What is a “Funk and Wagnall’s”?

A couple of my friends (family) have brought up the Orthodox and Roman traditions of following the “church calendar.” This something I truly admire. Unlike many Protestants, it is something of which I am starkly aware. If you have no idea what I am talking about you can research it here. Not just everyone in a local congregation follows it. The whole church, all over the world, follows it. It’s brilliant, really.

However, as much as I like this part, it is a practice that doesn’t go far enough for me and for two reasons. From what I have learned, this is a new generation that is unlike any before it. And they are filled with contradictions. First, they are a fatherless generation, so they are very leery of patriarchal systems. But secondly, in what seems to be a contradiction, they so badly need to be heard. Perhaps it is a direct consequence of such a paternal deficiency that they need to be heard.

Let’s unpack this seeming contradiction. First of all, they are known as a “fatherless” generation. This is arguably the distinguishing characteristic of the kids who are growing up in today’s world. Now stack that on top of the fact that they have more information and input at their fingertips than any previous peoples. Social networks, search engines, and even their favorite bloggers have more impact on their lives and their beliefs than strangers who claim to be “experts” ever will.

They display their lives online—at least the part they want you to see. They count on Wikipedia but have no idea what a Funk & Wagnall’s is, or was. The vast majority of them (90%+) have uploaded data, videos, and/or photos onto the internet. This generation was “born” online. That is why those born since 1990 are referred to as the iY Generation.

Dr. Tim Elmore wrote the book Generation iY: Our Last Chance to Save Their Future. In his promotional video for the book he says, “When I look at students today and schools (read churches) today, I see a gap. Students today are primarily right brain thinkers; schools (churches) are primarily left brain delivery. Students want to upload their own thoughts; schools (churches) insist on downloading information. And this chasm has led to a disconnect between adults and this emerging generation of kids.”

With so much peer influence, available data, plus paternal rejection, why would they seek out a pastor, a priest, or even a heavenly Father for exclusive input on matters of faith?

If you really want to do some research on this you could read this or this. If you don’t want to understand Generation iY, then you have the answer as to why we are having problems reaching them—indifference and a lack of understanding by the older generations. If you want to go even deeper you should read Elmore’s book.

But secondly, besides being dubious of single source authority, this generation, like no other before it, needs to be heard. Elsewhere on this blog, I have quoted author and former director of Alpha USA Todd Hunter. He says, “It used to be that people primarily listened their way into Christian faith. That made the Christian role talking: defending the faith, explaining the faith, doing apologetics, preaching, writing tracts, etc. While that reality is not entirely gone, these days outsiders are increasingly talking and observing their way into faith. They need to tell their story and see if Christianity is real. This major shift is difficult, because right when seekers are looking instead of listening, the church is at a high mark of un-Christian living. Transformation into Christlikeness has always been the goal of Christianity. Now it is utterly strategic—the future of the faith in the USA, humanly speaking, depends upon it.”

This makes our job listening and living it—two things we don’t do very well. What can the church do? Well, can we rethink our delivery? If not, we may need to prepare ourselves to lose an entire generation. How about simply changing our approach from, “Here’s the truth and you had better believe it and act this way!” to, “Here’s what Jesus said! Here’s my experience. Now, how do you think we’re supposed to live that out?” And then we shut up and listen to them. Not just one Sunday or one Wednesday, but every time we come together. Then that “format” becomes our liturgy.

That’s what happens every time we meet at Agora. Maybe you have a better suggestion. I’m wide open. Our community has evolved and hopefully is still evolving. I say all the time that we don’t think we have it nailed. In fact, I think the idea that we think we need to have “it” nailed is a major deficiency in the universal church today. (“It” meaning message and method.)

Here’s the thing. Could we possibly have enough trust in God and faith in our kids that they could hear from the Holy Spirit for themselves, beginning at a fairly young age? And that between them and us, we could work things out? That sounds like community to me. In our experience, it feels like a community too—wrestling with the questions, the words, the works, the faith, the doubts, the struggles, and the successes.

Finally, we must find a way to allow the kids to play a major role in the conversation. Not just around the Sunday lunch table, but where it matters most—around the Lord’s Table.

Sunday Lunch

As to some new ideas to stop the bleeding, first of all I would like to recommend family devotions. From the earliest times in the lives of your children, awaken your whole family around 4:30 am, and put together an hour long presentation of scripture, sharing, prayer requests, and prayer. Everyone should share, and sleeping is absolutely forbidden…

Okay, not really.

Look, I don’t want to diss anyone. Seriously, if family devotions were a part of your upbringing and it was meaningful and life-altering, I honor you and especially your parents for what they were able to do. Unfortunately, as well-intentioned as they might be, it is not the experience of most people, including parents and their children that devotions accomplished what was intended. More often than not they were forced, dreaded by everyone, too long (no matter how short), ineffective, and generally… uh…hated.

The intentions of family devotions are so good. But is there a way to engage your family in meaningful conversations about your faith and about the things that count? And can we find a way to make that happen naturally and spontaneously?

An idea came to me as I walked through my own home one afternoon. I was picking up papers, crafts, worksheets, coloring pages, loose cotton balls, and some multicolored pipe-cleaners that were all over the house that day. And it occurred to me that this represented just one week in the church life of my daughter. This pile was a collection of work that she had been given beginning with Sunday School on Sunday morning, Children’s Church after that, Sunday night worksheets, Wednesday night choir, and followed by her age-appropriate missions program. Wow!

Talk about drinking from a fire hose! She had at least five different lessons from five different teachers about five different subjects with five different scripture verses to memorize. But then, she would be doing that all over again starting the next Sunday morning. Five more of everything. I started looking through the pile and realized that none of what she had heard that week matched any of the three sermons I had heard in the same time frame.

Then a thought hit me. If the church wanted to help facilitate my being the point man in my daughter’s spiritual formation, why couldn’t they plan it out to where all the pastors were using their creativity to coordinate lesson plans? Wait, hear me out. It would have really helped if my daughter and I were learning the same things, you, know, at our own levels, but the same concepts, maybe even the same scriptures at the same time. That might actually spark some authentic and unforced conversation between us.

Then I thought about Sunday lunch. The Sunday afternoon meal after church has always been a family thing for us. How cool would it be if the conversation around the table at lunch time on Sunday afternoon was to eventually come around to the subject matter of the day? What would it do for our kids if they were to become involved in, included in the deep issues discussed at table on Sunday afternoon? Not compulsory, not strained, but naturally included, encouraged. What if their opinions actually mattered? (I’ll go here next.)

This is something with which we have experimented, and we can see real potential for the future as we grow into having just such a creative planning team. Some object lessons work for all ages. Videos, movie clips, and larger metaphors can bridge or can be made age-appropriate. Whatever tools we have at our disposal. Shouldn’t we be the most creative people on earth?

Just my first idea. What do you think?

Contextualize the Message, Part 3

At this point in the conversation, perhaps you are expecting me to give you a rundown on the best way to present the Gospel to the next generation in a manner in which they will understand. Isn’t that where we’re going with this? If you are anything like me, you would really like some specific words or a particular program like the Roman Road or the Four Spiritual Laws that you could use. Well, good luck with that.

See, here’s the deal. That is the problem. The problem is that we want a recipe or a 5 step formula for winning the postmodern soul. We want a script. It’s no wonder that the young think we’re like bad used car salesmen or irritating telemarketers who interrupt their lives with something they don’t want to hear about. And, as Neil Postman once wrote, they have built in “crap detectors.” So you can’t just blow smoke. They can spot insincerity a mile away.

“One size fits all” evangelism models make our victims feel like marks in a con game. Why can’t we learn to be ourselves? Jim Henderson, in his book Evangelism without Additives, talks about being real and simply “nudging people closer to Jesus” by asking good questions and then paying attention to their answers. He calls them “attention giveaways.” What a profound idea!

If there is a “secret” or a methodology, it is this: make a friend—a sincere one. Not a hey-I’ll-be-your-friend-so-I-can-win-you-to-Jesus kind of friend. I’m talking about developing a love relationship with someone that is unconditional. My problem used to be that I didn’t even know anyone who didn’t know Jesus.

Frankly, I used to spend 7 days a week in church and never got the opportunity to meet someone who wasn’t already like me. So we had to construct programs and events designed to pull people inside if we were to even have a chance with them. But if we had been truly trying to reach non-believers, that would make about as much sense as inviting a bank robber to come into the police station.

Today’s “church growth strategies” are really designed at reaching a “better class of sinner.” In truth, they are not aimed at “sinners” at all. Instead the targets are other church’s “sheep” or the grownups who have stopped going to church for one reason or another. So in reality, the Church (big “C”) is not growing at all.

We have to come to grips with the fact that we live in a pagan country where the basics of scripture and the Gospel are no longer common knowledge. It’s a new day. The old days of throw-enough-mud-on-the-wall-and-some-of-it-will-stick evangelism are over.

Todd Hunter, former director of Alpha USA, says, “It used to be that people primarily listened their way into Christian faith. That made the Christian role talking: defending the faith, explaining the faith, doing apologetics, preaching, writing tracts, etc. While that reality is not entirely gone, these days outsiders are increasingly talking and observing their way into faith. They need to tell their story and see if Christianity is real. This major shift is difficult, because right when seekers are looking instead of listening, the church is at a high mark of un-Christian living. Transformation into Christlikeness has always been the goal of Christianity. Now it is utterly strategic—the future of the faith in the USA, humanly speaking, depends upon it.”

Did you notice? Outsiders today are “talking and observing their way into faith.” This makes our job listening and living it—two things we don’t do very well. In fact, one outsider is quoted in the book UnChristian as saying, “It seems like Christians are more concerned with being right than being loving.” However, that has to change. If we are ever going to reach the next step in our mission, we have got to learn to love, listen, and live like Christ. Then we can count on the Holy Spirit to handle the next step.