I have this boy in my heart. He’s been around for almost twelve years now and has completely changed my life. Our second son Jacob Allan Mark joined our family on May 29^th 2000. Three minutes into our seventh anniversary and weighing in at a whopping 10lbs 7oz. Nothing about this boy was tiny and delicate. From the moment he arrived he was a massive presence in our lives. As a baby he was an interesting paradox. His entry into the world was our only ‘perfect’ birth experience despite his rather large size. Just us and our midwives, no medication, no trauma and delivered up onto my chest where he took his first breath in my arms. Noel took a picture of Jacob and I at this moment and it is one of my most cherished memories captured on film. He absolutely refused to use a soother but found his thumb within 24 hours of life. Short of amputation we were not going to break this preference. He was sensitive to tone of voice and would get upset if he thought someone else was upset. He loved to snuggle, still does in fact for which I am thankful. Jacob was a wonderful baby and was loved completely by his big brother and his family.

As he got older he started to become his own unique person. He could entertain himself easily and seemed happy yet didn’t smile for just anyone. His imagination was in overdrive and he could make himself laugh or freak himself out very easily. The terrible two’s were indeed terrible and lasted a looooong time. He became frustrated easily if we couldn’t understand what he wanted to say to us and we spent many days with him laying on the floor at our feet having a little hissy fit. It was fun. We got a whole new lesson in parenting that we hadn’t learned with our easy going first born. God gives you what you need and apparently we needed to learn how to parent ourselves. To me it seemed that Jacob had gotten the worst our genetics had to offer. The stubborn behaviour and insecurity of his mother and the temper of his father. Great combo. I spent many hours in prayer to God asking for guidance in how to parent this boy and praying for God to more than make up for our shortcomings.

Jacob is our deep thinker and our old soul with a great sense of humour mixed in. His school teachers and Sunday school teachers would sometimes come up to us laughing to say they had a Jacob story. I always had to brace myself because I never knew what he was going to come up with. He told his grade two teacher one day that his underwear were too tight so the teacher nicely asked if I could buy him some new ones since Jacob found this problem very distracting. Who tells their teacher this and not their mother? He asked a lady at church one day if she was old and then quickly reassured her that he liked old people. Manners and decorum are sometimes beyond Jacob even now. It’s a work in progress like most things related to child rearing.

One Sunday on the way to church he was unusually quiet for a few minutes and then asked, “is it true that people are always smiling on the inside?”  Noel replied that some people have difficult circumstances and aren’t smiling inside or out. “No,” Jacob corrected, “I mean underneath their skin.  Their skulls.  Are their skulls always smiling?  You can see a skull’s teeth all the time.”  These are the thoughts that arrest Jacob.

I love to hear Jacob pray. All our boys say a prayer that I taught them when they were very young so they know it by heart but I always try to get them thinking about what they want to say to God each day. I want them to know that God wants to hear what is on their hearts and that changes every day so their prayers are going to be different each day. Jacob does this a little better than the other boys. He prays for what he is dealing with and how he is feeling. When he says thank you for my blessings, he names them and they are heart felt. Jacob is wise beyond his years and as we celebrated his baptism he was praying that he would learn more and more about Jesus as he got older. He thanked God that he had the opportunity to be baptized and that he grew up with a mommy and daddy that knew Jesus so that he could be taught about God from the time he was a baby. I am frequently impressed with Jacob’s heart. He wants to serve God. All the time his dad and I spent in prayer for this complex boy has been time well spent with God. He has heard our prayers and I can just catch a glimpse of the potential in Jacob. I can’t wait to see what he does with his life. Jacob, my terrific, responsible, sensitive, funny, and emotional boy you make my life and I’m a blessed mommy simply because I have you.

• Session #1
• Session #2
• Session #3

I was encouraged this week to read that Harold Camping publicly apologized for his, “End of the world” predictions he made last year. (At the time I wrote about it here.) Using the Family Radio Network that his church owns, he famously guaranteed that Jesus would return on May 21st, 2011. The Media had a field day with Camping’s ultra conservative group and when the Lord didn’t return, Camping, his group, and believers in general all looked foolish. Camping revised his prediction for later in the year and that failed too.

This month Camping made a new announcement that he has no plans, ever again, to predict the day of God’s Judgment. He also issued an apology to listeners, admitting that he was wrong.
“We have learned the very painful lesson that all of creation is in God’s hands and He will end time in His time, not ours!” The full statement on Family Radio’s website can be read here. “We humbly recognize that God may not tell His people the date when Christ will return, any more than He tells anyone the date they will die physically… But we now realize that those people who were calling our attention to the Bible’s statement that ‘of that day and hour knoweth no man’ (Matthew 24:36 & Mark 13:32), were right in their understanding of those verses and Family Radio was wrong.”

“Even as God used sinful Balaam to accomplish His purposes, so He used our sin to accomplish His purpose of making the whole world acquainted with the Bible,” Camping says.  Though they were wrong, their doomsday predictions directed the world’s attention to the Bible and spurred discussions about the Scriptures among people who might have never heard about Christ, they noted. Still, that does not excuse them, Family Radio acknowledged. “We tremble before God as we humbly ask Him for forgiveness for making that sinful statement. We are so thankful that God is so loving that He will forgive even this sin.”

I was taken aback by this show of humility and contrition.  I have been wrong about tons of things but I don’t think I have ever been bold enough to admit it quite like that, and now that I’ve read Camping’s statement, I think I could be a bit more humble in the way I respond to people I don’t agree with.  Regardless of your stance on any given issue, recognizing your place before the God of the Universe is never a bad idea.  I do respect that.

Author Neil Postman warned that media (especially social media) trains us to be more and more likely to talk about issues and less and less likely to do anything about them. The KONY 2012 video is the latest (and not the last) example of this. Lots of well meaning people have watched and posted the video and genuinely want to make a difference but don’t let your social media experience fool you. Reposting is not doing something about the issue! It’s still talk.

Invisible Children, the non-profit that produced the video is likely not the best way to make a difference for children who are in danger of being exploited in Africa. If you haven’t read, you will soon hear about all the ways that Invisible Children supports the Ugandan Government’s Army and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army who are themselves the targets of accusations of systemic rape and looting. According to their public financial statements Invisible Children only directed 35% of their donation revenue in 2011 toward actual children in Uganda. If you do your homework you’ll find that Invisible Children’s primary purpose is to promote their KONY 2012 campaign to raise American political angst so that the next government will support the use of American Special forces in Uganda. Charity Navigator rates their accountability at 2 out of 4 stars because they lack an external audit committee.  See here for Invisible Children’s response to this criticism.

People like “awareness” and don’t get me wrong, awareness is vital. But the important part comes next. Too often nothing follows the awareness.

Social media makes it too easy to be “aware” of something, and be doing nothing. The big problem is that you can be aware of hundreds of issues but only have time to actually be doing something about one or two issues.  So you need to be very selective about what you choose to be “aware of”.   You owe it to yourself and to God to make very few life-long commitments.  The ones you do make, you need to be ready to go to the wall for.  Don’t over commit or you risk destroying yourself and dishonouring the causes you care about.

If you really want to get involved in KONY 2012 then go ahead and post it, but you better also be getting the action kit (and if you don’t know what the action kit is then you didn’t watch the whole 27 minutes; another reason not to post the video). Make plans to be part of the day of action on April 20, 2012 but don’t repost the video if you’re just going to repost it and get an emotion buzz off of getting upset about child trafficking and then do nothing.

If the sex trade or child trafficking is something you want to do something about then get connected with these charities:

• American Medical and Research Foundation: Better Health for Africa (http://www.amrefusa.org)
• Africare (http://www.africare.org)
• Children of the Nations (http://www.cotni.org)
• Compassion International (http://www.compassion.ca)

Or if you live in the Niagara Region, volunteer or donate toward the work of Hannah House in Niagara Falls or Elisha House in Welland. It is a biblically based, maternity home that shelters vulnerable adolescent mothers.  Teen moms who have been abandoned or alienated by their own families have no where else to live while they are preparing to have a baby. They are alone and pregnant and are at tremendous risk of being exploited by pimps or being abducted themselves.

We need to work against the natural inclination of the social media we use and be very, very selective about the causes we care about, and then we need to be very, very diligent in following through with the commitments we claim to have on our facebook status.

1.  Facebook is not the Product; You Are

Every time I read that, “Facebook is going to start charging users”  it makes me laugh.  Facebook is never going to charge you to use its platform.  Here’s why: In 2011 Facebook had a total revenue of 3.7 billion dollars, (see this report) which represented a billion dollar profit.  With about 480 million users that works out to be $4.39 per user.  You are worth $4.39 to Facebook, and the question is why?  It’s because your attention is worth $4.39 to their customers, the advertisers.  You and I are being sold to Facebook and we don’t even realize it.  Now, I’m not saying, “Don’t use Facebook.”  What I am saying, however, is that you need to understand what Facebook is or it will be dangerous for you to use it.

2.  People Massively Misunderstand What Facebook Is

Timelines, and an increased level of advertising were both introduced while I was gone and like every time there are changes to Facebook, people complained.   Most people groused and complained for a while and then just continued as they were.  Part of the reason almost nobody left Facebook is that, for the more compulsive users, Facebook represents something for them that they aren’t willing or able to get anywhere else.

Author Sherry Turkle, in her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, writes that Facebook has become for most of its younger users an “Identity Workshop.”  People make statements and leave comments trying to craft a fiction that they would like to make true. Jaron Lanier writes in his book You Are Not A Gadget on p. 71

“The most effective … Facebook users … tend their doppelgangers fastidiously. They … manage off hand remarks and track candid snapshots at parties as carefully as a politician.  Insincerity is rewarded, while sincerity creates a lifelong taint.  Certainly some version of this principle existed in the lives of teenagers before the web came along, but not with such unyielding clinical precision.”

On Facebook I will tell you that,” I am up ten times a night,” because I want to be the poor frazzled person who is up ten times a month.  I want you to back up this image by saying, “sorry to hear that.  Hope things get better tonight!”  Or I will make the smart aleck comment and try to get people to comment because I want to be seen as the smart aleck guy with the witty one-liners.  We are constantly trying to reinforce the preferred notion of our self and we need constant feedback to do it.

The problem comes when this pattern becomes compulsive (which it does in more than 10 % of the cases).  If I constantly need that feedback, my identity fails to have integrity.  I need feedback, therefore I need Facebook to know who I am.  Without it I wouldn’t have any identity at all!

That is where the danger lies.  I think every Facebook user out to decide how they use Facebook rather than have it rule them.  This can either come in the form of a specific time you will check it (e.g. only after the kids are in bed for no more than one hour), it could also be in the form of a fast (no Facebook time for Lent).

In order to reinforce your identity apart from Facebook it is vital that you have an identity apart from Facebook! So be proactive about your social media use instead of being reactive. Choose your level of engagement and stick too it.  P.S.  It is a tremendous time waster.  I finished a thesis by not using it for two months.  Imagine what you could accomplish!

The Guide is the fifth book of ‘wisdom’ from Rick and Bubba and has a pretty formulaic approach.  Two or three sassy sardonic stories written for amusement and then a heartwarming tale that brings some ‘biblical teaching’ to light.  When put together however it reads in an uneven way that makes it difficult to know when you should take them seriously.  It is not the kind of book that can be read at lenght since guy humour of this kind gets old quick.  It can only be read in short doses.

The biblical wisdom is light and fluffy and frankly hard to take seriously when it is surrounded by sarcastic stories where this same wisdom is not being followed very closely.  I know I am being a little harsh here but since I don’t think, “taking your wife to a sporting goods store,” is an ideal date night (p. 180) I can tell this book hasn’t been written for me.

A book full of funny stories? Sort of.  A book full of guidance for marriage? Definitely not.

Canadian church leaders however do not make a regular practice of noticing or understanding the differences between the Canadian church experience and that of our sister congregations in the US.  While similarities exist, particularly between the Northern states and Canada, church growth and evangelism literature typically addresses the needs of the Southern churches (by nature of their larger size) and do not address the unique Canadian cultural experience.  Most writers within our brotherhood and those from other church fellowships as well seem to operate on the assumption that what’s good for the “Canadian” goose is good for the “American” gander but the needs of the churches in the two countries are very different.

Recent research shows that the Canadian Evangelical experience is different than that of the United States, especially when it comes to the attendance patterns of young adults. Reginald Bibby is a Canadian ethnographer who is the authority on the statistical study of church and faith in Canada.  In his book, The Emerging Millennials: How Canada’s Newest Generation is Responding to Change and Choice, he reveals that over the past twenty-seven years the proportion of weekly worship attenders among teens and young adults (ages 13-19) has remained relatively stable, hovering around 21%.  The big change has been in casual attenders.  In 1984 49% of responders to Bibby’s study said they attended a worship service occasionally (once or more a month but less than weekly).  That number has fallen to 32% in 2008 while those who said that they never attend worship services has risen from 28% in 1984 to 47%  in 2008.  (Bibby, The Emerging Millennials, p. 178)

What does this mean?  It means that in Canada there are fewer and fewer teens who are casual attenders at worship services.  I think most leaders within churches of Christ in Canada would agree that the number of regular attenders have remained relatively stable but casual attenders are vanishing. What about in the United States? Have they found the same trend there?

Weekly church attendance for teens in the United States has remained relatively static since 1990.   The percentage of Twelfth Grade students who attend weekly worship services has remained around 30% for the past 20 years. (Child Trends (2011). Religious Service Attendance)  Christian Smith is a researcher in the United States who has studied the intersection of faith, religion and youth culture for almost 30 years.  He reports in the Journal For the Scientific Study of Religion that from 1976 – 1996 the percentage of twelfth grade students who were regular worship attenders fell slightly from 40% to 32% while casual attenders rose from 47% to 51%.  Twelfth grade students who never attend worship services rose from 12% to 16% during the same time frame.  (Journal For The Scientific Study of Religion (1996). Mapping American Adolescent Religious Participation) Later, in his book, Soul Searching he reports in 2003 that 25% of teens ages 13-17 attend worship services once a week or more.  45% of teens attend worship casually while only 29% report that they never attend a worship service (from the National Survey of Youth and Religion 2002-3).  More teens in the United States are casual or regular attenders than in Canada and subsequently there are far fewer teens who report never attending church.

Casual church attenders in Canada are becoming extinct while they remain a large proportion of teen populations in the US. This distinction becomes significant when you consider large scale approaches to evangelism.  An evangelistic strategy that appeals to a casual church attender is going to have far less traction in Canada (and the Northern US) than it will in the south.  In Canada there are far fewer casual attenders to appeal to.  Whether your approach is more relevant sermon topics, more vibrant worship, a more active children’s ministry or any other attractional growth model, they assume that there are people out there that will be interested in a better sermon, better kids classes, better young married’s ministry.  The statistics are telling us that in Canada there are fewer and fewer people out there to be appealed to.  Almost 50% of young people in Canada never attend a worship service anywhere.  An appeal to them that draws on positive experiences of the past will get nowhere.

Whether you are convinced by the statistics or not, I think we can all agree that in order to be evangelistically successful we need to know our immediate context better than we presently do.  For those of us who live in Canada, we need to be aware of our country’s unique cultural perspective.  Wherever you live, your church family needs to be familiar with the needs in your specific community and the potential partners in ministry that are already there.  A propositional approach to evangelism trades on the assumption that basic foundational principles of Biblical authority, and Christian theology are in place.  I think we all know that in Canada that isn’t true.

An evangelistic approach that is based on service to our community has the greatest chance of reaching people for Jesus because it is the clearest demonstration of God’s nature we can give to a generation of people who have little or no Biblical literacy.  Serving the needs of others, without any expectation of getting some benefit in response is the most Christ-like think we can do.  Selfless service does not produce immediate results, but it begins a relationship that can one day produce a space where the gospel can be shared.

More attractive and more efficient presentations of Gospel truth will come and go but in a country of increasing religious polarity, our communities need servant hands and servant hearts to act out the gospel, before they will be willing or able to hear someone present it.

In studies conducted from 1997 – 2010 the Barna group have found a 43% drop off between the teen years and early adult years in terms of church engagement (p. 22). Sixty percent of teens ages 13-17 participate in worship, youth groups, small groups or Sunday school but that number falls to less than forty percent of young adults ages 18-29. “The problem is not that this generation has been less churched than children and teens before them,“ says Kinnaman.  Eighty percent of these same young adults, “remember attending Sunday school or some other religious training consistently before the age of twelve, though their participation in the teen years was less frequent.  Seventy percent of Americans recall going to Sunday school at least once a month (p. 23).  While Canadian authors like Reginald Bibby might say that the figures in Canada are different, Kinnaman’s conclusions ring true: Teenagers are some of the most religiously active people, and twenty-somethings are the least religiously active.  Why?

Skeptics might suggest that this has always been the case. “People wander away from church in their twenties and come back in their thirties when they have children.”  Kinnaman warns however that there are a number of variables that make this generation’s rejection of church something different.  Young adults (called Mosaics in sociological research) are adapting to a radical shift in the cultural, technological landscape but the truth is we all are.  None of us are untouched by the arrival of the Internet, mobile computing and the digital age.  The difference is that this generation of young adults is growing up in a radically different environment than any of us did.  Mosaics are forming values and habits in a world where the way relationships are formed and the way wisdom is evaluated is radically different.  “It’s not that [Mosaics] aren’t listening; it’s that they can’t understand what we are saying.” (p. 39)

Kinnaman summarizes that young adults who drop out of involvement with church fall into three different groups: Nomads (adults who still describe themselves as Christian but are spiritually experimenting), Prodigals (those who leave the faith and self-describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or an adherent to some other faith), and Exiles (those who describe themselves as Christian but can’t see how their faith connects with the practices of their current church family).

Nomads make up 40% (p. 63) of young adult drop-outs.  They are not angry or hostile toward faith.  In fact, a quarter of this group say they may be willing to return to church life later, but it is not particularly urgent right now. While Nomads drop in and out of church services and bounce from active to inactive status, the Prodigal is holding fast to a “no faith” or a different faith confession.  Prodigals are much less common than Nomads (about four times less) (p. 68) and they motivated by matters of either the head or the heart.  Prodigals either find faith intellectually untenable, or they have deeply felt emotional wounds related to their faith.  They express bitterness and resentment for many years after leaving the fold.

Exiles are the largest group of drop-outs, making up more than half of the group but they are hard to statistically isolate. Kinnaman finds the best way to understand this group is to look at their attitudes.  They are largely identified but their strong desire to make a difference in the world.  Exiles are disillusioned when churches work at clearly separating themselves from the world.  Exiles want their faith to matter and they sense God is at work outside the church building.  That is not to say that they are all against the church as an institution, but they will not be satisfied with a church experience that only happens during scheduled times.  23% of Christian adults strongly agreed with the statement, “I want to do more than get together once a week for worship.” (p. 79)

Kinnaman concludes that we need a new imagination for how we look at the generation gap.  He says we might, “assume that the church is a collection of separate generations with the older generation given the responsibility of raising young people.” (p. 202) But instead he says there is a much bigger reality.  “A generation is every living person who is fulfilling God’s purposes.” (p. 203) Everyone that is part of your church at any one particular time is all part of one generation!  Rather than thinking that the church exists to prepare the next generation to fulfill God’s purposes, we should think of the church as a partnership of generations fulfilling God’s purposes together in our own time.  We’re all part of the same generation!

While Prodigals are truly gone and may not come back, Nomads and Exiles are willing to talk.  They are willing to partner with us in ministry.  Are we willing to listen?  We will give them opportunities to lead? To serve?

Kinnaman concludes that what we have here is a discipling problem. There are no quick fixes because discipleship is not a mass production process.  This is why we are failing.  Most of our approaches at discipling and spiritual growth operate on the assumption we set up an infrastructure and then lead people through it and they come out the other side spiritually formed. That simply isn’t true.  Studies show again and again that just as many long-time church attenders cheat on their taxes, and commit adultery and so on.  Being in church programs does not make a person grow spiritually.

On the other hand, a struggling church, no matter how small is always ready to be a place where mentoring and discipling can happen.  All you need are two people who are both humble enough to learn from each other. The younger believer needs an older believer, “to help them identify the voice of God, just as Samuel needed Eli to help him know God was calling him. “ (p. 94) Helping in this way, “requires that we recognize, as Eli did, that God is speaking to the younger generation.” (p. 94) Likewise, more experienced believers need to realize that they also have something to learn from younger believers.

Kinnaman concludes his book with fifty ideas (p. 213 – 241) for finding a missing generation. I think you will find that some of these ideas might work, and some might not, but all of them are worthy of consideration.  You Lost Me is a challenging read that places a prophetic call on the reader’s heart and at the same time gives some practical direction and some hope for a way forward for the church.

Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available at your favourite bookseller from Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

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Martin Luther, in his Lecture on Galatians says,  “The truth of the gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine. Most necessary is that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.” Luther was well known for theatrically overstated opinions.  I find this writing style encouraging, and tend to emulate it!  What I think is cool is that Luther is saying that the Gospel is something that we often forget and need to be constantly reminded of.  The Gospel is not just the basics of Christianity that you learn once, master, and then move on.  A believer returns again and again to the truth of the gospel.  It never gets old.

You are never done learning about the Gospel.  It is a topic that will continually tap out our capacity to comprehend.  You will never fully understand who Jesus is, what he has done and how Jesus changes our priorities for everything.  Understanding Jesus as the anointed Messiah, son of God and Lord changes everything!

In light of that fact: you don’t have marriage problems, money problems, and health problems. You have Gospel problems that have implications to your marriage, your money, your health and so on. Do you understand what I’m trying to say here?

The Gospel is that Jesus Christ is the anointed one, the Messiah who takes away the sin of the world.  Jesus, at great cost to himself took your sins and mine and paid the penalty for all of them and suffered the penalty of death.  He then overcame death and now reigns as King over everything.  In doing so he granted his perfect sinless life to us, so that God would find satisfaction in Him.  We are invited to embrace this salvation, be baptized into a newness of life and live in submission to the rule of Christ in our lives.  So here is what it looks like:

Your marriage problems are problems, I don’t want to diminish the reality of the struggles we all have but they are fundamentally an outworking of a failure to understand or apply the gospel.  Let’s say you keep having the same fight with your spouse. (hypothetically of course)  She says that you don’t consult her when planning events.  You just commit to projects or commit to other people without ever considering her wishes or if she is able to accommodate these new demands.  At that moment, when you are saying, ‘yes’ to these other people you are revealing something about what is ultimately most important to you.  At that moment, other people’s approval is what is giving you identity. Other people’s approval is giving you ultimate fulfillment.  Since other people’s approval is the most important thing to you, you will sacrifice everything in order to earn that: your health, marriage, family, money, everything!

The gospel on the other hand gives you an identity as a person loved by God who serves God not to earn standing with God but as a response to God’s service to us.  As I embrace the meaning of the gospel in my marriage I will respond to requests for my time differently, for now I do not earn God’s approval, nor do I earn my own value.  Instead I respond in light of the fact that I have been redeemed.  In light of the Gospel I will come to an identity as a ministering person that has responsible limits to what I can physically do.  I will still say yes to some things and no to others, but the gospel causes me to dethrone my approval idol and put Jesus in it’s place.

I know this to be true but I need to be reminded of it every day.