Today I continue my look at a new vision for millennials and
the church. Yesterday I concentrated on what I felt was the primary problems of
the church in regards to its attractiveness to millennials (and others as
well). I focused on more big picture missional failures as opposed to the
specifics that seem to bog down the debate within Christianity and the media.
Here is the link:
For today I will look at a more technical model of what I
think can will be a good model for the church as we look to attract younger
people, especially in lieu of the concerns that I brought up yesterday.
I want to start with a disclaimer. This model is far from
the only model, and I am quite open to other ideas for models. I also don’t
want to pretend that it will be an instantly successful, and I am certainly
aware of other models that have seen great growth among millennials. I will
also admit that this model takes into account my very specific biases of the
church and what I believe it should stand for.
The first part is strong
preaching. I have a lot of thoughts on preaching that I won’t dig into too
deeply here, but I strongly believe that preaching is what sets the tone for
the entire church body. I do not think that preaching is the be all end all of
church, and I am skeptical that preaching allows for great depth in Biblical
understanding, but I see it as establishing the foundation, providing the
direction, and rallying the congregation. Preaching should be Biblically based
(with some leeway for the occasional topical sermon), grounded in Christ
crucified/resurrected, and the life that He offers all of us.
The second part is Biblical
training/teaching. This can be achieved through a variety of means and will
be unique to the individual setup of the church. As mentioned in the previous
paragraph, this cannot be accomplished solely through the sermon. There must be
intentional Bible study within the church. The two best ways are Sunday school
or small groups. I am partial to Sunday school, but realize small groups is
often the best for schedules of individuals.
The key is “Biblical”. These meetings should focus on
scripture teaching and discussion rather than books or hang out sessions. There
is certainly a place for those two things, but Biblical study can expose people
to the fullness of scripture and prevent some of the cherry picking of verses
or focus on things other than the Word. I personally have found great success
in going through entire Gospels or Epistles or OT writings, forcing me to
address tougher scripture that is not well known or talked about. Always for a
fully understanding of God.
The third part is prayer.
Always be praying. I will have more to say on prayer as I continue to write,
but I am convinced that prayer time together is critical for any church
community.
The fourth part is fellowship.
There is value in combining this with Bible study, but it is even more
effective when kept separate, but for intentional fellowship time and in making
sure that Bible study time does not become more about fellowship than the study.
I focused more on how the church is failing in previous
posts, but one thing that millennials (and all humans for that matter) are
constantly looking for is fellowship and community. I would agree this can
realized in many places, but I also think the church is uniquely positioned to
provide this. And if the church does a good job of focusing on Christ and
remaining open to all, the church can be a place of community with some of the
best diversity, including political thought, income level, social standing,
racial, etc. This is an opportunity for the church.
The fifth part is service/mission.
I strongly believe that millennials have a sense of wanting to serve something
greater than themselves, and I think that can connect quite nicely with the key
aspect of the mission of the church. The old model was to send missionaries to
developing nations to spread the Gospel. While this is still important, the
nations are also coming here. And physical needs are everywhere. The church has
the opportunity to serve in the neighborhood, in the community, in the region,
and across the nation.
The sixth part is inter-generational
mentoring. This is another value of the church, the ability to spend time
with people of different generations to help you in your walk with the Lord,
and in life in general. I believe that everyone should strive to have a mentor,
a peer, and a mentee. I strongly believe that millennials, even if they won’t
admit it, need mentors and guides through life. The church is full of people
that provide this for whatever stage of life the individual is in.
The seventh (and final) part is worship. I think this is a reason that is often cited for
millennials not being as interested in the church but I am skeptical of the
impact. I am not sure the type of worship is as critical as the knowledge that
there is some sort of God-honoring worship within the church. This can take
many forms.
So this post was more of an overview than I thought. I was
able to do a quick glance at each of the seven parts of the model of a church,
but it will be more meaningful to take a deeper look at certain aspects of the
model. What I wanted to make clear is that I don’t think there needs to be some
radical change or brand new way of doing church. What I do think is that there
needs to be a return to what the church has historically been about. There will
be new ways to incorporate technology and new worship styles and new models of
small groups, but I do think that fundamentally some things need to be in
place.
For the next several posts I will dig into a few parts of
this model that need more comments and I will look at what the potential fruit
of this model well be.
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