Multiple Personalities

One of the interesting things I've read in all my study of the Millennial generation is the idea that they can comfortably live with multiple personalities. You can be one person with friends, one on Facebook, and another at work or at home. Personality is fluid, and one adapts to one's surroundings. Like being a human chameleon. I have to admit, it's one aspect of the generation I do not understand. I'm trying.

One thing I know, however, is that doing this in one's spiritual life is not confined to any generation. It's too often the default in Christian life.

I'll be a Christian at church.But at work? Well, there are decisions that have to be made there. Sometimes they can't be made with all that love and honesty stuff. That's real life.

With friends? I try, but sometimes, they need me to go along. Do what they want to do. Agree with what they believe. It makes everyone happier.

In politics? Hey, I know Jesus said to love my neighbor. But we have to protect ourselves. And I have a right to say what I want to say, regardless of those other idiots.

Problem: If I am created in the image of God, that's who I am at my core. Portraying that image full time was put into my being from the beginning. It's what was placed in my heart as my purpose for existing. If I'm trying to do that gig part time? No wonder I'm confused.

It's like trying to split an atom. We all know what happens when matter is split at its very core. Explosion. Big explosion.

Why do we think it will be any different when we try to split our being into “here I'll be God's person” and “here I'll be something else”?

If I'm fighting who I am at my core, no wonder I can't commit to being or doing anything long term. No wonder I can't reach, or even figure out, my goals. No wonder I have no idea what I truly want. I have tried to take apart who I am. And what I'm left with is a messy explosion.

Imagine telling my daughters, “You know, I'm just not feeling the mom thing today. Can I take a break from that and maybe come back sometime later?” Now, I know that occasionally, all moms want to do that. But however we are tempted, it will not change the facts. We are moms. We will still have that relationship, even if we check out of it. It just will be really messed up.

We can't show up to work as we feel the spirit. We can't be someone's child every other Tuesday. We can't be a real friend only after 8pm.

We can't be a real image of God because we press 'like' and 'share' for a picture of Jesus, then go back to gossiping about or downright insulting other people.

Whole People

We need to be whole people. Only whole people really know who they are. Only whole people can sleep at night without the conflict of knowing they were not who they believed themselves to be that day.

Not that we are always what we want to be. There are cringeworthy moments in everyone's day. But when we seek to be one, whole person in all situations? We're a lot more likely to act consistently. It's just easier. Less to remember, which, for me, is a huge incentive right there.

Image of God. Ambassador of God. Friend of God. Child of God. I am all those things. Trying to be some of those things some of the time? Big, explosive mess.

Trying, however imperfectly and slowly, to be that in all places, with all people, at all times? Big, cool breeze of relief. The pieces come together. The purpose appears clearer. When we're being who we were meant to be, through and through from our core out, that's peace. 

Yes, I Did Use the "I" Word

Why go to church? It's Irrelevant. How many times have you heard that?

In Kenda Creasy Dean's book Almost Christian, she explains the attitude of most Millennials toward church. “Teenagers tend to approach religious participation like music and sports, as an extracurricular activity; a good, well-rounded thing to do, but unnecessary . . . religion is 'A very nice thing.'”

I don't know about you, but to me that makes church sound a bit like a plate of macaroni and cheese.

It's not that they don't like church or have negative feelings about the Christian faith. It that they simply don't care. It has no relevance to their daily lives. Kind of in the same category as the climate in New Zealand. It exists and is probably nice. But it has zero impact on a 20-something American.

When we're talking discipleship, that's a far more dangerous attitude than outright hostility. Hostile people at least accept that religion is worth talking about. Indifferent people don't. In the US, the probability of the church atrophying away from indifference is much higher than being persecuted to death.

So what must happen for the church to be back on the radar for the next generation? How do we achieve a higher SEO, so to speak, in their spiritual google search?

One way is to end our church culture of entertainment and create instead a culture of engagement.

Remember last week talking about how America has a consumer church mindset? Funny thing is, that's what we intentionally cultivated for the parents of today's Millennials. But it's death for retaining their kids. (I think God just likes to switch things up to remind us we don't know everything and can't do it without Him.) 

Young people are highly sensitive to consumerism—they see more commercials in one day on the internet than most of us in ten years of television. They tune it out. They know when they're being sold to, and they don't like it. 

That includes sales pitches from the church to come enjoy/make use of/be entertained by God. Unexpected thing is--They don't want less demanded of them. They want more.

One big reason young people find church irrelevant is that they feel there is no place for them there. They have been entertained and instructed in moral behavior. But they have not known the power of the Holy Spirit or been set free to use that power as Jesus did. 

Our youth know how to be good people, but they don't know how to be meaningful people.  [tweet this]. 

That's not enough for the newest generation to reach adulthood. Praise God.

When I wrote my book, Don't Forget to Pack the Kids: Short-Term Missionsfor Your Whole Family, I didn't want simply to write about missions. I wanted to write about relevance. How do we keep the next generation in church? An important answer for me was to get them involved in serving, using their gifts, and believing they could contribute, at any age. We've lost large portions of the next generation by keeping them entertained and occupied but not discipled. Not being little Christs (the meaning of the word “Christian”).

When people complain that church is irrelevant, what they often really mean is that church is only relevant inside its doors, to the people already there. There is a little bit of accuracy there.

When it gets outside its doors, however, church can be the most relevant force on the planet. Funny, I think that's how God planned it to work. He did say “GO into all the world.” Not “Hang out here and I'll bring them in to you.” We're not Noah's ark; we're the church. One was meant for God to bring his creation inside for safety; the other was made to go out and batter the gates of hell. I think we get those two mixed up sometimes.

The church is relevant when the people who make it up are relevant to those around them. When we don't dissolve into our church walls doing our own thing. When we teach our children that they are the church and they make it relevant by being the hands and feet of Christ. And that they don't have to wait to do so until they known enough verses or are old enough for it to be “safe.”

We've tried to be relevant by creating relevant programming. It's a short-term fix. Creating relevant people—now that's long term. That changes everything outside our walls. When the church is that, it's nearly impossible to be ambivalent about it. It will no longer be perceived as “a nice place with no meaning to me.”

Do we want to be relevant? Forget bells and whistles programming. Forget fancy guest speakers. (Ouch. I'm a guest speaker.) Create disciples. Start as early as possible. Give young people the benefit of believing they can handle real theology and service.

Be relevant people. That's it.

Is Safe Overrated?

Fear. Risk-taking. Change. Becoming. All words in popular use right now. All words I use a lot in ministry. Words that, today, I want to put into the perspective of parenting.

I can't say my parents were the overprotective sort. As the parents of seven kids, they considered crowd control their main activity and lack of injury on any given day a bonus.

As the last of those seven, I basically flew under any radar that remained. I could have done just about anything. But I didn't. Like Binkley, I lived with a closet full of fears that didn't make a lot of sense if one examined them, but I never did.

Naturally, with that background, I followed the masses who tried to make certain no nasty beasties harmed my wonderfully special children. I covered their ears; I fought their battles; I slapped helmets on their heads and blinders on their eyes. It made sense. Then. (And bicycle helmets still make sense—let's be quite clear on that, my children.)

Now, I have children who want to skydive and take flying lessons and go on archaeological digs in the Middle East (and that's only one of them).

I have a theory. Maybe this regeneration of thrill seeking and risk taking is a result of a generation that has been trussed in bubble wrap and carefully structured from sunrise to bedtime since the day they were born. It's their rebellion against the can't-be-too-safe paranoia of their parents. I don't really blame them.

In fact, quite often I've joined them. It's been terrifyingly freeing. Honestly, you don't know what you're capable of until you're zipping down a mile-long cable over the Costa Rican canopy.

I wonder--maybe all the half-pipe skiers and shark swimmers are one big reaction to American paranoid parenting.

And now, we have studies like this one that surprise us by showing that, when we allow kids to be kids and use their common sense around risk, they actually do better. They are less bored, less violent with one another, and more engaged learners. Maybe, we were wrong to take away the slides and dodge balls.

Might I turn a corner and suggest this is also true spiritually?

With three-fourths of youth leaving our churches and not intending to return, we have to ask the reasons. And while they are complex, I wonder if one of them might not be that we focused too much on protecting said youth.

We spent too much of our time holding their little ears lest they hear a bad word and too little of our time opening their ears to the world around them and their place in it as God's person.

Young people are turning away because, according to Barna surveys, they find the church too judgmental and too ingrown. Might that be code for “You taught us to stay away from what was wrong but never told us how to make those things right? You kept us in our sanitized Sunday school rooms and homeschool classes but never accepted the messiness of honest life? You kept us safe but pointless?

(I am NOT blasting homeschooling here. Let us be clear on that. Only some of the reasons people give for doing it. I believe it's a great alternative for reasons other than protectionism.)

Our kids want to go down giant metal slides and feel the wind and yes, sometimes feel the concrete beneath. They want to get on the dodgeball court that is the real world and see if they have what it takes to play hard and long. They find our Holy Grail—safe—overrated. They are leaving the church that has told them that safe is their highest goal. I don't blame them. We lied.

I see two choices for the church and parents. We can equip them to take on their yearnings with Christ, or we can retreat and let them go at it alone. We can guide them toward the battles worth fighting and the thrills worth seeking, or we can let them jump off cliffs for their thrills, desperate for a feeling but devoid of purpose. We can smugly watch them “get it out of their systems,” or we can point them to the heart worth following, the one that took a giant risk to love us and live among us.

They will go at it. This is a generation that believes in blasting the door off the anxiety closet. If we want them back in the church, we've got to stop steering them away from the doors and instead put the light sabers in their hands. 

I read another blog just today that put it well.

"If you want to push the next generation away from your church, refuse to release them to lead. They want to be trusted to fulfill the task that has been given to them. If you micro-manage them, treat them like a parent, and refuse to believe they are capable of being leaders because of their age and lack of experience, wisdom, etc., they will only be at your church for a short season. Millennials will not allow age to keep them from leading…and leading well. If you refuse to release them to lead, the next generation will quickly find another church or context where they can use their talents and gifts to their full capacity."

 And honestly? If we want to be taken seriously in that, we've got to go through a couple doors ourselves.

And there's one of my terrors. Going up stairs

you can see through. Many, many stairs.

Afraid? Try ziplining somewhere. It will put you in the mood.

Setting our youth free to minister is a topic explored in Jill's book, Don't Forget to Pack the Kids: Short-term Missions for Your Whole Family.

This article previously appeared on her blog.