Groundhog Day...

As a guy who's spent all of his adult life working hard to see the story of Jesus as recorded in the Bible communicated to my post-christian peers in as effective and non-culturally-stupid a way as possible, I have to share a troubling experience I had this past weekend.

I'm honestly not trying to pick a fight with anyone over this, just disturbed enough that I need to 'say something' in a somewhat public forum.

See, twenty (yes, twenty) years ago a friend and I used the entire living room wall of our bachelor pad as a 'white board' of sorts, outlining a strategy we felt (at the time) *might* be somewhat effective in helping to introduce our post-christian peers to life in Christ. At the time, we were very troubled by a trend we saw unfolding; our normal, everyday peers, people who hadn't been raised in Church, were showing zero inclination to engage with Church. Zero interest, zero drive, Church wasn't even on their radar.

It was twenty years ago that I started using the term 'post-christian.'

"My peers are post-christian..." I'd say to anyone who would listen, to anyone who was upset about the way in which we began going about 'doing' Christian ministry. If they felt our drums were too loud (or not needed), if they felt our outreach events (yes, I was a youth pastor at the time) were too 'secular' or not 'spiritual' enough I'd say it.

"Listen, our peers are POST-CHRISTIAN! All the stuff you're talking about, means NOTHING to them! You're arguing with me about stuff that's NOT EVEN ON THEIR RADAR!"

The complaining Christians arguing with me were so out of touch they had no idea they were out of touch.

Fast forward twenty years.

Nothing's changed.

If your hackles are up reading this, just pause for a second and do the math. Look at the picture above (I took it, myself, this past weekend, with my iPhone--it's not some stock photo I found to try and support an argument I just came up with). Count the grey/white haired/old people, then count the rest, then do the division to come up with your percentage.

Got it? Done yet?

THERE'S AN ENTIRE GENERATION MISSING FROM THIS CHURCH!!

An. Entire. Generation.

And I'm not even going to go into how absolutely LAME the worship service was or how absolutely archaic the order of service was or how old fashioned the whole approach was or how 'straight out of the 1950's' the building and its (non)decor was. Heck, you might like those things.

But, dude, lemme tell you, I have A LOT of post-christian friends who NEED to get to know Jesus, who NEED to be introduced to Him in a context where THE HOLY SPIRIT is manifestly working, and where all the 'externals' (like style, vibe, look, feel) don't get in the way and pop them 'out' of the 'the moment' but work seamlessly in a way that isn't even really noticed, to help put them at ease so they can just relax and be available when The Ghost drops into the room with their name in the crosshairs.

And I would NEVER take them to that church.

And I'm not even going to go INTO how lame most preaching is these days, or how saccharine and empty most worship services are (I've been in some worship services in the last five years that were so bad I wanted to either shout them down, run from the room screaming or just repeatedly punch myself in the face until I passed out) or how lame most theology has become ('cause we're afraid to preach the truth or just don't know what we believe the truth to be anymore) or how absolutely stupid (and outright non-Biblical) most of the cultural imperatives many 'Church-ey Churches' (or bleeding heart liberals) are clinging to have become.

I realize there's different strokes for different folks; I'm not talking about guitars vs organs here. I'm talking about CONTENT!

Holy Ghost filled, passionate, imperative, demanding, comforting, inspiring, Biblical, about-Jesus, life-changing preaching.

Where is it?

Holy Ghost filled, blow the roof off the joint, musically amazing, non-performance driven, prophetic, heart-broken, eyes to Heaven, heart-cutting, supernaturally actuated worship.

Where is it?

Honest about their sin (and the fact that they're NEVER going to get 'IT' right), not preoccupied with 'face-saving' morality, unattached to anything but Christ and Him Crucified, culturally aware, secure, wine drinking, pop music loving, vernacular using, quick thinking, hard working, secular-seeming, Jesus following Christians.

Where are they?

Dude, if we don't do something, we might not just lose a generation, we might lose CHRISTIANITY as a vibrant, culture shaping force in North America.

(I have a feeling we're right on the verge)

And my Jesus-needing friends with their broken lives? They can't afford that.

We need to wake up and smell the humous.

We need to get busy livin' 'cause, if the picture above is any kind of accurate portrayal of how things ARE in current Western Popular Culture, the Church of Jesus Christ (the hope of the World) is already busy dyin'.

OMG, we need to get to work.

T