BLOG 3/15/15. “RESCUE THE PERISHING:” … ANOTHER DIMENSION

Back in the ‘heyday’ of gospel meetings and traveling evangelists, we used to sing a gospel song: “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying … Jesus is merciful! Jesus will save.” At that time we had a vision of poor lost sinners needing forgiveness for their misspent lives so they could go to heaven when they died, … or something like that. But there are more macro dimensions of ‘lostness’ than simply the individual—there is social and generational lostness, and it should be a demanding issue for the church’s presence and mission to our own society today.

Here’s what triggers this thought in me: in recent days there have been reports of  studies by the political scientist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) that have raised the issue that the large majority of those who attend college are also those who have grown up in homes where their parents went to college, and where there was structure and expectation and parental encouragement. And what of the rest?

Consider that there is the emerging Generation Z (or the iY generation born after 1990), which numbers something like 26 million, and is about the largest generational bubble since the Boomers, … but in which a frightening percentage are those born out of wedlock, or are the product of single parent homes with little structure, little true love or affection, frequently with no male figure present, with little discipline, and less expectation. It is these who are unlikely to have any conception of college, or of responsibility, or hope, and so are being formed by gangs of friends, or whatever they can pull up on the iPhones. We dump these young men and women on the school systems, where they are unprepared for any academic discipline, but which may be the closest thing they have of association with responsible adult figures.

These are the perishing who need to be rescued. This a whole dimension of our own social and cultural darkness. This is a huge area of need in our society. And where is the church? There was a time, in centuries past, when the church saw education as a fruitful mission enterprise, and where being an educator-teacher was considered a significant Christian calling to places of influence. Now the educational scene is a battleground between political factions, and where teachers are placed in a dismayingly near-impossible role of being the adult figures to these lost Generation Z kids—and maybe the only caring adults in their experience. The program Teach America has produced some good results, but it is not nearly adequate given the scope of the problem, what with all of the socio-economic-cultural decay.

Our churches have traditionally seen cross-cultural missions as sending folk to other nations to plant churches and to herald God’s love in Christ, … but the mission field that stares us in the face here and now, and is on our doorstep, is itself cross-cultural, is a generation of unloved, unstructured, lonely, hopeless, and morally ambiguous young men and women—which should break out hearts.

And I don’t have any answers, or brilliant suggestions, … except that the communities of Christ’s people need to wake up to the heartbreak of such a cultural tsunami that none of us will escape. I can only refer back to the model of my mentor John Perkins, that we need to literally move into the area of greatest need, with our ministry of reconciliation, and there to share the resources that will provide the demonstrations of incarnational love to those who so desperately need that gospel, that rescue, that will give hope and meaning and motivation and the embracing love of God—maybe as school teachers or community organizers.

It is also true that the more encouraging part of Generation Z is more entrepreneurial, more change-focused, and more digitally adept and has the potential of being something of a creative force with vision of how to bring about a whole new social reality. Am I Utopian? Perhaps, but then many of the Silicon Valley folk were told that their ideas were insane before they were proven to be correct, and so have changed our future. Come Holy Spirit!