I spoke earlier this week at a church business administrator’s conference in Nashville. These men just didn’t seem to believe me. They had that serious “prove it to me” look.
Business administrators ensure the church runs well, the staff is happy, and all the behind the scenes activities are clicking for those uplifting week-end experiences. They are hands-on, no nonsense types. I was talking to them about the impact of the digital age on you young professionals and your responses to it.
I shared that we now watch 485,000 Youtube videos an hour and are overwhelmed and unable to sort truth from fiction. Add to that, you young people read 2300 web pages, 1300 Facebook pages, and multiple thousands of text messages a year. It’s just too much to sort.
As a result, research now shows we are all searching for “Navigators” to help. Those people that help us make sense of a world that’s become to big to sort ourselves. I suggested that may be why many of you young people read this blog often. Or, maybe it’s just the need to connect.
Whichever, it was a comment that provoked that questioning look on their face! No, I don’t think they were buying it! That’s why I need your help!
So yes, please step up. Typically 10% of blog readers leave a comment (we had 5/45 the first day-that’s our 10%- but it’s not enough)! This is important. We need 100% on this one.
Could you please share why you come here, what you’re getting?
Don’t worry about eloquence. Don’t worry about your name either. Just your feedback is invaluable to help educate church leaders nationwide how to better connect with young people (well all people). This matters, it really does. It would be helpful to know your age.
Thanks for your help!
Sad…I don’t count! Well I’m gonna answer anyway - only 5 years past your target!
I come here to find people who share specific interests in ministry and the journey we are all on. I come to find companionship and wise counsel from people smarter than I am!
And it is one of the continuing frustrations of life that church leaders are some of the last adopters of technology, leaving a vacuum that others WILL fill. It isn’t a question of whether our young people are connecting online, it is only a question of who they are connecting with.
For the record, I too have several of my daughter’s friends reading my blog and facebooking me…they want to bare their souls in a safe environment. For them, online is it.
I’m 26.
100% interaction? You’re asking for a lot out of the lot of us who’ve been trained to passively absorb our experiences.
I come to this blog for social interaction, a chance to see what’s going through your head on any random day, and because I have this notion ingrained in my head that reading blogs and interacting online is more productive than staring at my wall.
The second point is the closest that comes to the Navigator part of your post. Though I would often quibble with your terminology and our vantage points are substantially different, I appreciate the fact that you appreciate the fact that technology (and its partner: commodification of livelihood) can lead to spiritual alienation and disengagement from any sense of the gritty world outside of my comfortable, generic haven from existence. In other words, it’s the epistemic form of buyer’s fatigue. The following link describes this well:
http://www.newpantagruel.com/issues/1.1/welcome_to_the_new_pantagruel.php
However different this is from your use of the term “Navigator”, I think they both recognize the same symptom: a shallow spiritual and psychical malaise that runs rampant through younger people. We were told that there were answers, and then given phrases and soundbites that would’ve been better suited on a crackerjack box. The only reactions suited to youth would be skepticism, rebellion, or apathy. Each is much better at destroying than preserving. Sure, there are enclaves that have managed to preserve some identity well into the postmodern wasteland, but they tend to be the exception, not the rule.
Personally, I think it’s more related to a lack of any meaningful sense of the word “tradition”.
But whatever I think, I appreciate it when others try to grapple with these issues. And that’s why I come here.
I’m 24, and I have to echo Nick: 100% interaction is asking a lot.
I come because I’m interested in the conversation about the future of the institution we call “church.”
I grew up in a traditional church, then I cursed or denied God for almost a decade, and just a few years ago, the Lord pulled me back in. I know what it’s like to be a bored Christian, to hate Christians, and to be part of a church that is passionate and real. I know by experience what happens when local churches fail to relate to people’s lives, and what happens when they do.
I also feel the tension in our society right now as we shift from TV to Web. Everything’s changing, and I see the church on the verge of falling behind. We’re at this amazing moment in time that, decades from now, we’ll look back at and either say,
“We stayed in the world but not of the world. We heard the voice of God and moved where we needed to move - even though is was uncomfortable and awkward.”
Or, “We missed it. We were too comfortable to get up and go with God, and who knows how many were lost.”
So I come here because I’m interested in what Ed is learning, and because - like Nick - I appreciate that he’s really trying. It’s insulting and demeaning when an older generation points at a younger and says, “Your life experience is wrong.” And in that vein, I also come here to be encouraged that there are people in leadership in the body of Christ who don’t blow us off.
25. I come here, honestly, because it’s my best opportunity to simulate the converstations we used to have, even if in a fairly artificial way.
And because there’s an offhand chance Nick will reference the New Pantagruel.
Hey Dad,
DOB: 3/10/1980
I come because your findings are stimulating, the comments are good & because I care about you :).
I remember taking forever to create my email address & finally a great friend stated that if I wanted to be part of a leadership team for a Girl’s Camp I would have to move forward for communication purposes. I now view texting the same way. I see my 16 year old brother attached to it like I am to email & I realize that before too long I will most likely have to accept it to communicate in the manner I desire (as in keeping relationships).
I see the terms “artificial, etc…” being used in this post’s comments & while I understand the use relatively I have to say that with friends & family living 12 hours away & even locally I have a connected support group due to email (nothing artificial about that). I have thee to four evites in my inbox at a time & I usually have an evite that I have sent out. So there you have the internet being used as a means of physically getting together. I also send intense emails & receive them solely as a means of communication & not as an event set-up.
All in all I am glad I gave in & created that email account some time back. I could say the same thing for my blog, etc… Love, J
Reading these comments sure stirred some emotion. I’m not sure what the rest of the office here might be thinking about my red eyes. But this stuff matters so.
Thanks for responding. I know that 100% request was a bit presumptive. But there’s no exaggeration here. Lex, you expressed it well…
“This time we may be too comfortable to get up and go with God through this cultural shift!!” The deteriorating statistics would sure suggest we are!
The 5 comments are powerful stuff. Please keep them coming. I’d like to get 20!! Yes 20. And, let’s go with Marla’s spirit….I don’t care if your older than 35, I need your thoughts. On second thought, no matter what age all your comments matter. Just let me know your age and I’ll sort them accordingly!
Thanks to all of you. I’ll share more thoughts on the above comments later.
Ed
Ed,
Thanks for opening it up to everyone. Some of us are young at heart, regardless of the birth date.
I come for the same reason as Lex described. I am very interested in the future of “church” and believers.
I would love to hear what pushed Lex to deny and curse God for a decade and how she got pulled back. I think that might give some people an insight on what the church’s should be doing or not doing to impact the community around them.
I believe God wants the church to be the head and not the tail, ahead of the pack and not trying to catch up. The church has to let go of some of its traditions. Jesus said he could not do some miracles in some town because of thier traditions and unbelief.
I look at the church like, the disciples that were in the boat when Jesus came to them on the water. Peter represents the young people today. They want to jump out of the boat and show the world what they can do with Jesus. They want to do some bold stuff.
Then you have the other disciples ( traditional church) that says “i’m not getting out of the boat, and Peter you better get back in here”.
Look at David. Young guy running to the giant and trusting God to take him out, while all of the older soilders are trying to convince him to stay behind.
The church has to make a decision to put their resources, time, and energy to backing up and supporting the youth.
Like Lex said we can’t blow them off. We need to train them up and send them out to make a difference.
If we don’t as the church, the world will. The world will send them out to do destruction.
The choice is ours, the youth are waiting. Lets go after them with the web, blogs, and everything else that God has given us to use as tools.
Great topic.
Hey Ed! I’m 29!
I read other peoples blogs just to stay connected and it’s a huge new way of communicating. I blog to keep my family updated….it’s to “hard” to sit and write letters or phone calls; it takes too much time. Blogging is a great way to reach a massive (not in my case) amount of people if you need to and only takes a few minutes or an hour.
Ed,
As you may have heard me share before:
1. I have been through and have seen many of my friends and others go through what I call the “Love God, but hate the church” phase. I just ran into a 22 year old at the Cornerstone Music Festival that was passionate about God and passionate about his disgust for the church.
2. I have also heard the following statement more times than I can count from former church staffers: “I had to quick my job at the church so I could go and do ministry.”
HHHmmm, something has certainly been missed. Let me try to bring a little balance to this seeminly negative post….I didn’t’ grow up in church and then married a pk (pastor’s kid), which I do believe has given us quit a balance - - also, I believe that the younger generations are getting to a point where we are done complaining about the church not changing or not changing at a necessary pace………we are simply moving forward and in some cases saying, “let the dead (churches) bury the dead…”
Michael
Just barely born in the 1950s. (You’ll have to do the math.)
I come to learn. I really appreciate the free exchange of ideas - especially from those who have a totally different life experience than I have.
Sadly, sometimes I don’t learn what I really think until I start to tap it out on the keyboard. Then I can digest it a bit, and reword it so that it expresses more clearly what I wanted to say. Sometimes I just delete and stay silent. Other times I submit my comment knowing that it will get honest, thoughtful replies. In fact, that’s one of the beauties of writing “behind the screens” - one can address the knottier issues without anyone taking it personally.
Another reason might be because I have this subconscious need to be a navigator. Although, as the oldest sibling in my family … the others always called it being “bossy”. ;-D
Hi Ed,
I come to your blog because after our time with you at our ministers’ retreat last year, I have been very interested in your thoughts about church and where it’s going.
When it comes to the church and it’s future, in this 20-35 age range, I wonder if there is a slight difference in the view of the church between singles and people who are married with kids. I feel like there is a greater sense of discontentment with the current church model among singles than the married with kids. I’m not sure why this is…I’d have to think about this.
I think that the internet doesn’t seem as artificial to our generation as it does to our parent’s generation. I feel like it can enhance our physical meetings with people. There is something kind of weird about knowing a lot about a person before we actually “know” the other person though. That’s probably a new thing that may affect church in some way…I don’t know. I’m just typing off the top of my head right now!
anyway, i’ll stop now before I start making no sense at all! thanks for your blog…it’s a great place to come to get me thinking!…I guess that’s another reason I like your blog…I feel like I haven’t wasted time when I’ve been here. I’ve been challenged to think about deeper things! I’m 29
Ed,
Why do I come to your blog? I come because you’ve been a good friend and mentor. You’ve asked hard questions and provoked thoughts in the past, and I appreciate it when people make me think. Thanks.
On one hand, as technology exposes us to a bigger and bigger world, it also makes the world so much smaller. For me, it seems hard to imagine a time where in order to communicate with someone it could take a week before you would hear back from them. There is a part of me that appreciates those days. The days when the world was smaller and at the same time, so much bigger.
How do we navigate this brave new world? That is an interesting question. We are inundated with mountains of data on a daily, hourly, and second by second basis. Aside from being properly grounded, I think it is extremely important to have some sort of mentor who has more experience than we have. I do this at work all the time. When news hits the wire, I listen to what older, more experienced people are saying about it and use their insight in trying to decipher it. I think we should do the same in our spiritual lives. You can call them “Navigators” if you like, but to me, they are mentors. Men and women with more and different experiences who help us make sense of the world.
One more thing to note, I think its important that these people we get to help us make sense of the world think about things differently than we do. They can help us see things from different perspectives which, in a world as complex as the one in which we live, is important. Proverbs 11:14, “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure.” There are some thoughts form a twenty-two year old white male. Keep up the good work and stay in touch.
Cheers,
Ryan G.
27-I come here (and read blogs in general) because I am always looking for other people in ministry to connect with. Other people who share my passions. Other people who have an idea I can use, or might be able to use an idea that I have. Other people that I can partner with to do ministry more effectively and meet more people.
I utilize blogs, facebook, twitter and anything else that comes my way to accomplish this. Web 2.0 has been a great tool, and I have made great connections I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Wow, thanks to all of you. There’s enough great content in these comments to keep me posting a while! And, it’s tough meaty stuff.
The spirit is moving here it seems. There is a strong and challenging message coming through.
Just a quick summary on the 12 responses (haven’t got my 20 yet):
9 - Touched on navigator, stimulation, learning type reasons for coming.
4 - Come because they care about the church and appreciate the conversation regarding it.
2 - Mentioned it mattered to them that an older person took them serious and pondered life from their perspective.
Yes that’s 15…some had more than one reason it seemed.
For those of you just stumbling into the conversation…I’d appreciate your thoughts as well!
I’m sorry about my slow response here and failure to post. Late last week was a killer. Grateful for your patience.
I’ve spent several hours this morning attempting to make some sense of your thoughts. I’ll post about it Tuesday.
However, I do want to personally thank each of you for all your effort to add to the conversation here and wherever I speak. It inspires me and everyone I share them with. This post had the largest first week traffic of any I’ve done. So again thanks.
Marla - You’ve become a dear friend I’ve never met. One of those cyber friends Rebekah spoke about. And, you are so right, our kids will connect somewhere better…with us. Thanks for adding to the blog and my life.
Nick - Thanks for a showing up and really stretching my thinking. You shared some deep feelings many feel but are afraid to express. I’ll post about them tomorrow. I hope you’re doing OK.
Lex - I would like to hear your story. I sense there is much to learn. Could we do some posts here together? By the way I never answered your question about China moving past us if they learn to build a creative culture. Yes, I believe it is quite possible. Remember, Rome was the king at one time as were the British. There is no promise or entitlement. Only hard work and creating value.
Jenny - I care about you too. Thanks for hanging around. My day is richer when you’re in it. I appreciate your stimulation as well. I’ve been calling Luke as I promised.
Ben - Oh…I miss those campus talks too Ben. It brought back special memories. I hope we can hook up from time to time.
Tyrone - Great thoughts! I like the boat analogy. Humm…thought provoking. I’ll post about them tomorrow. What are your thoughts regarding Barack and Jesse?
Heather - Ah…connection does matter doesn’t it. Thanks for hanging around.
Michael - Your the greatest bartender friend one could have. And we do have to get past this love Jesus hate the church thing for sure. Let’s keep working at it.
Don - Your always the voice of reason. And I sure can relate to the sorting thoughts on the keyboard. One of the special blessings of this blogging experience is the clarifying it has provoked in my own thinking as you suggested. Yeah, sometimes the delete button is appropriate isn’t it. However, I HAVE to kick out a post 3 times a week or so…sometimes it’s like…yikes I don’t want to hit “publish”! Keep coming back…you matter here.
Rebekah - Your posts always provoke a warm smile and place in my heart. Thanks for doing that for me. Could the married and single thing just be an issue of mental space. Married with children does provide a deep purpose many singles don’t have and it doesn’t leave quite the room for pondering. Make sense?
Ryan - Mentors and navigators are the same I’d think…right? And Prov 4:11 is one of my life versus. I appreciate you sharing it here. It is a brave and scary new world. We need each other to make sense of it.
Crystal - Thanks for coming. Do I know you? Specifically how do you use Web 2.0?
You all are more of a blessing than you know.
I don’t know if anyone’s reading these comments anymore, but I’ll answer Tyrone’s question because it’s applicable:
I don’t think I ever really knew God, but I left the Church (which in my mind, at the time, was all God was) after I’d completed the confirmation process. No one had any expectation of me beyond that, and I was bored out of my mind every Sunday morning. So I checked it off my list of life accomplishments and started sleeping in.
I came back to church and actually met the Lord when someone took an unwavering interest in me. I met and became friends with a guy who thought more of me than I thought of myself and actually knew God - not just religion. It was his example, his love, and that relationship that - after six months - opened my heart to faith and truth.
I’m a textbook case, I admit it.
Low expectations and zero cultural relevance convinced me to leave. Relationship brought me back.
Lex,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think your story is a common theme to the American church attendance decline that has been reported.
People are just fed up with religion and the rules.
They want the truth of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God. They want someone to show them how to get a relationship with Jesus and demonstrate it in their lives.
I believe the boredom that so many people experience in church, comes from the non relevant messages that Pastors are giving.
If the pastors are getting revelation from the Word of God and preaching it to the congregation in a way that they can use it in their everyday lives, people will be interested. That’s when you will see church growth.
There are pastors who actually get thier sermons from the internet, or a book on sermons. There is no revelation there and people know it.
Thank God for your friend who demonstrated the faith and the love of God to you.
When you say low expectations convinced you to leave, are you talking about your involvement with the church or you as a believer effecting those around you?
@Tyrone - I mean the low expectations that our society - the Church included - has for teenagers. I grew up in a Lutheran church where you were expected to go to Sunday School classes until you were 13. Then you “confirmed” your infant baptism, and you were all set to die and go to heaven.
That’s when the expectations ended, and my friends and I were pretty much left to fend for ourselves. There was no next step. When people sense that no one expects anything of them, they tend to do very little.
No one expected me to join a youth group, or get involved in the Sunday services, or volunteer in the nursery, or anything. It’s the general mindset of our society that teenagers are worthless and incapable of doing anything that matters, and teenagers live up to that expectation because they’ve come to believe it’s true.
Along with the low expectations, of course, was the fact that the church was really old-fashioned and boring. Neither of the two things that could have motivated me to stay were there. So I left. Me and all my friends.
My husband and I lead the student ministry at our church, and I’ve spent a lot of time in the past six months exploring this idea. There’s a really good book, if you’re interested, called Do Hard Things by Brett and Alex Harris - a couple of teenagers.