CHRISTIANITY IS CHANGING


My mind is full of a number of things as this week begins: the Veritas process (our Team has finished our proposal!), the call to prayer last Monday night, sadness at Bret’s resignation, the future of Christianity, and most specifically what the younger generation and unchurched people feel about faith, spirituality, God, priorities, values, and so forth.

Two weeks ago I received an email from one of our 20’s/30’s. It is relatively brief, but it reveals a lot about the ways young people are living, thinking, oriented, committed, and investing themselves. It also has much to tell us about the future, especially as it relates to “church.” I think the implications are immense. It is written by someone who has grown up in Hilmar Covenant and is sincere about their faith. Here is the email:

“Church in the next 20 years... I am sure there will be a shift. I can't really imagine my generation being spiritually fed through a traditional Sunday service. We tend to be more movers and shakers than pew row sitters. We are fed by serving others. We are not book club folks either, or readers of Scripture. We seek to entertain and be entertained in return--and how that will look when applied to a "church service," that will be interesting!  I couldn't say.”
 
“Another issue with my generation is that we (personally, I think) question our faith and our beliefs much more frequently than older generations because we tend to challenge authority and authority figures.  We are engaged in a world that is literally at our finger tips through the internet, where we can research our doubts and get a variety of answers from a variety of believers of all sorts of religions. Ultimately, we will make the decision best for ourselves and have it not necessarily be the same as our parents.  I know that I have gotten into heated discussions with my parents when I challenge ideas such as evolution or the reality of hell. Growing up, I didn't think I would be one to question the lessons taught to me, but now I do. I think my whole generation does. I know that it concerned my parents; this newly found freedom to question my faith. Not that I denied God or didn’t believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior! But the issues surrounding God are different from what they have been taught and adopted in to their own personal belief.   My generation likes the struggle. We like our ideas to be challenged because we come out stronger. Instead of being fed, we want to be challenged. Does that make sense?”

There were other things that were written in a very similar vein that I can’t share here. But even in these two short paragraphs, do you catch the shift that is going on in the younger generation? Certainly, some of these comments are not new. Challenging authority and authority figures? Hey, I was in high school and college in the 60’s and early 70’s! Remember the way we treated authority? “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” Also, every one of us is affected (infected?) by the internet, and the whole cyberspace revolution. The immediacy of information, and the almost unlimited amount of it that continually assaults us, has changed our thinking and behavior, even those of us who are comfortable in church and like it just the way it is.

But there is more here. And the attitudes, preferences, and understandings that are expressed ought to make us pause and consider how we in the Church today are going to connect with this younger generation in meaningful ways; in ways that will encourage, support, and enlarge their faith. Otherwise all of the planning, visioning, programing, communicating, and milieu that we are trying to put forward and create will be for naught--like throwing a party and no one shows up. They just won’t be interested.

What’s going on here? Why do things seem to be in such upheaval regarding Christianity today? What will “church” be like in the next 100 years? Will we even recognize it?


At the Midwinter Conference this year, noted authority on religion in America, Phyllis Tickle, made some interesting observations about the eruptions going on around us. She pointed out that every 500 years, massive transitions happen in the Church (think back to the Reformation--roughly 500 years ago!). She pointed out an amazing number of trends, incidents, and concepts throughout the 20th century that created a kind of “perfect storm,” resulting in an explosion of things regarding Christian faith that have created the upheaval we are now experiencing in the Church. Similar disruptions are happening in our culture too, as we all know (which should only be expected, since Christian faith must always be contextualized in culture!).

Tickle also put an interesting, “act of God” spin on what has happened. Every time there is one of these eruptions, the Church tries to make sense of the chaos and to bring order to it. Slowly, new theologies, doctrines, beliefs, and views emerge. As more time passes, humans try to organize the things of God more and more and more. In this past 500 year period, the Enlightenment, rationlism, science, and things like evolution and the modernist/fundamentalist controversy occurred. A materialistic worldview has emerged and affected people’s thinking and beliefs in profound ways, especially in the West and in countries with high levels of education. In the Church, we have adopted all kinds of approaches to Scripture, to the meaning of faith, who God is, what “orthodoxy” is, the “end times,” on and on and on. We have also built up responses and reactions to the forces around us, creating systems of thought, apologetics, and layers of belief that organize and formalize our spirituality. In the process, we become more insistent and strident in our attitudes, establishing absolutes, reducing faith to formulas, concepts, and ideas that we can make sense of, grasping everything tighter and tighter, narrower and narrower, squeezing the “life” out of God, until..........


BOOM! Another eruption! God says, “Enough of this!” You think you’ve got me all figured out? Behold! I’m going to do something new!” And so the chaos and disorder and upheaval begin all over again--much to the chagrin of those who thought they had God and Church and their spirituality pretty much together; nicely figured out.

This was the essence of Phyllis Tickle’s message to the Covenant clergy in February. Now she has published a book about her observations (it was highlighted in the April “Covenant Companion”). Her premise makes sense to me. All of the data I see and hear and read about supports this reality: we are in a new Reformation! The things this young person from our own Hilmar Covenant congregation expresses are just the tip of the iceberg regarding faith and Church, spirituality and God, belief and Jesus and what these are going to look like as we move ahead in this century.

How do we respond? What is the way to go? How do we engage these young people, as well as the unchurched and dechurched people in our communities and culture? These are some of the crucial questions that Christians and churches all across America--and the West--need to address today. It is critical that we do so, and quickly! The facts are in: today’s young people are the most unchurched generation in history. This is not meant to scare anyone, but it does show the urgency with which believers and churches need to act. And if Tickle’s premise is true, we don’t have paradigms and patterns from which to draw up our plans!

So again, how do we respond? I believe the answer is more simple than ever:

Listen to Jesus.

What’s your answer?