The most significant spiritual responsibility of any generation is the spiritual well-being of the generation that follows. The Hemorrhaging Faith research that has captured the attention of Canadian church leaders over the past year sadly indicates that this outcome is not being realized. Assuming that we can agree on what a well nourished, vibrant, growing young disciple looks like, it seems reasonable to approach this challenge with a high degree of intentionality.
Being intentional, means that we begin with our preferred outcome in mind and then develop the most effective strategy for achieving that outcome. Contemporary writers are giving us some wonderful insights into what spiritual well-being looks like. NT Wright, Scott McKnight, Kyle Idleman, Francis Chan and David Platt, (to name just a few) have unpacked the notion of discipleship in practical, biblical terms. The desired outcome is abundantly clear. To follow Jesus is a costly and consuming commitment! So how then do we move our young people to the place of being disciples who passionately follow Jesus for the long haul?
This generation of young people listens with their eyes. They are searching for authentic role models of mature faith in the generations that are ahead of them. Most visible, are parents who continue to have an enormous impact on the faith experience of their sons and daughters. What’s fascinating about the findings in Hemorrhaging Faith, is that what impacted young people most profoundly (for good or for evil) was the degree of authenticity or integrity of the faith they observed in their moms and dads. It wasn’t about parents jumping through a bunch of duty-driven ritualistic hoops, but it was about ensuring that in the day-to-day reality of their lives there was an authentic alignment with the life of Christ.
Of course, this quest for authenticity in spiritual role models extends to all of the adults who touch the lives of young people – whether we are conscious of the impact we are having or not. As church leaders (both vocational and lay), public Christian figures, business men and women, and denominational leaders, we must be conscious of the fact that our titles and positions mean little to young people establishing their faith journey if there is a disconnect between what is said and what is lived.
I’m part of a generation for whom external appearances has often trumped internal spiritual substance. For those of us whose age starts with a five, six, seven, or eight (after that it seems that authenticity naturally returns) we must be reminded that how we live our lives, how we treat one another and how committed we are to Kingdom purposes will be discerned by a generation who can sniff out superficiality in a heartbeat. Intentionality requires us to live a life that sees a genuine transformation from the inside out, not just for our spiritual health, but for the spiritual well-being of young people with whom we are sharing life.
What are some of the most common misalignments between the teaching of Jesus and the lives of veteran saints you’ve seen in Christian community?
Marv Penner heads up Youth Specialties, Canada and is the director of All About Youth and the National Center for Excellence in Youth Ministry, an innovative program for training vocational youth workers.
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Thanks for the article.
I agree about being intentional role models. That’s actually one of the reason that compels me to be part of a church and to be part of small groups and interact with families with children. I want to consciously help other parents by being part of their childrens’ lives and loving on them.
A question for you, does being intentional involve a direct invitation to provide mentorship/discipleship to a younger person. In other words, do you think an older person should call out younger person to “follow” or should the older person just “wait” for the younger person to ask.
Both approaches are seen in the Bible and in Jesus’ ministry. However, our current culture and society does not do the latter as consciously – ie there isn’t a teacher-pupil type culture as existed in the Jewish community of Jesus’ time.
I appreciate your question about common misalignments. We need to recognize that just as 90% of the flight pattern of guided missiles is course correction, so also the majority of the epistles are course corrections. These are necessary, not evil. We need to correct the common misalignments of the past generation (while continuing to honour our elders) and recognize that our generation will also need course corrections. Here is a starter list of some of the common misalignments I have recognized in my upbringing:
Common misalignments:
• “Love the sinner; hate the sin.” Jesus never called anyone a sinner to their face. His mindset was to be the Father’s reconciling agent to bring the world back to the Father. So how did he do this? He had to see them as what they were created to be—ones who bear the image of the Creator (i.e., who represent God accurately in the Creation) and not count their sin against them. If we see people first and foremost as sinners that we are called to love, rather than as image-bearers created to reflect the Creator, we will always approach them with condescension and the sin will always be a barrier for us. Only when we don’t count the sin against them are we able to bring them close and be true agents of reconciliation.
• Who can approach a Holy God? Those who read and misunderstand or disagree with the first point will think I am neglecting holiness and purity. Another misalignment among the previous generation is they have an old covenant view of holiness where sin defiles the tabernacle and where the unclean defiles the clean. We have missed that at the center of the Holy of Holies is the ark of the covenant and at the center of the ark is the mercy seat. In other words, the very center of holiness is love, and love is greater than sin. Jesus is not defiled when the woman with the issue of blood touches him. Rather, he makes her clean! Holiness—pure love—trumps sin and has the power to cleanse. For as long as we fail to see this, we will continue to see purity as keeping ourselves separate from those we see as “unclean.”
• Sin is the worst thing ever. This is perhaps one of the greatest recipes for legalism and empty religion. Sin was never the worst thing. In God’s mind, human beings carrying shame around was worse than if they had sinned. And the reason this was worse was that shame would result in his creatures hiding from him. What’s worse than sin is a breach in intimacy with God, and shame accomplishes this with much more sinister precision than sinning does. God does not put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil up on the pinnacle of the highest peak so that humans cannot get to it and thus never sin. He tells them right where it is and gives them the choice. But as soon as they sin and hide because of their shame, he comes to them to cover their nakedness. Beautiful! And when given the choice between a bunch of tipsy Jews getting even more tipsy at a wedding and a family living with the shame of being forever labeled “the family that ran out of wine at a wedding,” Jesus chooses to keep the family from being shamed, even though it meant the people being able to get drunk. For as long as we see sin as the worst thing ever, we will shelter our children rather than equipping them to make good choices, and we will use shame to try to keep people from sinning rather than seeing shame as the greater of the two evils.
• God is angry at me. Evangelicals have grown up emphasizing John 3:16 to the neglect of John 3:17. He did not come to condemn, but to save it. And it is the Father’s love for the world (For GOD so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…), not his anger towards people, that motivates the great rescue mission of the cross. We all agree that the world will never again be destroyed with a flood because God promised he wouldn’t. Yet in Isaiah 54:9 (which follows immediately after the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, perhaps the greatest Messianic passage in the OT) we are told that after the coming of the suffering servant, we enter the days that are “like the days of Noah.” And God vows, “As I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you, and I will not rebuke you.” It is impossible to approach or trust a father we think is angry or frustrated or disappointed with us. How much more impossible is it for us to “approach the throne of grace boldly” if we have been taught that God the Father is angry, frustrated, and disappointed.
• It is by grace you have been saved, but it is through works that you earn merit and favor. I love the U2 lyrics, though they stand as quite the indictment: “Love is a temple, love the higher law. You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl, and I can’t keep holding on to what you’ve got…” Too many faithful saints of the older generation have longed to hear after their passing the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” but without having first heard here and now before ever entering into Christian service, “This is my beloved son, and I’m so delighted in him.” If the knowledge of our sonship in Christ does not precede our service, it inevitably results in a performance or even perfectionist mindset, and is, at its core, pharisaism.
• It is in my nature to sin. We have taught that we sin because it is our nature to do so. We have spoken of Christ dealing with our sin “doings” but have neglected to demonstrate from the word how he has dealt with our sin “being.” The new covenant promised in Ezekiel 36 does not just speak of forgiveness of sins, but of receiving a brand new heart and a new spirit that is saturated with the Holy Spirit. If my old, defiled, sinful spirit has been nailed to the cross in Christ and I have a brand new, sinless, undefiled, holy, blameless spirit that is now ONE with the Spirit of Christ, it is NOT my nature to sin. I sin because I don’t yet love the Father enough. The remedy is not asking Jesus into my heart again and again, but asking the Father to show me afresh his love for me so that I can run after him again. A theology that maintains that I have a sin nature after I have come to Christ and have been born again will inevitably lead to hopelessness.
• God is in control. Is God sovereign? Absolutely. Is he “in control?” Depends what we mean by control. And we usually mean or at least infer that God is controlling everything. How else could he cause his plans to come to pass? Many Evangelicals have painted a picture of God as a cosmic puppeteer that has us all on strings to do his bidding. Or we see him as The Grand Master of Cosmic Chess where we are all pawns. Seeing God as controlling has resulted in his image bearers bearing much the same likeness. Yet in Christ we see a God who invites, “Come, follow me,” and who leaves us with the choice. He does not force the expert in the law to go love the Samaritan who is his neighbor. He does not force the rich man to sell everything. He does not force Zacchaeus to make restitution. He reveals the Father, and he invites us, woos us, creates broad spaces for us to enter into a deeper relationship. If we continue to see God as controlling, we will continue to see him as the Author of much that is evil.
• Nevertheless, your will be done. Related to the idea of God being a controlling God, we have similarly misunderstood the idea of God’s will. More often than not, we expect that what the Father wills is in direct opposition to the desires of our heart—that somehow he desires that our beloved spouse or child die a horrible death of cancer. We have failed to see in the prayer that Jesus prays to teach his disciples how to pray that Jesus not only gives us permission, but actually commands us to pray that the will of the Father that is being done in heaven also be done here, now, on the earth. It is not a prayer of resignation to God doing something entirely different. It is a prayer that earth come into alignment with the rule and reign of the God who has conquered the grave and who sees Death as the final enemy to be defeated. One of the greatest complaints of the younger generation against the older generation has to do with the many platitudes and clichés that have been served to the grieving to stem the tide of tears during a trauma. For as long as we see death and sickness as the will of God rather than as weapons of the enemy that God has in his sights to utterly eradicate as he is making all things new, and for as long as we see our assignment as needing to answer the big why questions rather being okay with silence, we will continue to alienate a generation for whom pat answers are nothing more than the counsel of Job’s friends.
• Being born again is the be-all, end-all. The previous generation has elevated “Born Again” to elite status, rather than seeing it as initiation into the life of the kingdom. It is obvious to any parent that a child that is born has yet to grow up and mature. Why have we failed to factor this maturing process in? The Church is full of Christians that have been Christians for longer than many 18-34 year-olds have been alive, and yet the number of years they have been Christians is in no way proportionate to their spiritual maturity. The testimonies of how and when we were born again are great and important, but the God who has saved us is also the God who is saving us and will save us. The testimonies of how he is saving us today are just as important as the testimonies of when and how we were born again.
• Eternal Life = life forever in heaven. Much has been done on this already, but it is still worth noting. Any gospel that has escapism as a pillar of its doctrinal foundations is not the gospel of the kingdom of God. Our ultimate destiny is not heaven. The book of Revelation ends not with heaven but the heavenly Jerusalem—the Bride of Christ—coming down to the new creation. Attempting to “sell” Christianity with an evangelistic pitch of mansions in heaven will continue to fail in a generation that has recognized the beauty and importance of the creation and has no desire to escape it but longs instead to find new ways of taking care of it. Any and all forms of escapism are counter to the God who desires his children to be regents of his kingdom who stand here on the earth and declare his rule and reign here and now in the present, to overturn and replace every throne of the kingdom of darkness. Eternal “zoe” life is not that which we are waiting to die for. We already died in Christ, and we participate in eternal life every moment that his rule and reign intersects our lives. The clearest definition of eternal life is in John 17:3 and it is not anything to do with heaven. This is eternal life: To know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he sent.