If you have followed me for any length of time, you know I have written much about milestones. The reason is because milestones in next generation ministry are both valued and celebrated. Brian Haynes lists seven legacy milestones in his book Shift that the church should partner with the home in celebrating. As a next generation pastor, I believe it is important that all next generation pastors create a next generation team (composed of the leaders of the preschool, children, student, and college teams). This next gen team needs to sit down together and map out how the milestones will be celebrated in the life of the church and then send this proposed plan to the senior pastor/church for approval.
The purpose of this post is not to discuss the milestones or the milestone process in the life of the family or church. I have spent enough time writing about milestones and or rite of passage events. The purpose of this post is to celebrate a milestone that is often overlooked. Before I get to that, let me first celebrate a personal milestone! This is my 100th blog post! In July of 2016, I stepped out in faith and began this website. I appreciate all of the website traffic and hope my next 100 posts will be better that the first. I am learning to celebrate moments and not just milestones!
Enough about me. What is the unseen milestone? It’s really quite simple when you think about it. Who in the next generation is unseen and overlooked? THE UNBORN. God says to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” King David penned something similar in Psalm 139:13-16, “For you formed my inward parts: you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, everyone of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
Can you catch David’s passion for the unborn? David knew the unborn were wonderfully made and the unborn were a wonderful work of the Lord. He says he knew this fact very well! David knew that the days for the born were formed before birth. Catch this! David is not celebrating the unborn as much as he is celebrating the one who created the unborn. God gets the glory! This is important for us to understand. As important as it is to celebrate milestones in our lives, it is more important to celebrate the life giver of those milestones. Without God, nothing would be possible because we wouldn’t even exist. God not only creates us and the world, but he sustains both (Gen. 1:1, Col. 1:16-17).