Reaching a younger generation

I received my auctioneer license 11 eleven years ago. Like most people starting a new business, the first few years were rather slow. When Covid shut everything down I began conducting my auctions online, and it is amazing how the business has taken off! We offer an online auction every two weeks, and we struggle to keep up with the items that are brought to us to sell. We ship to buyers all over the US, and my consignors bring me some of the most interesting items to sell. It's a lot of hard work, but it's fun especially when I have to research something just to find out what it is!

One thing I hear often from my sellers is that they asked their children to come and get what they wanted and were told that they didn't want anything they had. These are people who are downsizing or moving into assisted living. They may have beautiful glassware, antiques and other items they have collected for decades, but now they learn that their children have no interest in those items. I've read many similar stories from across the country. Many younger people are simply not interested in the things their parents and grandparents have. As a result, many auctioneers report that the prices for antiques and vintage items are down as much as 80 percent from just a few years ago.

This mindset among the younger generation also impacts how we do ministry today. Churches that continue to function as if it was 1950 will reach few of the younger generations. Styles of music and worship that were meaningful to their parents and grandparents do not have the same impact on younger generations. I sometimes tell churches that, if we still had record stores, you would not likely to see young people going in to buy pipe organ music. The taste of music has always been different for different generations, and this is no different for worship music. 18th century hymns do not speak to younger people like they do to those of my generation. Younger generations are also more visually oriented so simply having a talking-head on a platform doesn't really appeal to them either.

A few years I saw this played out at a conference I attended at a Christian university. The middle-age speaker pointed out that while many of us in the audience was watching him as he spoke, the college-age students sitting on the front role were watching him on the screen. Even though they were the closest to him, they still were watching him present his material on the screen above him.

For a few decades now the church has been involved in a worship war. Some have tried blended services, but many of them simply made everybody mad half of the time. Many went to two services with one offering a traditional service and a second serving which was more contemporary. Many traditional churches refused to do anything different than what they had done for the past 100 years and wondered why their attendance kept dropping.

Let me make a very unpopular statement that some churches will not want to hear. We either have to change the music and worship in our churches or we will lose this younger generation. Some churches that offer a blended service provide an excellent worship experience. I was fortunate to serve one such church as their Transitional Pastor and was greatly blessed every week by the worship service.

But, I am convinced that it is time for many churches to put away their hymn books and change both the music and format of their worship services. I can hear some of you complaining now that Dennis is wanting to offer entertainment to try to bring people into the church. NO. It's not about entertainment; it's about worship that is meaningful to those we are trying to reach for Jesus Christ.

My daughter attends a church in Florida when she goes there for 2-3 months every fall. This past year we spent a week with her and I attended this church. The numbers I'm about to mention are not exact, but they are close: in 2023 they saw over 2,000 decisions for Jesus Christ and baptized nearly 300 people. The message that was presented the Sunday I was there was theologically sound, and over a dozen people gave their lives to Christ that day. The worship was energizing, and the service reaching a large number of  teens and young adults. And that was just the first service! 

Either we are serious about fulfilling the Great Commission or we are not. If we want to reach the current generation we need to speak their language, offer them a worship experience that allows them to connect with God and present a clear Gospel message that points them to Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation.

Would I be a bivocational pastor again?

I'm now at the age where people often reflect over the decisions they made throughout their lives. One of the things I've thought about in recent days is the question of bivocational ministry. I have spent my life serving churches and our region in a bivocational capacity. I've published books on bivocational ministry and spoken to dozens of pastor groups across the US and Canada on bivocational and small church ministry. But, would I serve as a bivocational pastor again if I was starting over in ministry? The answer is yes.

Bivocational ministry is not better or worse than fully-funded ministry. It is just a different way of doing ministry that meets the needs of a specific church. Serving as a bivocational minister has allowed me to serve a church that could not afford a fully-funded minister. It allowed me access into people's lives because they saw me not only as a minister but also as a factory worker, a business owner, someone who shared similar experiences that they had. Working in the factory let me see how challenging it was to be laid off and scramble to find other employment. As a business owner I learned about the pressure to meet payroll when business was slow. I found it easier to relate to people because I had shared in their struggles at different points in my life.

The church I served had been stagnant for a long time with a series of student pastors from a nearby seminary. When I became pastor there the average pastoral tenure was 12 months. I stayed 20 years which I may not have been able to do if I was not bivocational. One of the joys of my life was seeing that church accomplish far more than many would have thought possible. Not having to seek new pastoral leadership every year freed up the people to do ministry.

There have also been a lot of personal benefits to being bivocational. I never worried too much about church politics. If the church fired me, I would go to my other job the next day, our family would still eat and have a roof over their heads. I've known too many fully-funded pastors who are fearful of church controllers and the impact upsetting one of them could have on their families. I never experienced that.

My family did not have to worry about being uprooted if I accepted another church, Because bivocational ministry tends to be fairly local, it wasn't likely that I would be moving across the country. That was especially comforting to our children when they were in school. I know at least one of them was concerned about that when he entered high school. I was able to relieve his worry by committing to him that I would not move as long as he was in high school. That might have been a dangerous promise to make if I was fully-funded.

There were many more benefits to both me and the church I served, but this is enough for this post. The answer to my question is a very emphatic yes, I would serve again as a bivocational minister if I had it all to do over again.

Ministry in the 21st century

 I have been reading recent studies that indicate that 4,000-5,000 pastors are leaving the ministry each year. That is an incredible amount! Years ago H. B. London, Jr. shared with me that 50 percent of seminary graduates leave the ministry within five years after graduation. The reasons are too many to go into in a blog post, but this has serious ramifications for our churches, and I think it speaks volumes about what is happening in the church world today.

I began my pastoral ministry in 1981 and served that church for 20 years. I left there to accept a ministry position in our judicatory where I served for another 14 years. In one staff meeting I shared that I felt the church and I enjoyed a good ministry for those 20 years, but I wasn't sure I could serve as a pastor now. The world had changed so much, and many churches have not responded well to that change. I knew that what I had done during my pastoral ministry would no longer be effective in the 21st century, and I wasn't sure I could reinvent myself to effectively serve in this changing environment.

One reason so many pastors are leaving the ministry is because they were never trained to serve in this new environment. Their seminary training prepared them to be managers of an institution, not leaders. They were trained to be research theologians and not pastors. Those who serve in traditional churches are expected to meet the same expectation from the congregation that it had of their pastors 50 years ago. The job description has not changed. Unfortunately, many of these pastors were trained to meet those expectations, but it doesn't take long before they realize that these expectations are no longer valid in today's culture. It become evident very quickly that to meet those expectations and to continue to do what the church has always done will reduce their role to that of a hospice chaplain. They will be tending to the death of that congregation. If they stay, they submit to that role. Many prefer to simply leave and find other employment and serve God in other ways.

In my role as judicatory minister serving 133 churches I saw so many stuck in a 1950s model of ministry. They were dying and refused to admit it. That model had long ago ceased to be effective in reaching people for Jesus Christ, but it was all the churches knew so it was the one they preferred. I will never forget reading The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren where he wrote, "We invite the unchurched to come and sit on seventeenth-century chairs (which we call pews, sing eighteenth-century songs (which we call hymns), and listen to a nineteenth-century instrument (a pipe organ), and then we wonder why they think we're out of date!" Many of us in ministry see the wisdom in what Warren wrote, but so many of our churches see all of this as normal. Attempts to change any of these things will be met with great resistance in many churches. Rather than fight an uphill battle, and probably losing, many of our pastors simply decide to walk away from their calling.

Math and God

 In several posts I've commented on how observing the space station as it flies over our house reminds me of how God has fine-tuned this universe in which we live. Like the sun setting over the ocean, watching the space station always reminds me that God is real and the creator of all we see, Because the universe is fine-tuned as it is, scientists can tell us exactly when the station will appear anywhere in the world, the direction in which it will travel, the time it will appear and disappear from our sight. A world that simply happened by accident would not be so fine-tuned.

Recently, I was exposed to another evidence of the existence of God I had not considered: mathematics. In a section in Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn't the author talks about mathematics. Now, I will admit that I am lousy with math. After taking Algebra I and Geometry I in high school my counselor advised me to not take Algebra II and Geometry II if I hoped to graduate high school! But, I know 2+2=4. But why? Why is 2+2 not 5 or 6 or some other arbitrary number if our universe is simply a random happenstance?

Quoting the atheist Luc Ferry, the author writes, "I can do nothing about it, 2+2=4, and this is not a matter of taste or subjective choice. The necessities of which I speak impose themselves upon me as if they come from elsewhere, and yet, it is inside myself that this transcendence is present, and palpably so."

Moving beyond 2+2=4, I can only imagine the mathematical calculations necessary to know where the space station is at any given moment.  Again quoting the author, "Whatever else we make of numbers, we cannot deny that they are incredibly useful. Mathematical truths apply to the physical universe with amazing consistency, allowing us to make predictions with astonishing accuracy." Some would argue that this is "a happy coincidence," but I believe this is one more evidence of God who not only fine-tuned the universe but gave us the precision of mathematics to help us make sense of this universe.

Not only did He give us these mathematical realities, He also gave (some of) us the ability to identify and use these realities. Many of the advances in society we enjoy today came because of the reliability of mathematical calculations necessary to create everything from space travel to the cell phones we use every day.

Personally, I find a creator God a much better designer of these mathematical truths that blind chance.

Churches on life support

Most of my readers know what I'm about to share, but for anyone new I want to give a backdrop for this post. I am 75 years-old and have been in ministry since 1981. I served one church for twenty years before spending the next 14 years as a minister in our judicatory with direct responsibility for 133 churches. Since retiring from that ministry I have served three churches as their Transitional Pastor and am currently serving the third church. From my experiences I agree 100 percent with what Reggie McNeal wrote in The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church.

The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to churches comes from people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.

The sad thing is that most churches are not aware of this. They realize things have changed, but they still hope that some day people will come to their senses and return to church. All they have to do is to keep doing the same things they did in the 1950s and everything will be great. That's not going to happen. Many churches are living off savings from the money that came from the Builder Generation, a generation that is growing smaller every day, and when that money is gone they can turn out the lights. 

Some churches do realize what is happening, and they are seeking new ways of doing ministry that will be appropriate in their context, but these churches often run into a lot of opposition. The current members like things the way they are. Their needs are being met. Change will just produce conflict, and many church leaders are very conflict-avoidant. Some pastors who see the hand-writing on the wall are counting down the days until retirement. Others are simply leaving the ministry and seeking other employment.

I'm painting a rather dismal picture, but it is a reality for many churches. What is especially sad is that every church is in the midst of a huge mission field. We know from studies that a minimum of 50 percent of every county in the US is unchurched, and in some counties it can be as high as 80-90 percent. Using just the 50 percent figure, we have a potential mission field in the county in which I live of 16,000 people. I seriously doubt that if every church in our county was full that we could hold that many more people in addition to the ones who already attend our services. We need new churches, and we are seeing some being started. But, what we also need are our current churches getting serious about the Great Commission and becoming missionaries to this mission field God has given us.

At some point, our church members must stop thinking only about their own needs and preferences and being to think about the eternal fate of those who will die without Christ. We must become willing to put aside our wants in order to present the gospel to the unchurched in a way that will speak to them. This will often impact our worship styles, our music, our programming, our traditions and many other aspects of church life that many of us take for granted.

One thing that has helped me is to remember that many of our church traditions were once new ideas that were developed to serve a new generation. Those new ideas were often rejected by those in the church at that time, but eventually they prevailed and enabled the church of that time to reach the people of that time. Now, many of those traditions have become a roadblock to reaching a new generation.

In a doctoral class I took Elmer Towns reminded us that every church has created walls that keep people out. Often, these walls were unintentional, but they were built anyway. He challenged us to tear down those walls and begin to build bridges into our communities by which the gospel can be shared. What walls can you identify in your church that keep people out? Are you willing to tear them down. If your church is on life support, you don't have much time.

Sharing pastors

 When I served as a an Area Minister in our judicatory I worked with a number of church pastor search teams. One smaller church in particular was having problems finding a pastor. I asked the chair of the search team if they would consider sharing a pastor with another another church or if they might be even willing to be a satellite church for a church in their association. I'll never forget his response. He said maybe, after he's gone. Years earlier, our Area Minister asked if I would be willing to serve a second church as its pastor. After receiving approval from our deacons I told him I would. The other church was not willing to share a pastor and has spend decades with a revolving door of pastoral leadership.

It's time that smaller churches accept some realities. There is not a long line of pastors waiting to serve your churches. Many seminary trained pastors are not willing to serve in smaller churches for a variety of reasons. Because bivocational pastors are not always available, they may not be available to serve your church either. Smaller churches need to accept the reality that they may struggle to find good pastoral leadership is they are not willing to share such leadership with other churches.

This is hard to accept for the Baptist churches in my tradition, but it is the current reality. Perhaps you were a much larger church in the past, and you were used to having a fully-funded pastor, but that is not the case today. Today, you are a much smaller church, and there is not a long line of pastors eager to serve as pastor of your church. Those who might be willing to serve your church may have no seminary training at all but only a sense of being called by God to serve a church. That was my situation when I became the pastor of a small, rural church, and it worked out well.

But, you may be in a church that demands a seminary education before calling a pastor. In a smaller church, you are highly unlikely to find such a person unless you are willing to share that pastor with another church.

This was the reality facing many churches when I retired as an Area Minister in 2019 and it is even more true today. Many smaller churches are now faced with the problem of finding a pastor in a smaller pool of potential pastors, and are going to have to make some hard choices. In many cases, their best choices might be to share a pastor with another church. 

Do atheists have doubts?

I have just finished reading Surprised by Doubt by Joshua Chatraw and Jack Carson as part of my morning devotions. It is a very good, honest look at how most Christians will struggle with doubts at some time in their lives. The authors draw a lot from the writings of C. S. Lewis and their own experiences of struggling at times to understand God and what He was doing in their lives. Probably most of us have had times in our Christian lives when we thought that "this isn't what I thought being a Christian would be like." At times like those is when doubts can begin to creep in. Certainly, I've had such times in my own life, and I appreciated how the authors addressed those doubts and offered practices to help overcome them.

From that book I began reading Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn't by Gavin Ortlund. I'm still in the early pages, but as the author addresses some of the beliefs of the New Atheists the question came to mind as to whether atheists ever doubt their atheism? Over the years I have read a number of apologetical books that do an excellent job of defending Christian beliefs against those offered by atheists. I am not of a philosophical mind so I am amazed at easily these Christian writers tear apart the alternative theories proposed by the New Atheists such as Dawkins, Krauss, Harris and others. I'm also amazed at how shallow those theories are especially as they are being offered by persons with such high academic standing.

So the question came to me: do these individuals ever begin to question that perhaps they are wrong, that God does exist and is the creator of all the universe? With so much evidence to disprove their points, how could they not have doubts? Perhaps they cannot afford to have doubts. After all, their books are selling well, and that would change if they decided that they were wrong and became Christians. Of course, Jesus challenged that way of thinking when He said, "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? (Mt. 16: 26)"

Psalm 111: 10 tells us "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Being atheists I would assume they have no fear of God, but how can anyone push any possibility of the existence of God out of their minds? Paschal's Wager is that if there is even a 51% possibility that God exists a person would be a fool to reject Him. While the arguments for God cannot absolutely prove the existence of God, they certainly take us well beyond the 51% threshold.

Yes, Christians can have times of doubt in their lives, but most of us will not let those doubts take us away from belief in God. We use those times to grow in our faith and find Christ to be even more real. And, yes atheists can have doubts as well, and sometimes those doubts lead them to faith in Jesus Christ. Among some notable atheists who came to believe in God are Antony Flew, Alister McGrath, Francis Collins and many more.

When you are talking to someone who expresses the belief that there is no God, do not give up on that person. He or she may be struggling with doubts you do not know. If not then, perhaps later. Keep praying for those individuals, keep sharing your faith as opportunities present themselves, and keep believing that God will break through their doubts and lead them to see that Christianity is true.