How do we connect with the next Generation?
Acts 16:1-9
Acts 2: 42-47; 1 Timothy 4:12-16; Philippians 2:20-22
Intro –
If you are like me and grew up in the typical Southern Baptist Church with the typical model for growth then you learned. Worship, Evangelism, Missions, Preaching and Bible Study was the key to growth. But one thing that we forgot was Vision, a God given vision. A vision as Dr. Benny King put it is “A clear mental image of a preferable future, imparted by God, based on any accurate image of where you are, and where God wants you to be.”
I want to talk to you this morning about the lost generation. We are loosing our young people in the church today. According to Barna’s Research group;
“From age 20 to 29, most individuals face many life-shaping decisions: whether to finish college; what career to pursue; where to live; whether or not to get married; who to marry; if and when to have children – among many other crucial choices. In our culture of hyper-individualism, those decisions are being increasingly shaped by people’s desire to determine their own personal fulfillment and purpose in life. For many twentysomethings, allegiance to Christian churches is a casualty of their efforts to “create their own version of fulfillment.”
A new study from the Barna Research Group of Ventura, California shows that millions of twentysomething Americans – many of whom were active in churches during their teens – pass through their most formative adult decade while putting Christianity on the backburner. The research, conducted with 2,660 twentysomethings, shows that Americans in their twenties are significantly less likely than any other age group to attend church services, to donate to churches, to be absolutely committed to Christianity, to read the Bible, or to serve as a volunteer or lay leader in churches.
Church-Going Softens
Perhaps the most striking reality of twentysomething’s faith is their relative absence from Christian churches. Only 3 out of 10 twentysomethings (31%) attend church in a typical week, compared to 4 out of 10 of those in their 30s (42%) and nearly half of all adults age 40 and older (49%).
The low level of twentysomething church attendance is not just due to the “college years,” when many young adults may not have easy access to a church. The research shows that church attendance bottoms out during the late 20s when the vast majority of students have transitioned from education to the workforce. Just 22% of those ages 25 to 29 attended church in the last week.
Many twentysomethings are reversing course after having been active church attenders during their teenage years. As teenagers, more than half attended church each week and more than 4 out of 5 (81%) had ever gone to a Christian church. That means that from high school graduation to age 25 there is a 42% drop in weekly church attendance and a 58% decline from age 18 to age 29. That represents about 8,000,000 twentysomethings alive today who were active church-goers as teenagers but who will no longer be active in a church by their 30th birthday. “ (Twentysomethings Struggle to Find Their Place in the Christian Church. September 24, 2003)
The reality is true in this church and in churches across America. The real question is what can we do to become relevant to them?
I. Back in Time
In the 1985 movie “Back In Time,” Dr. Emmett Brown, a research scientist and inventor of sorts, had just made a lifetime dream a reality. He made a time machine and was about to become the first person to ever travel into the future. One problem, he had stolen some plutonium from some Libyans and they were about to show up on the scene. Before he could climb into this time machine and head off into the future, he was shot. But still on the scene was a young man named Marty, who had caught the whole event on videotape.
The Libyans approached Marty to kill him, but the gun jams just before Marty could be shot. Marty quickly jumps into the time machine and the race begins. While shifting gears to speed up, Marty accidentally turns on the time machine set to November 5, 1955, which was the exact date the Doctor had the revelation for the flux capacitor, the contraption which made time travel possible.
When the car reaches 88 miles an hour, Marty is immediately transported back in time to November 5, 1955. As the car enters the year 1955, it slams into Mr. Peabody’s barn. Mr. Peabody and his wife and two kids show up on the scene to find an enormous whole in the side of their barn and something strange inside. As they enter the barn, they discuss what the unknown object might be. At the very moment that they decide that it might be some sort of alien spacecraft, the door of the time machine opens, and out steps Marty clothed in his nuclear protection suit, looking very much like some sort of alien creature. Mr. Peabody runs to the house and grabs a shotgun and begins to fire upon this space alien that he believes is mutating into human form.
Marty is able to jump into the time machine and drive away from the scene. But as he comes to a road that seems somewhat familiar to him, he realizes that he has been transported in time to the year 1955. As Marty attempts to “fit in” to this society and figure out what to do, he runs into his parents when they were his age. He then realizes that he will have to adapt to life in 50’s until he can find Dr. Brown, who is the only person who can help him get back to his own generation.
My friends, that is exactly what is happening when the young people of this generation enter into our churches today. They enter into a church that was designed to meet the needs of their grandparents and parents. The world has changed but the church has not. The church no longer has the power it once had, and the causality of this spiritual war is a lost generation. We lost the baby boomers, baby busters, and if we’re not careful we will lose this generation also.
The church in the beginning was a church that changed the culture. It was a church that had power and strength. It was a church that relied upon the awesome power of Jesus Christ to transform lives and the world around it. It grew so powerful that the Roman empire succumbed to it.
Now the church lets the world change it, instead of it changing the world.
We have a new generation of kids out there that would change the world if they were only given the chance. They are thirsting for Spirituality, they are starving for the reality of God’s power and grace. But like Marty, they are trapped in a church that has become complacent in their parent’s time, and does not have the desire to become relevant in theirs. They are trapped in a church that relies on a complacent God, Who is no longer able to be relevant in the world around them. A church that looks to the innovations of the world to change it, instead of being the innovations which change the world.
Do you know where the great changes in art and architecture came from? Do you know where the great scholars and inventors came from? The church, the church changed the world around it. It used it gifts to glorify God and the world changed in the process.
1. Why are our churches not reaching the twenty-something crowd?
a. We have the gift but the recipient has changed addresses.
b. The youth are in constant communication but he church is not in communication with them.
c. They are gifted artist, musicians, computer graphic artist, web designers but the positions are filled.
d. When the enter the church the feel like Marty entering 1955 and getting shot at because the church does not take the time to understand them.
e. They grew up with out a strong church background some have never even been to church, but, we expect them to act like Christians.
f. They are multi-sensory and we provide a analytical series of events.
g. Most of them grew up with out both parents, involved in divorse, with mom and dad both working, so they had to raise them selves. Yet we treat them like us who grew up with all the right influences.
2. Why are we not reaching them, we don’t want to!
a. Look who is here today, what representation is that of your church?
b. We don’t want to change because were scared.
c. We don’t want to deal with the baggage
d. We are to busy
e. We care more about ourselves and the grandma’s and grandpa’s in the church then reaching the lost twenty-somethings.
II. From then to now becoming relevant
Dr. Brown is now perched on a crumbling masonry ledge fifty feet above the ground, he was trying as hard as he could to bring two electrical cords together. The upper cord, which hung just out of his reach, ran up to the roof of he Hill Valley Clock Tower. There it was attached to the lightning rod where, in a few seconds, at precisely 10:04 P.M., a bolt of lightning would strike. The other cord, the one he held in his right had, hung down across the courtyard and ran over to an exposed wire stretched ten feet high across the adjoining street.
Everything hung on Doc Brown’s ability to connect the two cords in time. For as Brown wrestled in the wind and rain, a converted DeLorean sports car accelerated toward the over head cable. If the current from the coming lightning strikes, fails to reach the car the instant it passed by, then Marty McFly, the driver would be stuck forever in 1955. And everything lightning strikes, clock-towerbells, crumbling concrete, curious policemen, falling trees, balky starter motor – everything seemed to conspire against Marty’s attempt to get back to the future where he belonged.
Everything worked just as Doc Brown had planed. Marty is swept back to where he came from but things were not the same. You see he had touched some lives in the past and because of that things were different now. That is our job right now to touch lives right now so that things will be better for our children and theirs also.
1. O.K., you got my attention, what are some effective churches doing about it?
a. Getting Creative
Westwinds Community Church – Four figures, dressed in black, stand on plexiglas cubs suspending them above the stage. The upward lighting emanating form the cubes creates and eerie fell as it illuminates the objest the figures are holding: a whip, a hamer and a spike, and a crown of thorns, and a spear. John Micheal Talbot music floods the room as technicians project crucifixion art on the large screen. One at a time, the figures dressed in black speak and describe the torture inflicted on Jesus’ body by the objects they are holding.
The Peoples Chruch in Franklin Tenesseee – One Sunday, a potter’s wheel joined the pulpit and flower arrangement on the stage. A young woman, dressed in costume, strolled to the ancient tool and bagan to spin the sheel. The camera zoomed in on her hands, so everyone in the 2,000-seet auditorium could see the clay become a simple vase. ON the left side ofthere projection screen was the dramatization; on the right side, the lyrics of the song appeared.
Los Angles – Mosaic Chruch – While Pastor Erwin McManus preaches artist are working on sculptures and paintings in the audience. McManus doesn’t refer to the artist during his sermon; they aren’t props or visual illustration. In a way, their activities is incongruent with the sermon. They are not their to illustrate or inform, their function is simply to inspire.
b. Tell a story
1. What did Jesus do? He told stories.
2. Use Lifeway resources on line to get current stories that deal with what is happening right now. Young people have short memories.
3. Young people want things to be real and applicable.
c. Get Spiritual
d. Get Radical
e. Get Real
f. Get Truthful
g. Get Multi
h. Get Connected – young people today are connected. They have cell phones, PDA’s, Internet and emails. Not only are they connected they play constantly on these devises.
1. Get your class to all use Yahoo, AOL or MSN instant messaging.
2. Use email – it’s free
i. Challenge your young people – don’t be afraid to give homework.
III. From now to then – Staying Relevant
The final part of the movie has Marty and his girlfriend (his future wife) standing in the front yard with the Doctor returning from the future. Doctor Brown says you have to come with me it is about your future. Marty responds, “What is there something wrong with me?” Then the doctor says, “No its not you, it’s your kids.”
A. We need to change because our children’s future depends on it.
B. We need to give the next generation a church that is constantly changing to meet the needs of those around us.
C. We need to give or children a church that knows the awesome power of the gospel.
D. We need to give the next generation a church that is relevant to the culture around them because it created the culture around them.
E. We need not be scared of cell groups meeting outside the church. Not only embrace them but encourage them.
F. We need to make Sunday School fun again. It needs to be a small group that is as Steve Brown puts it, “When your brother is hurting, you taste salt.”
The Future church is already here. You will either embrace it or become irrelevant in the world today. The question simply is this, “Do you want a church that will change the world around you?
Books used for study
Future Church; Ministry in the Post-Seeker Age; by Jim Wilson
ISBN 574742565 – If you do not read any of the other ones you need to read this one
Culture Shift – Communicating God’s Truth to Our Changing World – David Henderson
IBSN 0801090598
Christianity with Power – Charles Kraft
IBSN 0892833963
Final Roar – Bob Briner
IBSN 0805423613
Leadership Lessons of Jesus – Bob Briner
ISBN 0517219220
An Unstoppable Force - Erwin McManus
ISBN 0764423061
Houses that Changed the World - Wolfgang Simson
ISBN 185078356X
Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age – Ed Stetzer
ISBN 0805427309
A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café – Leonard Sweet
ISBN 0805401598
The Purpose Driven Church – Rick Warren
ISBN 0310201063
There are 2 books that I have not read yet but Lifeway has that you might be interested in
Step by Step – by Hal Mayer – Transitioning your Sunday School to small groups.
The Fith Sense – Touching Students’ lives through Small Groups, by Ed Mills
for additional research items contact brostv@jvil.com
