A Different Direction for Churches

The big talk among many churches today is how to reach young people. 20-somethings aren't going to church and we wonder why. Being 22 myself I find this very exciting as new, biblically-sound churches pop up reaching out to my generation(sorry emerging church, this might count some of you out). Sadly, there are still many churches that have no real ministry to 20-somethings. A great example is Monmouth , IL, where I went to undergrad. There were at least 3 Baptist churches in this town of 10,000 plus many other denominations and yet few of them reached out to the small, liberal arts campus in the middle of town. The few that did I wouldn't recommend

What if churches looked to reach retirees? I have heard that centennials, one of my new favorite words meaning hundred-year-olds, are the fastest growing age group. I don't hear of any cool, trendy way that churches are trying to reach this age group. Maybe that is partly because there seem to be so many churches filled with older people who have no vision for the young.

Maybe it is time we combined these missions.

In the Bible it says to have old men teach the young men and old women teach the young women(though I can't seem to find the reference so don't quote me on that). It is a great encouragement to meet older people who have fought the good fight for so long and by God's grace are still winning. I believe that young people, especially 20-somethings, come to find a new respect for their grandparents and other older people. They see the world before them and wonder how the older generation managed.
I wonder if we as a church could reach the older generation and encourage them to reach the younger generation.

There is something to be said for being relevant to an age of kids who are living through the technological revolution and are coming face to face with pluralism and relativistic visions of truth. I believe mankind has always been sinful and that this generation isn't any worse than the generation before it. It is time for someone to mobilize the retirees. I could venture to say that the two age groups with the most free time are college students and retirees. Retirees aren't working, their kids have been out of the house for awhile, and their income is (mostly) stable. They need to be encouraged to love and reach this younger generation.

The great question is always, how? How can we reach the older generation that hasn't been reached by the older churches? How can we encourage the older generations to reach the younger generations? That is where the conversation goes from here.

Shameless Plug

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Bible Study Magazine and Mars Hill are giving away 20 copies of Mark Driscoll’s new book, Vintage Church. Not only that, but they are also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and a copy of their Bible Study Library software! Enter to win on the Bible Study Magazine Mark Driscoll page, then take a look at all the cool tools they have to take your Bible study to the next level!

Evangelism

Evangelism is something that we as Christians know we are supposed to do. Many of us came to Christ because someone was courageous enough to share their faith. Many of us have heard the Great Commission again and again. We know the importance of it, and yet many are probably like me and do not engage in much active evangelism.

But what should evangelism look like? Tracts? Preaching/bringing people to church? by example? through friendship? In undergrad I was frustrated with stories of Christians shoving tracts under the public bathroom stalls, or who said they evangelized by the way they lived. C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity that on the outside there is no difference between a moral man and a Christian man. We need to share why we live the way we do. But God pointed out to me that while I was judging the methods of other Christians I was not sharing Christ with people. At least they were trying.

In one book I read, evangelism was related to the unsaved being in a burning car. Wouldn't you want to do whatever you could to get them out of that car? Or the Christian punk band, Calibretto 13, showed a common difficulty of evangelism, which is knowing that our friends would love to hear the Gospel, but we would rather share it tomorrow.

We are guilted into evangelism again and again. How many of us who call ourselves Christians share the saving grace of Christ that we could not live without? I think we all know the importance of reaching the lost (a common Campus Crusade for Christ saying). And yet we don't do it, I don't do it. And I can't seem to motivate myself to do it. For me, I don't want to be vulnerable. I don't want to look like the fool who believes in Christ. I will gladly live as a believer of Christ, but to talk about that with unbelievers? That is hard, that is scary. It will change them, it will change my relationship with them. But that is what makes it so important. Now I am guilting you into it.

I will admit that to a certain degree I am hard on myself. I talk about Christ pretty often with other people, especially my friends who are not believers, but there are so many opportunities that I see and skip over. For example, I lived with a roommate all of freshman year of undergrad without ever talking to him about Christ. I do think that one good way to do evangelism is to live life the way Christ wants us to. This leads to so many conversations because every action we take is affected by our relationship with God. People will ask or we can just share with them why we do what we do. It becomes a natural part of our conversation and our lives.

This post on theresurgence.com provided an interesting take on evangelism for me.