Archive: 7 Big Questions Part 3: Positive Generational Attitudes

I am going to finish off my series of old entry re-posts with one of my more popular strings of entries, seven in all. I have a pretty new audience reading my blog now, so many of you probably didn't see these originally.  Feel free to comment away, the comments got pretty interesting last time.  For those of you that did comment before...have your feelings changed at all?

Originally published 1-5-07

Moving right along in my quest to stir up community conversation, based upon the article in this month's Relevant Magazine.  To the scores of lurkers that read...feel free to chime in, even if you never have before.  This is good stuff!

Question #3: What positive tendency do you see in this generation? (Matt's note: this is kind of a follow-up to yesterday's question, go back and read that before answering)

Erwin McManus said: I think we are all trying to figure out what is means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.

Lauren Winner said: I see people who sense that the Gospel is not a call to compartmentalization, but a call to love that encompasses all of our life.

Matt Singley said: I love this generation.  Why?  They don't put up with pretentious church.  To quote Christian Slater from Pump Up The Volume, this generation can "smell a lie like a fart in a car". What does this mean?  Well, I think a lot of this ties to worship, and now I'm talking the broad sense, all encompassing meaning of worship, not just music style.  When this generation enters a worship service (no matter in a church, on a Mexican mission trip or under a tree) they want authenticity and connection.  They can sense bull  a mile away, and they will steer clear of it.  I love that.  They're bringing it back to the real deal.  I have witnessed more tender moments, more God connections within this generation than I have observed within other age brackets.  Now, that is not to say that other ages don't have their own (and often more subtle) connections with God that are just as powerful...because of course they do.  Otherwise the church would not be around 2,000 years after our savior came to us.  But the question focuses on this next generation, and they can tune in to spiritual authenticity or falsehood faster than anybody else I have seen, including myself.

This of course challenges those that lead them.  There is no time for smoke and mirrors, there is no down time, there is no off day.  How can this be accomplished?  I cannot speak for others, only for myself.  I do this personally by not scripting my talks, I only pray about them, come up with a general idea, and then simply speak to them about what God has done with me in a particular area.  There is no BS, there is not pretension of other knowledge...they want to know about how I live out my faith, and as soon as I start to put on a mask as something that I am not, they're gone.

I love this next generation, and I'm proud to call many within it "friend".