Gavin Calver
National Director of YFC
It’s not about winning. It’s hard to argue that Christ won in his ministry on earth, but he won in the end. I personally think that unless the Church is serious about reaching young people, it has no future. But I think the Church is serious about it. Our society is giving up on teens in many ways but the Church is standing in the gap and doing what it can. One of the biggest issues in youth ministry is that we stop too soon. According to the government the definition of a young person is being under 25. Yet our youth ministry stops at 16. So I think we need to extend the age of our youth group – and see if we have young people praising Jesus at 25, not stopping at 16 when we think our work is done.
I always believe that the Church has got to have a better future than it has a past, otherwise we are stuffed. If the Church was as good as it could be right now, then Jesus would have returned. Let’s face it: we need to be a bit easy on the bride of Christ sometimes. She’s going to get married someday but she isn’t ready just yet. It’s time for a makeover perhaps. You get engaged then you go on a diet, get some beauty treatments, get yourself in shape, you get ready for the wedding – we are involved in the makeover. It’s a work in progress. I think we need to be careful not to spend our whole time dissing the Church, as we are part of the solution. At YFC we say that we are part of the bride of Christ, we are just involved with the makeover – because she’s not pretty enough or young enough to get married yet.
Nate Morgan-Locke
Youth evangelist at Christianity Explored
Definitely. Maybe. Jesus has promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail over his Church, but not necessarily his Church in any particular place. We can be sure the Church will ‘win’ but not necessarily the Church in the UK. It’s sobering to realise that the heartland of Christianity has moved over the centuries. If we see ourselves as part of the global, eternal Church we can say we’re ‘winning’. I think we can still ‘win’ in the UK but we might need to redefine what ‘winning’ is. The question is whether we had the right definition in the first place.
Jesus describes people who look like they are losing when they could not be more victorious. It’s hugely similar to him dying on the cross. Real winning involves the young people in our churches understanding their own spiritual poverty and infertility and basking in the awesome glory of Jesus, no matter what they face. In the beatitudes the people who rejoice and are glad are insulted and falsely accused because of Jesus. Real winning doesn’t look like winning.
In order to ‘win’ we need to swallow our pride, which is hard for us youth workers. Our passion for seeing God at work can be our greatest strength but also a genuine weakness. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. God’s Word must be our guide. The Bible delights, excites and inspires us but we need to allow it to restrain us sometimes too. I am very sad that the ‘missing generation’ is my generation - people who were teenagers in the 90s. This was the time in which youth ministry went boom! We need to remember that logs burn longer than fireworks.
The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres
Bishop of London
Of course no generation has ever felt that it has captured the hearts and minds of most young people for the gospel. Yet here we are, 2,000 years on, with a worldwide Christian Church growing faster than it has ever done in history. In the Diocese of London (3.9 million people living north of the River Thames) we have the privilege of educating 50,000 young people in our 150 church schools and we are working hard to provide staff, including chaplains and governors, who model the love of Jesus Christ. Last year we ‘commissioned’ well over 2,000 young ‘Ambassadors for Christ’ in a wonderful celebration in the Cathedral. We are working alongside XLP to provide mentoring for some of the most challenging young people in the City. Local authorities are negotiating with some of our churches to provide youth work as the state withdraws resources. We are working hard to increase by 50 per cent the number of younger men and women offering themselves for ordination to the Christian ministry because we know that younger role models draw more young people into our churches. And we realise that young people are not mono-cultural any more than older people are. We are not going to convert all young people to our particular brand of Christianity. Think London, think Christian! Let a thousand expressions of the gospel flourish and by the grace of God we will still be here in a hundred years’ time worrying about how to win young people for Christ.
J. John
Author, speaker & broadcaster
If someone was to ask me at some sporting event, ‘Can we win?’ my first response would be to ask, ‘Well, are you competing?’ The big challenge to the Church is not winning (whatever that means) but competing. After all, the New Testament doesn’t ask us to ‘win’; it commands us to get out there and be faithful. And that’s what we are not doing. Too many Christians have heard the commotion in the stadium of the world and decided to stay safe in the changing room.
The irony is that, despite the clamour, the opportunities for the gospel today are endless. In the marketplace of ideas, a lot of the opposition have shut up shop. The three seducers of our age – sex, shopping and sport – are beginning to lose their looks. And, for the majority of Britain’s younger generation, the Christian faith not only carries no baggage with it, but has a novelty factor.
Let’s have the single, simple objective of putting our faith back at the heart of the nation. We need to be confident: we must have a Jesus – and a Bible – big enough for a world of problems. We need to communicate: let’s switch from silence, muttering or denunciation to sharing the good news effectively. Let’s be central: out of comfort or cowardice we have withdrawn to the geographical, cultural and social margins of national life. Let’s get back to being everywhere and for everybody, whoever and wherever they are. Above all, let’s be committed: the only way we will compete effectively is with lives that embody the Christian faith on a 24/7 basis.
Whether we win or not is surely up to God. But if we fail to compete we are guaranteed to fail. And the choice to compete is up to us. Instagram: canonjjohn Web: www.philotrust.com
ROB BELL
Author and speaker
I don’t know where Jesus ever talked about winning. The gospel story is all about how God comes among us and suffers with us, and is killed. So whenever people talk about relevance, and ask about how the Church can be relevant - I just want to ask: do you have friends? Are you living in the modern world where people are losing their jobs, and kids are struggling with drugs and loneliness? Join people in their pain. I was recently having dinner with a friend who is a volunteer vicar in his parish, and he does funerals for people who don’t have a church. Sometimes two or three times a week. And he loves it. Because he gets to go into these situations where people are asking him to do something that they don’t know how to do. They don’t know how to do a funeral. So he shows up in this most intimate time of people’s suffering. And the fact that he is friendly is huge; most people have never met a friendly vicar. So you have people asking: how do we get people into church? And we have my friend going – multiple times a week – to be in rooms and chapels full of people who never go to church, asking him to help them. What world are people living in where others don’t have cancer and need someone to sit with them and organise meals for them and take care of their house? What world are people living in where young people’s parents aren’t getting divorced and just need someone to sit and grieve with them? There is something divine in that. That is the power of the Christian faith – that it is has these deep wells of wisdom about suffering. And we don’t believe it is the last word. And because we don’t believe it is the last word we can walk with them confidently through it. We don’t need to give them all of the answers; we just need to be present. Jesus comes and he is present with us. And that alone has resurrecting power. So I would just ask: where are people hurting, and what would it look like to join them? The idea that we have nothing to say to the world is completely ridiculous.
RUTH GILSON
Director of Girls’ Brigade Ministries
Forgive me, but is it all about ‘us’ winning? I know what we mean of course, but I wonder about the perspective here. I struggle with the idea that we aren’t ‘winning’ in this battle to share faith with young people. It sounds as though losing is the inevitable option. And I can’t buy into that, God is not done with his world yet, is he? Surely the story of faith in this generation is God’s story, not ours. Our role is not to win the battle, but to join in with what he is doing – to be part of his story within the grit of any prevailing culture and context. After all the ‘battle’ is won already isn’t it?
If we believe that his very heart is set towards his world, that from the very beginning his intentions have been for us to know his love and live as a reflection of him, then the real question is: how do we best encourage fellow Christians to see this and to live and minister from this position?
How do we effectively join with him to be his people of transformation and restoration among young people?
Let’s intentionally grasp hold of our position in God. The battle is won! There is nothing more powerful than God and his redeeming purpose for this generation. Has God left us? Is his power less than it ever was? Just because culture has changed does that mean his love is less compelling now than anytime past? No!
Of course, some days the gritty realities do totally wear me down. The culture of the day vs the ghetto thinking of Church, our lack of resource, love of negativity and experience of opposition from Church folk towards engagement with today’s realities is hard to handle. Let’s intentionally grasp hold of our calling as God’s Church, especially those of us locally who ‘control’ money, teaching and attitudes! Church isn’t called to preserve ‘history’ we’re called to live ‘his–story’ in ways that make sense now.
I’m minded of Paul’s note to Timothy: ‘I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline’.
DR ROWAN WILLIAMS
Former Archbishop of Canterbury I think the answer is: no we can’t, but God can. The important thing to remember, whenever we are aware of real crisis, real tension and real failure in the Church, is that God has said that he will not desert his people; God says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church and I take him seriously. I think that whatever lies ahead, God will continue to do what God does, which is to call people to be his sons and daughters in Christ. So at one level I’m not really too worried about it. Obviously on the practical level there are any number of things which can cause concern. But there are one or two things which give me practical, specific hope. Firstly, the way in which the Church continues to be present in any number of rather challenged environments, deprived communities for example. People still seem to know that the Church is something they can trust, and they are aware of it. That’s a precious gift which we shouldn’t squander. The other thing is, when you get to a stage where a lot of younger people really don’t know a thing about Christianity, the truth is: you’ve got a huge advantage. They’re not coming with stereotypes, they’re not coming thinking they know everything it’s about. You can surprise them. You can actually tell them what the gospel is and they will say, ‘Oh, I never knew that’. And in my own experience, talking to school children and students, quite often when you take the time to sit down and explain what it’s really about – they are surprised and interested and they realise that whatever it may be, it’s not boring. So I think there are at least those signs of hope in our situation.
Ruth Dickinson
Editor, Christianity magazine
In one really obvious sense, the answer is yes, we’ve already won. How you square that absolute victory with what we see around us – declining numbers, people disengaging with God and starting atheist churches because they didn’t find what they were looking for in the Christian ones… and so on – is one of the great paradoxes of faith.
Three important things to remember. One, we do not have the full picture, and we are all in danger of assuming that the way we see the world is the way the world actually is. Only God has the full picture. Even if it feels like we are ‘losing’ week by week because things are tough in our context, it doesn’t mean it’s the same everywhere.
Two, even in the worst youth groups anywhere, it really isn’t all doom and gloom. People are becoming Christians and growing in faith, and every single one of us has examples of where that happens. It’s undeniable. Even if it mostly seems bleak, God is still at work.
Three, it is not our job to try and win. Christ’s resurrection has already done that. So no, we can’t, and I think we need to let go of any sense that that is what we should be aiming for. It’s a heresy to say that it’s what we are doing or striving for that brings about the victory, or that we are personally responsible for any young person’s salvation. To anyone who feels like work is exhausting, funding is on the decrease and young people are harder than ever to reach, I would say, stop. Breathe, and go and spend some quality time with the one person who can help you realise that it’s not your job to win.
SETH PINNOCK
REGIONAL DIRECTOR OF The Message Trust Midlands , Director of midnight oil summit
The Christian context defines a leader not as one who would parade gifts and callings in the pursuit of gratification, but as one that uses such to serve.
Chapter 37 of the book of Ezekiel depicts biographically the ‘hand of The Lord’ being upon the writer. This, in all its majesty and grandeur interestingly did not lead him to dance on a mountain, but to walk in a valley. ‘Leading in a valley’, is an underling theme that comes to mind when we grapple with youth work. We are daily surrounded with testaments of every sector being dry and evidently the only way to look is up!
Just as Ezekiel was commanded to prophesy and speak life to the dry bones in that valley, we must realise that our voice can awaken the dormant potential in the many lives we encounter. You see, life is loud while death is silent. For years I have engaged with thousands of young people just waiting for someone to wake them up! Unfortunately, often the person they are waiting on is busy attempting rock climbing expeditions - such is the culture of our time.
Thankfully, Joel 2:28 is a redeeming declaration of God’s promise. It significantly highlights that sons and daughters will play an integral part in the latter day outpouring, and that they shall prophesy. This is a key indicator that young people are on the agenda of God in this season. It is therefore imperative that we invest in our youth. Our mantra should be to challenge, charge and cultivate, rather than to breast feed and change their nappies until they are 20. For it is through this that we will speak life to the bones of our communities and raise comrades in a language of relevance and revival.
We are living in a time of unprecedented opportunity, where our voice can be louder than ever before.
