As the church goes, so goes next generation ministry. The two are so intertwined together that there is no escaping the fact. But is the church going in the direction that God wants it to go? That’s a question only you and your church can answer. However, I think I can provide you with some help as your team tries to formulate an answer.
Is your church gauging success by the 3 B’s – buildings, budgets, and bodies or is your church gauging success by the 3 D’s – decisions, disciples, and development of those disciples?
Is your church growing in Christ and not just growing in number? Are hearts being converted, disciples being made, and fruit being born? In other words, are lives being transformed by the written and living powerful Word of God?
Are your people gaining clean hands, a pure heart, and a sound mind?
Is your church growing in grace, godliness, and good works? Philippians 1:11 and Colossians 1:10 teach us that “the mark of a church that is growing in Christ is the fruit of righteousness and good works.”
In his book Growing True Disciples, George Barna writes, “True discipleship builds churches known for their culture of love, commitment, and service rather than for their events, information, and programs.” Does your church have this type of disciple-making culture?
If so, you can expect next generation ministry to flourish in your context!
Near the turn of the century, Robert Lewis wrote a book called The Church of Irresistible Influence. The book was prophetic in the sense that delineated what the church’s witness should look like in this century compared to last’s. Lewis realized his church in Arkansas had been burning bridges when they should have been been building them all along. He said, “my first error was in trying to convince a postmodern world of truth when it rejects truth . . . in our culture . . . truth is consistently and wrongly defined as a matter of one’s preference or perspective, if it exists at all”
In our century, reason gave way to experience as “I think, therefore I am was replaced with I feel, therefore I know . . . maybe.” Objective truth went out the window and was replaced with subjectivity on every level. Lewis writes, “To our age, truth is nothing more than talk — especially when you don’t show it. The eye, not the ear, is the decisive organ. Our postmodern world is tired fo words — it wants real. Real is everything. Real is convincing . . . We are trying to build bridges on truth alone, while the world is crying out for proof. Proof!”
Lewis writes next, “Our design is wrong. We need bridges that balance public proclamation with congregational incarnation. Bridges that are suspended by the steel cables of the Great Commandment as well as the Great Commission . . . [our age doesn’t despise] belief. Rather, it is an age that wants to believe, desperately so . . . But it trusts nothing except what it can see and, more importantly, experience.” This postmodern world needs not only to hear the Word of truth, they must see the Word made flesh — “A living proof — an irrefutable incarnation.”
This is where your church comes in and this is why the early church exploded in number. We can’t just do church. We got to be the church!
Lewis ends by saying, “What the world waits to see is whether what we have is better than what they have. Just think what bridges we could build if we truly followed the example of the New Testament church. We would go beyond seeker-sensitive to a new frontier of being community-admired. We would be known, not just by the corner we inhabit, but by the city with which we interact. And people would be drawn to God, not because of the weekly show in our churches, but by the irrefutable lifestyles we incarnate. On both sides of the postmodern chasm, there is a growing emptiness. For the church, it is due to a lack of radical, courageous, and sacrificial faith: If our Christianity is real, let’s live it. For the world, this emptiness is from a lack of captivating, life-giving proof: If your Christianity is real, let’s see it.