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This afternoon, after my normal full day of lectures I was required to attend a biannual lecture on evangelism. The lecture was to focus on youth evangelism, and was delivered by ‘Iver’, who, as everyone who’s anyone knows, is the minister of the Free Church in Stornoway. His lecture was entitled…

…’Winning the Next Generation’.

He began by giving a ninefold (yes, that’s right ninefold) definition of generation, based on the way the word is used in the Bible. This took about 20 minutes. From there he went on to describe the current cultural situation, in which he briefly touched on Boomers, Xers, and then spent a lot longer on whatever you want to call the next generation, which apparently includes those born between 1982 and now. This section probably took another 20 minutes. I began to wonder, because of the time, if he was just going to stop after his analysis without actually saying anything positive, but this was not the case.

He then moved to making suggestions for ways in which the church can minister to this generation of people born since 1982. His suggestions basically amounted to endorsing Campaigners, Youth Fellowships, Scripture Union groups in schools, summer camps and maybe a couple other things that I’m forgetting now. While you may not recognize many of these names, suffice it to say that they are all fairly well established (and semi-effective) programs in evangelical churches in Scotland. He expanded on these traditional methods only by saying that they should be done more effectively than they have been in the past (and gave a couple pointers for doing so) and by saying that ministry to youth must be relational.

So, you ask, what is there here that causes me frustration at the end of a long day? Perhaps I have some bright new idea that he neglected to mention, and that’s got me upset? If not, what’s wrong with what he said?

Well, nothing…and everything. While I don’t really disagree with anything he specifically said, I think the methodology underlying his lecture is completely wrong, and as a result his tips and pointers amount to a waste of time.

First, let me say that I find the topic of ‘youth evangelism’ problematic from the starting point. I can find no justification in the Bible for aged-based ministry of any kind. I think it is essential to approach the question of ‘winning the next generation’ not in terms of their age, but in terms of their worldview. And once we begin to see this in terms of worldview we have freed ourselves from focusing on a certain age group (because worldviews overlap generational boundaries to some degree) and we are then focusing on engaging our culture as a whole, regardless of the age of an individual.

As soon as we begin to think about ‘winning the next generation’ in terms of worldview we must immediately come to terms with our own worldview. And here, in my opinion, we run into major problems. In my opinion, the church, for the most part, has bought into the worldview of modernity. Following the Enlightenment, science became the absolute standard of fact, and progress and understanding largely became the result of finding and applying the right technique. That is, very basically, the modernistic worldview.

At first modernity posed a problem for the church, but the church was able to adapt (or rather, give in). By simply replacing science with the Bible as the absolute standard the church could engage the culture in a way that made sense to people with a modernistic worldview. And this has been, more or less, the norm for engagement with the world for the last couple hundred years.

While this was not really a biblical solution, it was effective in as much as Christians were able to convince unbelievers to adopt the Bible as the absolute standard instead of science. The problem with this approach began to worsen when, in the last 50ish years, the modernistic worldview has been replaced with postmodernism. Under modernism whatever you could prove to be true was fair game, but now in postmodernity the very notion of absolute truth is rejected. The implications for the church are immediately apparent.

The clash of these two worldviews, however, has taken place outside the church as well. When a parent says (with disgust) to his/her teenager, ‘you can’t even understand the lyrics of this song’, this is an illustration of the clash in worldviews. In modernism, the lyrics of a song are the dominant feature, and thus determine the overall value of the song. In postmodernism the singer is basically just another instrument and the words he/she is singing don’t make much difference. So the parent determines the song is worthless because the lyrics are unintelligible, while the teenager couldn?t care less about the actual words.

The same thing happens now in Christian evangelism. Christians are still trying to prove the absolute truth of the Bible, and postmoderns don?t give a rip?even if the Bible is proved to be true, postmoderns don?t believe in absolute truth. In modernity if you have the right technique/formula/plan/method/whatever, and you apply it in the right way, the destination that you arrive at by means of you technique will ultimately be true. And postmoderns don?t care, because they don?t think anything is ultimately true.

So as Christians we are attempting to operate on the basis of a worldview which was wrong in the first place and which is now losing sway quickly. And this is essentially the way Iver (and, for that matter, many many other Christians) was suggesting we go about ?winning the next generation?. We employ the right techniques (the Youth Fellowships, summer camps, the small groups, etc.), and we will arrive at the right results. If the technique doesn?t produce the result then the fault must be in the technique, so we look for a better one. And all the while people are going about their lives without a thought or care for what is going on in the antiquated, irrelevant church.

So, since Iver?s suggestions are not ultimately helpful, what are we to do? Well, we could, like the church has done in the past, adopt a modified version of culture?s worldview that is more compatible with the Bible. When the culture?s worldview is postmodernism, there are at least three problems with this approach. First, it doesn?t get us to a truly biblical solution, because we are still adopting a secular worldview as the basis for our engagement with the culture. Secondly, we will run into the same problem that we are currently experiencing when postmodernism runs its course and another worldview becomes dominant. Thirdly, it will be much more difficult to adapt postmodernism to Christianity than it was to adapt modernism to Christianity. While in modernity you only had to replace the standard of absolute truth (that is, replace science with the Bible), postmodernity rejects absolute truth. But Christianity must have an understanding of ultimate truth, so any attempt to make postmodernism into something where absolute truth is recognized ceases to be postmodernity. Sadly, however, there are already many churches that have attempted to go down this road.

The only truly biblical response is to jettison our own unbiblical worldview and fully immerse ourselves in the worldview revealed to us in the Bible. This will, of course, mean that we will still experience the clash of worldviews. But it also means that when people are converted, they are converted to a biblical worldview, not a ?Christinized? version of something that is thoroughly unchristian. In other words, in order to ?win the next generation?, we need to start with ourselves. We need to conform our understanding of ourselves and our world (and God, of course) to the Bible. From that point we can take stock of any developments in our culture?we can evaluate them and determine where we have immediate points of contact, where we are likely to encounter resistance, and how we can most effectively engage people who embody this worldview. Until we take this step, both on the personal level and within our own congregations, and within the church at large, we are just wasting our time by talking about programs and techniques. Even if we come up with a ?surefire? program to engage our culture, they will respond with the annoyance of the teenager who doesn?t care if you can?t understand the words.

This entry was posted by Bryce on Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 at 6:51 pm. This entry was tagged with Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.