Many years ago I had the privilege of living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While living there the Lord directed us to attend a new church in that city. This particular church was four years old and had four-thousand members. There were many factors which contributed to the growth of this church, in a city that has a big church on every corner. From our apartment it was about a sixteen minute drive to this church. I noticed a certain denominational church about two blocks away from this thriving church that had a beautiful building, but only four cars were there every Sunday. I had been raised in this denomination so I told my wife, I am going to visit that church to see what the deal is with the same four cars there every Sunday. Well, the next Sunday I went in and the inside of this old church was perfect. The eight people that were there seemed very friendly and gracious that someone new had bothered to venture in. The service was good, the preaching was good and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The very next week the the pastor drove over to our apartment for a visit.
He was a very nice man and I was blessed by his visit. But in the course of our conversation I learned the head deacon was his father-in-law. One of the other couples in that church was the head deacons sister and her husband, and then there was her husbands sister and her husband. Later on I found out, that head deacon had helped build that church with his own hands and as long as he had a "say-so" they were not going to change anything. Well, some of the people went down the street and started another church. I visited it as well. It ran maybe a hundred people, but they were all old-timers. They continued to do things like they had always done them. Not many young people did I see. “Church” to these two small churches was dying, they were negative about anything new. They could remember how it use to be and they intended to hold out to the end, which was inevitable. They didn't care if the church closed up. As a matter of fact they said we would rather see this church close, than to change into this new way of doing things. Now back to the church that I attended, it had no connection to these two smaller churches, except there were many young people who had left these two small churches to attend there. The pastor of this fast growing church had served as a children pastor for eleven years before starting this new church. During that eleven years he had been asked to preach in the main church twice, he was young, you see. Well, when he started this new church he determined to reach and involve young people in his church and that was the key to his success. When I was there, two-thousand of the four-thousand people who attended were children. The first time I visited that church, when we got in the car leaving the parking lot, I asked my children if they liked church. They said, “Daddy can we come back tomorrow”. Well, that was twenty years ago and today that same church runs over 15,000 people every Sunday. Now, what does that have to do with foxhunting? Let me ask you this question, what shut down the fox pens in Fl. It wasn't the FWC or HSUS . It was the “old-timers”who refused to change or listen to common sense. There was a young man who made a post on here a few days ago about a “New Way to Field-trial”. Go read it and look at the negative post made by the old-timers. I happen to know that boy, he is 24 years old, works on an oil rig, been fox hunting for about two years now. When he talks about his young dogs you can see a glee in his eyes. You old timers were a real source of encouragement to him. I ask you old timers, instead of being negative, get behind these young men and women who are the future of this sport. Be grateful there is someone like Mr Howell that is trying to help bring about changes for the betterment of this sport.
Or, just maybe you would rather see the pens closed if we can't do it the way you always did it.

That's what I'm talking about ManoMan. Very positive post indeed. You really helping.