THE GREAT (GENERATIONAL) WALL

We are discussing generational walls and barriers. There was a huge divide between the baby boomer generation and our parents in the late 1960s ... and corresponding cultural change as well as massive ecclesial change. The "Jesus" movement reshaped the face of the Evangelical church, the style of worship and the music.

S.S. sent me a statistic by email from Barna research which indicates that 36% of Americans today are Evangelical, but within the next generation, should current trends continue, that number will drop to 4%. It is routine for most churches to lose their graduating high schoolers as they go off to college (It would be interesting here to discuss the temptation for Evangelicals to go "instransitive" to use Mumford's phrase).

The question to be considered in this discussion is two-fold: 1) how can we be more effective in handing off our baton of faith to our own kids in our churches? (evangelical or otherwise).

2) How can we effectively engage millennial young people (secular) with a serious communication of the good news of Jesus?

Both questions lead to a third question that most be considered in order to answer #1 and #2: what are the generational and cultural differences that require a change in missiological methodology to reach these kids? Some say, there is no difference, others say we need to go back to historic Christianity, and yet a third group wants to throw out everything and start completely fresh. Which is it?

Trial Balloons

Despite our many grumblings about "politics" and "the system", we do have the amazing privilege of voting. So who you like for the OO (Oval Office) in 08? You get to name your (current--subject to change) candidate, and please provide the one or two reasons behind your choice. The hoped-for give-and-take might change some minds or sharpen some convictions!

Whatever Happened to Sin, next iteration

In the 1970s, Karl Menniger published "Whatever Happened to Sin?" The book pointed out the ways in which culture had abandoned the notion of "sin" as an important category for thinking about what's wrong and why things go wrong, and replaced it with terms derived from the realm of psychotherapy.

I wonder if we're not in a similar cultural moment, one in which our conception of the "location" of "evil" is shifting. In classical Protestant terms, sin/evil is located in each and every one of our rebellious hearts; we need a Savior. The therapeutic revolution moves the locus of evil to maladjustment, bad parenting, low self-esteem, etc.; we need a therapist. Various other social movements will locate or "explain" evil in terms of large corporations, centralized authority structures, or authoritarian ideologies; we need a raised, revolutionary "new consciousness."

Information technologies offer a fresh "take" on the human dilemma. Sin/evil is caused by twinned lacks: of connectedness and of information. More than a few voices in the emerging church movement are calling into question our "standard" categories of sin/sinner, being "lost," and formulations of judgment and the possibility of eternal punishment. Several are advocating wholesale denial of the doctrine of "penal substitution," the idea that Christ bore the punishment for our sin; this, at least in a few quarters, is seen as "cosmic child abuse." A modified universalism--while no one is saved apart from Christ's sacrificial death, many (all?) are saved without knowing that their salvation has come through Christ--is gaining a fresh hearing. The idea of drawing lines that separate those "inside" from those "outside," the understanding that people who "don't know Jesus" are "lost," are being viewed as outmoded, unhelpful and possibly even evil.

So: do we have an opportunity to rethink and reformulate our understanding of sin, what it means to be a sinner, and what it means that Jesus is Savior? How might we respond to the cyber-optimistic contention that people are inherently good and desire to make a positive contribution to a community (the ideology behind craigslist or eBay or Wikipedia)? What are our emergent brethren onto that we (those of us who might not be sure that the emergent label looks good on us) ought to pay attention to in regards to sin and salvation?

One out of ten ain't bad for starters...

Totally selfish post: here I am, pastor of a small-ish Covenant Church (65 adults + kids), recognizing my need to lead our folks in a more "outward" direction. Help me develop a Top Ten list of things a guy like me, and a church like ours, might do to get ourselves going and reproducing/making disciples. Let's not have any one of us give all ten, but if everyone could offer one, with some reasons why you think it's important, maybe we could create a practical list that a guy like me could start doing! I realize you can't tell much about us from this brief description, so if you'd like more info, I'm happy to provide it, but feel free to fire away without it.

What's New?

With all the usual caveats about not pursuing the novel for the sake of novelty, or striving to be cutting edge, or falling prey to "new-ism" (the belief that what is new is automatically superior to what is old), please post a thought that is new for you: what's working in you right now that you haven't shared with us previously? These do not need to be fully-formed presentations; instead, I'm asking for a kind of "field report" from where your heart and mind are currently operating.

New Year's Razz-solutions!

Kick off a new year with some razzle-dazzle! What would be the top 2 or 3 resolutions you would like to see any/every "church" (howsoever you wish to 'define' that entity, but keep the focus on a local gathering) make for 2008? You may comment on other's razzle-lutions ONLY after you have proposed 2-3 of your own. Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, Joy to the World!

Here's an opportunity and invitation to "preach" a very brief Christmas sermon to your blogmates. Please select a short portion of the "Christmas story" (as told by the canonical Evangelists or by Paul [test question: Paul tells 'the Christmas story'? Where...?]) that you feel the church in the US particularly needs to attend to in these days. Hey, it's a busy season, so if you go on and on, we'll probably move along to other things... but if you are succinct, insightful, humorous and brilliant, you may hear the angels sing. Otherwise, the sounds you hear will just be us clapping and cheering.

"The Well" and ecclesiology

Let's not neglect the praying-for-one-another thread from the prior post, but this came through from Joseph (I shortened it a bit) and I thought it might be good to ruminate on it together. Please take time to visit the links Joseph provided before commenting:

"The Wall Street Journal had an article in it about the church that Susanna Petrie attends in Brussels. We met the pastor when we were over there a couple of years ago, and Deb and I visited some of their sister churches in London and Dublin.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119578825507501887-lMyQjAxMDE3OTI1MzcyODM4Wj.html

"The pastor, Carlton Deal, is part of an innovative missional movement dedicated to planting churches in Europe ... http://christianassociates.org/

"I really LOVE what these people are doing ... their approach does lead, however, to some legitimate discussions of what exactly constitutes the "church." I think ecclesiology is going to be the great topic of conversation and debate in our time, as soteriology was for Luther and others in the early sixteenth century.

"...and here is a critical response (in the good sense) from David Neff at Ancient Evangelical Future:
http://ancientevangelicalfuture.blogspot.com/2007/11/church-next-to-godiva-chocolate-shop.html "

Let us pray.

Let's try something less analytical. What are you praying about these days that you might like us to join you in? Anything from the very personal to the extensively global would be fine: how might we be praying with and for you?

Unlimited forgiveness...?

Paraphrasing Bob Mumford from the recent ACM conference: the coming of the kingdom looks like unqualified love and unlimited forgiveness in action. Yale theologian Miroslav Wolf, in his book Exclusion and Embrace, writes of the two "movements" in forgiveness: first is exclusion, where the evil that has been done is named, its effects described, and the perpetrators identified. Once this has been done, embrace (re-welcoming the offenders) becomes possible (though not automatic or instantaneous). What forms might a "ministry of unlimited forgiveness" take? How might the church move from being perceived as the place to receive unlimited judgment and condemnation to a place where the excluded might experience being re-embraced?