I was born in the South, raised in the South, educated in the South (yes, we actually know how to do that), went to college in the South, got married in the South, raised a family in the South, and will be buried in the South! I am not complaining. I love the southern way of life.

If you live in the South and you want to refer to a group of people, you will say “y’all.” Here in the South, a shopping cart is called a “buggy.” If someone tells you to “mash the button” that simply means that you need to press the button. “Cut off the light” means to turn it off. “Pull the door to” means to close the door. Those that are “fixin’ to” do something means they are about to do it. My southern husband of many years likes his tea extra sweet. In the South, college football fills Saturdays in the fall while good bar-be-cue is served. Yum!

While I do love living in the South, there is one thing in particular I dislike – bugs and insects. We can have roaches about the size of a small skateboard, scorpions that give a healthy sting, spiders that love to visit your home, and ants, ants, and more ants. Having lived in several southern states, I’ve experienced all of the insects I listed and then some. At the present time, the main pests we encounter in our home are ants.

Ants are always on the search for a tasty food source, and when they find one, they let their friends and family know where to go for dinner! The way the ant communicates is to emit a scent known as a pheromone. They leave it all along the trail and then the other ants know where to head and the exact path to take. Now you know why you see a trail of ants from the back door to the garbage can, up the garbage can, and even into the garbage can. (Been there, saw that!) It is fascinating to watch a video of how quickly that pheromone trail develops.

Ants can also emit an alarm pheromone when they are in danger. If you see an ant bed outside and you step on it, thousands of ants begin to feverishly crawl about and even crawl on top of each other trying to locate the disturbance and stop it.

To me, the most fascinating of all the pheromones is the propaganda pheromone. Certain species of ants rely on stealing larvae from other ant species. They raid colonies and spray massive amounts of propaganda alarm pheromones. The deceptive pheromones overwhelm the attacked colony workers, and their alarm response causes them to attack their own nestmates instead of the enemy.

The attacking ants then steal the larvae and take it back to their colony where, once they are born, they perform worker functions for the nest. They become slaves. The attacking ants go after the larvae, after the young.

We are seeing propaganda pheromone happen before our eyes with our young ones. The whole purpose of the propaganda pheromone given by the ants is to capture the eggs and raise the young ones to become slaves. Church, we have to reach the younger generations. We often need to change the method but never the message. I don’t always like smoke machines, louder music, pastors with holes in their jeans, and various lighting effects. You want to know why I do not like those things? Because I am seventy-two years old!

My husband was a pastor for more than thirty years. I remember when we transitioned from not singing just hymns but to also singing new worship choruses that were projected onto the wall. Some people thought we had lost our spiritual marbles. I remember people being upset because a woman could be permitted to wear slacks to a worship service. We lost families over these kinds of changes, though the message was never changed. (I am not talking about sinful or sketchy things, but preferencial things.)

Church, we must be willing to do research, listen to young people, and see how we can reach them. Never change the message, but a change in the “how” might be needed. I know this kind of blog will be controversial to some and might even aggravate a few. So be it.

I probably don’t have too many years left on this earth. I don’t want to spend them complaining about today’s youth. I want God to show me how to reach them. I want to learn all I can about how to reach them with the truth. I want to listen to how they are experiencing the challenges of life. I want to hear their stories and tell them mine.

I am tired of the nest of God’s youth being invaded by pheromone propaganda. Church is more than a good Sunday service. The Church is an army. It is time for the army of God to go to the enemy’s camp and take back what he stole with his deception and lies. Truth sets free and destroys propaganda pheromone!

^“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.” – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. (NLT)