerry is proposing, and give volunteers a sweetener? He is making civic participation, in particular an initiative to get one in seven pre-university students into a volunteer programme, a central part of his campaign. Participants would receive four years of tuition at a public university in return for two years of volunteering. Tasks might range from mentoring students to building affordable housing and cleaning parks."
I share this because, for me, it links with recent discussion over at Paradoxology about rites of passage into adulthood. Part of my response was to mentioon that I felt that the Mormons were onto something in having their young people do a year [is it?] of missionary service. I don't think that it would be right to have all of ours on the doors [though some maybe.. it clearly works for church growth for the Mormons] but works of Christian service. I don't suppose that a modern government would do this -the cost and tax implications are scary to current fiscal policies- but if they did ... well it would be a rite of passage and we would need to respond appropriately as churches. But in the meantime [which could be for the rest of the life of our society] how about churches looking to expand things like Careforce so that it became the norm?
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