Then he writes another post on the Mission of Christ as David Lipscomb saw it. Hicks writes,

“I am often amazed at how some contemporary writers–missional and emergent–seem to believe that they have embraced a new vision for the mission of God. It also amazes me that some more traditional writers–some Evangelicals and some New Calvinists–regard the missional emphasis as a new understanding of the gospel.  David Lipscomb (1831-1917) reminds us that such emphases are not new.”

If you have a minute go read the Lipscomb quote on the mission of Christ.

We had two main purposes in doing this:

• The growing disconnect in our churches between the old and young – this helps them get to know older memebers
• The need for the younger to learn from the older. Often 20s are taught by 20s. That can be good but it can’t be everything.

We had some great results. They got to know the elders of the congregation. They gained perspective on life, love, marriage, family, spirituality/faith, and much more. That is not all. Those who shared in our class also gained something from their time with younger Christians. It was really very mutually encouraging. We are seeing more and more that having an effective Bible class is not about being trendy. It is about doing and teaching things that are biblical, relevant and relational.

When I say this is an issue I am not saying it is 100% bad or wrong to have groups like this. There are benefits to having groups of people in similar life stages. It makes sense and is effective. It makes sense that teens need time with other teens and develop friendships with other teens. or young marrieds with other young marrieds. That is healthy, needed and makes total sense. However, we have a serious issue when the only people you know in the congregation are people most similar to yourself. What tends to happen is that people end up isolating themselves into an exclusive group of people who together only have a limited perspective of life experience to share with others.

This is a real challenge in ministry because if I have a new couple come who am I going to connect them with to get the biggest impact the fastest? Someone who is most similar to themselves, right? I am starting to learn that pigeon holing people like that is not always the best or healthiest route. My assumption of what they need might be smaller than God’s understanding of what they need and who they need.

What is the solution? It is a both/and situation rather than an either/or. What I mean by that is that people need both time with others in a similar life stage and time with those in a stage different than their own. There is perspective about life, faith, spirituality, relationships, etc that a teen is not going to get from another teen or maybe even from the 22 year old youth minister. They need their parents to help teach and model a healthy spirituality for them and they need others in the congregation to do that as well. Likewise, there are elderly adults who need the friendship of some young adults in the congregation.

Too often we spend our time planning and organizing segregated ministries. It would be wise to start looking for ways to cross the age/stage lines to promote healthy relationships within the congregation. You may try marriage mentoring, having the youth go to the shutins, bringing people from outside the group inside the group in classes or activities, sending those inside a group outside to others. It is not about trying the right thing. It is about starting see this as an issue and take steps to address it. It is important that more and more people start crossing these lines for the benefit of all. They may not do that until someone helps them see the benefit of it and the drawbacks of isolation by age.

Last, there is a subtle but important bi-product that will result from this effort. There will be less conflict in the church in the long run. What I mean by that is, some conflict in the congregations come from the fact that the different generations don’t know each other, understand each other or even like each other (thanks to Eric Brown for pointing that last one out to me). That results in conflict over worship styles, preaching styles, song selection, and much more. The more we have time spent with those in another age demographic, the more we will care for those who are not in our stage of life and the more we will understand where they are coming from and be willing to bear with our differences.

This all starts with solid efforts to create environments of desegregated time together. What ways have you tried this and what questions do you have about this?

Psalm 92:12-15 gives us a vivid image of our lives being like a palm tree in God’s courts. We grow and flourish and bear fruit as God plants us in His court. Even when the tree is old the fruit is there and that tree is still “fresh and green.” That psalm gives us a picture of vitality aged to perfection. There is something about spending your life in the courts of God that helps our lives bear good fruit. It is the only way to flourish and stay green in old age. There is no substitute.

It is possible to reach the end of your life and, while dying, still be full of life. It is equally possible to be young and energetic but dead on the inside. Age does not have the be the disadvantage that society tells us it is. Youth is not always advantageous for the most substantive things in life, the things you will cling to when your health is failing. It is important that we don’t wait until we are old to get first things first. I have had friends who told me that the faith thing would come later in life when they had a family. Well, now they have a family of their own and faith is still far from their thinking. Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 tells us that we are not to wait until old age to remember the Lord. Instead he tells us twice in seven verses to remember the Lord while we are still young. Obviously it is important to remember God at all stages of our lives. However, if we remember God when we are young then we can avoid many of the pitfalls and poor decisions that can happen when we don’t think about God until we are old and firmly entrenched in our actions, attitudes, and beliefs.

How can we teach a generation that is incessantly focused on self and on immediacy how to shift their focus to God and the long haul? How can we turn around the stigma that old age has nothing positive to offer?

Classes

Keynotes

Who ?- who will be there? Not who do I expect will be there but who does the Bible say will be there?

What? – What happens in heaven? What is the focus? What will we do?

When? – When will all of this happen? When will Jesus return?

Where? – Where is heaven? Where are the dead?

Why? – Why did God create the world in such a way that there is a distinction between heaven and earth? Why is there evil in the world? Which leads to…

How? -  How will God take care of the problems we face in this world? How does God expect us to live here and now and how does an understanding of heaven address that?

I am going to highlight what scripture has to say in response to these questions and how that helps us to have an accurate view of heaven and to help us live in light of that understanding.

What questions do you have about heaven?

This year was a little different at GCG. When you are trying to be on the cutting edge, if you keep doing the same thing all the time it feels like it can run dry. This year they tried some new things and did so effectively. They tried to create more community by splitting the students up into small discussion groups. Worship Sunday ended with communion in these groups with people you had been discussing things with over the weekend. I thought that was a good idea. There didn’t seem to be as visible a focus on international missions this year as their had been in years past. Instead, they highlighted with various campus ministries had done over the past year. This covered everything from paying for a homeless veteran’s eye surgery to serving meals to the homeless, and reaching out to various subsidized housing developments. I thought that was an important focus because often we get the message that what needs to be done is somewhere else and not in our own backyard.

A Lesson Learned:
There was one thing I specifically wanted to share. On Saturday night, Mike Cope spent three hours talking about Jesus and how he fits into the broader story of scripture going all the way back to Genesis. He talked about everything from the major stories of the Old Testament (chronologically) all the way through the Gospels. Pretty much the only stuff he left out was the documentary hypothesis and Q. Other than that, he pretty much hit all the highlights of OT and NT theology. He ended with why Jesus came and what it means for us in terms of how we follow him. It was some solid stuff that should be available soon on the GCG website.

Here is what was so remarkable about it…our students wanted more. The wanted a fourth hour. Now, this is 10pm and they are wanting to hear another 60 minutes of Jesus. Often we fear boring people so much that we avoid the meat. These guys got a taste of it and wanted more. Granted, Mike is an excellent communicator who can go 180 minutes note free on how Jesus fits into the story of scripture. Not many people can do that well or keep people engaged. But their reaction really taught me a few things:

1. Young people are hungrier for scripture and spiritual meat than I had imagined. They want this. They don’t just want it in Panama City. They want this at home. They want to read the Bible and understand it. Often they will need a guide. Will we provide that for them?
2. Time really isn’t the issue. Maybe our presentation of it gets in the way or intimidation gets in the way or people looking at watches gets in the way.
3. Their lack of interest is not the issue. It is easy to assume more Bible = more boredom. That is not the case. Maybe we need to step up our game in how we present it to keep people on board and engaged. We need to present it in a way that does justice to the power of the story.

Any of you attend the Getaway? What did you take away from it?

This is nothing new:
It really isn’t anything new. This video is basically a catchy rehash of views of Christianity that have been voiced over the last 30+ years. The old saying was “I want the man, not the plan.” Dan Kimball addressed this a few years ago in curriculum called “They Like Jesus but Not the Church.”

But before all of that, God expressed some of the views of this video in Jeremiah 7. What God said there is a little lengthy but worth the read. I would encourage you to go ahead and click that link and read that chapter because it will shed light on how God views all of this so we can take His word on it. A few things stand out to me in Jeremiah 7. The first is that God hates empty religion. God hates when religion becomes an end to itself. God hates when religion is used almost like magic. You go through the motions and say the rights words to ensure something for yourself. But Jeremiah 7 never says what this video says…that religion as a whole is to be hated. In fact, God says that he gave commands and he wants them to be obeyed,

“For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, ²³ but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you. ²⁴ But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.” – 7:22-23

I don’t think this guy hates all religion either. In a minute I am going to quote his description of the video where he brings out a few points that would have been helpful to clarify in the video itself.

The problem of broad generalization:
The big problem I have with this video is that it broad brushes religion when really the video is condemning a certain type of religion. He says he hates “religion” and that Jesus hates it too. Is that true when spoken of so generally? Is all religion to be hated and seen as evil? I don’t believe that is biblical. Instead we should be upset about false religion just like God is. Yes, Jesus was called a drunkard and a glutton by “religious” men. But that doesn’t make religion bad or evil. Those men relied on their religion and practice rather than relying on God but that doesn’t mean religious practice is wrong or evil. It just needs to be understood and practiced from the perspective of how those practices are relational with God and others. Pure religion is not about jumping through hoops. Religion is an expression of following God by following the things He has taught us. Religion is not an end to itself. Religion must be about relationship.

Jesus and Religion on Opposite Spectrums?
In the video he says that Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums. I guess that is why Jesus and Paul both went to great lengths to observe the law during their lifetimes? Maybe that is why Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matt 5:17). Hardly a statement describing the “two different clans” he says divides Jesus and religion. Also, how much of the sermon on the mount was about practicing pure religion from the heart rather than going through the motions and rationalizing sin. My point is, Jesus believed that religion could be good and lead to good things when understood from God’s perspective and true to God’s intention for religion.

If you look at the description he wrote of the video, he nails it. He just never explains this in the actual video!

“A poem I wrote to highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion. In the scriptures Jesus received the most opposition from the most religious people of his day. At it’s core Jesus’ gospel and the good news of the Cross is in pure opposition to self-righteousness/self-justification. Religion is man centered, Jesus is God-centered. This poem highlights my journey to discover this truth. Religion either ends in pride or despair. Pride because you make a list and can do it and act better than everyone, or despair because you can’t do your own list of rules and feel “not good enough” for God. With Jesus though you have humble confident joy because He represents you, you don’t represent yourself and His sacrifice is perfect putting us in perfect standing with God!”

Now that is a little better. I would add a third option to what religion ends in. Religion can end in pride, despair or in a closer relationship with God. It ends in the later when religion is understood as a part of approaching God in all of his holiness and obeying his commands out of a response to God’s grace. Once religion becomes all about earning things or about self it becomes false. But there is such a thing as pure religion. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27. I wouldn’t call that an infection and I am sure he wouldn’t either.

To sum it up, the big problem with this video is the broad generalization of lumping all religion into a stereotype and ignoring what the Bible actually says about it. It muddies the water too much for me and lacks clarity as well as biblical support for the broad generalizations he makes. People who want to hear a Christian say things like that are going to jump on board and make it even harder to reach them.

I want to make one last point here…catchy has replaced content. If you turn on the top 40 songs in America today the content is terrible but the tunes are catchy. It all sounds good. You can dance to it. It has a nice beat. But the content is deadly. I am not putting this in the camp with all that raunch. But I think there is a similar principle here…make something catchy and people will overlook a lot and put more stock in it than it might be worth.

What is your take on this video?

HT: Philip Cunningham – Thanks Philip for mentioning this and sharing your thoughts. I would love for you to share some of them in the comments.