A Closing Window of Opportunity?: Bringing Millennials and Gen Z into the Great Commission

(Hello everyone. I've been traveling a lot this summer, and have been able to spend a few weeks in the US for the first time in 3 years. My post today is on a topic which I feel is important for the North American Church, and very relevant to the future of Global Missions from this part of the world.  While there has been great concern over how younger generations now have largely stopped attending church, I submit that this is because attendance was indeed the issue of concern when leadership and ownership should have been. You may disagree with my analysis of how we got here, but we are here. I believe we don't have to stay here, however.)

Don’t Get Them Confused: Millennials vs. Gen Z

Every couple of decades, a new generational cohort comes along, with a fresh outlook and worldview, and sometimes very different assumptions and expectations from those of their predecessors. Millennials were the hot topic for years, with their marked differences from previous generations and defiance of many long-standing US cultural institutions. No longer now the college kids frequently targeted for criticism by their elders, even the youngest Gen Y/Millennials are already getting past their mid-20’s. The college students of today are not Millennials but Generation Z, who have already been exerting their own unique influence on society for years now, albeit to less media fanfare.

People tend to break down the generational differences between Millennial and Gen Z in certain ways: Typically Millennials are regarded as idealistic and concerned with the great events and causes of their time, while Gen Z are seen as more pragmatic and focused on their own day-to-day lives. Millennials have been slower at setting up their own households and pursuing a stable income compared to previous generations, preferring to invest their time and resources in other areas. By contrast Gen Z seem more interested in achieving financial independence, and even starting their own businesses. Most Millennials had the internet from a young age, with smart phones coming later, while Gen Z are mobile device natives who have grown up regarding wifi as a basic resource.

Some more comparisons of Millennials and Gen Z.
This chart was a better summary than most I found.

Rather than compare these stereotypes against each other positively or negatively ("Gen Z are harder workers" "Millennials are more relational"), I believe it’s more helpful to understand them as natural preferences developed at different periods of recent history:

Millennials were the first generation to have access to the online social world at their disposal from a young age, and so there is an innate desire to connect and unite. Inherited material resources and optimism from the Baby Boomer days also provided a context where society seemed to moving forward; Millennials understood their responsibility was to keep that going and make the world a better place, and a great many feel that this is indeed the purpose of their lives.

By contrast, Gen Z grew up in the post-9/11 era, more destabilized, pessimistic, and less prosperous. They feel the stress of financial anxiety more keenly and don’t consider society to be progressing forward. Thus rather than worrying about making the world a better place, they tend to focus on achieving personal security in the midst of uncertain times.

Personally I have experienced the sense that a certain large block of people used to have a voice and influence in the way society as a whole runs, but that it's a sort of privileged group that requires a certain level of social integration and sufficient personal resources, and as society fragments, that group has shrunk drastically and no longer speaks for the majority of society. (Although many senior Americans still imagine that this consensus exists, and try to fight political battles to regain control over it)

Growing up with mostly Boomer parents, many Millennials could at least have witness this world by proxy, and infer that top-down influence was the most effective way to steer society in a better direction. (An increasingly leftist progressive media also assume this as a first principle and communicate accordingly) By contrast, I submit that Gen Z, with mostly Gen X parents who were increasingly outsiders (both inadvertently and by their own jaded and system-weary choice) to that broadly influential social club of "people whose opinion matters". Gen Z also grew up in an increasingly fragmented society, and have little conception of that kind of social integration and inherited influence which existed in the past. Thus the idea of top-down influence obtained by collective process makes less and less sense; they are growing up in an un-integrated society, and each goes their own way as seems best to them. We have arrived at situation described at the very end of the book of Judges: 

"At that time the Israelites left that place and went home to their tribes and clans, each to his own inheritance. In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." - Judges 21:24-25

A Missed Opportunity: Unled Millennials

That may be the condition of society, but let us shift our focus specifically to the Church and Global Missions and how they could be blessed by these new generations: Millennials seek to work in community to bless the world, and they understand the great value of mentoring. Meanwhile Gen Z are focused workers who aren’t afraid to start building amidst uncertainty. These are not only both valuable mindsets for the mission field, but the two are also naturally complementary.

It would be a pity if current leadership in the Church and mission sending agencies missed out on these God-given strengths, but sadly for the Millennial generation this has already happened. The passionate but often naive idealism of Millennials met a prosperity-addled Church in love with its comfort zone, with leaders focused on maintaining an acceptable status quo or still fighting the culture wars of previous decades.

It has been widely observed that Millennials are all but unanimous in their desire to make a difference in the world. Yet, at church they often encountered a lazily fatalistic mentality which insisted things will simply get worse until Jesus comes, simultaneously conflating social and spiritual authority, and thus was increasingly disengaging from the world as popular culture drifted further and further from Bible-belt culture. Few leaders actively recruited maturing students into the great work Christ left us to do, but expected loyal attendance without any undue boat-rocking or change-making, or simply gave over spiritual responsibility for tomorrow's elders and deacons entirely to youth groups, so the adults could continue in their accustomed ways undisturbed. It’s not surprising then that when secular voices told Millennials a more optimistic and empowering tale--that change was coming and necessary, and by working together students like them could indeed make a better and more just world than that of their elders--Millennials allied themselves excitedly to those causes instead, and abandoned church attendance en masse.

For Millennials who did find their way into missions, surveys showed an interest in innovation and teamwork, and their highest priority was to find a seasoned missionary to connect with relationally and be mentored by. Yet arriving on the field they frequently ran into entrenched and outdated ideas and methods which had persisted less due to any bad motives than simple inertia. A sink-or-swim/hands-off mentality often prevailed over missionary mentoring, leading to widespread discouragement and burn-out.

Millennials only partly deserve their reputations as snowflakes.
As always, there is also some projection in those accusations...

It’s Not Too Late: Bringing Millennials into the Fold

Millennials are already changing global missions by their relational and technological focus (and willingness to totally reject defunct narratives and systems) but churches and sending agencies need to find more ways to channel their passion and desire to make a difference. Mentoring, mentioned above, is an urgent and crucial need. Millennials deeply desire to be mentored and led into ministry by people they respect, and then work hard to make a difference there; whether in the workplace or full-time ministry, they have consistently refused to be treated merely as the next batch of workers with an obligation to show up and maintain status quo. Mature believers who have been working actively for the kingdom of God should reach out to Millennial singles and couples and guide them into obedient service, not wait for them to appear.

As a generational cohort, Millennials are often criticized for delaying traditional milestones of adulthood, but that also means they are less tied down than previous generations at this point in their lives. This means it’s late but not too late to bring them back into churches and onto the mission field. The fact that they haven’t shown up doesn’t mean they never will, but it will take relationship building and invested leadership, not expectations of immediate changes in habits or ideological leanings as a sign of spiritual development. As Millennials have children and settle down, they won’t lose their desire to make a difference in the world, and families serving together can be uniquely effective on the mission field too. (Especially in the supportive and relational ministry environment in which Millennials seek to serve).

Coming and Already Here: The Challenge of Gen Z

With all the media focus up till now on Millennials, it’s important to recognize Gen Z are not a hypothetical future challenge, but an opportunity facing us today—they are already graduating college and beginning to enter the workforce. Having initially dropped the ball with Millennials, how can the Church and sending agencies avoid doing the same for another generation?

Fortunately, some lessons learned with Millennials will benefit Gen Z as well:

• The connectivity of the digital age is now increasingly an integral part of operations.
• In recent years many sending organizations have scrambled to catch up to the 21st century and are now moving into better and more flexible positions to work with modern missionaries.
• A mentality shift from waiting for qualified workers, to active recruiting and guidance.

All these things will help reach Gen Z, who will present new challenges to missionary recruiters. They tend to lack the deep Millennial passion to see change in the world, and also increasingly lack background understanding of the legacy of the Church and the missionary task. They are focused on working hard to reach personal goals in a fragmenting society. For them it may often be necessary to start from the beginning and explain why missions is important, why we do it, and what spiritual growth and other benefits they will personally experience as a result of obedient service. ("What's in it for me" is a self-centric question, but a very human one that the Bible anticipates and teaches us to grow beyond)

Gen Z missionary candidates will probably be less likely to come in with a Millennial-style crusading ideological stance on issues of gender, privilege, etc. but will be accustomed to that language and have a live-and-let-live approach; again it will be important for someone with a deep understanding of scriptural (and not merely "conservative christian") teaching on these topics to explain via authentic dialogue (not a long monologue) why a doctrinal or faith statement, etc., has certain firm language on these topics, or why it's absent. (Be sure to include informative graphics and not only text in the explanation)

It is probably also best to share real examples of kingdom opportunities and give them a clear picture of what they’ll be doing (The “it’s complicated, just show up with a willing heart and figure it out” mentality makes a lot less sense to digital natives who may prefer to simply video chat with their future coworkers in the field and get some answers directly), and explain what skills would be helpful to acquire before going in. Lastly, Gen Z members seem not to expect as much hand-holding as Millennials, but they need mentoring and discipling just as much whether they ask for it or not--and they shouldn't need to ask to receive it. In a healthy church culture, it should be the default.

We Millennials and Gen Z are the experienced kingdom workers of the future, but still largely the unrealized opportunity of the present. May we submit ourselves to Christ as obedient servants of His gospel, and may the Church rise up and embrace the opportunity to establish a healthy generational relationship of mature believers actively discipling and guiding their younger brothers and sisters in Christ!

Hurricanes and the Goodness of God

For my American readers, this hurricane season will be one that many people remember for decades after the unprecedented flooding that Hurricane Harvey brought to the Houston area. Hopefully, it will also be remembered how people came together to help each other in the midst of a tense period in our national mood, when scenes of cooperation, relief, and unselfish neighbor-love are like balm to a frenzied social soul.

Now with Irma shredding through Caribbean islands and barreling down on Florida, we seem poised to be dealt another heavy blow from weather conditions not under our control. Only time will tell the scale of the damage there. Almost certainly there will be many billions of dollars of damage, countless lives disrupted, and a few ended. For Christians, not only in America but in all the world, we do believe there is One who has power over the weather, a God without whose permission nothing can occur, blessings or tragedies alike. So why does He allow these things to occur?

No Humansplaining

It is always ill-advised and futile to attempt to give narrowly specific reasons that large-scale natural disasters occur. Was Houston being judged for its sins like many claimed or implied New Orleans was in Katrina? Were the 16,000+ killed in the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami disaster more sinful than the rest of Japan or the rest of East Asia? Were the people whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices or who were crushed by a falling tower in Siloam more guilty than the rest of Jerusalem? (Luke 13:1-5, Hint: Jesus says "No!")

In the whatever'th-wave of the feminist movement we're in now, "man-splaining" is criticized as men offering unnecessary or patronizing explanations to which they expect women to listen respectfully. Or something like that. These things tend to be flexibly defined by those who wish to claim victim status, whether they have a legitimate cause for complaint or not. (They might as well lock up all the INTPs now, we love to explain things to anyone willing to listen to that much excited detail.)

But there is another kind of mansplaining, or humansplaining, which I would love to see end, and that is when people with positions of spiritual authority start trying to explain things they don't understand because they feel people expect them to have an explanation. Like the occasional situation in Chinese culture where courtesy demands a response to tourist inquiries of how to get to a place even if the local being asked has no idea, it's not so much about knowing, as feeling that you are in a position where giving an answer is expected and so you come up with a good-sounding one.

As a missionary with a seminary degree, I am sometimes put in this position. While I am not a very worthy example, at least I do try to always say when I don't know something off the top of my head but will go research it and have a better answer later, or else that the Bible doesn't actually give us an answer, so I neither have one nor should you trust anyone who says they do. It may be less satisfying than a pithy response you can copy and paste onto a picture and pass around social media, but I don't dare put words in the Bible's mouth. (If you feel I have done so with this post, feel free to let me know)

When a pastor or prominent Christian or anyone else stands up and says that a disaster happened for positive or negative reasons--as judgment for sin, or to bring everyone together--they are choosing from various possibilities, hopefully biblical-based ones, but they have no possible way of knowing the real reason or combinations. We are not privy to an explanation from God, and be very cautious about anyone claiming that they are.

But if we can't known the specific reason, then on a more basic level, why would a good God allow disasters like Katrina, like the Tohoku Quake, like the flooding in Houston, like the crises which you didn't even know were claiming lives every day in less-reported areas of the world, to happen? And can we answer that question without "humansplaining" or adding purely speculative ideas to scripture?
I think we can, and this is my attempt to do so.

A hurricane season that will be long remembered...

Why God Lets Hurricanes Strike Major Cities

I. Because when ocean water reaches a certain temperature, and seasonal wind patterns...

We know this reason, or at least learned it in high school or saw it on the weather channel at some point. This is what people call the scientific reason, and what atheists tiresomely pretend makes God unnecessary until you bring up that this is not the Why at all, but the How. Personally I find it fascinating, how the unbelievable amount of energy representing in a raging hurricane is all the result of a positive feedback loop that can emerge from the tranquil, sun-warmed ocean when conditions are right. But that's wandering from the thrust of our topic.

As I have blogged previously, the ancient Greeks spent some time thinking about why things happen, and came up with the brilliant idea that every event had multiple causes, as seen from different perspectives.

For a simple example, a crystal goblet dropped on a stone floor shatters into scintillating shards. Why? Well, 1) because someone dropped it. But also 2) because it's crystal. If it was rubber or wood, it mostly likely would have survived the fall. Also 3) because the floor is stone. If it had been thick shag carpet, the goblet probably also would have been fine, though my allergies might not. Also 4) because in some humanly incomprehensible way, the shattered goblet fits into the vast and mysterious unfolding of all things, under God's authority and obeying His will. When we ask "why did this happen" we are usually speaking more to the that last category. What was the ultimate purpose?

I am not here suggesting the Greek causal categories are comprehensive or even correct. But their reminder to us that there is not merely one reason for things to occur is important.

So for our damaging hurricane, we could come up with a similar set of explanations. "Why did a massive hurricane strike a populated area with lethal results?":

1) Because of a set of natural phenomenon which to some extent can be traced back in chains of cause and effect to the beginning of the universe. Energy was transferred and the earth went around the sun and the ocean sloshed around for millennia and the hurricane was always going to happen at that time, unless you want to go really deep into arguments about human free will and chaos theory, and suggest the sinking of some Carthaginian trireme during the Punic Wars was just enough energy disruption to butterfly effect the hurricane into being thousands of years later. Perhaps so, but even that can be described precisely by physics, if we had access to the data.

2) Because people decided to build a city there. Actually there are lots of big coastal cities, and hurricanes have a very wide track. Sooner or later every city near the coast will be hit, it's just a matter of time. If we didn't build any major cities within 50 miles of the coast, hurricanes would rarely ever threaten them seriously.

3) Because people build communities out of materials which can be affected by storms. I live in Taiwan, where cities are dense and built mostly out of concrete and steel. Here in the capital metro area, even supertyphoons are mostly just a day of missed work or school, while eating instant noodles you bought at 7-11 before the storm got too intense to carry an umbrella, and listening to the wind howling past the windows. People who live in the mountains are at greater risk of mudslides and flash flooding, however, because of the nature of their environment. Our choice of living space and way of life does render us more or less vulnerable to nature's occasional fury, and like New Orleans, deciding to live in low-lying coastal areas is simply accepting the risk that sooner or later there will be tragedy.

4) Because God did not prevent it. I say it in this way, because when people ask the question in other way (If God is good, why does He send hurricanes) they are implying that a hurricane wasn't going to happen, and God "incited" it. But it was, as we explained above. Given scientific superpowers, we could trace the unbroken chain of cause and effect and energy transfer and weather patterns all the way back to the Creation event. This is important. God's creation is real. It is broken by sin, but it still functions according to knowable and consistent physical laws. Now the Bible certainly does speak of God causing disasters specifically as punishment for sin, but it also certainly does not say that every natural phenomenon which humans are caught up in and suffer is a punishment from God.

So we live in the kind of world where hurricanes happen, we have built cities in their path, and we haven't built those cities to be hurricane-resistant. Yet knowing all this, God doesn't stop them. Why? This brings us to the second part of what we mean when we ask why a disaster occurred:

II. Because God did not interfere in the Natural Order on this occasion

We spoke of the unbroken chain of cause and effect which proceeds forth from the creation event: God can and does interfere with this when He decides to, but this is a specific and special event, what we call a miracle. Even in the Bible, which being concerned with God's salvation plan for humanity and interactions with us mentions miracles and direct acts of God very frequently, we still read of a natural world that is God's creation and functions more or less as it was designed to, a world where the sun is a light-emitting object that God placed in the high heavens for the benefit of earth (a different kind of geocentrism -- the sun doesn't revolve around us, but it's there for us and not we for it), yet not a world where the sun is a little god in a chariot that rides around the sky every day but might choose not to do so tomorrow, or might be caught by a hungry sky wolf instead. The very existence and persistence of creation is itself a miracle, to be sure, but to speak as though every single thing that happens each moment is an arbitrary supernatural intervention risks ignoring a default reality the Bible itself assumes, the blessing of being able to take reality for granted, a core component of a scriptural worldview that all modern science is based on and to which it testifies.

So science is true and godly in the sense that it measures this physical world God established to function according to the laws of physics, neither arbitrary nor pantheistic. Yet if we believed only in this, we would be deists and not followers of Christ. As Christians we understand additionally that the One who set those parameters is present and active, and can always make the call to intervene directly, and does so both unprompted for His own reasons and in answer to our prayers.

So then under what conditions does God intervene? The Bible gives us some general categories:

1) Salvation history - God's interactions with the Patriarchs, miracles on behalf of Israel, through His prophets, in the person of Jesus Christ, etc. The Bible is mostly about this--God's special interactions with individuals and nations in His eternal plan for our redemption, and what happened in history as a result.

2) Judgment for Sin - Both the Old and New Testaments mention specific occasions not directly related to the progression of salvation history, which show God specifically acting to punish special sin. In the Old Testament we famously have Sodom and Gomorrah, but in the New Testament we also have Herod, receiving the crowds' adulation in a blasphemous way (Knowing who the LORD was, he still welcomed the crowds' praising him as divine) and being struck down for it. This is mentioned almost parenthetically as a direct punishment by God, and not as the Spirit-empowered act of any apostle, like the blindness of Elymas. We can assume if God punished both individuals and cities/nations directly, in both Old and New Testaments, for sins other than causing harm to Israel (as in the case of Egypt), then He may still do so today.

3)  As an Answer to Prayer - Whether it is the healings and exorcisms performed by the disciples, or the miraculous answers to prayer the Church has seen from its inception until today, Christians know that God is sometimes willing to intervene dramatically. Testimonies to medical "mystery" cases where tumors vanish and doctors are confused by inexplicable recoveries are so common (even discounting the made-up, "share this post for a blessing" ones) that if modern scientists were as inquisitive as their forebearers we'd have whole fields of research trying to figure out by what means these things are occurring. (expect some kind of quantum energy/power of positive thinking explanations to crop up eventually as a way to get around a Biblical explanation if they haven't already, East Asia is way ahead of the West on that front)
Another specific example pertinent to our topic today: After a particularly severe typhoon here in Taiwan a few years ago, cleanup had just begun and rescue crews were still trying to get to people trapped in the mountains, when another typhoon headed for the island. Many people prayed earnestly, and the typhoon made an abrupt u-turn and headed straight back into the Pacific Ocean where it dissipated. I've heard similar stories in other places, and can't speak to their veracity, but at least I've witnessed it happen once myself in this case.

All this has prepared us to answer the central question: If a hurricane was going to hit a city through natural processes, yet God could directly intervene if He so desired, why didn't He do so?

Let's check our categories of Divine intervention mentioned above:

1) Is the hurricane part of salvation history? By definition, no.

2) Is the hurricane judgment for sin? Possibly. As I said above, it's foolish for us humans to pronounce this without knowing the mind of God (let alone start listing out which sins we guess God is punishing or why it was these people and not other people), but with Biblical precedent we also can't rule it out. I personally don't like this explanation because a hurricane is not really a "black swan" event; they happen every year, some are always more powerful than others, and it's only a matter of time before a large city is affected.

3) Did people earnestly pray in faith for God to send the hurricane somewhere else but He answered no? That's complicated, isn't it? Who would you pray for the storm to hit instead of you? As a Christian I fully believe that if many churches gathered together and prayed for God to make the storm do a 180 degree turn and head back out into the Atlantic, He could and might do that. I've seen a similar thing happen once, as I noted above. Obviously I have no way of knowing if those prayers occurred, though I think people tend to not pray with that kind of real urgency unless there's a special emergency. Sometimes we blame God for things we never really petitioned Him to change, but both scripture and the church's experience of great acts of God suggest that there is power in many people humbly petitioning God that a single person's earnest request does not have. To investigate how that works would both take a longer blog than this, but it can be said that prayer is never a means to manipulate God; we can never discover a formula by which to get consistent affirmative answers to our various requests, the Bible only touches on the topic of which prayers are pleasing to God, while telling us that there are some requests to which we will get consistent affirmative answers (Like James 1:5). (Note: This isn't a question of sovereignty--if God has ordained a thing, He has ordained the means, for example the prayers of many, by which it shall occur.)

III. Because Suffering and Pain is the Default of our World, not the Exception

Perhaps I was the only person who hadn't figured that out, but growing up this was not clear. Life wasn't perfect, but it was alright, and events like serious sickness or car accidents or job loss or natural disasters were tragic intrusions in how life ought to be. Much of the developed world seeks to make this perspective as much a reality as possible--that through use of resources and wise decision making, the suffering of this life may be minimized for as many people as possible. This is not a biblical perspective, but it's a natural human one, that leads to evils as well as good. (Trying to minimize suffering leads to acts of mercy and the alleviation of need, but also to abortion and euthanasia)
Scripture does not describe the world exactly in this way. Rather, a peaceful life free from tragic incidents or societal chaos is a blessing from God, a manifestation of Shalom, something to be sought after not because it is "normal" but because it's what people want and how the world was initially supposed to be. We are all longing after Eden, but sin has turned our quest for it into the welfare state, or even communist regimes.

When man fell, he dragged creation down with him. we have no idea if the world had hurricanes before the fall; although people do like to take one verse and run with it, on this question at least there is biblical evidence to suggest that before Noah's flood the climate didn't allow for that kind of thing. By the time of Noah's flood, not only had the fall taken place, but mankind was so wicked that God initiated a pan-disaster that dwarfs the most furious hurricane the world has ever known. To run the risk of the "humansplaining" I mentioned above, my understanding ("I, not the Lord") is that hurricanes and many other potentially lethal weather events began in the post-flood world as an inevitable result of changed climatic factors. (There is also some biblical evidence to suggest "climate change" in terms not of global warming, which an increasingly small number of people cling to in the face of insurmountable evidence to the contrary, but of the increasing instability of the climate is also an inevitable result of the fall, and will only get worse until the end.)

I have mentioned in a previous blog how, just as you cannot get the tin out of a bronze-alloy sword without destroying it, our post-fall world is alloyed with sin. God will remove it one day, but in doing so "the heavens will perish with fire" and the "earth shall melt like wax." He delays so that more will know Him, more will fill His tables at the feast and enter His dwellings, before the end comes and the door is closed.

Hurricanes are an inevitable phenomenon in our sin-alloyed world. God does not, except in special cases, intervene to prevent the natural consequences of sin. That is the reality of the messed-up world we inhabit. Yet through common grace, by wisdom and understanding the nature of creation (effective city planning and disaster preparation, science that understands the weather and also stronger building materials, etc), we are free to develop ways to mitigate the destructive power of natural phenomenon, and indeed we have done so to a large degree.

So pray for recovery in Houston, pray for mercy in Florida and the Caribbean, and indeed for western wildfires, violence in Syria and Yemen and Nigeria and Sudan and American inner cities and elsewhere, tensions on the Korean peninsula, and a whole host of situations. But if you are simply praying that God will make all the bad things and the hurting stop, that prayer may arise out of the heart's distress, but it does not correspond to biblical reality. The consequences of human sin will wreak havoc as they do, until the final judgment.

Then, what should we do?

God has entrusted the task of letting the world hear the gospel to us. While movements of the Spirit are bringing millions to His kingdom, they are doing so alongside and through the faithful service of brothers and sisters around the world. We are His witnesses, and that is our constant and joyful responsibility whether or not we see God specifically intervening to do miracles on His own. "He's not a tame lion," but we are no longer languishing in the endless winter of frozen Narnia--Christmas has come, and Aslan has died, defeated death, and opened the way.

Now should we sit and question God for letting nature take its course, a course we chose ourselves in Eden by deciding we had better options than trusting obedience? Not as believers. We are on this earth to proclaim Christ to a world that desperately needs hope beyond this world. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. When confronted with disaster, we have two necessary options:

1. Pray, but don't do it alone. God does listen to our requests made in faith. If He chooses to let nature take its course, that is not being mean or unjust, that is in fact exactly justice. He may rather choose to show special mercy in a specific situation, even in a miraculous way, but my experience at least is that He rarely does so when we are casual about asking. And I don't mean prayer memes on FB, but roomfuls of people on their knees.

2. Go. Help. If you are burdened by a disaster, demanding the government or somebody do something on your behalf earns you zero points. (maybe even negative points, by encouraging a culture of shifting Christian responsibility up the secular ladder) Also you can earnestly request, but are unable to demand God do anything. But you are quite capable of being the body of Christ and bringing love and joy to a broken world. If people need help, you go help them.

And some people already are, as we watched in Houston. But what if, like Paul and his race, the Church was excited and even competitive about this? What if the government complained that so many Christians were already responding that they couldn't get state and federal aid in there? (I'm not talking about interfering with professionals doing their jobs, I'm saying a) that's an excuse when there's so much that can be done, and b) Christians can get access to that training too, yeah?) What if we decided no one would outdo us in showing charitable love and being first on the scene to bring mercy and relief in times of disaster and hurting?

I guess, in that situation, the Church might even look like salt and light to a hungry and darkened world. Pray for Florida, pray for Houston, pray for God's mercy on those involved in these and other disasters nationally and globally. Then recognize that God might be prompting you to be one of those expressions of His mercy that you were praying for, and go help someone.

Stop Hating on the Church

I recently noticed a blog entry making the rounds on FB, "I Hate Church..."

I am not specifically condemning the article, as he explicitly admits later on that the title is simply a stunt to get views and that he actually loves church (A little too 'bait-and-switch' for my taste, but I suppose it does bring in the audience to discover his point), but he believes it is in error in various ways. Read his article if you wish, in my opinion among his various assertions/accusations there are a few valid ones. However, his writing is in a similar vein to many other articles and blogs I've noticed over the past few years, and the trend troubles me.

What I want to respond to is the idea that it's alright to take cheap shots at the Church in general based on your own ideas of what local church culture should look like, especially when some investigation reveals that the complaints are often grounded in either whatever secular take on virtue is currently in vogue and how the church isn't doing enough to meet the world's expectations on that front, or the complainer is suggesting all churches should parallel their own particular subculture/background.

In this post, I want to look at the claims that the local church is beset with unloving people who only care about appearance, based on a perceived unfriendliness or intolerance for people who are "different." "If the church started really being the church," the argument typically goes, "then no one, of any appearance or background, should feel uncomfortable or unwelcome there." Usually they proceed to claim that the church would then necessarily look much more diverse than our churches do today, filled with people of all walks of life.

1. Diversity: The church/Church Confusion

Notice one immediate problem with that line of attack. "The Church," the Body of Christ, is already incredibly diverse. Compared to the adherents of other religions, diversity could be said to be a notable trait of Christianity. It is indeed comprised of desperately poor and astonishingly rich, people of every walk of life and nearly every ethnicity on the planet (Check out the Joshua Project for info on those people groups not yet reached!). Where the intentions of men would fail due to sinful prejudice, the Spirit has succeeded, and the Church is truly being formed from every nation, tribe, language, and people.

Now this glorious, global Church is made up of a vast number of local churches. The church/Church difference is usually glossed over in these complaints, as they're transferring their problem with the practices of some local churches to 'the church' because it sounds more urgent. After making the distinction, we can easily see that the implied claim that each individual local church ought to reflect the same diversity we see in the global church is simply invalid; to be "local," it stands to reason that the members of a local church ought to more or less reflect the people of its locale, whether varied or homogenous.

But what is true in America (and pretty much any other place, I believe, but I prefer not to speak where I do not have experience), which is where most of this dialogue is taking place, is that the real divides are not just between different locations, but between socioeconomic levels and subcultures. Which leads to my next point...

2. A Christian Welcome?

Let me ask a very direct question here. Is it evidence that your local church is failing to love people as they should, if people from significantly different subcultures or economic classes feel uncomfortable or unwelcome there? Quite possibly, but not necessarily.

It turns out that churches are full of actual people, not demographic data points. And real people all spend their time and go through life within some kind of economic class and subculture. And people in the same class tend to live near each other, and go to the same churches (and schools, and shops, etc). Certain subcultures often frequent the same places as well. An ordinary church in America therefore has a high chance of its members being from the same or adjacent economic classes and subcultures. This may not be the ideal or most God-glorifying situation, but it needs to be recognized as the default. It's not a contrived situation created by unfaithful churches, it's the starting point from which we can do better.

In the article I mentioned, the example is used of a group of bikers, some of whom said they wouldn't be comfortable or welcomed in church. Let's turn the example around. If in a hypothetical area all the churches were biker churches, with the congregation looking more or less the same as they would at the biker bar, and you came in on Sunday with a 3-piece suit and Italian leather shoes, talking into your bluetooth earpiece, would you be surprised if you got a few "what are you doing here?" looks? I wouldn't be.

The young lady from the article was stared at for her tattoos, piercings, and the way she was dressed, not because churchgoers are bigots or intolerant or unloving, but because in the subculture/s to which those church members belonged, she presented an unusual spectacle. If they are not taught otherwise, people stare at things which are unusual or out of place. (If she had fit the subcultural appearance code but been nine feet tall, she would have been stared at even more.) But, if she had kept attending, regardless of the tattoos and piercings, she would become at least a familiar face, and most likely come to feel accepted. (Not exactly the same, but similar to my experience being one of the only white people in a Chinese church in Dallas.)


Consider this question. If a homeless person had attended church as a guest of a couple who'd been loving and witnessing to her over the course of a few weeks, and had been asking others in their church to pray for her, do you think the scenario would play out the same?

So the problem here is not necessarily that local churches are failing to love, but sometimes the inevitable frictions which result from the collision of subcultures. And I've argued against some of what the author of the linked article says, but on this point he's absolutely right; Christians in America can be hesitant to step outside the bounds of their own subculture to walk with and witness to those who are different, because they're never interacting with those people in the first place. If Christians were more actively reaching across subcultures with the gospel, our churches might be more used to the odd-looking guest now and again.

But although anyone randomly showing up on Sunday morning should be witnessed to by seeing Christ and the love we have in Him (otherwise that church really is failing), if we're relying on Sunday mornings to save people and therefore focusing on church being a building and event where the random guest of any subculture would not feel out of place, we're not obeying the Great Commission. Christ said to speak the truth in love, not that every church needs to tailor itself to the specific needs of inner city ministry (what the article writer seems to be alleging), or any other ministry.

3. The Answer: (As Always...) Do What Jesus Already Told Us to Do

So if we really love "those people," the ones who wouldn't feel comfortable in our church, and who maybe we're not 100% comfortable even having in our church, then while we're working on changing those attitudes inside our church, we should be GOING TO THEM.

The missional church movement takes this a step further; its proponents are convinced that by implicitly changing Christ's command from "make disciples of all nations" to "get as many people as possible to come to this building on Sunday morning," we have lost track. On this particular point, I totally agree with them. Once a local church is aware of the needs of a particular community or culture within their ministry reach, rather than focusing on trying to change things at that church to work for that subculture too (and yes, the practical side of "doing" church is affected by who the members are), they should be doing outreach and eventually planting new churches among them.

Therefore, rather than the focus being trying to prepare churches to be "ready for the day the prostitute walks into church after she just finished her night shift... or the back of the church smells like weed because broken people are coming in through the doors... or the day when they can’t leave their purse on their seat during worship because that visitor might just steal their wallet," (Honestly to me this sounds more like a desire to "shake up the system" and "scare some stuffy old people" than a plan to develop a more God-glorifying church...) it would be vastly more in accordance with the Great Commission to make church a place where some seats were empty because people were out doing church with those people, in their own communities.

Churches are already full of broken people. They're just mostly full of broken people who feel less broken around people who are similar to them. And just because some of them don't know they're broken, that doesn't make them any less in need of healing.

4. So Please...

Don't say you hate the Church because some local churches have issues. 
Don't say you hate local churches because they are full of sinful people (like you, like me).
Don't think that because your eyes are opened to love the have-nots, it's ok to despise the haves.
Go to the harvest where it's planted; a new field might need a new church focused on it, not for each church to change to accommodate every kind of grain.