Category Archives: generations

The Great Drop-Out

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Very interesting interview on NPR with Barna Research’s David Kinnaman on why so many young people are dropping out of the institutional Church. Give a listen!

Here are a few paragraphs from the interview:

MARTIN: What are the young people telling you about? Whether they’re taking a break, a temporary break or dropping out altogether, what are they telling you about why?

KINNAMEN: What we really boil it down to – you know, each person that we interviewed had very specific experiences and challenges and the church was, in some way, inadequate in their mind to that. And yet, when we looked at it from a broad perspective, the way I would conclude this is that we’re living in a more complicated age, more complicated questions about marriage and the diversity of this generation, the technology used in social media

And, in a nutshell, what we learned is that churches aren’t really giving them an answer to these complicated questions that they’re facing, these lifestyle issues and challenges that they’re facing. And it’s not really a deep or thoughtful or challenging response that most churches are providing to them.

MARTIN:
And are you finding this phenomenon across what people consider liberal and conservative churches or do you find it concentrated in one side or the other?

KINNAMEN: Well, one of the
surprises for me was I figured that we would see some differences between young Catholics, for instance, and young Protestants and young mainline versus young evangelicals. But I think the overriding theme was that this generation, in so many ways, is post-institutional, regardless of their traditions. So many similarities in their reasons and their reactions to the church and to Christianity.

Some of the things that were different was I think many churches that deal well with complexity didn’t give a sufficient amount of conviction or commitment required of the young people that they work with. And then,
conversely, those that had a strong degree of commitment and sort of emotional connection with the church didn’t deal well with the complexity. So it was sort of a double-edged sword for many of these churches.

Much of this is coming from this much viewed recent YouTube video:

Here are a some additional information –

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Smartphones, Smart Pastors, Smart Church

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“The dining scene hints at the fact that many youth and young adults today have a relationship with technology and social media that is core to their formation. With this access to the Internet and, through it, the world, their worldview is significantly different than that of pr

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evious generations”

This is an important article and commentary by Adam K. Copeland that anyone… everyone… who has a desire to impact the lives of emerging generations should read!

Read the whole thing here:

Smartphones, Smart Pastors, Smart Church 


App Store – Dayspring Church

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It isn’t a matter of just employing technology, but understanding how emerging generations are integrating with changing technology. Current technology, in and of itself, is always passe among emerging generations.

I made a Facebook post a while ago about the passe nature of the World Wide Web among younger people with respect to APPS on smartphones and tablets and how they are usurping the Web. I believing that in the coming decade everything will change, again. As today’s emerging generation moves into their 20’s and 30’s, they will access information and engage their social networks not from the World Wide Web, but they will interact with the world and get their information through APPS rather than the WWW.

Anyway, way back when I started our new campus ministry at Bowling Green State Univ., (Dunamis Outreach, part of Chi Alpha Campus Ministries) we were a part of a new church in Bowling Green, “Dayspring Church” (we had four hundred attending on Sundays in just four years). Well, I came across Dayspring’s APP on iTunes.

So, were are we with respect to emerging culture?

Check out their APP on iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dayspring-church/id476240885?mt=8

I’m Christian, unless you’re gay.

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Dan Pearce writes this piece on his blog, “sdl.” It is worth reading!  It is about, after all is said and done, how we live out the calling of Jesus Christ – how we are and are not living up to the example and commands of Jesus. Here are a couple paragraphs to give you a taste.

“Why is it that sometimes the most Christlike people are they who have no religion at all?

“I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this… Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just… plain… different…

“They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.

“And if we boil it down, isn’t that what love actually is?

“Don’t get me wrong. I know a lot of incredible Christians, too. I know some incredible Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and Jews. I know a lot of amazing people, devout in their various religions, who truly love the people around them.

“I also know some atheist, agnostic, or religionless people who are absolutely hateful of believers. They loathe their religious counterparts. They love only those who believe (or don’t believe) the same things they do.

“In truth, having a religion doesn’t make a person love or not love others. It doesn’t make a person accept or not accept others. It doesn’t make a person befriend or not befriend others.

“Being without a religion doesn’t make somebody do or be any of that either.

“No, what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others.

“Nothing else.

“I know there are many here who believe that living a homosexual life is a sin.


“Okay.


“But, what does that have to do with love?


“I repeat… what does that have to do with love?


“Come on. Don’t we understand? Don’t we get it? To put our arm around
someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a
different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they
should be… doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting
what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them
in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs
right.


“It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend.


“That’s all….

“My request today is simple. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Find
somebody, anybody, that’s different than you. Somebody that has made you
feel ill-will or even [gulp…] hateful. Somebody whose life decisions
have made you uncomfortable. Somebody who practices a different religion
than you do. Somebody who has been lost to addiction. Somebody with a
criminal past. Somebody who dresses “below” you. Somebody with
disabilities. Somebody who lives an alternative lifestyle. Somebody
without a home.


“Somebody that you, until now, would always avoid, always look down on, and always be disgusted by.


“Reach your arm out and put it around them.


“And then, tell them they’re all right. Tell them they have a friend. Tell them you love them.


“If you or I wanna make a change in this world, that’s where we’re gonna be able to do it. That’s where we’ll start.


“Every. Single. Time.


“Because what you’ll find, and I promise you this, is that the more
you put your arm around those that you might naturally look down on, the
more you will love yourself. And the more you love yourself, the less need you’ll ever have to find fault or be better than others.  And the less we all find fault or have a need to be better than others, the quicker this world becomes a far better place to live.


“And don’t we all want to live in a better world? Don’t we all want our kids to grow up in a better, less hateful, more beautiful “world?


“I know I do.”

Read all of the post.

Think on such things – try to come into the idea that the Way of Jesus Christ is so contrary to this American culture of ours! It matters not how much the left or right or liberal or conservative or Roman Catholic or Evangelical or Anglican or Protestant or Independent wants us all to believe that THEY (their group, their belief system, their denomination, their church) have it all exactly right and so lovingly warn everyone else that if they don’t get on board they are going straight to the Lake of Burning Fire for all eternity -crispy critters.

We are blind. Why? Because we are fallible, because we see in part, because we know in part, and because we will not know fully until we get on to the other side.  Why, then do we have to pretend that we or I or s/he or us are exactly right?

Purpose

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In the continuing saga that is this book I’m dipping my foot into from time-to-time, the author picks up the ideas of the Church needing men and men needing the Church – the why, how, for what purpose, and all that.  Here is a bit from the author concerning what the Episcopal Church in its Anglican Faith has to offer men for today (well, “today,” as the author wrote, was 1917 through the final publishing date of the book, which was into the 1940’s) and why men should be a part of the Church:

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“…And because, if they do not [participate], they will lose sight of the central fact of Christianity and that is the life, work, and death of Jesus Christ, who reveals God to man.

“The Church believes that the man wishes to know why the great gift of life was given him, how he  may see beyond the affairs of the moment, what is expected of one so richly endowed in mind and heart, what share he has in the improvement of the race, what he must do to enrich his own living, what thoughts he must think in order to understand his own relation to God and the world, what efforts he must make to gain real and durable satisfaction, what he may do to avoid the devastating sines, to whom he may appeal to quiet his conscience, how he may gain comfort in time of loss, how he must estimate necessary sacrifices, what powers he may appropriate to expand life and purpose, what unfading compensations there are for righteous effort and finally what his destiny is to be.

“The Church is the guardian of all this knowledge. Imperfectly as it may teach such truths, nevertheless that truth is its treasure.

“If this treasure of truth is drawn upon, men will enlarge their vision and fortify their lives.”

Now, I will certainly say that all the above is as appropriate and applicable for women as for men, but this book is addressed to men, specifically. 

I will also say – which will be a bit of a counter to so much of what I experienced in my career in higher-education working with those enthralled with and dominated by identity-politics – that if we are to know fully how all this works and to realize it all in our lives truly, we need to admit that there are unique ways of appropriation and experience for men and for women.  The sexes do not experience things the same and if we demand that they do then we lesson the full human experience.

Primitive Tradition

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“Therefore the idea of primitive tradition is not only a preservative idea, but a quest for reform. It is a demand for the restoration of, or re-emphasis upon, those beliefs or practices approved or authorized by antiquity but wanting or fragmentary in the present age.

John Keble (* 25. April 1792 in Fairford (Glou...

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“‘Is there not a hope’, asked Keble, ‘that by resolute self-denial and strict and calm fidelity to our ordination vows, we may not only aid in preserving that which remains but also may help to revive in some measure, in this or some other portion of the Christian world, more of the system and spirit of the apostolical age? New truths, in the proper sense of the word, we neither can nor wish to arrive at.  But the monuments of antiquity may disclose to our devout perusal much that will be to this age new, because it has been mislaid or forgotten, and we may attain to a light and clearness, which we now dream not of, in our comprehension of the faith and discipline of Christ.”

Writing about John Keble and the Tractarian movememt – Owen Chadwick, “The Spirit of the Oxford Movement: Tractarian Essays;” p.29. 

5 Cultural Shifts

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Interesting, and short, article on cultural changes that we need to pay attention to, particularly if we care about emerging generations and their interest in and involvement in their own spiritual lives and our worshiping communities.  Here are a couple paragraphs…

Five cultural shifts that should affect the way we do church

“It’s probably good that most churches aren’t all wrapped up in the latest fads. We don’t have the cash to keep up with most of it, and if we do, we’re probably better off spending that money on feeding the homeless rather than making sure the youth room has the newest flat-screen TV…

“But there are cultural shifts that congregations and church leaders need to track and respond to sensibly. Here are five of them.”

Read it all here

By: Carol Howard Merritt on the Duke Divinity School blog, “Call & Response blog”

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Wither the Church

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I contend that a primary reason for the withering of the Church within the public mind is resultant of the Church – liberal and conservative – capitulating to the zeitgeist. When we simply mirror the prevailing culture or system whether political, economic, philosophical, whatever, we lose our significance, our voice, our purpose, our justifiable reason to be noticed.

Occupy Wall Street

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On Thursday, October 6th, John Mertz (priest-in-charge of the Greenpoint parish) went down to Zuccotti Park (Liberty Park) to see what was going on at the Occupy Wall Street protest site.  John wanted to attend the second of two daily “General Assembly” meetings where organization is arrived at and announcements and decisions are made.

I was, frankly, quite impressed with what I say and experienced.  Yes, of course, there are the fringe people, but for the most part these where normal young folks who for perhaps the first time where engaging in the democratic process.  Being trained as a Social Studies teacher and seeing all the young people at the site, well, this whole affair is thrilling (just like the Tea Party phenomena is thrilling, but with a different perspective).

I was impressed with the organizers at the General Assembly.  Their calm, reason, and organizational skills were apparent.  I “spirit” of the whole thing was, in fact, respectful, even with a decided point of view expressed freely.  They are very conscious of the neighbors (the babies that have to go to sleep), the businesses in the area, the sanitation issues, and of their relationship with the police (they are civil servants who are part of the 99%… they are not the enemy).  These people know what they are doing.

Yet, there are those who are provocateurs.  There are anarchists.  There are the glommers-on who have no real interest in the cause (as undefined as it is), but only want to stir up trouble.  These people are present, and they are ready.  The struggle will be for the organizers how to mitigate these people so that they do not spoil the whole enterprise.

John and I both wore clericals. I was surprised at the expression of desire among many people that the clergy get involved and that the Church (whatever church) make a statement. This is a nod to whatever residual authority the Church may still hold within the younger demographic of American society.  Gen Y is so very different than the Baby-Boomers, yet they can at times look very similiar.  This is a problem for the Baby Boomers – they see Gen Y and think that they are like themselves.  This is clearly seen who Baby-Boomer commentators write or speak about how this protest is like the 1960’s or the aging hippies in Zuccotti Park. 

Here is the thing:  As a Christian, I am compelled to regard both sides as having the need to redemption and in the need of reconciliation.  Neither side is all evil or all virtuous! 

No social, political, or economic systems will achieve what most people are seeking.  All the “systems” are temporal and fallible – they look great on paper but don’t work in real life.  All systems presume something about the human creature that is invalid.  From the start, then, the systems that look great on paper do not work when the rubber-hits-the-road. 

So, what I will say will not please anyone, frankly.  Capitalism and Socialism are neutral systems – both can work or not depending on the people who lead and the people who inhabit the system.  As a Christian, I focus on the people and not so much the system (even though I have my own opinions on what system seems to work best based on data as much as possible).

The Church needs to understand that we don’t simply jump on a bandwagon… we offer an alternative that begins with Jesus Christ.  That, frankly, is the problem within a society that is increasingly post-Christian and demands that everything be considered and treated equally without critical evaluation and where any opinion anyone holds must be esteemed as valid.  It is also a problem for those in the Church – particularity the leadership – who are so insecure that they are afraid to proclaim anything that might bring about opposition or ridicule or condescension.