In our January sermon series on “God’s New Community”, we have seen how God wants the church to be an intergenerational family who are committed to the Body of Christ. This raises the question: “How can the church effectively disciple the next generation?”
This article(1) exhorts us to love the church in order to reach our younger generation. In the first of this two-part editorial, we will first see why our commitment to the local church is vital for the discipleship of our youths, and in the next, we will note three ways in which this is practically played out in our relationship with the church.
May it encourage us to love the church well so that we can reach our youths better as an intergenerational family of Christ.
Pastor Luwin Wong
If I asked you to name the most controversial Christian teaching today, what would you say? Some might say LGBT+ issues, some Jesus’s divinity, some the doctrine of eternal punishment. My answer might be unexpected: the necessity of the church.
Over my years serving as a pastor to college students, I’ve received more confused responses, pushback, and dismissiveness when it comes to the church’s necessity than any other point of theology. Many Christian students will acknowledge the need for Christian friendships or some type of Christian community, but as for the fullness of the church—church as both gathered and scattered, organism and organization—there’s often ambivalence. They aren’t denying the need for community but are skeptical that the church is necessary in fulfilling this need.
This is the case for a wide array of people on the spiritual spectrum, from new Christians all the way to those who’ve passionately proclaimed allegiance to Jesus for their whole lives.
I don’t think this ambivalence usually has at its root a dramatic change in religious beliefs or commitments. As I’m honored to hear students’ stories over a meal or coffee, I often hear, “We went to church for a period of time when I was little, but after ______ we stopped going. We still believe in Jesus though.”
The event that fills in the blank can be something as traumatic as the prominent Christian in the family, such as a grandmother, passing away. Or it could be something as subtle as a busy athletics schedule that eroded the habit of church involvement over time. As a result of these events, I often hear, “I didn’t really grow up in church, but I grew up in a Christian home, if that makes sense.” Do these stories have a common thread running through them?
Authentic Spiritual Journey
It’s impossible to reduce so many different people’s stories down to one common cause, but I suspect what’s often hidden under these stories is a belief absorbed unconsciously from our culture: the more individual, inward, and disconnected from institutions a spiritual journey is, the purer it is and the closer that person is to God. It feels less spiritual and authentic to move outward to be shaped by a structured community and to have your faith tethered to the church. The church can be nice but not essential to a thriving Christian walk.
Indeed, the church can be seen as dangerous in this framework, a slippery slope into having “religion but not relationship.” Given such beliefs, when involvement in the church becomes inconvenient or too uncomfortable, it’s cast aside.
Relatedly, we’ve often believed that an inward decision alone makes one a Christian, while ignoring the church’s key role. In this framework, baptism and church membership lose their pivotal roles in the conversion process. But as we read the Bible, Christians as independent individuals don’t definitively declare themselves as Christians. Jesus has given that responsibility to the church (Matt. 18:15–20; 1 Cor. 5:1–6:8).
As we consider the next generation’s posture toward the church, we must seriously ask, “What place does the church have in an increasingly post-Christian society?” A Christian faith that has hitched itself to the church is doomed to failure, it’d seem.
We’re in an age where people are leaving the church like never before. As Jim Davis and Michael Graham have pointed out in their book The Great Dechurching, “We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country. . . . More people have left the church in the last twenty-five years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham crusades combined.”
Despite our cultural trends, for the Christian faith to have a meaningful, long-term influence in the lives of the next generation, we must not only embrace the church but also labor to strengthen it and make it an essential part of our evangelistic methods. As our Lord has done, we must love the church and place our confidence in its future. For us to help the next generation see the beauty of Christ and his church, there must be three marriages: (1) The Church and Embodiment, (2) The Church and Mission, (3) The Church and Christ.
(1) Cyril Chavis Jr. (2024, October 22). Want to Reach the Next Generation?
Love the Church. The Gospel Coalitionhttps://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/reach-generation-love-church/
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