Engaging with Millennials

And I think for me it was, I was understanding that that's not where this is going. There's something more significant at play and began, at that time, to start to dig into that and try to understand what's really happening with the next generation and how do we help them as Christians have confidence that the Christian faith actually has a lot to say about the current moment that we're in. But also to non-Christians to understand how to approach them in a way that maybe a lot of our assumptions were wrong in the last couple of decades about how to engage with a non-Christian.

The second thing that's been happening though is that the next generation of millennials now are finding it very easy to disassociate from faith and religion at all. Now some of that can be chalked up to the culture they've inhabited that sees religion as a bit of a pariah and a negative within our communities and cities and life and see it as a judgmental sort of source of shaming people versus a life-giving source and generative for our communities.

But the other would be in some cases their parents were very hands off when it came to the faith discussion and religion in general. They didn't wanna use dogma to convince their children to believe the narrative that they had believed because in this new western American moment that we're in there's a lot of value given to, open to all ideas and all expressions. And so parents really stepped way back from encouraging their children towards a specific path. And I think we're seeing some of the fruit of that.

And so one of the lessons for the church is to think through, again, as we always have to do generationally, what are some of our methods that we've basically institutionalized that may not be aligned with what scriptures ever taught or what we ought to be doing. But it's just something that we do whether it's our liturgies and how we think about a church service, to literally how we accentuate teaching and preaching and how we think about those topics. And when we're not on point in doing something in a way where we're communicating the Gospel and we've started to replace the Gospel with our own sort of practices and things that don't relate to a new generation, they outright reject that. And so the church can learn from that and ask ourselves the questions, what are we doing wrong? Where have we gotten off track here either in our teaching theology or in our practice and then do the hard work of saying where can we reform? And then the second piece of this, and Darrell this is a long answer because it's a complicated –

So in effect I gave at the office and I don't have to worry about it again until meet up with God. You've got this huge gap that ends up being in the middle and that's the half Gospel. That's Jesus dying for sin, which certainly is a part of the story, an important part of the story. In fact it's the launching point in many ways for aspects for the story, but the story itself is bigger. Talk a little bit about that 'cause I think that's an important piece.

The first part we find in Genesis 1 and 2, the creation part of the story that there was a good design to this world that every human being is made in the image of God, meant to bear witness to who they've been designed after. But that sin, so the fall part, the second part of the story distorts all that. It makes us actually disordered. And we go after things that God never wanted us or intended us to go after. And then only through Christ can we be redeemed as you mentioned, through the cross and his resurrection and our belief and acceptance of that gift of grace.

But then there's this fourth part of the story, the final part of the story that we're called to be a part of partnering with God to renew all things, to be a part of reconciling as II Corinthians 5:18 describes that we've all been given the ministry of reconciliation. So the challenge I think for the church today is to get our teaching right, number one. If we're teaching people about just a vertical relationship with Christ and we're kinda hanging on as the world, as we see the world start to slip, we go man, I can't wait to get to heaven one day. Things are gonna be great. We've missed actually the entire point of how God wanted us to live out our lives with our neighbors here on earth, and that is to be a part of his redemptive purposes which I believe God will use to draw people towards himself in a way that our words and our beliefs and talking about those will never do.

Those are the four parts. In the half stories when you just talk about the fall in the redemption and you don't bookend it with creation and where, the way God designed us, why he designed us that way, what he hopes our place on earth is and will be and the fact that he has a place he's trying to take us.

And yet that's what we do every day we hand the half story or tell the story of the Gospel in just these half story terms of you're a sinner, you need to get saved and then you'll go to heaven and then by the way your jobs tells many other people that story is possible. We actually are saying something that's pretty incoherent and people are scratching their heads and they're going, I don't know what you're talking about. You're answering questions for example that maybe in the '60s and '70s people were asking such as if I died tonight where would I go tomorrow? Well there was a nuclear holocaust on the horizon for people. They were really asking the question, I might die tonight. You know I haven't had a lot of people ask that question in 2015, '16.

And all of a sudden this church, and people involved in this church are having that experience and they're drawn towards that. It becomes attractional not because you created some beautiful service on a Sunday morning in a really cool environment. It becomes attractional because they see a life that's lived counter-culturally that's giving witness to something deep in their soul they know is true.

And I think that's happening for a lot of Christians today because they don't understand these rules. The first rule is thou shalt not, you know do not criticize someone's lifestyle choices or behavior. So for Christians and leaders, many times we almost, our job feels like that we're criticizing people's lifestyles and behaviors because when you're preaching the Gospel it's going to offend people at the root of who they are. Because it's calling into question a lot of the desires that they have, a lot of the things they're trying to live out or where they're trying to find meaning. And so you break that rule and immediately you're the evil person in the room.

So for pastors or Christians who try to try to have conversations with somebody where the conversation focused on what was wrong with their lifestyle or their choice or with a child maybe who's had this experience, you're being rejected because culturally that's not cool man. Don't criticize my lifestyle choice or behavior. So that's number one. The second one is that you're not, do not coerce people to do something that would 'cause harm to others. And in our current moment, again, there's a lot of sensitivity right now to words and to language. And so I think we'd all agree it's not good to coerce anybody to harm other people. So we agree with that.

What's happening though is that idea is now translating purely into language and to ideas. And so if you have an idea that coerces somebody to believe something is wrong, back to the rule number one, that's not really wrong. So for example if you're a pastor or a leader or church leader that's teaching on sexuality and you're teaching the biblical ethic of sexuality and somebody in your congregation is sleeping with their, you know, girlfriend and they're not married and you're teaching this. Well all of a sudden you could be coercing your whole congregation to think badly of that couple. And if you do that you're all of a sudden breaking a huge rule and people kinda get standoffish. The third one is, seems obvious as well which is do not have sex with somebody without their consent and if you break that rule you've created the cardinal sin. Keep in mind there's no reference there to age, limitations, no reference to multiple partners.

And so when you start to get your head around that dynamic, it helps you be a little more cautious in how you approach topics. It makes sure that you're not just engaging with people, many times you're not in a relationship with to have those kind of really tough, difficult conversations. And it helps us I think as Christians just to be more understanding and sensitive to the dynamics that I think we should be aware of as sort of mysiologists in our time.

And this sort of patience I think is enduring but leads to the moment when somebody actually asks the big questions and they'll let you question those things which is when they have a crisis. And so either a personal crisis in their life, so this could come in the form of a divorce from a couple, a broken relationship. It could come from some sort of abuse or drug activity or addiction, something happens in people. We all have dealt with this where we have a crisis moment and we do for a moment ask the bigger questions. And if you're in their life during that moment you're gonna have the opportunity to talk about choices, behavior, but really the deeper side of that which isn't about just choices and behavior but about who your life has been aligned under. Is it aligned under our Father the King or is it aligned under sort of what the world has told us will bring the results of meaning and value.

And I think of the relationship I have with the late Chuck Colson where that was a big part of our relationship the last decade of his life was in his 70's he was still asking me who was in my early 30's like what are you seeing out there? What's happening in the church? How do you respond to this particular topic or issue? And we had a mutual relationship between you know, separated by really three generations. We had this mutual conversation going on where I was learning from him and he was asking me questions and he, I don't know that he really learned anything from me. I think he just nodded his head a few times and acted like it. But he would listen and seek to understand.

And I think between parents and children we're dealing with a similar thing. We've gotta take a step back. I know we think we have all the answers, and listen to the next generation. There's a lot we can learn from them because they're not coming from a place of fear. You gotta understand they've grown up. The air they're breathing right now has been some of these social rules that I've laid out.

And so it's kind of built in so they don't – they're not fearful of it at all. They're used to pluralism. They're used to growing up in an environment where Christians did not have a dominant point of view in the world. They've always been a – and Christians have been a little bit more of a minority point of view. So we can learn a lot from somebody who's joyful and hopeful even in that circumstance. Whereas I think sometimes the old generation sorta remembers the good old days and says, "Man I wish it was like that and since it's not, I've got a lot of fear about where this is going."

Whereas if you walk in from a different angle, the opportunity exists to build some empathy and sympathy and connection and then when you challenge, you challenge with the credibility of having built a relationship that works. You suggested this with patience but what else would you suggest in terms of how to walk into these kinds of spaces and thinking about these kinds of spaces?

And in having that conversation, what was so helpful was instead of me being frustrated about his perspective was having a sensitivity to it to say actually everything that I'm talking about and writing about right now doesn't replace how I was raised or the fact that the fall redemption story is true and that that's how I became a Christian and came to know Jesus. I feel like what this conversation is broadening our responsibility as Christians. It's saying yes, not only do we have to proclaim the good news and do evangelism, we have about ten other responsibilities we need to be doing as it relates to following Christ in the world. And having a sensitivity to that conversation allowed my father to see some of what I was talking about without it being this offensive clash.

But I do think Darrell you're right. Language has become a huge problem for all of us. Even in writing this book The Next Christians, one of the things I was trying to do was help parents understand their 20-something children and have a conversation that was rooted in this idea of the Gospel but they were approaching differently. So one of the chapters is called, you know being provoked instead of offended. Well lots of the older generation would be offended sometimes at the types of sin or corruption or even parts of town that they weren't going to go to because it represented a lack of holiness.

Well the next generation sees those places and they feel called by God to actually go into them, to be provoked to engaged some of these spaces that otherwise felt very off limits to Christians. And by doing so put themselves in positions to do real ministry to people who really need it. And yet an older generation sometimes looks at that and goes, "Wait, you shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be involved there." And so the religion side can sometimes hold back the next generation who's saying no, I just practically wanna love people. I wanna do justice. I wanna live out what I see the teachings of Jesus tell me to do without all of these rules and parameters you keep trying to put around me.

And so out of that builds a desire to listen and hear how they are seeing things because I know their goal isn't to undermine what I believe in. Their real goal is to try and further what I believe in. now let me do it a different way. But part of that is hey, you know I'm here to listen and hear. Your experience isn't my experience. Your age group does react to things differently than I do. I'm all ears.

But then the next scene has him in Capernaum and he's doing all kinds of things that actually support in concrete ways the message that he gave in the synagogue. So there's a word in deed coherence in connection that fits. And you see by the way they minister that they mean what they say.

But that's not the point. The point is to ask what else churches should be doing that they haven't been doing that helps speak into this space. So the question goes like this. There's the church that you grew up in when you were growing up. And then there's the church you would like your child to grow up in. What does the church that your child should grow up in have going for it that you didn't experience when you were in church?

I think what's happening now is a real new opportunity where it moves not just from people in the pews now having access to the scripture but them feeling very empowered as ministers of the Gospel to be going out into every one of these realms. And so it aligns with that first thing I would hope to see churches doing which is teaching in that way and developing and cultivating in that way. But it really goes to how the structures of even the church work that they start to function in such a way that it's not only about people coming into church services on a weekly basis. And we see this in the missional idea played out in some places.

But that the church really takes on a whole different mentality for the age ahead. That's about how do I continue to do on the job sort of discipleship for people who are called into these different spaces and that church is a place to nurture and disciple them. Not necessarily, and this is Darrell where I disagree with some of my peers, a place to do evangelism. I don't really see the church is designed to be the seeker sensitive environments where we're just trying to attract people. I actually see the church as needing to be more rigorous in how we're training people theologically, how we're training people theologically, how we're teaching them to believe and to think. And then to go live that out within all of these different places. And so I think the future church is going to have to look like that.

And we're talking about adding a third week and the third week we would divide up the teachers or the lawyers or whatever and rotate the vocations and pray for people in an effect, almost like commission them in the midst of their ministry to say, "God had you here doing this. We're praying that you have wisdom and discernment. We're asking that the Spirit equip you to be able to do this." And that's the kind of mentality that you're talking about wraps itself around this kind of a church where it says the whole of life is the ministry if I can say it that way. That ministry is not you know a one day a week two hours a day. It's not 1-2, it's 24-7.

It's those kinds of ways of thinking. I'm not sure that's such a great idea but I'm suggesting that the innovation to really adapt to where are people at today. What questions are they asking? How are we as a church gonna show up in those places? That's what's been great about evangelicalism is we've always been pioneering and innovative to say, "We're gonna take action and keep doing mission no matter what this world throws at us."