1. Our nation will see the emergence of the largest generational mission field in more than a century. According to our current research, the Millennial generation, those born between 1980 and 2000, will have a very low Christian representation. Our estimates now are that only 15 percent are Christian. With a huge population of nearly 80 million, that means that nearly 70 million young people are not Christians.

2. The dominant attitude of this huge generation toward Christianity will be largely indifferent. Only 13 percent of the Millennials rank any type of spiritual matter as important to their lives. They are not angry at churches and Christians. They simply ignore us because they do not deem us as meaningful or relevant.

3. Family will be a key value for Millennials.  Nearly eight out of ten of the Millennials ranked family as the important issue in their lives. They told us that they had healthy relationships with their parents who, for the most part, are Baby Boomers. Some churches say they are family friendly, but few actually demonstrate that value. Churches that reach both of these generations will make significant changes to become the type of churches that foster healthy family relationships.

Those born between 1980 and 2000 are currently between the ages of 11 and 31.  If the numbers are anywhere near accurate, then there are a couple of things I see as being crucial if this generation is going to be reached for Christ.

Christian parenting.  If we want to reach this generation for Christ, then it may be wise for us to look to minister to the generation ahead of them.  A secular study done in the early 2000′s revealed that the number one determining factor of a child’s religious beliefs and practices once he or she reaches adulthood is the influence of one or both parents.  Parents are the key, so rather than first looking to reach this generation directly for Christ (at least the younger half – ages 11-19), maybe we ought to look at reaching their parents first.

Family Ministry. Churches need to have a strong focus on helping parents raise their children to follow the Lord.  This includes marriage ministry, parenting ministry, children’s ministry, and youth ministry.  All of these ministries must be relevant and must work together to assist parents in the training of their children to walk with the Lord as adults.  Of course, in the absence of godly parents, churches can assume the lead role in helping kids grow in the Lord, but even non-Christian parents must never be excluded from the ministry reach and help of the local church.

Church Integration.  The churches that see the most young adults (ages 18-30) stay connected (to the church and to their faith) are churches that don’t just offer age-specific ministries to young adults, but work diligently at helping them integrate into the life and body of the church as a whole.  Real life is integrated and multi-generational.  Churches that keep young adults separated from the rest of the body are not doing anyone any good. I’m not suggesting that churches do away with age-specific programs for young adults (college and career, etc), but I am suggesting that churches must work diligently to help young adults integrate relationally and in ministry with people from other generations.

These are just a few thoughts off the top of my head.  What are your thoughts as you process Rainer’s findings that I listed above?

1. Mutuality—The future of missions will be shaped by mutuality between East and West, North and South, sending and receiving nations. Churches worldwide are learning to come together.

2. Partnering—Different than mutuality, partnering pertains to projects that require the assistance of skilled co-laborers driven by what indigenous leaders in the country are trying to accomplish.

3. Investing in leaders—Leadership is everything. Wherever good things are happening, a capable and passionate man or woman will be leading the way.

4. Combining good deeds and good news—The level of problem-solving in which externally focused, missional churches are engaged is significantly higher.

5. Greater financial accountability—With all the needs and opportunities in the world, global missions leaders of the future are working to maximize every dollar expended on global outreach.

6. Business as mission—An emerging funding model ties business and mission together. Missional entrepreneurs who are starting businesses and creating jobs in the countries in which they serve.

7. Focus—Churches today are learning to do better by focusing on fewer places of engagement.

8. Technology—With every breakthrough in communication technology, there have been innovators who have exploited that technology to advance the gospel.

(Leadership Network Advance 2/23/10)

The Bible makes it clear that we are to minister to the oppressed. What made you decide to work with the homeless as opposed to other people who might be oppressed?

It’s the passion that God’s implanted in my heart. In Scripture it says that when we give and care for the poor, we’re giving and caring for Jesus. The Word of God says that as I’m caring for the poor that I meet in the streets, I’m caring for Jesus. That changes the mindset because I’m not really doing it for the poor, I’m doing it for Jesus, and the recipients are the poor and the homeless that I meet.

There’s been a lot of frustrations in your ministry to the homeless, but if you have this perspective, you can keep going, can’t you?

Absolutely. In fact, that perspective keeps me focused when bad things happen. Sometimes I get shot at, or guys will try to mug me or abuse me on the streets. Sometimes there are brand new homeless people that have just come in who don’t know me but see all the goodies that I have in my grocery cart and try to rob me. The understanding that I’m not doing it for them, but I’m doing it for God, helps me keep the whole thing going. Plus, at least once a week, I’ll see a man or woman make a decision to change their life, get some help, and they begin a new adventure through Jesus Christ. That makes it all worthwhile because we actually see people get healed constantly. There’s something about working with homeless people that is close to the heart of God. His power and His grace are constantly evident as we work with the poor.

How has “living” with the homeless allowed for a much greater opportunity for ministry as opposed to just occasionally visiting them at a homeless shelter?

They know that I care about them and that I understand their plight. I know what it’s like to sleep under the bridges and fight the rats off from biting you. I know what it’s like to run away from drug deals gone bad. I’m with them in the rainstorms, when it’s miserably cold, and when they’re hungry. Sometimes I’m on the street for four or five days and nights in a row. I sleep with them. A man walking by would not recognize me as a pastor. He would think that I’m one of them.

Normally, when we pass by homeless people, we don’t look them in the eye, and we don’t acknowledge them as human beings. We bypass them. For me to develop a relationship with them and love them as they are, I earn their respect and their trust. This seems to be the key element to staying alive for one thing, but it also allows me to have relationships with them to the point where they share their deepest issues with me. We can then go beyond that to the place where Christ can touch their lives.

Give us a feel for who the homeless people are, where they’ve come from, and why they’re on the streets.

There are doctors and professional people who had a life of prosperity with their families and career, but who – through the use of alcohol and drugs – have lost it all. The common thread running through almost every homeless man is that he has made bad choices. Some of them have made one bad choice, and some of them have made a combination of bad choices.  Some of the homeless are mentally unstable and can’t hold down a job. Some of them are unstable from birth, some unstable from being on drugs and alcohol, and some of them are mentally unstable from living on the street. You can’t live on the street more than a few years without becoming somewhat mentally unstable.  There are some great people with fantastic hearts living on the street. Some of my best friends are homeless people that are alcohol and drug-free. They are some of the most caring and loving people on earth who just so happen to be homeless.

How can we as parents help our children develop a heart for the poor – one that goes beyond feeling into action?

One of the things that I would encourage parents to do is to create opportunities for their kids to give to other people. We often have calls from families telling us that they have a box of clothes that they’d like us to give to the homeless. I always tell them that although I appreciate the offer, I’d rather they come with me and pass the clothes out themselves. I want them to see the faces of the human beings that they’re giving to. Better yet, I want them to wear some of the clothing that they want to give away and take the items off of them and hand the clothing to the homeless people. It’s more symbolic to give something off your back than giving something out of a box. It symbolizes to a young person that we’re supposed to be giving what we have on us to those in need.

Giving is the beginning, middle, and end of a strong relationship with yourself and with God. We’re called to give. We’re saved to save others, blessed to bless others, and God has given to us to give to others. Young people have the concept and many adults do today that God blesses us so we might store up. That’s not right. Many believe that God gives to us so that we might enjoy for ourselves. That’s not right. He blesses us, gives to us, and saves us to bless and give and save others.

I believe parents ought to be helping young people find arenas where they might give, like at a nursing home, a homeless shelter, or a clothing closet. They need to offer a place where young people can give of themselves without getting something back in return like a paycheck. It will give them a place where they can give from their heart unselfishly.

Kurt is the director of Salierno Ministries.  His wife, Lori, is the director of Celebrate Life International.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST…

Concerned evangelicals gathered last week in South Hamilton, Massachusetts to search the soul of their movement and find a new way forward.  Among evangelicals, who account for a quarter of the U.S. population, the idea that they must focus their attention on shaping authentic disciples of Jesus has always had broad support. But how to do that in a consumerist society with little appetite for self-denial is fueling internal debate.

About 500 people attended a conference at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary on “renewing the evangelical mission.” Leading thinkers called fellow believers to repent for a host of sins, from reducing the Gospel to a right-wing political agenda to rendering God as a lenient father who merely wants “cuddle time with his kids.”

“We are seeing the very serious weakening of American faith, even among people who profess to be believers,” said Os Guinness, senior fellow of the EastWest Institute in New York and author of “The Case for Civility.” “Yet an awful lot of people haven’t really faced up to the true challenge and still think they can turn it around with things like political action.”

“The church has lost its mission to go out and love the people,” said Steven Mayo, pastor of Elm Street Congregational Church in Fitchburg, Mass. “We’ve become useless in a society that desperately needs us.”

How to become useful again, however, is a matter on which there is no consensus. Cornelius Plantinga, president of Calvin Theological Seminary in Michigan, urged pastors to talk less about fulfilling personal potential and offer more from the likes of Old Testament prophet Joel, who warns God’s people to wail and repent before the Lord scorches the earth.

But church leaders responded to Plantinga’s prescription with a reality check.  “For pastors, it’s very easy to lose a job by taking your advice,” said Rachel Stahle, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Carteret, N.J., after Plantinga’s 45-minute lecture. “It’s even harder to find another one by taking your advice. So what wisdom do you share with us to take what you’ve said back to the churches?”

Some evangelicals are taking little comfort these days in successes of the past two decades, which included hundreds of fast-growing megachurches and the advancement of a socially conservative agenda during Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.  Too often, they say, Christians came to display un-Christian behavior in the public square and did a disservice to the cause of making disciples.  Beware the escalation of extremism,” Guinness said. “Christian sayings such as, ‘Love your enemies’ — they’re forgotten. People are attacking their enemies, but they’re certainly not on the side of Jesus in this.”

Some church leaders say the drift away from traditional teachings has led evangelicals to neglect such biblical mandates as ecumenism and to organize around lesser principles, such as political preferences.  “We evangelicals have moved from a church grounded in solid theology to a church grounded in personal relationships,” said Neil Gastonguay, pastor of Bath United Methodist Church in Maine. “We don’t have a message anymore.”  But others say evangelicals have worried too much about doctrinal differences when they should have been joining forces on larger issues.

Richard Alberta, senior pastor of Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brighton, Mich., said preoccupations with doctrinal purity help explain why he struggles to round up other evangelicals to join him at anti-abortion events. “When you get evangelicals among themselves, instead of addressing the social and moral issues, they get backwatered into some debate about dispensationalism or Calvin or Charismatic Renewal,” Alberta said. “There’s lots of suspicion, and those worries seem to act as filters that keep evangelicals from getting together.”

Similar frustrations were expressed by Travis Hutchinson, pastor of Highlands Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) in Lafayette, Ga. He said he routinely gets a cool response from other evangelicals when he asks them to join his efforts to minister among undocumented immigrants.  The problem, he said, is that the doctrine-obsessed have lost touch with the heart of Jesus.  “The missing ingredient is not the primacy of the mind and doctrine,” Hutchinson said. “It’s the willingness to suffer.”

Although renewal strategies might vary in the years ahead, evangelicals expressed agreement that their inspiration is to be found in their bedrock source: Scripture.  John Jefferson Davis, a Gordon-Conwell theologian, said today’s Christians “need a high-intensity experience of God” and should seek it through meditative readings of Scripture. Still, he conceded, even Bible-based worship will need to be “more attractive and more enjoyable than a trip to the shopping mall.”

“Unless we can experience God in a way that is as real and as appealing as what we see on a 60-inch, high-definition plasma home theater screen,” Davis said, “we are in trouble.”

What should we emphasize first as the motivation for our unbelieving friends to come to Christ?  Should reigning forever with Christ be it?  I’m not so sure that reigning will be the one thing that causes an unbeliever to make the leap of faith toward Christ, and I’m not so sure it should be.

Shouldn’t we be quick to first emphasize the fact that the only way to be made right with God is to believe and receive Christ’s free gift of forgiveness?  Shouldn’t we emphasize the fact that the cost of our sinfulness is separation from God, and the only way to bridge that chasm of separation is by believing that Christ’s death on the cross took the place of the death we all deserve?  Shouldn’t we emphasize the incredible love that God has for us in that He would be willing to sacrifice His Son in order to satisfy the debt that we all owe?

I know that this church is trying to be cute and catchy with their sign, but I wish they would think about the message they’re sending to the unbelievers who pass by it each day.  Yes.  Followers of Christ will reign with the Lord forever – which is no small thing – but the message of the gospel is so much more than that.

When I got there, I felt like I was playing the part of an extra on the set of Cheers. As different men arrived, I watched as the others sitting around welcomed them with a wave of the hand and a hearty calling out of their name. The men engaged one another in conversations about their work, families, and other life issues, all the while enjoying their favorite cigar or pipe. The evening was filled with smoke and casual, friendly, natural conversation. Men from all different walks of life sat around and enjoyed one another’s company. As the new guy, I was immediately welcomed, and before long, I was right in the middle of the conversation.

There was a sense that these men genuinely cared for one another. There was an older man who the others respected so much so that he was allowed the best seat in the house. This man bought everyone in the room pizza. The owner offered a free cigar to another man whose business has fallen on some tough times. I met a man the others called “Rev,” who I later discovered is a fellow pastor. Even though he is “a man of the cloth,” all of the men there respect him and laugh at his goofy church jokes. It was a warm (pun intended), inviting, relaxing place where – even though all the men knew I was a pastor – I was accepted and made to feel right at home.

I really enjoyed my time there, and it got me thinking. I just completed leading the men at my church through a 24-week study on authentic manhood. We spent the last several months discussing what it means to be a real man, and while it was a good study, I’m not so sure the men really connected with one another like I had hoped. Why? I think because it was forced. There was a one-and-a-half hour window each week where men were expected to come, hear a lesson, and then share their deepest, most intimate feelings…and it really didn’t work too well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty confident that the men did get to know one another more than before, but the kind of care, concern, and camaraderie I experienced at the cigar room just wasn’t there.

Women are quick to come together and can easily move from surface issues to core issues in a matter of minutes, but men need something to gather around. They need a project, an event, a reason. And even with those things in place, men are still pretty slow to open up. I know of a man who has committed his life to the Native American men of northern Wisconsin. He has lived among them for 30 years, and in addition to preaching at a small church (attended mostly by women and children), he spends most of his time under the hood of pick-up trucks with men and in the cab of a snow plow with men. He does this in order to connect with the men of his community because few will ever grace the doors of his church.

I know of a fellow pastor in the New England area who meets with the men of his community at a local pub once a week to drink some spirits and talk about the Holy Spirit. He calls it “Pastor on Tap,” and it’s a weekly event that is even advertised in his church bulletin. Men who this pastor would otherwise have no way of connecting with at the church come for a drink and some spiritual conversation with their pastor.

So, back to the cigar room concept. I’m convinced that men do want to connect with other men, and I’m convinced that men do want to discuss intimate issues like how they feel about their marriage, their children, their job, and even their spiritual condition. They just need an environment that allows them to connect with other men in a naturally masculine way…a place where men want to come, and a place that men enjoy when they’re there. I’m not so sure sitting in a circle at church is that place.

I agree that encouraging men to hang out at a local cigar room (or even a local pub) would be a radical step for a church to take, but how serious are we about reaching the men in our church and the men in our surrounding community? I – for one – am tired of making attempts at reaching men that prove to be minimally effective at best, and I – for one – am ready to consider a more radical approach if effectiveness is the pay off.

The last example of courage is the greatest example. It is when Christ died for our sins. I believe this saves us from our sins. Christ is the real picture of courage.

There’s no doubt that this took a lot of courage for Taylor to write, but he really believes this. Michelle and I didn’t know he wrote this, so this was something he wrote all on his own. He writes this kind of stuff all the time, because he loves the Lord and looks for opportunities to share his love for Him whenever he can. I am impressed – to say the least – at Taylor’s boldness, and I am both proud and thankful for his courage in talking about the Lord to others.

It was the response of his teacher, however, that blew me away. In a day and age where revealing one’s Christian beliefs can bring about a lot of trouble, I was incredibly impressed at the courage of Taylor’s teacher. Here’s what he wrote in response to Taylor’s paper.

I couldn’t agree more, Taylor! You keep this mentality up and God will do amazing things through you. The simple fact that you wrote this comment shows your courage! Never be afraid to tell anyone about the love of Christ. You are one of my best students, and now I know why. Keep being the salt and light to this cold and dark world that doesn’t know the One who saved us from our sins.

Wow! Talk about courage! It took a lot of courage for Taylor’s teacher to write this on his paper, and it shows that the Lord has His people strategically placed even in the dark halls of our public schools. I could tell that Taylor was pretty pumped about all of this, and so were Michelle and I. Oh, and by the way, Taylor got an A on the paper!

There are several “tipping” tracts that Christians can choose from, but this is one of the more popular ones. It starts off by saying…

Thanks! I wanted to leave this with you to thank you for the good service you gave me. Since we might not meet again will you take a minute to read this? I bought these little cards to help me tell others about the wonderful new life that is possible in Jesus…

Seriously, how many waiters or waitresses have stopped dead in their tracks while busing their tables in order to drop to their knees and give their hearts and lives to Jesus right there in the restaurant because of these tracts? I would venture to say none. One tract-receiving waitress had this to say about Christians who tip with a tract:

As a waitress for many years, I always hated working the Sunday lunch crowd. Not just because I didn’t want to miss church, but because Sunday church customers were the worst. Nothing like cranky folks who left no tip, a sucky tip, or a tract with either no tip or a sucky tip.

I remember one rude family in particular. I did everything I could to make sure the large party was happy, but the patriarch left a dollar and a tract (a specially designed one that was just for servers about the ‘best tip’ ever). I followed them to the door and handed the tract back to them, saying they could save it and use it on someone else, as I was simply waiting tables that morning to help pay for seminary, since I’d been on the mission field for the past two years and had not been able to save much.

I have waited tables with a lot of non Christians. I remember one gal who said that she wondered why Jesus was such a big deal if no one would talk about him, just leave a little piece of paper in old language (King James) that no one could understand.

I agree. If Jesus is as important to us as we say He is – and as important as our tracts say He is – then shouldn’t we work hard at building relationships, getting to know people, and loving them (like He would) rather than throwing a corny tract their way and running off?

Jesus is not a product to be sold nor is He an item to be advertised on a cheesy tract left on a messy restaurant table (or worse: in a dirty bathroom stall). Leaving a tract and running off does far more to hurt the cause of Christ than it does to help.

Sniper-like, hit-and-run tract-leaving Christians do more to harm and confuse non-believers than they do to help. It would be best if they’d just mind their own business and keep their tracts at home – or better yet, burn them.