Posted: 07/01/2009 at 2:37pm | IP Logged

Loren Sanford

Before I get to the meat of this word, it is important to understand the principle of cognitive distortion. A cognitive distortion is an inaccurate perception of reality that happens when small things so fill our vision that they seem to be very large things. For instance, very few of us have ever visited a television studio to see how things are actually done on the set or even in live filming on location.  We therefore cannot begin to understand the distortion of perception the small screen creates. It tricks us into thinking that small things are really very big things. For instance, a large conference is being televised. The camera zooms in on the one or two people shaking under the power of the Holy Spirit. That image fills the screen and creates the impression that 5,000 people are being dramatically impacted by the power of the Spirit when really very few are being touched in this way. Most of the other 4,998 people present remain relatively untouched, but caught up in the magnifying glass of the small screen, the television audience would never know it.
 
Something like that now leads many of us to believe that a huge revival is breaking out among youth in our culture. Christian television shows us conferences filled with young people worshiping passionately. The images fill the screen and create the impression that something massive is going on. Yes, those youth we see on the screen are passionately devoted to the Lord and ready to do radical things for Him. The conferences are indeed powerful and God is certainly sowing the seeds of revival, but no, we are not yet seeing a massive youth revival breaking out across the nation. What we hear coming out of conferences and reported in Christian media is not the norm. If we think this is the norm or in some way widespread, then we have fallen victim to a huge and dangerous cognitive distortion. In reality, the church is losing an entire generation. Except in isolated pockets of exceptional glory, very little is happening anywhere among the young. Take time to listen to the voices of youth pastors and youth workers across the country as my son (who serves on my staff as our youth and young adult pastor) has recently done and you will hear many tales of desperation, disappointment and sometimes despair.
 
Anecdotal evidence from my son and others who have attended these powerful youth conferences tells me that there are almost no truly unsaved kids in attendance. It’s overwhelmingly kids raised in church, many of whom fell away and are making recommitments, but they were Christians already. We need a revival to touch a generation of very lost young people who have never darkened the door of the church and know nothing about Jesus Christ.
 
A crisis now confronts us and becomes more urgent with every passing day. Recently I received an email from the pastor of a thriving renewal church in Ukraine seeking solutions to this same problem. He said that his church is growing and that they effectively reach adults and minister wonderfully to children, but that they aren’t reaching their youth. He wanted advice on how to remedy that situation. I hear similar comments and questions everywhere I go. Except for those isolated pockets of glory I spoke of, young people are leaving – not joining – the church.
 
Why is this happening?
1. Today’s youth are the progeny of the “me” generation. Whether we want to admit it or not, we baby-boomers have lived for ourselves rather than pouring our lives into our children. It’s never too late to learn to live selflessly.
2. Today’s youth suffer from a generational sense of abandonment. We ‘boomers, the post-World War II generation, actively and openly rebelled against our elders. This generation simply isolates from us. We have broken trust with them and they’ve cut themselves off from us. A recent article published through the Associated Press states that the generation gap today is wider than it was during the 1960s - and it was a huge issue then.
3. We fail to accommodate young people in our style and approach to church life. Youth ministry is cross-cultural ministry. Different language. Different ways of worshiping. Youth live in a culture as radically different from us as America is from tribal Africa. For instance, how many churches would alter their worship music to be able to reach both the young and the old and reject music that failed to reach one or the other? And how about language? How many of us would take time, for instance, to learn what a young person means when he exclaims, “That’s sick!” If you didn’t understand that one, know that you are woefully out of touch!
4. The religious spirit masquerading as “holiness” fails to accept and absorb what youth bring. Too often want them to join us, act like us, think like us, talk like us and believe just as we believe. They can’t. Many of us came to Jesus during the Jesus Movement in the 1970s. Have we forgotten why we had to start our own churches? Why the established church structures could not absorb us? Are we willing to embrace and work with the messes young people make? The damage they do? The clothes they wear? The cigarette butts in the parking lot (they don’t get holy overnight)? The language they speak?
5. In our education programs for children and youth we have consistently substituted intellectual knowledge and theological propositions for genuine dramatic encounters with the Spirit of God. Young people need experience. To them experience is truth. No church that cannot or will not provide or allow for supernatural experiences will be able to attract and retain young people. Our Sunday Schools have imparted knowledge and facts, but how many Sunday Schools teach children to prophesy? Pray for healing? Hear God? Interpret dreams? Feel Jesus? Too few.
 
The advice I gave to that pastor in Ukraine applies just as well in any culture:
1. Find a young leader on fire for the Lord and full of passion. He or she needs to be able to inspire others with fire and passion. Above all other things, youth respond to passion and fire.
2. Give this young leader full freedom to gather a group of young people and lead a service of their own during the week. They will need to develop their own style, their own music and their own way of worshiping without a lot of adults around to hinder them. Most of our youth leadership team at New Song is under 25 years old.
3. Encourage this leader to develop his or her own vision. In our church my son leads the youth group. He is 33 years old, but his heart is for the young. They have their own meeting on Thursday nights with their own music and preaching. They also have their own discipleship groups and their own outreaches.
4. Young people need to feel as if they have a meaningful vision or goal to pursue that is their own. They want to participate, not just sit and watch. This will NOT be painting stripes in the parking lot or doing workdays at the church. Take them to the city park to give food to the homeless and pray for people. Turn them loose at the mall to look for folks who need healing prayer.
5. Give them meaningful roles to play in the life of the whole church. Young people should be greeting people at the door on Sunday morning, teaching children in Sunday School, serving on the ministry team and playing on the worship team. Challenge them to become part of the ministry team during ministry time in the main service, ministering healing and power alongside adults. Draw them in and value what they have to give.
6. Be genuine with them. Ask them questions about their lives and listen to their answers. LOVE them unconditionally. Most young people feel they are not listened to by the older generation. One of our young people once said, "My parents think they listen to me, but all they do is talk at me." They want to be heard. This is the first step toward developing the kind of relationship with young people that they so desperately need. They need fathers and mothers in Christ, but we have to earn the right to be fathers and mothers by really listening to them. A number of young people in our church call me their father, but I have earned the right to play that role in their lives because I have listened to them.
7. In the main Sunday morning worship service, try to choose music that ministers to both the old and the young. Find worship songs that are done in a style they can relate to. Avoid music that fails to bridge the generations.
8. Be ready to absorb the messes they make. They will break things. They will lose things. The sanctuary will be dirty. You'll have to accept this with grace or they won't come.
 
Finally, most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, cry out for revival with some measure of self-motivation in mind. James wrote: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures” (4:3). "Bless me Jesus," will no longer be enough to spark a revival. Can a generation who came to Jesus on the wings of the revival we called the Jesus Movement (and their children who are now parents) plead with true and desperate selflessness for a revival to redeem a lost generation? Can we cry out with tears for the sake of the next generation without a thought for self? "Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance, And the young men and the old, together, For I will turn their mourning into joy And will comfort them and give them joy for their sorrow” (Jeremiah 31:13).
 

Posted: 07/01/2009 at 3:24pm | IP Logged

Super!

Danke schön!

Posted: 07/01/2009 at 3:29pm | IP Logged

One of my greatest joys at Church is to see the youth up front, feeling at home in His House and being free. Purple hair, black finger nails, tats, peircings  - Goths, Emo's, Jocks, "Witches," "New Agers"  ~ feeling accepted enough to seek  God ~ Halleluiah!!!!

Posted: 07/02/2009 at 11:06am | IP Logged

Maybe because it has been a major call in my life, but I think this topic hits on THE most egregious "sin of omission" in the church today.  Pastor Sanford is exactly right on all counts, and his suggestions are excellent.

The church as a whole is woefully behind reality.  We still operate with modern thinking.  But we are in a postmodern, post-JudeoChristian world.  We like our nice, neat, carefully planned Sunday mornings.  It is hard for us to change.

But change we must- for the sake of the least among us. 

Is God responsible for how our youth process information?  Did He give them their method of differentiating the Truth from fiction?

I wonder if most in the church today think that our youth have been trained by satan to be how they are.  No, God made them that way.  Let's get past that right off.  Quit trying to make them little Ward and June Cleavers.  They don't look like us and they don't talk like us.  Why is that a problem?

A quick story that highlights the difficulty:

     I would bring in local youth pastors to speak at my chapels.  25 year old youth pastors can sometimes bring up distressing ideas like "do whatever it takes to get closer to God even if your parents don't understand", and similar topics that teens like to hear(and need to hear).  Well, on more than one occasion, teachers who sat in on the chapels to keep an eye on their students voiced their objections to me about some of the things the speaker had said.   The most oft used term was rebellious, in reference to the speakers' words.  These older teachers had absolutely missed the point of the message because they could not subjugate their own "stinkin' thinkin'"! 

Those teachers thought that the teens should conform to whatever their parents and churches were saying and doing, and to an extent, I agree.

But they were equating holiness with speech, actions, and even clothing choices.  It was holiness to them to sit still during the "3 fast, 3 slow, offering, sermon, let's go" style so prevalent in our churches today.

Ah, they know religion when it bores them, I mean, slaps them in the face.

As Ron Luce says, they need "a head-on collision with the Holy Spirit!"

Yes, they do.  And so do we.

I'd like to be able to walk into a church, look around to see if I see scores of teens and twenty-somethings, and use that as a barometer of a healthy church.

But I can't.

It would be way too depressing.

P.S.  Yeah, just so's you know, if it's too loud, you ARE too old!

Posted: 07/03/2009 at 6:04am | IP Logged

5. In our education programs for children and youth we have consistently substituted intellectual knowledge and theological propositions for genuine dramatic encounters with the Spirit of God. Young people need experience. To them experience is truth. No church that cannot or will not provide or allow for supernatural experiences will be able to attract and retain young people. Our Sunday Schools have imparted knowledge and facts, but how many Sunday Schools teach children to prophesy? Pray for healing? Hear God? Interpret dreams? Feel Jesus? Too few.
 

This and all of what you have said is so true ...I'll be using this as a prayer guide for our youth ~Thankyou !

Blessings~

Beverly Miller

Posted: 07/04/2009 at 1:11pm | IP Logged

Hi Loren,

Yes I agree~  Most boomers in my age group (60) are focusing on cruises , vacation homes etc even though Christian....I've been there and Thankfully the Lord has brought me out of that and given me a heart to hurt & pray for youth  , I see but at this point all I can do is pray ... I appreciate what you have written as it gives a solid outline of ..what to pray ~Blessings,

Beverly Miller