Reaching The Next Generation For Christ

Reaching the Next Generation for Christ

(1 Corinthians 9:19-23)

I want to talk to you a new virus in Barry County. I work as a doctor at the Erwin Ranch in Washburn. There are four patients, my four girls, in my home office. I have been studying the digital cultures taken from them. I have another set of patients at 618 2nd Street North, which calls themselves the congregation of Washburn First Baptist Church. This group of people say they go to a church. They have this virus, which makes it very difficult for their church to reach younger people – reaching the next generation for Christ. They are not the only ones with this problem reaching younger people.

People who have this virus are missing the following cultural parts:

1. How many of you have a Facebook account? Raise your hands.

2. How many of you have ever heard of Pinterest. Not interest, but Pinterest. Raise your hands.

3. How many of you know how to tweet? Raise your hands. Of course, you may think tweeting is for the birds. But there are all kinds of people who are tweeting today, all around us and we don’t even know it.

4. How many of you know how to use an email account? Raise your hands.

5. How many of you use a smart phone? Raise your hands.

6. How many of you use a cell phone? Raise your hands.

As you can see, there is a digital divide between the generations. This digital divide is like an illness, in which we infected. Before I share with you the illness and its cure, I want to share with you the spread of the epidemic in Barry County.

SPREAD OF THE EPIDEMIC IN BARRY COUNTY

I want every one of you to stand right now. All of you please stand. Now, half of the room, please sit down. Let’s make it the left half of the room. Those of you who just sat down, you represent the people who are lost in Barry County. Now, for the rest of you who are still standing, I want to divide you into two groups – right down the middle. I want to ask the front half of you to please sit down. All of the people sitting down right now, you represent the population of Barry County who is under the age of 44, and who is not going to church. Either because they are lost, or because they have become members of a church, but they don’t come. Look at all the people sitting down. These people represent the people who are not in church. They also represent the people who many churches are having a hard time reaching. The people standing – these people represent people who are attending churches in Barry County.

This epidemic has been increasing over the past thirty years. In essence, we are losing the younger generations.

Let me ask you some personal questions:

How many of your children are in church today? Raise your hands.

How many of your grandchildren are in church today? Raise your hands.

How many adults at this meeting are under the age of 44? Raise your hands.

Why is this happening? There are many reasons. I don’t have time to go into them all. I think one of the biggest reasons is that the younger generations have grown up in a different world than you and I. I also think that as Southern Baptists, we have expected younger generations to change to our way of doing church, instead of finding out what is the best way this younger generation does church. We force them into our church mold, instead of adapting ourselves to the next generation for Christ.

“…I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some. Now I do all this because of the gospel, so I may become a partner in its benefits.” (1 Corinthians 9:22–23, HCSB)

Paul says that he becomes all things to all people so that he may possibly save some. That means he didn’t use the same methods, the same programs, the same tactics with everyone. He changed his methods whenever he needed to in order to reach a different group of people. With spiritual Greeks in Athens he used a very different way of reaching than with Jews from Thessalonica. What you do for people who watch “Andy Griffith” will be different than with folks who watch “Duck Dynasty.” What you do to reach hunters and fishers will be different than what you do to reach Walmart employees. So that may mean that the programs you use now are out of date for the younger generation. You may need to experiment.

Do any of you have a strategy about how you are going to reach these people? Because they are leaving the church. They are leaving YOUR church and they are not coming back. Why? I don’t have all the answers. However, I can tell at least one reason why they are not coming back. One reason is that we are UNABLE and in some cases UNWILLING to reach the next generation for Christ.

Some of us are unable to reach the younger generation because we don’t understand them. Some of us are unwilling to reach this next generation because we think they need to change to our way of thinking.

What is our illness?

It is a disease which causes us to fear, misunderstand, and hate people of the digital generation.This disease has made us fearful of the younger people around us. It has also created a desire to be nostalgic about the past.

Churches with this disease can’t get younger people to come. We are so infected with this fear of the young and the change it would bring, that we are unwilling and unable to do anything about it. One of the symptoms of this disease is growth paralysis. We don’t seem to grow like we should because we are unable to adapt to the culture around us enough in order to reach the people who we are called to reach.

Now I know what some of you are thinking? Why can’t we just reach people like ourselves. The problem is that there aren’t too many people like yourselves around anymore. The population of the churched is getting older. The population of the unchurched is getting younger, and much larger.

What will it take to reach this younger digital generation? How can our churches start reaching the next generation for Christ?

It will take more research and development. Companies invest in research and development to make new products to sell them to a population which expects better products. Churches need to research this generation and then develop methods which work best to reach out to this digital generation. What works well for one church may not work for another church. Just because the Southern Baptists have researched a method, it doesn’t mean that that’s the best way to reach people. Sometimes we have to go outside of the Southern Baptist box to reach people. Apple uses ideas from Google. ABC uses ideas from NBC. It is just fine and ok if one of our churches uses another idea from another church or denomination. What matters is that we reach people for Christ.

Don’t you want the benefits that come with sharing the Gospel and seeing people come to Christ? I do. Are you willing to become all things to all people so that you may by every possible means save some? That’s the question I leave you with tonight. Does it mean that every method will work? No. Does it mean that I may need to look at what I am doing and whether I am really reaching people? Yes. May God help us as we reach Barry County for Jesus Christ. Let us partner with God as we “become all things to all people so that we may by every possible means save some.”