In last week’s post, I said this: “if we want to know God’s will for the church as a body, we need to pray as a community…together…often. If we want to know what God wants, we need to get past our awkwardness about prayer and come together and converse with Him, expecting that He will answer. When He answers, the more of us that are there to hear him together, the more we’ll be on the same page together.”

As I check out the scriptures and actually come to a deeper understanding about prayer, I’m realizing a few important things…

Prayer is awkward – This idea of getting together to speak to an unseen God, listen for His voice, and meditate on His ways, just doesn’t make that much sense from a logical, scientific, humanistic viewpoint. And that is just the point. Prayer seems to be God’s way of drawing ourselves out of our dependence on our own strength, understanding, and comfort and into the precarious position of trusting in Him. If you are at all human, that just doesn’t feel natural. The result is, that in order to get together and seriously pray, we have to get past what feels natural and just do what is asked of us. That takes humility. Humility leads to faith. Faith leads to expectation. Expectation leads to openness. Openness leads to the reality of God. The reality of God leads to a conversation with Him, which leads to the point of our existence. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we have grit our teeth and walk through our awkwardness about gathering to seriously pray. It’s something that we just need to do.

We are a swarm – While God knows and loves us each as individuals, He also sees us as a group. He relates to us and reacts to us as a connected community that shares an identity. Nowhere is the idea of “team” more clear and important than in communities of Jesus-followers. If we want God to speak to us and lead us as a group, we need to approach him as a group, be willing to lose our individuality for a time, and be open to being part of a choir instead of a solo act. I really think that this approach opens some mysteries about how Jesus’ Body is meant to operate. Check out the Bible. This idea is everywhere.

Prayer is a signal to God - when we pray together, it says something important to God. As more and more people join together to pray seriously, we send Him a stronger and stronger message that His Body is ready for something or that something is becoming real to us. In the scriptures there is a guy named Joel who, in the middle of national disaster, calls all the people back to God – not just spiritually, but physically. Here’s what he says:

“Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the temple porch and the altar.” (Joel 2:15-17)

Joel was leaving no one out. He was saying that even newlyweds on their honeymoon (!!) should join old men and children and priests to gather and pray seriously to the Lord. That would send a message! The idea is that such a gathering would give a signal to God that His people believe in Him and that they are all ready for Him to act. That idea is as alive today as it was then, and the spiritual devastation around us is as good a motivation as the people in Joel’s time had.

Do we want to send a serious signal to God about our readiness to live out His mission? If we really are serious about partnering with God in work that seriously matters to Him and to our world, we need to seriously pray. Together. Often.

Lately, I’ve sensed and heard a lot of healthy spiritual unrest and dissatisfaction among twenty-somethings. So much of this restlessness is coming from people who have been around churches for a while and a good deal of their frustration is focused on church as an institution or organization. There seems to be a growing perception of inconsistency between the timeless, Jesus-spoken mission of the Church and the established mindsets and patterns that are distracting churches from that mission. It is creating a vacuum and a quest for a purer, simpler, more original expression of Christian life for the young community of believers.

I encourage this quest, and I think it is our hope for the future Church. If you are an individual, or are part of a group, who is on this quest, please don’t give it up. If you have this burning gut- ache that begs to get back to the heart of Christ and His mission for His people, I want to cheer you on. This sense of holy impatience and anticipation is what revivals are made of. The Church is called to constantly pursue purity and refinement. Please keep these things in mind, as you are a part of this Movement:

Nobody’s perfect, so no body’s perfect
We can’t let this be a cop-out, but we have to know it’s a reality. Whenever two or more gather together in His name, there is imperfection. Our hearts have a built-in desire for the paradise that we were made for and that’s what we groan for deep inside. We’re looking to church as a place to experience this paradise, but it won’t be found in any group of people. Nor will it be totally experienced here in the current chapter of our spiritual lives. We always have to hope for and strive for the best as a body, but we can’t expect total satisfaction…for now.

Prayer is vital
Prayer is simply getting in synch with God. If we want to be personally in line and in relationship with Him we have to pray individually. Better yet, if we want to know God’s will for the church as a body, we need to pray as a community…together…often. If we want to know what God wants, we need to get past our awkwardness about prayer and come together and converse with Him, expecting that He will answer. When He answers, the more of us that are there to hear him together, the more we’ll be on the same page together. Then we will be unified and less involved in convincing others that what we heard from God is for real. There isn’t clearer instruction in the Bible than to pray together, and yet we are doing poorly. Movement together toward revival and refinement probably won’t happen without it. It’s God’s job to transform our minds together. It’s our job to respond together.

The Bible should be the filter
A lot of whacky things have been dreamed up and done in the name of God. Many of them are in practice in the modern church because we’ve haven’t learned how to part with the things that were never meant to be sacred. We all probably have a list of things in mind that have become like a bunch of red tape wrapped around Jesus, and it’s stuck. We know that it shouldn’t be there, but we fear removing it. There are other things that are so obviously missing from our communities - we see them directly addressed in the Bible - but we are afraid to suggest them because people “in charge” seem to be fine without them. When it comes to pursuing a pure expression of the Body of Christ, we have to have the guts to let the Bible be the filter - not the “owner’s manual” (barf) - but the filter. We have to have the courage to blow things up that are distractions from authentic Christian community and we have to have the nerve to pursue things that are sacred to God. An honest look at the Bible will point things out, but we are keepers of those things, for the most part.

The fruit of the spirit matters
We can’t really influence anyone deeply if they don’t know we love, like and respect them. When it comes to communicating our criticisms and suggestions for the Church, it has to be wrapped in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Mean-spirited, judgmental, condescending people usually only meet resistance and defensiveness. Our message will be heard best when it is comes in the form of a respectful conversation with people who know our hearts and who know we like them and are committed to them. If we want to have influence, it needs to ride in on the profound humility and selflessness that Jesus showed.

There will be friction
When Jesus talked about old wineskins and new wine not being compatible, he wasn’t just spouting a clever analogy. His metaphor is meant to point out a practical reality and to serve as a heads-up to anyone who has enough guts to call people back to God. Pollster George Barna has predicted that young adults will imagine and introduce all kinds of new and relevant expressions of faith into the church. AND, he predicts that as that happens, it will cause even more friction and distance between the older generations and this new one. The current generation of twenty-somethings are foreigners to the established world. Your mindset, needs, orientation, and ways of expression aren’t just a product of your stage in life. The world that birthed you had a cultural earthquake and you ended up a refuge in someone else’s world. People of previous generations don’t think like you and don’t know how to take you. Honestly, they aren’t quite sure what to do with you. And yet, there is great hope in this generation. This age has been compared culturally to the time right after Jesus ascended, when people were ripe to hear the untainted Good News. Your generation, with your questioning, and scaling down, and sobering up is poised to be bearers of that untainted Good News. But there will be trouble as older generations will not comprehend your ways and will often take your call for change personally. Just realize that this is part of the mission field you’ve been dropped in, and realize that other generations are not your enemy, but you may frustrate one another.

This means you
If God has placed a spiritual uneasiness inside of you that makes you feel like something just isn’t right when you encounter church, He has issued a personal call to you. He has not called you to complain, snipe, or cherry-pick. He has not called you to dropout or give-up. He has called you to jump into the current of the historic stream of believers who have given themselves for the Gospel. The first bend in this river might be to help nurture the Church back to relevance and purpose, but it is headed out to the sea of people in this world awaiting the love and grace of believers who have been invited to help change, renew and save them. God will empower you and equip you for this role, but He will not force you into it. Participation in this change is voluntary. You can sit out, but you shouldn’t and you won’t want to. BUT…God leaves it up to you to jump in. He won’t push you or pull you in. I hope you’re ready to jump together!

Here are some things I’m learning as I build relationships with, and coax honesty out of, twenty-somethings. I invite you to add to, contend with and converse on these ideas:

1. There is a lot of despair among them. A general sense of insecurity, jadedness and instability can often lead to seasons of lonely despair that robs hope and joy. This generation has only known a life of terrorism, corporate scandal, governmental paralysis, disingenuous Christianity and bad-news-overload. They need to find places of stability, people of honesty, stories of perseverance, and times of celebration to remind them that good exists in the world and that purposeful living is worth pursuing.

2. Their menu of life-options is overwhelming. Because of the global awareness that exists, and due to our cultural obsession with being busy and entertained, the options for living out the moments of life are so numerous they are almost paralyzing. Choices for how to spend the evening, how to invest energy and passion, and how to choose an occupation, fly directly at this generation like a flock of birds. Catching just one or two is so tough that it is almost easier to not try to catch any at all. Too many choices can end up in a temptation to shut down or jump off.

3. Commitment is tough for them. See Points #1 and #2. This is not a lazy or ambivalent generation, but feelings of hopelessness blended with impossibly numerous life-options have made commitment overwhelming and frightening. Questions that are asked internally are “By committing to one option, what am I missing from another option?” or “Will I commit to this just to be let down?” or “What if I fail in my part of the commitment?” A softer approach to commitment might need to be employed where young adults are allowed to be involved in relationships, organizations and initiatives for longer periods of time, at lower levels, before commitment is invited.

4. Christian philosophies and perspectives are shifting. The conventions of evangelicalism are not being automatically embraced by this generation. The traditional stands on the interminglings of Christianity with corporatism, environmentalism, patriotism, ethics, morality, finances and globalism are being challenged. This “Why” Generation engages in a healthy questioning of past interpretations of Christian thought, lifestyle and expression and is trying to look through others’ interpretations to adopt those that are pure and based on the original as they understand scripture. A greener, more relational, more global, less legalistic, more expressive, less patriotic, more organic Christian culture is emerging.

5. They want to be directly involved in making a difference. There is a strong desire to be able to see tangible results of their giving and to be hands-on in serving. Right or wrong, there is a strong desire to give money and time to efforts that allow them to connect with those that are being served, and with the results that occur as a result of their giving. Groups and causes that are best at depicting the stories and realities of the people in need of support are having the most success with this generation. Those causes that use a “give-and-trust-us-to-know-what-to-do-with-your-money” aren’t cutting it with this group. This includes many local church budgets wherein a clear giving-to-results path is not seen in a tangible way.

6. They see the world as a global community. Because of the access to the whole world through technology, media, and travel, the world has become much smaller. Events, plights and movements anywhere in the world are as real as those going on next door. Issues with worldwide or continental impact get more attention than in the past. See points #4 and #5. Young adults have real propensities to help those in need who are beyond the local church/civic community. World issues and events are occupying a much higher proportion of young adults’ conversation and concern.

7. Leadership is defined differently. The hierarchical authoritative leadership forms have lost much relevance with young adults. First, effective leadership is seen as coming from within a group, not from above it. Leadership is more of the “team captain” model than the “manager” model. Credibility and authority are earned by doing and by being among the group instead of by education and title. Leaders are often seen as those who have an idea or calling and that gather a team for a temporary season. This is in contrast with the more traditional view that leaders can lead anything and that they can be assigned to initiatives, callings or organizations purely because they are leaders. This really affects the way leaders are identified, mentored, sustained, supported etc.

8. They need to be parented. Young-adulthood is the new adolescence. This group has had a lot handed to them as far as material things, but they are lacking the parental stability and involvement that used to be taken for granted. They have been very insulated, in many ways, from the realities of the world, delaying their coming-of-age to early to mid-twenties. As they are jumping into the real world, they need parental figures to help them with the all of the details and pit-falls.

9. They want to be passionate about something. This generation is looking to invest all of themselves into a purpose that is worthy of every part of them. They are hesitant to open themselves to something that appears to be benign or that only engages a part of their being. The true message and purpose of Christ holds appeal for this generation beyond any we’ve seen in our Modern history. The challenge is that young adults have to see that followers of Christ believe what they espouse and are willing to dive headfirst into the Movement. This means that, where Christianity seems passive, inert, or compartmentalized, young adults will probably either seek other passions or will adopt the inertia they see around them. This is a great reason for any community of Christians to check their own calling and passions and expressions to see if they can live them out with authenticity (See Point #4).