Growing Young/Best Neighbors

Sunday, June 16, 2019

            Religion is about rules.  Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.  What an absurd statement!  When you look at the census form, where it says “religion,” Christianity is right there as one of the choices.  Doesn’t Christianity have rules?

What does Jesus say about this?

When asked what commandment (a/k/a “rule’) was the greatest, Jesus went straight to the rule book – the Law of Moses found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible. 

            A Pharisee lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment is greatest” (22:36)?  Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  This was not originally from Jesus.  He got this from Moses.  He doesn’t say anything about relationship.  This is a rule.  According to Jesus it is the rule, and if we want to follow him we are commanded to obey it. 

            Then, he adds a second rule which he says is like the first.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Again, this is not a Jesus original.  He’s quoting the Law of Moses here, Leviticus 19:18.  God says there, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”  That’s the rule.  Why?  God is Lord, Master, and God says so.  That’s all the reason we get. 

A lot Christians kind of ignore much of Leviticus because the instruction is a set of guidelines for sacrificing animals in worship.  We don’t do that.  Because Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, we don’t kill animals and sacrifice them to show our devotion to God.  So, Leviticus is disregarded only to be read by the zealous Christians doing one of those read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plans, and they read it quickly so they get to more interesting stories in Joshua and Judges.  When Jesus was asked what matters most, he quoted Leviticus and Deuteronomy. He gave rules, rules that were already in place: love God and love neighbor.

So is Christianity a religion of rule, specifically these two rules?  So many Christians base their faith on their relationship with Jesus.  Is it a relationship?  Is it both?

The final core commitment of the Growing Young approach to church ministry is where we will find resolution to this tension.  Our church is committed to the Growing Young idea.  We’ve spent the last month looking at the core commitments of churches that are growing young. 

1.    Shared Leadership

2.    Empathy

3.    Take Jesus Seriously

4.    A Community of Warm Relationships

5.    Prioritize Young People Everywhere

6.    Be Good Neighbors

Growing young churches involve young people in leadership.  They empathize with the struggles young people face.  They prioritize the teachings of Jesus, about Jesus, and the relationship we have with God in Jesus.  They foster an environment in which people can develop deep, true relationships both with peers and intergenerationally.  They prioritize ministries to young people in all areas of church life.  And finally, today’s core commitment: Growing Young Church are good neighbors to the community.  This means we strive to help people in our community thrive.  We hope many unchurched people will come to our church.  We hope many unbelievers will encounter our ministry and through that encounter decide to put their trust in Jesus.  Whether they do or not, we want to be a force for God’s good in our community and in the world.

In many ways we are already doing this.  Earlier this year, we built a ramp for a family living about a mile from here.  We do ramp projects like that almost every year.  The middle school a block from here uses our parking lot when they need overflow parking, like this past Thursday when they had 8^th grade promotion.  We are also the school designated site in the event that an emergency would cause them to evacuate students.  Numerous churches in our community use our facility for funerals and banquets.  We do charge for some, not all but some, of these building uses, but those who pay are glad to do so.  They say our fees are among the most reasonable in Chapel Hill and they love using our space.  Our helping hand ministry is there for people in financial emergencies. 

These are just a few of the ways we try to be good neighbors.   Young people and unchurched people pay attention to the words we speak about Jesus when they see us doing good in the world.  Helping kids in Ethiopia get an education and job skills; sending backpacks loaded with needed school supplies and gifts to extremely poor families in Appalachia; hosting big events like Vacation Bible School and the Chinese New Year celebration and inviting the community; inviting the community to our Christmas Eve and Easter services; hosting the mobile dental clinic so low income families can get free dental care: in all these ways we strive to obey Jesus’ command to love our neighbors. 

We can improve the way we do many of the things I’ve mentioned.  We might add ministries, but even if we just did a better job of maximizing what we already do, it would magnify our effectiveness in showing our town what God’s love is like.  All these good works are examples of us trying to obey Jesus’ command to love our neighbors.

When love happens in a way that makes peoples’ lives easier, relationships start to happen.  So there it is.  Obeying the command is following the rule, but it leads to relationship and in the first place we try to be obedient because of the relationship we have with Jesus.  So, Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.  Right?

It doesn’t really matter to me how it’s defined.  I categorize our faith as the Christian religion.  I participate in this religion through ritual like the Lord’s Supper and baptism, a holy book (the Bible), and regular worship.  I try to show religious devotion to God. 

In this religion, which I believe is the path to God, I have found that because my sins are forgiven, I have been adopted as a child of God.  God is my Heavenly father, therefor I have relationship with Him. My relationship with God is more important than any other relationship or loyalty in my life.  I am my best self as a husband, dad, brother, son, friend, and pastor because of who I am in Christ. 

Because of who Jesus is, I want to follow Him.  I want to understand and obey when he says, these commands are the most important.  The words he speaks in Matthew 22 come in a series of confrontations that Jesus had with religious leaders in Jerusalem in the week between Palm Sunday and his crucifixion on Good Friday.

Different powerbrokers in the government and in the temple felt threatened by Jesus.  They tried to control people’s lives and to an extent they succeeded.  Then Jesus came along and severely criticized them.  Sadducees, Herodians, and Pharisees were kind of like political parties vying for the soul of the nation.  They exercised influence through control of the temple and synagogues and through their knowledge of the Law of Moses.  Jesus knew the law better than they did.  He saw these leaders manipulating people with guilt and threats of expulsion from houses of worship and he wouldn’t have it.

Jesus helped people find their way to God. Through healing, driving our demons, and teaching about the law in new ways, he drew his listeners close to God whereas the leaders who contended against him came between people and God.  If we are to be good neighbors, if we as the body of Christ are to help people come to know Jesus, we have to love our community as Jesus loved those who came to him. 

When he quoted the Deuteronomy command to love God, he wasn’t talking about a feeling.  This was not love as an emotion or impulse.  He meant love as a decision.  To love God meant – and still means – to give oneself to God with one’s entire person. 

Do we do that?  How much of you does God get?  How much of me does God get?  Loving God in this way – the way commanded by Jesus – is a lifelong pursuit.  It’s difficult to give oneself entirely to anything: a profession, a romantic relationship, a pastime.  He’s passionate about golf.  Maybe.  To be “passionate” about something is to love so much it hurts.  Does he love golf so much it hurts?  Do we love God so much it hurts?  Are we giving absolutely all of ourselves to God?  That’s what Jesus says is the most important of commandments.  There’s no option to follow him and have Christianity be a small part of our lives.  Loving God the way Jesus says we must is all-consuming.

It is also directly tied to the second great command: love others.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Again, the verb Jesus used to describe love indicates love is a responsibility.  When we follow Jesus, we have to give ourselves fully to the care of our neighbors.  We do this as a community and as individuals.  Jesus illustrated the point with his Good Samaritan parable.  Anyone you or I come across is our neighbor, one we are commanded by God to love.  Loving in this way gets us to “the essence of the way God created humans to live.”  We give ourselves to God and others to fulfill God’s purpose for us as the crown of creation.[i]   We were made to be in relationships of self-giving love with God and with people.  It’s why we exist.

When we come together as a group of Jesus-followers and together commit to love our community in this way, we will show our neighbors Jesus.  Seeing Him, some will see their own need for Him and turn to Him in faith.  We’ll be a “Growing Young Church.”  More importantly, we will be a faithful church and each one of us will meet Jesus in this gathering.  We will see Him in this place. 

Pray for our church.  Ask God to help us grow young and help us increase our love for each other, for him, and for the world right outside our doors. 

AMEN

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[i] M. Wilkens (2004).  The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, Zondervan (Grand Rapids), p.726.

Growing Faith and Increasing Love (2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12)

Sunday, June 2, 2019

            “Yahoo!  This is awesome!”  You yell as you leap off the rock outcropping into open space, falling, until you finally splash into the icy, clear mountain lake.

            The embrace is bone-crushing.  Love flows from him into you and from you into him, this friend you once called your best friend, but are now seeing again after many years of separation.

            The tears flow out of your eyes.  You have no control over this flood of emotion that has blindsided you.  You know exactly what it is about and yet have no words for it.

            Excitement and icy exhilaration.  A long-overdue reunion.  Cold cocked by grief.  Whether it is joy, love, sorrow, or something else, we have emotions that cannot be held in.  They must be released.  This is the sense in 2 Thessalonian 1:3. 

First century Jesus follower Paul is writing his second letter to a church he planted.  They are a faithful group, but have had to deal with tragedy that sparked confusion about Jesus’ hoped-for return.  Paul writes to answer questions, correct mistakes in thought and behavior, defend against false teaching that threatens the Thessalonian Christians, and re-establish right teaching about Jesus. 

However, before he gets to the meat of the letter, there’s something he has to say, a feeling he can’t keep to himself.  “We must always give thanks to God for you, [my Thessalonian] brothers and sisters,” he says.  That phrase “we must give thanks” has this sense.  Paul feels he owes it to the Thessalonians and owes it to God to thank God for the people of this wonderful, stressed out church.  Why?  His reason is the core of the message this morning. 

Again, verse three.  “We must always give thanks … because your faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.”  Because faith has grown and love increased among the Thessalonian Christians, they endured persecution from pagan Greeks.  Mocked, shut out of local commerce, even beaten, these Christians have kept the faith in the face of painful trials.  Confused by false teaching about the resurrection, these believers have kept their eyes on Jesus.

Paul is so thrilled by their endurance in spite of the threats, he tells them he has boasted about them to other churches.  “Hey you Philippians!  Hey you Corinthians!  You have got to see how committed the Thessalonians are!”  Their faith has grown to abundance, beyond measure.  Paul exaggerates a little, but he never hesitated to be critical in his other letters when critique is called for.  He is truly amazed at the growth of their faith and the increase of their love for each other.  The Greek verb gives the sense that the love in the Thessalonian church is constantly increasing.

            Faith growing to abundance and love increasing more and more produces in a church an environment of warm relationships.  The church becomes a family that’s committed to building each other up and supporting one another through thick and thin.  Our church has experienced some losses this year and you might even say we’re a little bit down.  But I see in us a commitment to grow in faith and increase in love. 

            We’ve been learning about the Growing Young approach to church.  A philosophy developed by the Fuller Theological Seminary Youth Institute, Growing Young encourage churches to invest in the discipleship of people aged 10-25, Generation Z and the Millennials.  We believe that if everyone in our church contributes to developing young people as Jesus’ disciples, we will all grow in our walk with Christ.  We will become a more welcoming, service-minded church.

            We’ve been studying the core commitments found in churches already successfully growing.  How are we currently doing with these commitments in our congregation?  What changes can we make to increase our ability to live out these commitments?  We’ve looked at shared leadership, also called keychain leadership; empathy; and, taking Jesus seriously.  Today, we’re on the fourth core commitment – warm relationships.  Churches that grow young create space for people to be in genuine relationship with one another.  In these churches, “brother” and “sister” mean something – something very good and much needed.

            In our Thursday night prayer meeting this past week, we prayed for one of the young people in our church who is facing some challenges.  She has grown up in our congregation and is now in her 20’s.  A retiree at the prayer meeting remembered taking this young person to basketball and football games numerous time over the years.  This retired person has been Growing Young long before we ever heard of the Fuller Youth Institute program.  Through her love of sports and her love of young people, she has been connecting with children, teens, and 20-somethings for years.  When she heard that one of “her” young people was struggling, she felt it.  She prayed for that young person from her heart.

            For her the connection happens through sports.  For you it might be yardwork or dartball or construction or school tutoring or music.  The interest is the point of connection.  You can invest your life in a young person.  Warm, true relationship forms.  You will be a friend and mentor for someone who needs it.  When you pray for that person, you will find yourself connecting with God’s heart at a level deeper than maybe you even thought possible. 

            People of all ages crave a warm, welcoming environment where deep relationships grow.  Pause for a moment and gauge the relational temperature in our church from your perspective.  Is this a place where you connect with others?  Do you feel welcomed and loved?  Do you have true friends whom you can trust and call on in this church family?

            We want the church to be a warm community, but we shouldn’t pretend that it is.  Some find their best lifelong friends within this body of believers.  Others feel disconnected and have real trouble plugging in.  If that’s been your experience, don’t fear.  In looking at the Thessalonian church as our model for a warm, welcoming family, we don’t just consider that they had faith and that they loved each other.

            Their faith was growing and ours can too.  Ask God to expand your faith.  Whatever your relational experience at HillSong has been – warm or cold – pray for God to expand your faith.  This starts out as a work of the Holy Spirit in you.  We open ourselves to what God is doing in us.   Pray for the church.  Ask God to move in the coldest hearts among us, softening us, so that we welcome one another.  Paul was excited to see the Thessalonians’ faith grow.  Ours can too.

            He was just as happy to see them respond to God’s love revealed in Jesus, by increasing their love for one another.  Among us, love can continuously increase.  Fix in your mind’s eye the image of Jesus welcoming you into His embrace.  Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love for you and in Him you have blessed life as a child of God.

            Now, let that love of God, expressed in Jesus, begin reforming your heart.  That reformation of the heart becomes real as you express the Christ-love growing in you to your friends here in the church family.  This takes risks.  So take them.  Speak to something this morning that’s in the church that you don’t know that well.  “Hi.  Good morning.  I’m Rob.  I just wanted to say I am happy to see you today.”  That’s a place to start and love increases from there.  We have to start somewhere.

            From there, like the church member I mentioned in the prayer meeting, your life interests can be the context in which you begin developing relationships.  If you have found our church relationally cold, or you feel distant, pray for growing faith and increasing love.  And find ways you can connect with people.  If you’re not sure where to start, give me a call this week and we can work on it together. 

            There is a misperception that young people are locked in with their phones and are completely happy tuning out the world, especially the adult world.  It seems their most important relationships are with people in social media, people they’ve never met in person.  The attractive thing about the phone is they can control it – just turn it off.  The truth is, like everyone else, young people crave human-to-human contact.  As one young person in the Growing Young study quipped, “The internet can’t help you move into your apartment.”[i]  Virtual relationship cannot surprise you with a needed smile or embrace.  They cannot have you over for dinner or go to a game with you. 

            Growing in faith and increasing in love embodies the mission our HillSong leaders discerned from God at our March leaders retreat. 

What do we do?  We follow Jesus.  He embodied love as he welcomed all people into his circle. 

What do we do?  We love others; the second of his two great commandments.  Love your neighbor as yourself.

What do we do?  We share hope.  Our abundant faith and ever increasing love – the Holy Spirit expressed in and through us – gives us hope and gives hope to all the people God leads to us. 

            God is calling HillSong to be a church of warm relationships.  Among us, Jesus is Lord.  People are loved.  And hope grows.  And we want you to feel yourself fully welcomed, fully a part of this circle of family relationships. 

            Paul concluded 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 saying, “We always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  We strive to respond to God’s grace so that our faith will grow, our love will increase, and the name of Jesus is glorified among us.

AMEN

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[i] Powell, K.  J. Mulder, and B. Griffin (2016), Growing Young, Baker Books (Grand Rapids), p.169.

Growing Young - Take Jesus Seriously

 

            What do growing churches do that stagnant or declining churches fail to do?  Pastors’ bookshelves are lined with volumes giving the definitive approach to church growth.  Pastors’ email in-boxes are overrun with advertisements promising to “grow your church.”  Sometimes techniques in one program directly contradict the ideas put forth by another author.  What leads to church growth?  There’s no simple answer. 

We don’t want growth for growth’s sake.  We want our church to be a place where people are drawn closer to God through their relationship with Jesus.  If we are that kind of church, we think growth will happen.  Our elders and deacons have prayed that God will help us grow as we help people become disciples of Jesus. 

The writers of the Growing Young study researched 100’s of churches that successfully help people aged 10-25 learn to follow Jesus.  One of the top findings of their research is a set of six core commitments.  Every growing young church exhibited at least four and in most cases all six.  

This week we look at the third core commitment: “Take Jesus Seriously.”  Don’t all churches do that?  Maybe not.  In the lingo of Growing Young “take Jesus seriously” means teens and young adults prefer to deal with what Jesus really said and did.  He died a bloody, violent death on the cross.  He told any who would follow him that they had to die to self, and take up their cross.  Following Jesus means he is first in our lives.  He comes before our ambitions, our most important relationships, everything. 

Not all young people (and not all older Christians either) are ready to put Jesus first.  We have academic goals.  We have career ambitions.  Some kids’ lives are all about their sports careers.  Some young adults are wrapped up with dating.  Maybe some hope for marriage.  These and other good things can be all consuming.  Jesus says, no, these things have to fall in line behind the commitment to and relationship with him.  Young people don’t always make that radical commitment, but the research shows that churches that grow young present robust Gospel challenges rather than a non-descript, easy sounding Gospel.

Pop culture, unfortunately, too often promotes that easy, non-descript gospel, sometimes called as moralistic therapeutic deism.  The National Study of Youth and Religion concluded that “American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith – but it does not concern them very much.”[i]  The sense is that faith leads to being a good, moral person.  Moralistic.  Religion helps you feel better.  Therapeutic.  And God exists, somewhere, up there, out there, but He’s not involved in life here.  That’s Deism. 

It’s fine to be moral, feel good, and say God exists.  The Bible says much more.  In 2 Corinthians 1:3, “The God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ … consoles us in all our affliction.  … The sufferings of Christ are abundant for us.”  Some God of some kind somewhere out there in some way helps us feel better?  No.  God is revealed in Jesus, a first century Jewish man.  This Jesus died on a Roman cross around 33 AD. The God revealed in him consoles us through the love shown to us in the death of Jesus.  He suffered this violence suffered because sin leads to death. We all sin.  He took our place in death.

Moral Therapeutic Deism, feel-good religion, has as its partner, Golden-rule Christianity.  Based on Luke 6:31, do to others as you would have them do to you, this approach to faith is effort-based.  Advocates of Golden Rule Christianity skip over the instructions Jesus gives just a couple of verses previous to this one.  Love your enemies.  Bless those who curse you.  When struck, turn the other cheek.  Feel-good religion (Moral Therapeutic Deism) and Do-good religion (Golden Rule Christianity) both live out very positive ideas.  But they are individualistic and based on our behavior, not our confession of faith in Jesus and a growing relationship in which we follow Jesus’ lead in all the places of our lives. 

I was in a bizarre conversation about politics with a friend in my neighborhood.  She and I feel the same way about the issue we were discussing: health care.  Yet she started going off on me, railing against Christians who disagree with her point of view.  “How can someone be a Christian and not take my view on ‘Obama care’?”  She was in a pretty worked up state of agitation, so I decided it wasn’t the right time to tell her someone’ Christianity is not tied to their opinion of ‘Obama care.’  Our Christianity is tied to our faith in Jesus.  Who am I in Christ?  That’s what defines my Christianity, not my politics or moral code.  Feel-good religion and do-good religion, only vaguely interested in Jesus, think life is about an individual’s story.  Life is all about me.  Followers Jesus know life is about God and God’s kingdom.  Our individual stories are part of God’s larger story.

I started this message asking “What makes the church grow?”  It’s a question I hope you’ll consider, but even more, I hope you’ll deeply ponder a bigger question.  What is the Gospel?  Is it feel-good, do-good?  Or is it God’s story, and how God’s story is central to your experience and your life? 

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead; He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us” (v.9-10).  He’s referring to an experience he had while sharing about Jesus in Greece.  However, though his words mention a specific instance from his life, those words speak to our lives once we decide to be totally sold out in following Jesus.  In Christ, God rescues us and we live as saved people here and now, today.  We live dependent on God because he who raised Christ can be trusted.

This way of living is seen in three shifts described in the Growing Young approach.  First, we talk less about abstract ideas and more about the specifics of Jesus’ life and teachings.  We’ve already addressed this.  We choose radical discipleship, following Jesus and receiving the blessings he gives, instead of anemic, vague feel-good, do-good religion. 

The second shift is a move away from religious formulas and a move toward a redemptive narrative.  Our faith is part of a real, messy story full of twists and turns but ending in resurrection, first Jesus’ and then ours.  It can’t be reduced to a pithy statement on coffee mug.  It is a lived relationship, a full-fledged, epic narrative.

Shift 1, from abstract ideas to specific teaching from and about Jesus.  Shift 2, from formula to salvation story.  The third shift is a move away from talk about heaven in the distant future and a move toward life lived following Jesus in our day-to-day, here and now. 

Paul had a stormy relationship with the Corinthian church.  He probably wrote four letters to that church.  Second Corinthians is either one of those four, or it is a composite of parts of letters 2, 3, and 4.  Paul wrote to them so much, with such force and emotion because he loved these people and wanted them to find redemption in Jesus and they were having trouble doing that.  Even though he was an itinerant minister and away from them more than with them, he didn’t abandon them. 

In the passage read earlier, he tries to explain why he hasn’t arrived when he said he would.  If his “yes” I’ll come became a “no,” I can’t come it was because God led him to change plans.  He appeals to his Corinthians friends to trust that he loves them even if they don’t see him.  He’s trying to obey God.  Obedience: that’s how we live our salvation here and now. 

Imagine the teenager.  She likes her boyfriend and she wants to follow Jesus.  She wants both, badly.  She wants to be in love with this boy. And she wants to grow in Christ.  She and that boy are healthy, their bodies are mature, and the hormones are raging.  He wants to have sex with her.  She wants that too, but she believes Jesus wants her to wait.  Save sex for marriage. She is sure Jesus is leading her that way, just as she is sure the boyfriend is ready at a moment’s notice.  The decision to follow Jesus means she’s not going to have sex before marriage.  Even if the boyfriend she thinks she loves gives the ultimatum – sex or break-up – she won’t budge. That’s one example of taking Jesus seriously.  That’s one way she is living her salvation here and now. 

In that example, sex is not an evil.  It’s a beautiful aspect of God’s creation, but like all things, it is submitted to Jesus.  A disciple submits fully when he or she takes Jesus seriously.  Young people and everyone, when we do that, we live differently than the people around us.  The way we make decisions will not always make sense to our friends who don’t follow Jesus, but our stories are entwined with God’s story.

We also discover that life in Christ is the most blessed of lives to be lived.  In Jesus Christ, Paul writes, “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’”.  That teenager may not ever get married, may not ever have sexual union with a man.  She has spiritual union with God in Christ, a union she grows into throughout her life.  She’s part of the church family.  She experiences joy that builds throughout life and continues building in eternity. And if she does get married, then her marriage is submitted to Christ as well. 

I’ve talked about a teen’s decision to abstain from premarital sex as a discipleship decision.  We could say the same about who we are in our work.  Our work ethic and our personal morals come as a result of Jesus at work in us.  In feel-good and do-good religion, people call themselves Christians because they think their morals are good.  And the pay-off is religion makes them feel happy and fulfilled.  When our lives are in Christ, any good we do is a result of the Holy Spirit expressing God’s will through us.  We don’t settle for fleeting happiness.  We are filled with divine joy that remains no matter how well life is or isn’t going at any particular moment.  We sense God’s presence smiling with us in the highs and consoling us, to use Paul’s word, in the lows.

The final words from the passage are “It is God who establishes us with you in Christ and [who] has anointed us, but putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (2 Cor. 1:21-22).  No program or book can guarantee our church will grow.  The good news is, Jesus has died for us, is with us, and offers us forgiveness and new life as his disciples, sons and daughters of God.

Young people aged 10-25 can handle all that this Gospel entails.  When they meet Jesus, they become on-fire disciples ready to follow Him to the ends of the earth.  And by the way, that’s true for people of all ages and it is never too late to take that first step toward him in faith.

AMEN

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[i] K. Powell, J. Mulder, and B. Griffin (2016), Growing Young, Baker Books (Grand Rapids), p.130.

Growing Young/Empathy (Colossians 3:5-17)

I See you, I am For You” (Colossians 3:12-14)

Sunday, May 19, 2019

            “Pastor, if I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I raise it?”

            Thirteen-year-old Steve attended church every week and this particular Sunday, he asked the pastor this question.  “Yes,” the pastor answered, “God knows everything.”

            Steve then pulled out Life magazine, with a photo of children in another country starving to death.  He asked the pastor who had just told him ‘God knows everything,’ “Does God know what’s going to happen to these kids?” 

            The pastor said, “Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God know about those dying children.”  If you were Steve, would you be satisfied with the pastor’s response?  Steve wasn’t.  He walked out that day and never again worshiped at a Christian church.

            When Steve was troubled by the question of starving children, he went to his pastor.  I don’t know what answer the pastor could have given, but in the case of 13-year-old Steve, the answer he did give drove the boy from church.  He didn’t feel the pastor respected him.  He was asking a serious question, one that troubled him, one that should have troubled the pastor, and should trouble all of us.  If God is all powerful and God is good, how can there be suffering in the world? 

He felt that the pastor dismissed him with a trite answer and the degrading assertion that he “wouldn’t understand.”  That inquisitive boy grew up and founded a company whose products you might have in your pocket.  Steve Jobs created Apple, the iPhone. When he was a kid trying to work through pain and big questions, he felt like all his pastor and his church did was tussle his hair and tell him he didn’t understand.

Imagine if that conversation went differently.  Thirteen-year-old Steve, clearly troubled, asks, “Pastor, does God know there are children starving to death?  What’s He doing about it?”  What if instead of a simplistic answer to a complicated question, instead, the pastor invited Steve to sit and talk.  What if Steve’s big question became an “on-ramp to a deeper discussion about faith?”[i]

We can’t go back in time to change the interaction between adolescent Steve Jobs and his pastor.  Maybe the pastor was ready to talk, but nothing he could have said would have made a difference.  We’ll never know.  Here is what I do know.  I have spent time with the teenagers in our church.  The middle and high schoolers in our youth group, the young adults, and some of the older elementary students ask questions every bit as big as those Steve Jobs asked his pastor. 

We have the opportunity to respect them when they ask big questions.  We can dive deep into those question with inquisitive young people.  When they ask big questions, we adults can allow ourselves to be reminded to ask big questions too.  We can allow ourselves to be reminded that there aren’t always easy answers and we don’t always agree with each other on the answers.  But, we can care about each other enough to listen to one another, go to the Bible together, prayer together, and seek answers together. 

If our church is to successfully grow young in our mindset and in our spirit, we need to say to our children, teens, and young adults, “I see you.  I feel you.  I am for you.”  We need to be so genuine in adopting a posture of understanding, presence, and respect, that young people hear us and know that we mean it.  We really do see and respect them.  We are for them.  And if we practice this stance when our young people bring big questions, we’ll find that we’re treating our older people with similar generosity because we realize we all have big questions.  It’s just that some of us have become old and jaded, and we’ve become afraid to ask. 

The church is essentially a gathering of people who each are in Christ as individuals, and together are united in Christ.  In Christ, we welcome all people.  Every seeker and inquirer, every child and intrepid teen, everyone looking for a second or third or tenth chance after life has repeatedly broken them – all are welcome and invited in. 

When we have declared Jesus “Lord” and receive forgiveness, we receive the Holy Spirit.  We are in Christ, new creations.  Colossians 3:12 gives three names to all who are in Christ: they are God’s chosen ones; they are holy; and they are beloved.  If you have received Jesus, that means those are your names; chosen, holy, and beloved.

Those in Christ should live differently than those who are not Christ.  You could easily see if I changed my shirt.  You should be able to see just as clearly if I am in Christ or am not.  In Christ, I put to death fornication, impurity, uncontrolled passion, evil desire, and greed.  In Christ we get rid of anger, wrath, malic, slander, and abusive language.  We examine our lives and make the changes to put to death in us the things that need to be killed and to get rid the things that cause hurt and come between us and God. We strip off the old self.

But, we don’t prance about spiritually naked.  As the Spirit works in us, transforming us, it says in verse 10, we clothe ourselves with the new self; verse 12, we clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience; and verse 14, we clothe ourselves with love – the love that binds the church together. 

Of these garments that signal to others that we belong to the Lord, compassion, and patience are especially important when we talk about helping young people in our church become disciples of Jesus.  We can only help young people grow if we are in relationship with them – eliminating the us-them divide.  That relationship only happens when we identify with the struggles young people have.

Here’s one example of how we have to learn empathy and understand that without it, we won’t connect, we won’t grow young, and we’ll actually lose the youth and young adults who are here.  I come from the school of thought that we overmedicate kids.  I don’t remember kids when I was growing up taking medications for ADD or ADHD or anxiety or other things.  So, like an out-of-date curmudgeon I grumble about it.  Well, I was discussing this with a psychiatrist who prescribes meds in her practice.  I was ready to go off on my “kids these days rant,” when she, with genuine compassion in her voice said, “Imagine how hard life is for him without the medication.”

Ouch!  I don’t know if that psychiatrist is Christian.  I know I am supposed to be one.  I know I just read a passage from the Bible that’s supposed to my authority.  That passage said people in Christ clothe themselves with compassion and patience.  I, Mr. Christian, was already to grumble about the behavior of teenagers.  This “secular” psychiatrist felt the young person’s pain.  She wore the compassion that is supposed to be my clothing.  I wore that anger that Colossians 3:8 says I am supposed to get rid of. 

Showing compassion for today’s young people takes effort.  We have to put on patience, not just being patient with the young person I want to love and nurture, but also being patient with the process.  A woman recently wanted to introduce me to her teenaged daughter.  The kid wanted no part of this interaction.  As her mother tried to make introductions, the teen never removed the earbuds from her ears.  When I said, “Nice to meet you,” she said nothing, but just looked at me with eyes that told me to … well, I won’t use the crass phrase she communicated with her seething glare.  Her mother told her to take the earbuds out.  She snapped, “I can hear you.” 

If all I do is think, “What a rude kid!”  I’ll never reach that young person.  I need patience to get past that initial encounter.  Young people today, are on their phones all the time.  They want instant stimulus and immediate feedback they can control.  We have to stay present, open and ready to gently enter their lives when they invite us in.

We also have to be patient with the process.  Kids today are entering puberty a younger age and marrying at older ages.  That’s a long time to wait and many aren’t.  By 18, 75% of unchurched young people and 53% of church-going young people have had some kind of sexual experience.  Usually it is emotionally unhealthy experience.  Add this distorted sexuality to the way social media has opened the world to kids, and you have a much earlier starting point for entry into adulthood.

At the same time, these digitally connected, sexually confused young people stay home later.  Parents today are provide more financial help to their grown children than 40 years ago.  More American young adults are either don’t move out on their own, or do, but then move back home.  In terms of adult maturation kids are behind where they used to.  Twenty-five is the new 15.  And 15 is the new 25.  Both are true.

We aren’t going to solve this.  It isn’t a thing to be solved.  This is the world in which we are called to bear witness to Jesus.  He is Lord.  In him people have salvation. All people need salvation.  We are called to share this news and help people become his disciples within this world.  We have to put on compassion and patience every day. 

To be announcers of the gospel and makers of disciples, we have to work hard to understand our young people.  When they hear us say, “I see you; I am here for you,” they have to be convinced.  We have to say it in a way that they know we mean it. 

We have to get rid of phrases like “back in my day,” and “when I was growing up.”  Nowhere does the Bible tell us that nostalgia is a mark of discipleship.  We can honor the past and appreciate and learn from it.  We must not idolize it.  Relating to young people is messy, but we’ve got to be willing to go right into that mess, neck-deep. 

If we do, we’ll see the difference.  People come to Christ in a church that makes space for them the way Jesus made space for tax collectors, beggars, prostitutes, sinners and people deemed unclean by religious authorities.  If we convey the compassion the lost found in Jesus, the lost will come to us.  His Holy Spirit will effect transformation in them and in each one of us.  We don’t need to change people.  We need God to work change in us, making each of us more like Christ. 

We do that, and we’ll be ready when 13-year-old Steve comes with big questions.  We won’t rub his head as we condescendingly mutter, “Oh you’ll understand when you’re older.”  We sit with him and say, “Thank you for raising big questions.  Let’s explore it, reading the Bible, praying, and thinking together.  We can learn together and meet God together.”  We do that and this will be a church where seekers become disciples no matter their age.

AMEN

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[i] K. Powell, J. Mulder, and B. Griffin (2016), Growing Young, Baker Books (Grand Rapids), p.89-90.