The Church of Tomorrow?
A challenge from Nigel James.
An Englishman, Scotsman and an Irishman see a sign in a travel agents window advertising Round the World Holidays for £10. They go in one at a time to order the holiday and each are knocked out by the man behind the counter. They wake up floating on a life-raft miles from anywhere in the Atlantic ocean. The Englishman panics and cries out; "We're going to die!. The Scotsman says, "Don't worry, they'll send a rescue helicopter." The Irishman says, "Well they never did last year!" It's not just the Irishman who makes the same mistake every year, I reckon the churches in Wales are often doing the same; especially when it comes to two concerns close to my heart - youth ministry and evangelism.
Tired old methods, new wine in old wine-skins, trillions of teenagers leaving the church every week, what is the solution? (answers on a postcard please!) Part of the issue must be in the area of passion and priority. Until we are passionate about reaching and equipping young people, and prepared to make culturally relevant evangelism and discipleship our priority, we will never see our churches full of young people.
Moving forward with God always requires a new perspective, and historically it's always been the emerging generation that seizes this. In Numbers 14 we see that only Joshua and Caleb from the previous generation, make the transition from Wilderness to Promised Land.
I love coming to "Flames of Fire" each year and serving God, but to be honest I do get a bit worried when seminars entitled "How to receive a super boost of God's love for you, to be prophetically healed, signed, sealed and delivered" have sell out crowds of thousands, (okay, I'm exaggerating) and seminars about youth ministry and evangelism attract one man and a dog. Last year our panel of youth experts outnumbered the audience! I'm not knocking the incredible impact God has into people's lives at "Flames of Fire", but real revival is fleshed out into a heart for evangelism and a compassion for young people. Young people today are responding to a sense of community - often they belong before they believe, to an intimacy with God, and to a real purpose and calling in their life. The good news is that like never before there is an openness to spirituality; the bad news is it can be to any spirituality unless we get our act together. Whatever role we have in the church, especially with young people, we must be missionaries and bridge-builders into today's culture and generation. Working in Big Ideas shows me that this generation hasn't rejected Jesus yet, - it just needs to meet him in a way it understands.
I've recently been in South Africa where I met a group of students who cycled round the perimeter of their country for 6 weeks, interceding on behalf of their nation. I'm writing this in America on the road with the Christian rock band Newsboys, who are performing to 3,500 young people a night on a 60 city tour. God is breaking into this generation across the world, and it happened in Wales once too! In the Welsh revival of 1904 Seth Joshua recorded that "the young are receiving the greatest measure of blessing. They break out into prayer, praise, testimony and exhortation in a wonderful way." I believe that before we see this again in all it's fullness, we need to have a heart change and make young people our passion and evangelising this generation our priority, otherwise we'll all be floating on that life-raft again next year.
and from Penny Williams
As another "Flames of Fire" conference rapidly approaches, the Children's Team is gearing itself up for this year. We have been truly blessed to have Wavemakers with us for the last two years. This year will be the last when they will be with us in their entirety and the Welsh team are preparing for the hand-over. At the moment, we are few in number, but taking heart from the fact that Gideon also learnt that the Lord can achieve His purposes with what appears to the human eye to be an impossibly small number of people!
It is wonderful to watch what He is doing through the children each year and to see how those, who return for a consecutive year, have grown and developed and to see how their ministries are already being shaped.
I think that last year's conference was summed up for me on the final morning when we all joined together in the main pavilion for a combined act of worship. During a break in the proceedings, the offertory buckets were passed around. With limited experience of the procedures of the adult pavilion, a nine-year old sitting with me, expressed curiosity about the collection. Summoning up all my adult magnanimity, I asked him if he would like to go and put something in it, thinking of course to give him some money.
The first thing he did was to pick up a twenty pound note from the bucket and stare at it with incredulity. Probably such things did not pass his way very often. Eventually, he was persuaded to return it and he put the change that I had given him into the receptacle. I turned to go, mission, as I thought, accomplished, whilst he lingered slightly. When we had returned to our places, he leaned over conspiratorially and whispered in my ear, 'I put my name (label) in the bucket'. I seem to recollect that Jesus told a similar story, something to do with a widow and a mite?