Training Gen Z

The great evangelist D. L. Moody returned hometo his wife from an evening of preaching the Gospel.

"How did it go?" she inquired.

"2 1/2 converts" he replied.

She pondered on the unusal reply for a moment and then worked it out. "Oh, so how old was the child?"

"No, two children and one adult" She gave him a quizzical look. "The adult's life is nearly half over, but the children have their whole life ahead of them to serve Jesus" he explained.

That little anecdote changed the way I saw children's ministry. Especially the children's ministry I am involved with, namely with my kids.

So my 5 year old son, Calvin, and I instituted a new tradition called "Phenology Time" (should be Theology Time, but he mispronounced it once and it has stuck!). We spend about a hour or so on a Friday afternoon doing something together about the Bible. This is on top of our daily reading the Bible and praying. Part of this is that I thought I should be training him because he is my son, part of this is that I did not have a ministry apprentice at uni this year and train people because...that's what I do.

We have done a poster of the time line of the Bible, made a prayer diary for him to pray through, done a lego picture story of Esther and are currently working on a video of one of his favorite Christian songs.

Anyway the reason I mention this is that it is starting to pay off. He has been giving me feedback on my talks for a little while now. "You should say this next time you talk about Jesus...". Some of his feedback is more helpful than some adults!

But the big highlight was this week when he announced at dinner that he would like to be baptized.

"Do you know what that means, little mate?" (my name for him)

"Yep, it is what friends with Jesus do."

"Right, but you know there is nothing special about the water don't you?"

"Yep, it is about making promises and praying. But I, dunno, I just like the idea of the water."

I wish some of my friends in ministry had as clear view of the sacraments as a 5 year old!!

Has the Game Changed?

The new theological lines

In the old days (when I was growing up) there were basically four Christian camps you could be in. These were largely determined by the Wesleyan quadrilateral of authority.

If the Bible was the source of your authority then you were evangelical and you were concerned on getting truth right and seeing people become Christian.

If tradition was your source of your authority then you were Catholic or High Church and you were concerned with making sure we kept doing what were doing 50 years ago.

If rationalism was your authority then you were liberal and you were concerned with making sure Christianity was in touch with culture, mainly through social action.

And if experience was your authority then you were charismatic and you were concerned with getting the latest experience: tongues, blessings, the latest CD or cool hair cut.

But now the lines have changed. However, many of us are still playing as if the are not. It is like we were playing rugby and don’t understand why there are now 4 vertical sticks, not two and there is no offside (The game changed from rugby to AFL if you are missing it!).

While we used to have charismatic, evangelical, liberal and high church clearly marked out we cannot work in these categories any more. Let me offer three illustrations, there are more but I am a preacher so there must be three points!

Firstly, Gen Y, as it is known, has made social action more important and more importantly cool. The globalisation of society and meant that Gen Y is more connected to the rest of the world in a way that previous generations are not. (Interestingly, this has lead to a downturn in nationalism but I am not sure what to make of that.) As such globalisation has meant that people are more concerned about “Making Poverty History”, “Live 8”, and the whole Bono thing! Social action no longer for the lefty, out there, vegetarian anymore as it was for Gen X; it is for anyone who is cool! This has made its way into our churches with the growth of Compassion, churches making sure they are ‘green’, etc. This means that evangelicals are now seeing an increasing role of social action in their community, not replacing evangelism, but sitting comfortably with it. Hillsong likewise used to be clearly in the charismatic camp, but now is doing much more in terms of social action.

Secondly, we see popular evangelicals having charismatic experiences. Mark Driscoll is the most popular of these with his own “charismatic with a seat belt” label. Though others are similar. I have still not worked out where to put Louis Giglio, even though he will be in Sydney next month with the Passion event (Oct 21, Ent Cent). He preaches an evangelical message but when I have spoken to his staff appears to have a charismatic approach to making decisions about where he goes and what he does.

Thirdly, new players on the scene don’t seem to fit anywhere. What do we make of the New Perspective, Emerging, Emergent churches? Is Tom Wright an evangelical? If he is not then what do we call him? Emergent churches appear to want to borrow from everyone: mysticism from the high church, interaction with culture from liberalism, experience mainly of community from the charismatics and something with the Bible from evangelicals. Though they do this with varying degrees of success, it makes them very hard to label!

If the game has changed, how do we play? Here are some suggestions:

1. Be aware that the lines have shifted. I am concerned, as I mentioned before that we have not acknowledged that the game has changed at least a little. We are therefore quick to label people who seem to hold a characteristic of another camp. I fear this is leading to the wrong fights. I am not against fights, just against ones that don't have to be fought. Rather than having the fight over evangelical v charismatic (both of whom we do not know exist anymore), we might need to have the fight between evangelical cessationists and evangelical non-cessationists.

2. It would be nice to say we should ignore labels altogether, and assess everyone on their own merits. But frankly this is not realistic. There are too many people to do this and we need to be able to identify who we need to be wary of and who we should warn others to be wary of. We probably need to come up with a new set of labels: New Calvinists, Emergent, Attractional Megachurch, etc. But someone smarter than me needs to do that!

3. Be careful of using words in derogatory ways. Doing social action does not make someone a liberal anymore, anymore than having an unusual experience makes them charismatic. For example, I am no longer sure of what to make of people raising their hands when they are singing, though 10 years ago they were clearly charismatic. Again, I am no longer sure how to 'label' Hillsong, though some of the things they do are good (did he just say that? I think he did, blogging must be making him soft!).

4. The Wesleyan quadrilateral is not something we should throw out. But it does need some modification. The question is what is at the heart of what you are doing? I believe evangelicals may have some experiences, do social action, etc. But what is driving them? The Gospel. Why? Because their final authority is the Bible. I suspect this means that Louis Giglio would be regarded in the old labels as charismatic. He wants to give people an experience that will change them in the Passion events. That being said, I guess I have to put KCC in the same basket!

Any thoughts on how the game has changed?

Christ and Culture and Complexity

I have been trying to write a Bible study assessing the "missional v attractional church debate" going around and found some big problems.

Firstly, the purpose of the church is not clearly articulated in the New Testament. It is assumed, but there is never any statement that the church should be seeking to evangelise to the world as a church. (Though I think it should, but that is a longer point). The point here is that unless you have a clear doctrine of church you cannot work out what the relationship should be.

Secondly, is that the relationship between the church and the world is fairly complex. This has been illustrated by Carson in Christ and Culture Revisited, where he assesses Neibhur and others who have tried to develop models of considering the relationship. While this is a dense book, and largely assuming a US audience it is worth persevering. Here are some of the models that have me thinking:

There is of course the idea that the church can transform the world and it is here to do so. While this can be taken to its nth degree in the social gospel advocated by Gustavo Gutierrez it can also be taken in smaller degrees. For instance the church can seek to change the world to be a little more like heaven, while acknowledging it will never quite succeed (see Phillip Jensen’s talks on the Resurrection from Matthias Media for an example of this).

Abraham Kupyer has a different approach and that is that it is not the church, but Christians who seek to change the world and makes a distinction between them. Hence while he sought to establish Christian schools and Christian universities they were not church institutions. This keeps the purpose and the identity of the church unique. My question here is do Christians need to address the world as a church from time to time? For example the Australian government will soon review the laws on R rated computer games being available in Australia. While I am planning on getting my Christian friends to lobby against this, should I also ask the Christian leaders of denominations to do so as well as representatives of the church?

At the other end of the scale we see Darryl G. Hart and Frederica Mathewes-Green. They argue that “we have about as much chance of influencing culture as we do of changing the weather”. What we need to do is rather seeking to help people change things, help people weather the inevitable storms. Hence the church and Christians have no place in seeking to transform culture. I believe this is what Driscoll can accuse people of the church merely being a parasite on culture. We are not contributing and we have so much to contribute! On marriage, relationships, work, and especially on the subject of rest in a stressed out world. Further it makes the assumption that just because it cannot be done does not mean it should not be attempted (see my previous post).

My final approach is my own and it works like this: a couple of equations. By contextualisation I mean not just understanding the world, but actually getting our hands dirty and being involved in it. Jesus did! By confrontation I mean the inevitable confrontation that takes place when people talk about Jesus as his lordship confronts people who should be under it.


Contextualisation - Confrontation = Liberalism
The church is merely another part of the world, it has no relevance to the world because it is only a part of it.

Confrontation – Contextualisation = Alienation
The church confronting the world with the Gospel without being a part of the culture it is in means that it will be ignored by the culture and therefore alienated from the society. I am sometimes asked why the church is not persecuted more and wonder if the reason is that we have been alienated instead.

Contextualisation + Confrontation = Persecution
If you are a part of the world and yet confront it with the Gospel then there will be some conflict that takes place. I have put persecution here as the result. But this is only because it makes my equation look cool! There is another possibility as articulated by Carson:

"The complexity will mandate our service, without insisting that things turn out a certain way: we learn to trust and obey and leave the results to God, for we learn both from Scripture and history that sometimes faithfulness leads to awakening and reformation, sometimes to persecution and violence, and sometimes to both." Christ and Culture. Pp227-228

Still have not worked it out yet other than, it is really complex. Or in the words of Diver Dan of Sea Change (one of my heroes) “Hmmm…tricky!”

Success v Glory

I have been struck by the difference between seeking glory for God and seeking success. Most, including I, often put the two together. The more numbers in a ministry the more glory it brings to God. But watching the movie 300 I was challenged by this.

For those that missed it, 300 is about the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC. Where 3,300 Greeks held off the Persian army of 80,000 for three days. (The numbers on both sides were exaggerated for the movie - that's what makes it a cool movie!).

In the movie, there is a scene where a Greek scouting party sees the Persian army that it will take on later that day. There are 300 Spartans and a few other Greeks including Arcadians. There are 1 million Persians. In the scouting party an Arcadian and a Spartan react differently to the situation at hand. The Arcadian sees the army and says "There can be no victory here". There is no chance of success. And he was right, after 3 days the Greeks were slaughtered.

But, the Spartan smiles. He sees a chance not of success but glory for Sparta and himself. For him success is not the same as glory. Glory is about showing how great someone or something is. While the Greeks were slaughtered, they did so at the cost of around 20,000 Persians!

I think we often mistake the two in serving God. We do not have to be successful. What we have to do is show how great God is. Sometimes that will mean walking into a situation that we have no hope of success, because it is the right thing and that's what God's people do. We bring glory to God!

Confessions of a Reluctant Blogger

I have to admit that I have avoided the whole blogger thing. I have not read many, I have written on fewer and thus far refused to join the trend. So what changed?

Firstly, I need to write. This is not some self indulgent, I need to express myself thing. It is that I need to write stuff down to work out what I think. I might as well do this in a place where people can tell me I am right or wrong.

Secondly, people have said I should. And I am a sheep and do what people tell me to! No really, people have said "you should write that down" when I have said things, and since I have a memory like a gold fish I thought "Hmmm....maybe I should....now if only I could remember what I just said, and who you are, and who I am that should work well!"

Thirdly, there does seem to be a change in what people read, how they read it and all that sort of stuff. And if that is the case then I should get involved. I guess....