The next grand installment is coming to Church Remix. Zondervan was offering about 100 free copies of Scot McKnight’s new book, Blue Parakeet, to bloggers. I am excited to announce that my copy is on its way and as soon as it does the posts will be rolling in.

I am also thinking that I will be posting thoughts, random or otherwise, from my Older Testament class this semester. I think that there might be some useful insights from those earlier incarnations of the people God. What do you think? Just maybe?

That’s where things are headed.

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My son and I were worshipping together on Sunday and being the first Sunday of the month we partook in Communion. As the elements came to us, he smiled at me and we had the following conversation:

Ethan: Do I get some of that?

Me: No son. We need to make sure that you truly follow Jesus by faith and that you believe that he is your Lord and that he has forgiven you.

Ethan: I do Dad.

Me: Well, you have to get up with Pastor Doug and tell everyone that you do.

Ethan: By myself?

Me: Yep.

Ethan: I’m not ready for that Dad, but I can’t wait!

Amazing! This ties the whole thing together for me. We have confused the sacraments. For believing children communion is the place for the public proclamation of their faith. For the new convert it’s baptism.

Can you imagine what that day will be like when he stands before the world and proclaims his faith in the risen Messiah and claims him as his own and then joins with the community through The Meal?

Infant baptism, communion, all tied together. This is the beautiful way. This is the covnenantal way of our promise keeping and ever faithful God!

I read this article tonight and it blew my mind. I think it’s precise, well said, and poignant.

Today’s culture is adrfit. There is no longer an oppressive meta-narrative keeping everyone in check. Everything changes, and everything changes fast. If you have to wait more than a couple of minutes for your fast food you get upset. If the lines at the self-checkout are long you can’t understand why they don’t have more. People change their relationships almost as often as they do their underwear.

Yeah, it’s a different world. The change that has taken place has left many disillusioned, frustrated, and wondering if there is anything left that matters, that will be what it says it will be.

Many of the college students that I work with are looking for stability. They are desirous that somethign will deliver. They can see through all the bull crap that’s out there and so they are cynical. Who can blame them? Every week it sems that another “holy” man has turned out to be a pedophile or morally degenerate in some way. Every week sub concsiously they exclaim with the little boy, after the Black Sox trial, “Say it ain’t so Joe!”

This is where infant baptism comes in. More than that this is where the covenant promises of the holy, triune God comes in. He brings about the things that he promises to bring about. He makes sure that they happen, because he can.

I had a conversation one time with a gal about baptism. She was baptised as an infant in a “liberal” “church” of some sort. She had been going to a church in town and they were pressuring her to be baptised now that she was walking with Jesus. They informed her that her “first” “baptism” meant nothing since she was a baby and didn’t choose it and that her parents weren’t even Christians. Yet, to me it is amazing that the day she was bapised her parents, the congregation, and the officiant promised to lead this girl to Jesus. They covenanted with God and he made good. The promise was on him to make happen and he did. As she reflected on that reality she was deeply moved and drew nearer to the God who had called her as a freshman in college.

As I think about my two kids and their baptisms I am amazed at how the Lord is making good already. Our pastor prayed during Ethan’s baptism that he would be an evangelist and that he would take the gospel to the world. His first few weeks as a kindergartner, the first time he was ever around kids who weren’t “churched” he began inviting his classmates to know about God. I didn’t tell him to. He did it because “they need Jesus like me dad.”

In a culture, a world where no one makes good on their promises. God does through this rite of passage into the covenantal community of believers. God shows his faithfulness over and over again to the child who is baptised in the triune name of God. It does not save them but it initiates them into the community.

I can hear the naysayers already, “it doesn’t happen for everyone”. I know. I don’t know why, it’s a mystery. It seems more often than not in my experience that these promises made in faith turn out.

The God of the Bible is a God who covenants with his people and includes the children in that covenant. He always has, always will. Why are we afraid to trust him for our children? Why act like he doesn’t care, when he does? Why not show a cynical world the beauty of our promise keeping God as we remind our children, our friends, and those around us of their baptism and the promise that God is making good on?

Oh, for the world to see promises kept generation after generation.

I am on vacation in beautiful North Myrtle Beach, SC. Today is the last day. We leave tonight for Louisville and then on to Evansville. I will miss the beach!!

I have begun emailing with a close friend about Baptism. So, I thought I would begin my thoughts here. This first post is rough and raw. It’s the baseline argument for infant baptism. It’s not as nuanced as I would like, but, that will come later, maybe. The point of the following posts hopefully will be to show it’s importance in our culture.

The basic argument from my perspective runs like this:

1. God is a covenantal God and works out his will through the work of covenants. The ultimate covenant being that of the new covenant in the person of Jesus. The sign of the covenant began with Abraham as that of circumcision. This was the marker of God’s covenant people and was applied to male infants at eight days old. In Christ the covenant was no longer with an ethnic people and so the marker of the covenant was moved to baptism, this is now the sign of inclusion in the covenant community.
2. The NT references to baptism consistently speak of household baptism which is most easily and normally understood to include children.
3. Jesus blesses the children.
4. There is no statement of change to the inclusion of children in the covenant community. A change this radical would require at the very least Apostolic teaching, if not Messianic teaching.
5. Believers children should be baptised as covenantal members of the community of God’s people.
6. This in no way means that they are saved, it is simply the outward expression of God’s promise to bring about their salvation and that their parents and the body of believers will bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord believing him in his covenantal faithfulness for their salvation.

The Baptist argument creates a distinction that I do not believe exists in the Bible between Old and New Testament. I believe that it is a coherent whole which builds upon itself and finds culmination in Jesus. The Baptist position seems to argue for a decisive distinction between Old and New where once the NT was complete the OT becomes obsolete and is understood as a relic. That’s a bit over the top, but, well, I am on vacation.

The covenantal understanding of the story of the Bible is the only one that stands up to coherently reading the whole story of God. The Baptist position does great harm to Biblical coherence. In so doing removes the children of believers from the community of God’s people. It also does harm to the significance of communion which is truly the sign, biblically, of the adult who has “searched himself” and partakes with Christ at his table. The Baptist position does harm here as well by making the Communion table something that means little more than a once a month, or so, ritual of saltine scraps and warm juice concentrate.

So, I was reading some blogs recently, alot of them, about the missional church. I have been surprised by how mean people are, especially those who claim to be gracious, open-minded, post-moderns. It came to a head with the debacle between Obama and Dobson. The anger and dare I say hatred expressed by many toward both men (in missional circles predominantly at Dobson, in attractional circles predominantly Obama) was amazing.

The vehemenance can also be seen in conversations that have to do with the mega-church movement. I just don’t get it.

I understand being frustrated with other believers who disagree with you. It gets hard to keep on communicating the same thing over and over and people “just not get it”. I think it’s sad though when there is not an open heart and open mind that goes both ways. It seems like folks on both sides of the coin forget that they are indeed on the same coin and part of each other.

Oh, would it not be awesome for kindness, gentleness, and respect to be a real thing in the conversastion between fellow Jesus followers and even people outside the community? The more I interact across the board with people from different traditions in the faith I am seeing more and more the wisdom of my father-in-law who makes some clear distinctions between what should be discussed publicly and what should be done “in the family”.

I hope that if I ever come across this way that I will get slapped upside the head and fast!!

My friend Tim challenged me to go deeper with this. So, I have been thinking about it for the last few days and meditating some more about why Communion is so significant right now in our time and place.

I keep going back to mystery and transcendence. So much of our world today is “real” there is no imagination. There is no mystery. Our movies leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to sex, violence, or anything…really. Neither do sports. I was struck by this when I heard a caller on the local sports station talk about his experience as a boy going to his first Tiger game. He said that when he would watch a game on TV it was black and white. He had to imagine the grass being green, the colors of the uniforms, and the color of the stadium. He said that when he walked through the tunnel to enter his seats for the first time he was blown away by the color, the green grass, the green seats, the whiteness of the baseballs, the brownness of the dirt, the blueness of the steel. It seared deeply in his memory.

We have lost that. Now we have ‘High Def’ TVs were you can even see the sweat drip off the foreheads of the players and the individual blades of grass sway in the breeze. Mystery is gone.

That is the beautiful thing about the supper. There is a mystery to it. There is something that we can’t get our hands around. There is an engagement of our imagination as we enter into the presence of the raised Jesus with us at the meal (or snack as it is now). If we will engage our imaginations in the mystery of this sacrament then we can regain something that has been lost. We can enter into the story of our faith and with the church invisible taste and see that the Lord is good. In a culture where our imaginations are stolen from us, actually, where we willingly give our imaginations away, this is our one opportunity to engage them again and embrace the mystery that is supping with the Lord Jesus!

The second thing is transcendence. It seems that much of the Christian life is considered to be humdrum and boring. But, oh, the supper is anything but. It is in this supper that we enter into an experience with Jesus that is beyond us and takes from the normal and we enter into communion, into fellowship, into the presence of our Jesus with one another.

People want to know what is so different about the Christian life? Is it any different from being a good Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu? Yes, in every way! It is found in the transcendent reality of the supper. The supper should bring us into an experience that changes us and draws us into a passionate and emotional and physical and spiritual engagement with our Jesus. With the one who really died for us. With the one who looked at our sin and our turning away and went to the cross anyway. With the one who conquered death and thereby made us conquerors too. With the one whose love for the Father led him to that cross. With the one who sits at the right hand of his Father and intercedes for us. This is the transcendent reality that the Christian alone can experience as he or she eats and drinks with the Lord at his table.

Mystery and transcendence. These two things have been lost in our churches, our culture, and our world. They have gone the way of the dinosaur. It is in the Supper that we can reclaim them, reengage with them, and get lost with them again.

If you want a great picture of getting lost in the mystery and transcendence of the supper grab a copy of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis. The interaction with Aslan and Lucy in the house of the Magician is amazing.

Tim, I know that this barely scratches the surface. I can hardly put all this into words. I am still processing and am thankful you keep pushing and drawing me deeper.

As I begin to write this I am feeling a bit like I am walking on sacred ground. In the Protestant tradition we only have two sacraments: communion and baptism. I have been thinking a great deal about the role of both. As I mentioned before communion is on the top of my mind because I just finished reading a book about it by Robert Letham. It was fantastic!

First, what I am not going to do. I am not going to argue for the merits of the Reformed version (read Calvin’s) of communion. I will leave that to the places where it has been dealt with in full. If you want to know the differences between Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed understandings check out Letham’s text or the Westminster Confession of Faith.

So, what’s the big deal? We take communion once a month in our church and it’s a nice ceremony with saltine crumbs and a thimble of grape juice. This is the consistent mode of taking communion in any church I have been in. I have witnessed Catholic mass and also Lutheran communion. There really doesn’t seem to be much difference in “how” we go about doing it. There are obvious differences in why and what it means.

So, it’s a nice ceremony. The Elders always look good in their suits and the men and women who serve communion are very solemn. It’s nice.

But, is communion supposed to be nice? Is it supposed to be so solemn? Isn’t it supposed to be “communion” with the risen Jesus? If so, then so much of this ceremony seems to be a little askew from what it must really be.

Sitting in my chair I realized how individualistic communion is currently. Think about the first “supper”. The disciples and Jesus hanging out in an intimate setting, one of the boys even reclining on his chest. They were in a circle. They could see each other. They could smell each other’s nasty feet. I have been in a setting with college guys many times like this. My poor wife wouldn’t even go into our basement until I lit a match to “de-man” after Bible study.

I think that communion needs to be let loose. We need to realize what is really happening. We are coming into, entering into, the very presence of the risen Jesus. We take the “bread” and drink the “wine” and in so doing are united with Christ in community with other brothers and sisters in the body. I can’t see who is joining with me with Christ.

It’s me and Jesus.

This is not communion, not in its fullest sense.

In this culture we need to re-engage with the mystery, beauty, glory, and awe that communion necessarily is. We must elevate this sacrament back to its high, honorable, and lofty place.

It is mystical.

It is awe inspiring.

It is fearsome.

It is physically, emotionally, spiritually uniting with our Jesus.

Why don’t we use real bread? It’s inconvenient.

Why don’t we use real wine? It might be offensive.

Was the crucifixion convenient? Was Jesus blood spilled not offensive?

The “supper” is to bring us together to experience community with one another and with Christ. I think we need to move back into a mode of doing communion where we actually see each other. Where we rise and go to the front together. Where those under discipline can’t hid in their chair. Where the one outside the faith feels being left out. Where those in relationship with Jesus physically rise and stand shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters.

Our covenant children watching and experiencing the longing to rise too.

The weight of glory as we together break bread and drink the wine. We would touch the broken bread. We would smell aroma of the wine and feel the warmth in our bellies as the wine hits.

In a culture that sees through the bull it is time that we return and embrace together the beauty and holiness of communion.

Think about it this way: What must communion have been like in the first century when the faithful were accused of being cannibals (eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus) and of practicing incest (for they were ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’) in the midst of their love feasts? Our communion doesn’t inspire this kind of response from a watching world.

I pray that we will embrace communion: the uniting of ourselves as the body of Christ with our head, the risen Jesus.

As I was catching up with my blog reading today in my quiet home, I thought, “It would be cool to link the blog to the stuff I am reading.” So, here it is: Stuff I am Reading

So, I have been writing a bit about the big picture of what missional is and exploring some things here and asking questions. Most of these questions I don’t have answers for, it’s a bit frustrating for a guy who usually has answers for EVERYTHING!

It’s hard to be in a place where you feel like everything is up for grabs. Where you are evaluating so much of what you believe and what you think. It’s good though because I am realizing how little I know and how little really matters. But, the things that do matter are critical.

In light of all this, I want to take a bit of a detour. I have been thinking a bit about two issues that seem to me as very important for our time.

Communion.

Baptism.

It seems that both of these issues are ones that either have been forgotten about (communion) or are taken for granted (baptism). Over the next couple of weeks or so I am planning on wrestling through why I think these two things are critical for recovery in this generation as we seek to engage with our God in his mission.

I just finished reading The Lord’s Supper by Robert Letham, so I will take up Comunion first and then Baptism.

The one questiont that I have been wrestling with in conversation with a friend and as a result of reading The Forgotten Ways is the issue of authority. What does it mean? Who is in authority? Is there leadership anymore? What does it all look like in reality, right here, right now? Are we all to do what is right by our own personal hermeneutic? Are we simply to do what feels good? Is it “just Jesus and me”? What is the role of the community of God’s people? What are the individual roles within that body? Are some called to lead? Are some called to follow? What do we do with the Bible? What do we do with our heritage of the visible church?

The answers are not easy in coming. But the list of questions continues to grow. Check out our conversation here.

So, I have begun thinking about “programming” in the church. It’s something that I have been wrestling with for a while and my thoughts are beginning to clarify a bit more. I studied some pretty large chunks of Acts this winter and spring. Something that really hit me was how “out there” the first and second generation Christians were (Paul is a second generation, let that one sink in for a moment).

They met together and ate food. They worshiped out in the open at the Temple. There was no real distinction in their mind of anything sacred or secular. There certainly did not appear to be any kind of “holy huddle” going on in the early church. There was rhythm to their life.

They broke bread, they served, they remembered the Lord, and they sat under the teaching of the leaders. They did all this in a culture that was just as pluralistic as ours. They did this in a culture where the Empire was more oppressive (atleast in the persecution sense).

The question I have been pondering: Why do we pull out so much? Why do we feel the necessity to program EVERYTHING. Why can’t we set aside a day for corporate worship, teaching, etc…Then the rest of the week what if we gathered together outside the walls of the church and followed Christ in community “out there” in the midst of a lost and dying world? What if we did more in our homes? What if we even invited our neighbors? What if?

>submitted by Robin Schmidt

It is the information age. We can find out pretty much anything through books, television, or the world wide web.

We value knowledge and pursue it. We have game shows where people compete to see who possesses greater knowledge. Remember Ken from Jeopardy? He seemed to know EVERYTHING. We believe knowledge is power. If we know then we are in control.

My father-in-law is not a doctor, but he plays one on the internet. With a small amount of research he can diagnose symptoms, attempt to manage treatment and presume to advise doctors. Sometimes a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Recently, I have been reflecting on the connection between knowledge and fear.

In the beginning there was a tree and it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of all that God created this was the one tree whose fruit man and woman could not eat.

Then came the lie. You will not die if you eat this fruit, said the serpent, eat it and your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

You will be like God. What did the woman think that meant? Exactly like God? Equal to God? Did she get that it was just like God in knowing?

Fast forward a few hundred/thousand years and consider some shepherds outside of Bethlehem. An angel appeared to them, and his first words were: Fear not. Why? Because an angel appeared to the shepherds and suddenly they knew. They knew that angels existed. They knew they were not alone. They knew what an angel sounded like, looked like, and they were afraid, sore afraid.

Faced with the knowledge of an angel, we know we are not the biggest thing going. We are NOT God, we are little and powerless and vulnerable and we become afraid. Very afraid. Sore afraid.

We are made in God’s image but we don’t have his perspective, his power, you name it we ain’t got it. So, here we are, NOT a lot like God, only now we know.

The woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was a delight to the eye and it was desirable for gaining knowledge. She desired knowledge so she took it and ate and gave it to the man.

You might say she had a hunger for knowledge. So do we.

They ate the fruit and they recognized their nakedness and attempted to hide it and then hid themselves from God because they were afraid.

Afraid of what?

I’m thinking they were afraid of what they knew.

God told them not to eat from that tree, presumably because they didn’t need to know good and evil. God walked with them in the garden and was asking them to live on a need to know basis. But knowledge is power and we want to know.

The thing is, they already knew all they needed to know. They knew God.

Here is something I put together about applying the missional concept to the role of “Youth Pastor”. What do you think?

Introduction

There has been a fundamental change in the way the world works over the last twenty-five years. The shift has been called “post-modernism” or “hyper-modernity” or “post-Christian” or “post-Christendom”. Regardless of what one calls the paradigm change, the change has indeed happened. The way that most people see and understand the world is very different than it was not very long ago. You could say, “this ain’t your mama’s world anymore”. The kind of shift that has happened is as thoroughgoing as the shift that took place in the 1960’s, maybe even more so.

The environment that the children of the emerging generations are growing up with is a unique one that the church, their parents, and their educators have not ever experienced. The rampant individualism, the emphasis on a radical consumerism, and the overdevelopment of the institutional church are leaving the emerging generations out of the spiritual conversation. If we are going to reach the emerging generations there has to be a change that takes place on a fundamental level.
Consider briefly the reality that the Benoit Mindset List tells us of this year’s graduating seniors:
“Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

1. What Berlin wall?
2. Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
3. They never “rolled down” a car window.
4. They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
5. They have grown up with bottled water.
6. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
7. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
8. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
9. Rap music has always been mainstream.
10. Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
11. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
12. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
13. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
14. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
15. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
16. 16. Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
17. When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
18. Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
19. They grew up in Wayne’s World.
20. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
21. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
22. Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
23. Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
24. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
25. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
26. High definition television has always been available.
27. Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
28. Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
29. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
30. MTV has never featured music videos.
31. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
32. They’re always texting 1 n other.
33. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
34. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
35. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.”

Biblical Foundations

The change is simple and yet so radical that we might simply dismiss it out of hand without thinking through the consequences. The fact of the matter is that we as the church are like most auto manufacturers. We are seeking to outsource the spiritual formation of the emerging generations.
Biblically the primary function of the parent is to “bring them [children] up in the training and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Interestingly, the emphasis is on the father here. He is not to “exasperate” his child. This is the role of the parent. It is their responsibility to train and instruct their child in the Lord.

This idea is not new to the Newer Testament but is found throughout the Older Testament as well. A key passage is in Deuteronomy 6:1–9:

“1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

The concepts of the parents passing on the fundamental truth about who God is, is placed on the shoulders of the parents.

It is not the responsibility of the youth pastor. It is not the responsibility of the Christian school. It is not the responsibility of the Sunday School. The spiritual formation of the child is the parent’s responsibility.

The body of believers is then to come alongside the parent to aid in that process of spiritual formation. This is communal. Think about what you just read there in Deuteronomy 6. Could you imagine being a child and every home you went to had Deuteronomy 6:4, 5 written on the doorposts? You would be exposed to it at every turn.

The other key thing is that at a very early age (probably 13) boys and girls were understood to be fully a part of the community of faith. The disciples of Jesus were most likely teenagers. The covenants were bestowed on children at eight days old!

Today, most people younger than 35 in our faith communities are seen as children who are not ready to exert leadership. It’s nice if they want to be in a choir or a play, even play in the band. But, they are not challenged to teach, to engage as leaders in the community. How many conversations take place around the dinner tables in our homes about spiritual things? Does family worship take place? Is there intentionality of the parent to teach their child spiritual truth?

Missional Paradigm Applied

Approximately 80% of churched children do not continue in their faith after high school. The keys to retention seem to be pretty straightforward, discipleship and parental involvement.

Most churches however, hire “Youth Pastors”. The job descriptions are simple. Reach out and care for our High School and Junior High students while providing support for K-5.

The consistent pull in youth ministry over the last twenty-five years has been to create a bigger, better program. If you entertain them, they will come. The hard part is that you keep them by how you get them. The entertainment has to be bigger, better, and more awesome each week or they will go down the block to the other church.

What if we saw the children in our congregation as not simply kids but as image bearers of the triune God? What if the parents were engaged in the spiritual development of their children? What if we sought to actually send our kids out as ambassadors and engaged with them as brothers and sisters in Christ?

To achieve this there would have to be a fundamental transformation in the role of the “Youth Pastor”. He would have to become a “Family Pastor”. To understand what “Family” pastor means one must first define what is meant by “family”.

Family is the core building block of a community. This would include young married people to those who have sent their children to college. This would also include single parents and blended families. The reason is that marriage is the primary foundation for godly parenting. The Family Pastor would first help marriages to be healthy and then build on that foundation when as people have children. He will help in the transition from no kids to one child to elementary to middle school to high school to college.

This role would have him focusing on the discipleship of parents, helping them to engage their children in spiritual formation. He would then be freed to foster the “youth” of the church to be missionaries to their peers.

This means that the ministry of the church to the youth would have a focus on pulling the children into mission as opposed to pushing them through a program. The emphasis would be on training. Sending them to their peers as ambassadors for Christ.

A developing community of Christ followers who happened to be young people would replace programs. “Church” would become a place to connect with other Christ followers on mission. Sunday mornings would be a time of worship, prayer, training, and teaching.

Young people would be pulled into the rest of the community. They would be influenced by 80 somethings, 70 somethings, and on and on.

Generational differentiation would be replaced as young people are seen as participating members of the community. The Family pastor would help to bridge the gaps between generations.
Youth involvement would move beyond babysitting and singing in the choir to a full engagement in the life of the church. Youth would be seen and understood as people created in the image God along with adults. Believing youth would be recognized as fellow believers indwelt by the Holy Spirit with spiritual gifts.

As emerging generations graduate and leave the context of the church and enter the world, they will leave with a firm grasp of their faith, and how it functions in the context of the body of Christ.
To move from program to organic community in realm of families and youth will require time. There will be consolidation. But, when the gospel is embraced by a generation (be it emerging, Boomer, or even X) the results are explosive.

Nuts and Bolts
The big question that must be answered is practically what does this look like in a job description for a search committee of a church that desires to apply the missional approach to “youth” ministry. The key would be not the development of programs but a pastor who is focused on discipleship as his primary ministry. I think that it could look something like this:

• An embracing of the concept of covenantal family.
• This points to the fact that within the body of Christ there are covenantal families that comprise it.
• Children are brought to adulthood, recognized as adults, and differentiated from their parents.
• Shepherds families (as defined above)
• Marriage support
• Parenting training
• Oversees and develops volunteers in all youth ministries.
• Disciples parents and trains them to engage in spiritual formation of their children.
• Disciples teens and sends them out on mission to their peers.
• Develops an environment of spiritual formation for youth church-wide cross generationally so that all believers are embraced and sent as laborers.
• Recruiting and developing multi-generational disciplers.
• Drawing teens into discipleship relationships beyond their parents and peers.
• Develops an organic community among youth and families where youth are continued to be developed into adulthood and maturity in the faith.
• Develops and provides opportunities for training and involvement in mission in the peer and familial context.
• Develops an environment where the family is the first discipler but not the only discipler, thereby creating an environment where teens are prepared to be discipled outside the family context.
• Teens are developed and sent as adults and mature believers upon graduation.
• An acknowledgement from the church that this will be an imperfect and messy process.

Imagine…
Imagine generation after generation of covenant children embracing their relationship with God as their own…

Imagine sending High School seniors as ambassadors for Christ to the university, work force, and the world, year after year…

Imagine healthy marriages that foster an environment for healthy parenting…

Imagine parents and children engaged with Jesus together…

Imagine generation after generation Christ-followers being born, grown, and sent to the world…

Imagine our church changing the world by sending laborers to the harvest one son and one daughter at a time…
Imagine the Lord smiling and saying to each generation of parents, “Well done, my good and faithful servants.”