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Like most who work with young people and families in churches, I’m reading, thinking, and theorizing a lot right now about the alarming rate at which young people leave the church after high school  (recent studies put the rate upwards of 50% across evangelical denominations).  If you’re a parent or church leader and haven’t read Sticky Faith, Real World Parents, and You Lost Me (just to name a few front-runners), you need to do so immediately.  

The question that is nagging at me is this: What if the problem is not just about educational philosophy, program design, or church structure…what if it’s about a foundational misrepresentation of the Christian faith?

Christianity, at its core is a mystic religion. Simply put, this means it hinges on supernatural powers and realities.  We believe in a God who is entirely “other” than we are.  We believe that, by means we cannot fully understand, we are able to participate in the death, burial, and resurrection of God’s son Jesus.  I doing this, our sins are canceled, we partner in God’s redemptive work on earth, and we anticipate being with God forever in a place we cannot fully describe or understand.  We believe in the presence of evil, particularly as conducted by Satan (a spiritual being) and those forces working alongside him.  We believe that we are given power and direction for navigating this life by the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.  This (although a very simplistic representation of the whole) is a mystical set of beliefs and it is the foundation that all of our rules, practices, and principles rest upon. 

Enter the Enlightenment, Scientific Method, Rationalism, and The Industrial Revolution.  Over the course of the last few centuries, western Christianity has tried to frame itself as a rational religion.  Very simply put, his means we focus on finding answers to supernatural phenomena and we value individual responsibility and work ethic.  

This collision of world-views has created what I believe is a faith-based case of cognitive dissonance – the painful psychological state we find ourselves in when our beliefs and realities to do not match.  Unfortunately, we’ve been trying so hard for so long to rationalize Christianity that we are blind to the problem.  We are so far removed from a mystical understanding of our faith that it doesn’t occur to us to think about this as a gap in what we’re passing on to the next generations. 

Now, enter generations Y and iY (labels for those born since 1980).  These folks show up at church with a postmodern, post-Christian worldview.  They don’t feel obligated to accept propositional truth just because the preacher tells them to.  They distrust anyone that claims to have the answer.  For these people, a rationalized depiction of a mystical religion just doesn’t feel right.  Perhaps they cannot put their finger on exactly why that is.  Perhaps they don’t have a robust enough theology to explain their discomfort, but it’s very real.  And for this generation, it’s enough to cause them to look outside the church for something that seems more real. 

What if Christian faith is exactly what they’re looking for, but the modern, Western church isn’t the place to find it?  

What if the problem isn’t that they don’t want Christianity, but that they don’t resonate a rationalized version of God’s mystical work in redeeming our world?

What if they SHOULD be leaving the church because the church has reduced the mystical power and nature of God to a set of principles and formulas, which frankly, aren’t that compelling?

What if GOD is leading them out of the church, not to kill the church, but to reform and reshape her – to call her back to faithfully witnessing to the mystical, unfathomable, holy nature of the tri-une God?

Note:  These are questions that are ruminating in my mind.  They are speculations.  I do not claim to be the one person that has solved the riddle of young people leaving the church.  I am confident that the issue defies any one explanation and certainly any one blog post.  I do see some connection here though.  Please feel free to add your thoughts to the conversation. 

It seems like once a year or so I go through a period of time when I simply cannot get the Lord’s Prayer out of my head and heart.  In those few lines, Christ lays out a basic pattern for praying, a mechanism for recalibrating worldview, a full-bodied redemptive theology, and a call to incarnate the image of God as Jesus himself did (I’m sure you could add to this list, but this is what I’ve seen so far).

Right now, I’m taken with the incarnational undertones of the beautiful prayer.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Don’t say it too quickly.  Don’t absent-mindedly breeze through it.  This is a game-changer, my friends.  A world-changer, actually.

In proclaiming a desire for the kingdom of God to come to earth as it is in heaven, we do not simply acknowledge God’s supremacy over all creation or even request his intervention into it.  In this one little line, if prayed honestly, we are laying down our lives and taking on the very work of Jesus.  We are dying to ourselves and coming to life again not simply as supporters or advocates of God, but agents of God.  This is a prayer that draws us into the redemptive work initiated on the cross, culminating in Christ’s return, but going on all around us right now by the power of the Spirit through anyone adventurous enough to look up to God and say, “Let’s do this!”

Yesterday, a local high school student interviewed me. She was fulfilling a requirement for her class in world religions by interviewing a leader from a faith other than her own (she is a Muslim).  Our brief conversation reminded me of a few of simple truths vital to sharing faith:

1. Know what makes your faith unique. One question she asked me was, “How is Christianity different from other world religions?”  There were about a thousand things I wanted to say about this, but since she clearly was not looking for that many, I gave her a couple of them that I thought might stand in contrast to her own beliefs.  The question got me to thinking – if you’re unable to speak of what makes your faith uniquely important, you’re not likely to hold onto it.

This is crucial for parents!

We’re raising successive generations of kids who are walking away from their faith, largely because they do not fully understand what their faith is because we (parents) either do not really know ourselves, or have not invested adequately in passing that knowledge on to them.

2. Lose the Christianese - Throughout our conversation I had to remind myself to do this.  Explaining tenets of Christian faith without using distinctly Christiany words is a challenge, but it’s a very healthy practice.  We must speak a language that people can understand.  Again, parents, this is a MUST.  To pass on a lasting faith to your children, they have to understand.  If you find words like “salvation”, “eternity”, “righteousness”, etc. coming out of your mouth while talking to your children, stop!  Try explaining whatever you’re talking about using simpler words.  If you can’t fully define them yourself, go find the answer, then come back and explain it later.  This will take time.  It is somewhat humbling.  Remember, this is the faith of your child on the line – don’t let pride stop you.

3. Be Open To Talking (not debating) – I showed up to our interview a little tense – wondering if she might be hostile toward my faith.  She and her mother were incredibly warm and thankful for my time.  We had a very enjoyable conversation.

Recently, God has been reminding me that faith is inherently an act of questioning.

Truth is truth and if someone is seeking it, God is where it will be found regardless of the questions they have to ask on the journey.  Do not lose patience or slip into judgement mode when someone is coming at things from a very different direction.  The conversation itself, the act of processing ideas, your explaining the vital parts of your faith, these are the spaces where God can do great work.  Remember, you are not equipped to convert anyone.  Conversion happens in a person’s heart – only God can do that.  Our job is to lovingly share what we know, to invite others into conversation about it, and exude the very love that drew us to Christ in the first place.

Even though he was before my time, I’ve always kinda liked Johnny Carson. One of the first things I ever remember seeing on television was Carson doing his Carnac the Magnificent bit.  I remember one time hearing Carson discussing the difference between television and movie stars.  He said that television stars are the kinds of people we’d walk up to on the street and engage in a conversation.  They seem like ordinary people to us – the kind of folks we’d like to get to know.  Carson said that this is because they exist in a little box that sits in our living room – they are “among us” (it was more humorous when he said it).  Movie stars tend to intimidate people more, Carson said.  When we go to movies, we look up to huge screens with enormous, larger-than-life images of celebrities and it creates a sense awe and other-ness.  If we see them in public we’re inclined to give them space and respect their privacy.

I think a similar thing happens to us in our understanding of Jesus.  We think of him as Savior, Messiah, and Lord.  We remember him as the Son of God who came to earth, turned religious practices upside down, and heroically died for all of us.  To be sure, these are all deeply and importantly true, but they can tend to create a Carson-esque movie-star understanding of Jesus making him seem almost unrelatable.  This is not the Jesus of the Christmas story.

Jesus was a baby – born in the same painful, very human way that you and I were.  He cried.  He spit up.  He did all the things babies do…all of them.  Sometimes I think it makes us uncomfortable to think of Jesus this way, but this is how he wanted us to think of him.  He wanted us to know him as someone real.  Someone we can relate to.  Someone we’d walk up to in a coffee shop and have a conversation with.  The incarnation of Jesus was not just a theological necessity for achieving the salvation of humankind; it was an act of love committed by a Savior who yearned to connect with us and for us to connect with him. 

During a lunch conversation today, the topic of motivational speakers came up.  We agreed that speakers at conferences, seminars, etc. can  leave us feeling like personal failures – like we should’ve accomplished more by our age, should have better ideas, should work harder, etc.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I work hard.  I try to be excellent in the things that I do as an act of worship to God.  However, I also believe that there is a time to embrace the meaty part of the bell curve.  That big bulging center is there for a reason – because that’s where the vast majority of us exist.  The fact of the matter is that most of us are not going to be the best-of-the-best.  Most of us are not going to actually change the world or strongly impact our culture.

If no one has told you yet, let me be the first to say it…that’s OK!

I’ve witnessed hundreds of kids investing thousands of dollars and hours into their sport or their art.  Nearly all of them graduate high school and leave it all behind.  I’ve seen adults shell out millions of dollars to be motivated, trained, and inspired.  Nearly all of them end up about where they were before.

Maybe we should spend less time worrying about why we’re not more, better, smarter, richer, etc. and spend our time embracing the life God has called us to.  Enjoy the people that make your life meaningful.  Find significance in the way that God is using you right now and allow yourself to see that it is important to the Kingdom, even if no one is writing books about it.  Understand that where you are right now is God’s gift to you also – life is not just about the future.  The real action is in the now.

God rarely uses the best-of-the-best to do the really important things anyway.  He’s all about the dark-horse; the underdog; the anonymous. If God needs you to change the world, it’ll happen.  It won’ t be because you patterned your life after a motivational speaker, but because you patterned your life after the simple, contented way of Jesus and his followers.

I’m afraid that many of us waste the best of our resources and focus on trying to be something that we never will be instead glorifying God with who we already are.

Embrace the life God’s given you.

Embrace the normal.

What if…?

This question has been coursing through my brain the last few days.  Inspiring me.  Challenging me.  Even intimidating me a bit.  It’s a powerful question because it can only be answered out of the imagination.  It begs the consideration of another idea; another point of view; another option.  It’s the kind of question that gets you moving again when you feel stuck in the mire of routine and predictable.

I believe God asks this kind of question.

What if I created a species that I could fully express me love for? What if I made it their choice whether they’d return my love? What if I went down there and died to make things right? What if I put the physical expression of my love in the hands of a bunch of sinners and let them be the ones to share it with people who haven’t heard the story?

Churches should ask this kind of question.

What if we took all those “go” passages seriously? What if we committed really sharing each others’ lives? What if we expected God to do adventurous, bold things in and through us? What if we committed to honoring our core values while also committing to innovating all of our practices to resonate with our culture?

Individuals should ask this kind of question.

What if I oriented my life toward God’s priorities, not just making more money and living comfortably? What if I asked God how I should spend my money? What if I asked God where I should live? What if I asked God to show me how I could best serve him and the church? What if he talked back?

Families should ask this kind of question.

What if we budgeted for generosity? What if we raised our children to be bold, adventurous, passionate servants of God? What if that meant they didn’t go to college? What if, as a family, we discussed how we could best use our resources to honor God?

This is a question that invites us into the heart of God’s work in the world – into increasingly fuller expressions of faith.  God’s work is creative.  It’s imaginative.  It’s bold.  It’s scary.  It’s dangerous.  But then, that’s how following Jesus is supposed to be (think, “Pick up your cross and follow me.”)

What if…?

It beckons us into the future of God’s work in and through us.  It frees us of the chains of boredom, empty ritual, and cultural irrelevance.

Go ahead.  Ask.  I dare you.

What if…?

If you know me at all, you know I love Christmas.  I listen to Christmas music during jogs along the beach in July.  I’ve received a citation from the village I live in for keeping my Christmas lights up too long.  The Christmas version of Big Mouth Billy Bass hangs on the back of my door at all times. I’m a fan.  I have no trouble embracing (and separating) both the silly (Santa, Rudolph, etc.) and the sacred aspects of the holiday.

That said, there is no escaping the fact that there is a rising concern amongst many of those in my social network over the early onset of Christmas – particularly in the retail world.  I have many a friend that is clearly annoyed at this trend, which I certainly understand.  I sense a growing tension; a budding disdain even for the Christmas holiday.  My friends, this cannot be!  Therefore, I give you today 4 tips for not hating Christmas.  They appear in semi-chronological order.

1. Don’t skip Thanksgiving – Many people mistakenly believe that my love for Christmas implies a disregard for Thanksgiving.  Not so!  I love thanksgiving.  For me, the two holidays go hand-in-hand.  What better way to enter into the season of celebration of Christ’s incarnation than with a day dedicated to being thankful?  Thanksgiving (the practice more than the holiday, but let’s not split hairs) is at the heart of the Christian identity.  It is who we are.   Do NOT skip it, downplay it, or think of it as insignificant in any way.  Also, don’t eat so much – you’ll feel better in general.

2. Don’t go shopping. I know it’s probably a little ambitious to presume that shopping can be avoided, but most of what is wrong with Christmas in America is driven by the world of retail.  While you probably still need to purchase some sort of presents for various people in your life, consider online shopping or gift cards.  Better yet, shop at World Vision or similar organizations where your money will make a real difference in the world.  This will save you the stress of being swept up in the ridiculousness of the retail world.  It will also save you having to see the multitude of really bad Santas with really grumpy children waiting to see them.

3. Don’t Buy Junk, Buy Memories.  When it is time to buy gifts, consider purchasing experiences instead of stuff.  Buy your kids a gift card to a bowling alley and promise an epic family fun night instead of another video game that they’ll play for a week.  Take your spouse out for an extra-fancy night on the town instead of choosing between new slippers or that sock-monkey ear-muff/scarf combo. Buy tickets to a sporting event or theater production.  Write a heartfelt letter to a loved one instead of sending a boxed card.

4. Don’t skip the story - If Christmas is about decorations and candy and shopping and Santa, it gets annoying fast.  A week or two is fun – six weeks makes you want to scream.  Get caught up in the beauty of Immanuel – God with us – before you get caught up in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.  Fall in love again with the proclamation of the coming Messiah before watching 15 explanations of how Santa gets toys to every kid in the world on one night. Read it.  Meditate on it.  Talk about it with people around you.  Consider the implications of the birth of God in the flesh.  Start early so you don’t get disenchanted by stories of toys, food, parties, and junk you need to buy.

That’s it.  That’s what I have for you.  I’m sure this doesn’t solve everyone’s problems, but maybe it’ll help a little.  If you have other ideas, please share them.  May the grace, peace, and presence of God overflow in your heart for the next couple months – and beyond.

This is my bulletin article for this week at NCOC.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

To me, one of the most amazing teachings that Jesus offers comes when he’s teaching about prayer. In Matthew’s gospel it comes as part of the Sermon on the Mount (ch. 6). In Luke, it is in response to the disciples’ coming and specifically asking for instruction in praying to God (ch. 11). One striking thing about Luke’s account is that when Jesus’ followers ask him how they should pray, he does not say, “Just talk to God like you talk to your best friend,” or, “Say whatever is on your heart.” Jesus is very specific about the form of prayer – specific enough to include it in multiple conversations.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not to be seen as the only way to pray. We have numerous prayers recorded in Scripture from Jesus and others that do not follow this pattern. Nor am I saying that there is no place for praying in very informal, friendship-type prayers to God. It has to mean something, though, that Jesus answers his followers’ question so specifically.

There is a pattern to be seen and followed in The Lord’s Prayer. We center ourselves on God’s sovereignty, submitting to his will above our own and to our place in bringing the Kingdom to earth. We acknowledge our dependence on him for all we have. We confess that we’re sinners in need of forgiveness and we commit to extending that grace with those who violate us. We ask for guidance and strength to walk in God’s path going forward.

The simple truth about prayer is that it isn’t for God – it’s for us. It is God’s gift to us. It grounds us. It keeps the world in the right perspective. It draws ever deeper into the reality and blessing of being part of the Kingdom.

THIS is how we should pray!

I just ran across a really inspiring blog dedicated to sharing stories of those who live lives of affluence, but are identifying with the 99% of the world that does not. It’s titled “We are the 1 percent…we stand with the 99%“.  Take a minute to click on the title to go visit it.

I love this concept.  I work every day to help teens see their privilege and to build within them a sense of justice and responsibility that will drive them to create change.  Here’s the thing we have to remember about issues such as poverty, justice, equality, etc. – power is everything.  ”Standing with” those in poverty doesn’t change poverty.  People affluence sharing with people who do not have what they need changes poverty.  Creating a new economic system changes poverty (this doesn’t have to be global economics…the “economic system” could be your inviting a struggling family to  live in your home).

It is an inescapable truth of all political and social structures that power exists, and those in power are generally the only ones that can change things.  The unpopular kids can’t build bridges into the “in” crowd, someone from the “in” crowd has to do that.  The people on the low end of the totem pole in your workplace can’t demand respect and better treatment from those on the top of the totem pole, it has to be freely and honestly offered by those above.

Please, please stand with those that are less fortunate, less free, less cared for.  Wear a ribbon, start a blog, buy a bumper sticker, get a tattoo – do it all.  More importantly, though, think about how you can lay aside your position of power and somehow level the playing field with those who are “below” you.  Remember, it’s not that they feel below you – they are below you.  It may seem artificial from where you are, but on their side of the fence, it’s very real and entirely insurmountable unless you and I stand for them, then walk to them.

And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

In a recent discussion one of my students mentioned a conversation in which a friend made a statement that went something like this, “I don’t really read the Bible, but I love God and Jesus, don’t you think that’s enough to get me into heaven?”  My student didn’t really know how to respond.  In some ways, I don’t either.  This question, while very common, so terribly misses the point of the Bible that it’s almost like asking, “What does the color purple smell like?”

The fact that so many people ask this kind of question about the Bible is really sad to me.  It’s sad because of the implications for what commentary it makes on the church as a whole.  What is truly sad though is the enormous, hurtful misunderstanding of what God’s Word is really about that spawns this kind of question to begin with.

Pause: I must acknowledge that a full discussion of what Scripture is or is not would turn into a multi-volume set of large, leather-bound books – so we’ll just go with what immediately comes to my mind for now.

Frist, what the Bible is NOT.

The Bible is not some kind of entrance requirement for getting into heaven.  It’s not God’s equivalent of a minimal SAT score needed for your application to heaven to be reviewed (the logical next step being the tallying of “good” things you did vs. “bad”).

The Bible is also definitively not a rule book that God  has tossed down to earth, from which we are supposed to mine the most important do’s and don’t's for a cosmic quiz on Judgement Day.

The Bible is also not simply a collection of intriguing, beautiful, or inspiring writings.  It is not an ancient repository for slogans, sayings, memory verses, tattoo ideas, and bumper-sticker quips.

What the Bible IS (at least, part of the tip of the iceberg):

The Bible is, to me, the grace of God in written form.  The Bible is not for God, it is for us.  The Bible is God’s gift to humankind.  Out of his pure love for us, he decided he wanted to help us find true meaning and joy in this life.  Knowing that the only hope for the salvation of his beloved creation is Christ, he decided to help us see how all of history points to Jesus.  He desired to bless us by ushering the Kingdom of Heaven into our world, to be fully realized with Christ’s return, but very much present already, so he gave us written evidence of what that means and what it looks like.

God also knows that there is an Enemy – very real and very active.  The Bible is our source for wisdom in defending ourselves against The Enemy’s schemes – finding victory over the one who seeks to devour us as a lion in the wild tears apart her prey.

Out of his overwhelming desire to bless us with the ability to connect to his Spirit and to a life embodying all the characteristics of the Spirit (see Galatians 5), God commissioned the Spirit to capture in words what we would need to guide us in making that connection.

I could go on with a list of all the ways God has blessed us with the Bible, but the key issue here is our core understanding of what Scripture is.  Scripture is grace on a page.  Scripture is God’s gift to us because he loves us and wants us to live beautifully triumphant and joyful lives in the Spirit, but He knew we would need a compass to keep us moving in that direction – The Bible is that compass.

It pains me (really and truly) to see people think of the Bible as a chore that Christians are supposed to guilt each other into attending to.  It is brutal to see believers whose lives are torn apart by guilt, shame, anger, sin, etc. – never realizing that The Bible holds truth that will set them free from so much of that because they’ve never thought of it as more than a hoop to jump through.

The Bible is life.  It is true, free, abundant, grace-filled life.

I’m sure you have your own ideas about what the Bible is or is not.  Feel free to share them if you’d like.  May prayer, though, is that we can all embrace the Bible as a gift of God to us, offered out of his unfathomable desire to give us the best in this life and in eternity.

Grace and peace to you.