2/3/14. THE CHURCH FOR AN EMERGING GENERATION OF PRAGMATISTS

So in my Blogs having to do with an alternative narrative for the church, and especially for the emerging generation, we have, first of all the inescapable fact that over 50% of the world’s population is under 25 years of age. Then, feed in the fact that this generation is emerging into a totally different cultural setting than its predecessors. It is a culture that is not only post-modern and post-Christian (whatever those designations imply), but it is a culture that is global, digital, connected, faced with some seemingly impossible pending dilemmas (water shortage, global warming, economic factors that could be ominous, etc.) and yet it also seems to be a generation that is incorrigibly optimistic … but even more, it is a generation that is pragmatic: there are exciting solutions that we can find to the seemingly impossible challenges.

Yet in our North American cultural scene it is not uncommon to find that it is a culture that has found the church to be irrelevant by those outside, and somewhat mindless by those inside. Articles about how the church is losing the Millennial culture, and how the church “lost us” by those of the emerging generation, who were once part of it, are published regularly.

My conclusion is that the church itself is a good part of the mission field (alas!) and that is primarily because the church has lost touch with its own very pragmatic raison d’ètre. It has displaced its two fold commission by its Lord: 1) to go make disciples in every people group, and 2) to love one another. I want to look briefly at that first commission and its evident Biblical components. Disciplemaking is accomplished within the Christian community when (according to one of the few passages that explicates it: Ephesians 4) by knowledgeable practitioners of discipleship, who then not only communicate/teach the data of Christ’s life and teachings, i.e., of God’s in-breaking New Creation in Christ, to every one of Christ’s followers, but also model it before them and coach them in the process of becoming practitioners themselves. The result of this is that then a second generation is equipped to do the same with a third generation of believers, etc.

But note from that same Ephesians 4 passage, that there are four components necessary to create disciples who are mature, and so the Lord provides four different gifts to his church. Every follower of Christ is to be formed by the Word of Christ and held accountable for it, hence, the teaching-shepherd / or pastor-teacher gift. Each follower of Christ is to be equipped in the capacity to communicate that joyous news to those with whom he/she is engaged every day, and to be contagious with that very possibility (this is not learned in a classroom!), Hence the gift of evangelist. Each follower of Christ must be understanding of the context of his/her life and so to exegete that culture, however its darkness (or hostility) expresses itself in their experience. This is the gift of prophet. If our calling to be Christ’s followers is that of calling men and women from the realities of their darkness, and into the light of God’s New Creation, then each must be a student of how that darkness expresses itself societally, relationally, intellectually, psychologically, politically, etc. That is the church’s calling (and we have failed dismally to do this. Rather, we simply tell folk to: “come to church” and be entertained with ‘churchy’ stuff).

And, fourthly, every follower of Christ must be equipped to maturity in the church’s missionary mandate, in the mission of God to the world. No one is exempt. Every believer is a missionary and a disciple-maker, and a church planter. Every home or apartment is a potential gathering place for the church. This is the gift of apostle: the missionary gift.

If and when the church rediscovers these pragmatic components … then it gets exciting, and engages a generational culture, which is actually looking for just such a resource and a hope. Add in one another love, or caring relationships, and the church emerges but in a new form.