Legacy - Next Generation Ministry

Fall is one of my favorite seasons of the year. Not only do the temperatures drop, but college football and hunting seasons begin! You can always tell Fall is around the corner when the NFL Hall of Fame game comes on. Now, the NFL itself is in a mess. I’m not a big fan, but one thing the NFL always gets right is its Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I always enjoy watching speeches from legendary players because the speeches are unfiltered!

The speeches are always heartfelt and awe-inspiring because most of the players come from single-mother homes and poverty-stricken areas. Many of these players have never met their dad and should have just been another statistic. But, they overcame! Jesus Christ, God, came through for them and their families through all the trials and tribulations. A common word spoken among the Hall of Famers’ was, “Football is what I do, not who I am.” Football was a way out, a job, something fun to do, but the sport didn’t define the man. “Faith, Family, and Football in that order.” Through all the fame and fortune, these players didn’t forget where they came from. They stay humbled and their speeches are real!

I love good speeches. They motivate me. I’ve heard many good speeches in my lifetime and I have my favorites. But, ranking right up there with the best of them is now Baltimore Ravens Linebacker Ray Lewis Hall of Fame speech! If you have not heard Ray’s speech, I would challenge you to listen! Ray has been a perennial leader on and off the football field for many years. But, hearing his life story and how he arrived at this point is amazing!

What I love about Ray’s speech, besides his life story, is how he uses his platform to inspire the next generation. Rather than talk about all his accolades and accomplishments, Ray tells his audience (which includes you and me) to overcome the ills of today by loving and by serving. Ray takes a page from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s playbook and uses his platform to talk about loving people. Reminds me of Jesus. Want to stop school shootings? The suggestion is to start loving your neighbor. I think I’ve heard that line before!

Rather than quote the whole speech, why don’t you listen to it yourself! Just click on “Watch on YouTube” after you see the message pop up that the NFL has blocked it on this site.

Buzzwords come and go but the buzzword being heard in the church today is the word legacy. Legacy is an important word in next generation ministry (NGM) because of the command for parents to hand down the faith that they have been entrusted with to their children and to their children’s children (Deut 6:1–9; 2 Tim 1:5, 14). The faith must be passed onto the next generation if the church is going to thrive. Churches and families partner together in the process of passing down the faith to the generations that succeed them. The by-product of parents and leaders successfully handing off the baton of faith is the creation or continuance of a spiritual legacy. It is more important for next generation parents and leaders to possess a spiritual legacy than it is to be a world-renowned legend.

NGM is a very progressive model of ministry and is future-oriented in that its advocates are always standing high and looking out over the horizons to see what lies ahead. However, there is some danger in this trail-blazing approach if balance is not kept in proper perspective. Our natural tendency is to look ahead when we think about passing on our faith to the next generation. After all, our thoughts are on the next generation. However, what we cannot forget is the spiritual legacy from saints past that precede us and has brought us to this point in time: Abraham, Jacob, Noah, Moses, Joshua, David, the prophets, the apostles, and the list goes on.

Because of my conviction to value the faith of my predecessors, I recently made a lifetime investment. I was offered a special deal by Lifeway to buy a total of nineteen books written by spiritual giants of the faith from ages past. Here is the ad that sold me on making the buy:

The voices that shaped your faith in an exclusive collector’s edition to read and pass down for generations to come

Augustine. Bunyan. Chesterton. Edwards. Luther. Murray. Spurgeon. Wesley.

The Legacy of Faith Library guards the good deposit handed down by champions of the faith whose messages are as applicable today as the time in which they were written. This contemporary collection of the classic texts preserves the author’s words while presenting them in custom bound, leather editions with gilded edges, ribbon markers, and a careful typesetting to guide and enhance your reading experience.

The eight-volume set includes a total of nineteen books and is presented in a handcrafted, mahogany cradle designed to display this one-of-a-kind collector’s edition.

We need the witness of the Church.

We need to hear the voices of those in the past to be faithful in the present. We need to remember stories of heroism under trial—Augustine defending Christianity against its pagan critics and Luther standing before the Roman Catholic magisterium. We need to defend the faith with the wit of Chesterton and the humility of Andrew Murray. We need to embrace Jonathan Edwards’ all-surpassing vision of the beauty of God and John Wesley’s evangelistic urgency. We need to recapture Charles Spurgeon’s ability to proclaim the liberating power of the gospel and John Bunyan’s ability to make these truths accessible even to children.

Church history is important! We have a lot to learn from the Christ-followers who came before us. As I begin reading these books, I plan to include excerpts from the books on this blog. I think it is very important that we highlight the past as we continue to forge new paths in the future. In doing so, our legacy as next generation parents and leaders will only be that much stronger!