Sunday July 28, 2002
Psalm 78:1-8
Releasing the NeXt Generation.
World Youth day – it has been amazing to see all these young pilgrims swarming our streets, singing songs of praise on the buses, street cars and subway and attending all the events that celebrate their faith. World youth day has been happening for a number of years now, every second year. We have world youth day because the Pope knows that the future of the church is in the youth – that even a church with such a powerful influence and structure like the Roman Catholic Church is only one generation away from falling apart. All through his papacy, and even as a priest and Bishop, John Paul has placed a strong emphasis on youth, even to the point where now, while his health is failing he has canceled many other things so that he can be well enough to be here for world youth day.
My sense of things is that it is not just the Pope’s dream to see the next Generation built up in the faith, but it is also God’s dream.
Many of you know that we are sending Mary and Julie to The Gathering in Charlottetown this week. The gatherings are a time when Christian leaders and intercessors from all over Canada gather together to seek God for the Church and for the country of Canada. Unlike most conferences they come with no theme speakers or agenda – the agenda is to seek God on what he wants for us in Canada. At the last Gathering, something amazing happened. David Demian writes: “From the first gathering in Whistler in 1995, our hearts’ longing has been to train and release the younger generation. The Lord has led us on a journey to raise up the covering and protection of true spiritual fathers and mothers in our nation, those who would walk with the younger generation and speak into their lives. This journey reached a climax in September 2001, when more than 110 leaders from across Canada entered a covenant to lay down their lives and ministries for one another to see God’s kingdom advanced in Canada.
Soon after the covenant, the Lord spoke to us that now, with a covering of fathers in place, He desires to release the children to walk with the fathers.”
David, who facilitates the Gatherings, believes that it is at the gathering in Charlottetown that God is going to begin to release the next generation to walk with the fathers and mothers.
Many of you may have seen the latest issue of Spread the Fire which is all about releasing the next Generation of Christian leaders.
As an individualistic and self centered culture, we can often have our minds set on today only: that God’s favorite generation is my generation. But God has a larger view that that people will serve him in this generation, and the next and the next.
Psalm 78:1-8
It may be our hope that Jesus will return within our lifetime, but we must work, plan and prepare as if he will wait another 2000 years before he returns. And the question that Jesus has for us in Luke 18:8 is “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
What are we doing to ensure that when Jesus returns, he will find faith in this place? I believe that God is about to do a work among Young adults, but I also know that we cannot just sit back and watch him do it, we need to step into the work that he is doing.
In June 2000 Charisma Magazine published some alarming statistics: “Currently, 88% of America’s 30 Million teenagers don’t go to church. Of the 12% who do, 80% will stop attending before they graduate from High School.”
If this the case, how do we ensure that, as verse 4 says, we are not hiding the powerful works of God from our children, how are we telling them to the next generation in a way that they can hear? How do we reverse the trends and release the next Generation to go further in the Spirit than we have?
The Word for The Boomers
The reason that those of you who are called boomers are called boomers is because you are part of the post-war baby boom, which created the largest generation that North America has ever seen. It also created the powerful youth culture of the Sixties and Seventies. My father and I bracket the Baby Boom. My father just turned 61, and I will be 37 this year. If you are younger than my Dad and older than me, you are a boomer.
It is interesting that when churches started to try to reach the baby boomers in the 80’s, the people in the church that had most difficulty with the change to less formality and contemporary music were not the elderly people – they realized that their time was soon up, and they needed to make room for the youth. The ones with difficulty were the people in their 50’s and 60’s because these people knew that they would have to live with the change for a long time. The strange thing is that now it is the boomers who are in their 50’s!
Just before I went on holidays I was talking with our worship leader, Don Richardson, about worship. He said that he had been playing his music (soft rock) in his home since he was a teenager, but he was 39 years old before he was allowed to play it in worship! As we talked about the emerging generation, he said something very gracious, he said “I hope that my children don’t have to wait that long to hear their music in church”
I’ve told you about the worship conference coming in September, and the one part that I am really excited about is a fellow named Andy Hunter. Andy comes out of the Rave scene in England. He is still a D.J. at secular raves, but he also leads worship using his turn tables. He calls it “worship off the decks.” You might think “How could anyone worship with that type of music?” or, “How could he being such a profane instrument into the Church?” People said the same about Martin Luther when he brought into the church a profane instrument that was used in the pubs for drinking songs. They asked “How can we worship God with such a profane instrument as a Pipe Organ?
Serving
Peter Lyne writes about the struggle of reaching a new generation while retaining the older one. He say that the turning point came when God led them to the story of Isaac and his wife Rebecca. They had been married for 20 years with no children, and getting worried when God spoke to them saying “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated, one people will be stronger than the other, and THE OLDER WILL SERVE THE YOUNGER!” While God was taking the verse out of context to make his point, the concept of the older serving the younger was what saved the Paul Lyne’s church a lot of grief.
You might know leaders who ask people to come and serve them, or come and serve their vision, but Jesus model for leadership is much different. He says:
"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. not so with you, Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
(Matthew 20:25-28)
If we are going to release the next generation, we must learn to serve them
Mentoring, Discipling, Parenting, Apprenticing
When we gain a much more long term view of our faith, we realize that we are going to need to pass the baton at some point.
The apostle Paul was a master at this, he took timothy from a young Christian man and brought him up to the point of being Bishop over the Church at Ephesus – a church that Some estimate at 50,000 members!
I think that we can take a page from Bill Gregory’s book here. Bill used to say to me that he never had a job that he didn’t teach someone else to do. He was a print setter and he apprenticed many young men in that trade, but he didn’t let the principle end there. I was a real blessing to see so many men stand up at Bill’s memorial service to talk about how Bill had been like a father to them. He had apprenticed them in life.
Your faith, and what God has taught you is not your own. You need to find a younger person to share it with, to walk beside them and mentor them in God’s will and way.
This can be scary because it requires you to be connected to God and growing in your own faith. John Wimber tells of how one night early on in his ministry he heard God ask him “how big do you want your church to be? John answered something appropriate like “as big as you would like, Lord” But God said, “Let me put it another way, how many people do you want to be just like you?”
Ouch!
Mentoring requires that we have a depth of character that runs after God and does his will. Mentoring requires the type of character that we do not mind cloning! It is a great challenge. But it is a challenge that we must take up, because if we give up on mentoring others because we don’t make the grade ourselves, then how do we expect them to make the grade? The next Generation is relying on you to set the standard. To lead the way in Godliness, prayer, worship and service. Like Paul commands Timothy, we need to “set an example for the believers in life, in love, in faith and in purity (1 Timothy 4:12)
Let me put it this way – if you are a parent and you great hope is that your children do not turn out like you and you are doing nothing about it, they probable will turn out just like you! But it is not they that need to change first – you need to change to be the type of person that you want them to be!
Releasing
I was talking with my old neighbour Jay this past week and was telling me about his apprentice days as a painter. He said that he worked with a master craftsman for 4 years, and for three of those years he wouldn’t let him pick up a brush! And then he said “I used to work under him, and now I work beside him.”
There is a point in any mentoring relationship where we need to release our student, son, apprentice into their own leadership and ministry.
Youth for Christ did a survey about ten years ago to discover why young people left the church. What they discovered was that the number one reason for leaving was not theological or relational or a lack of faith. It was because that never felt that they were given a chance to offer anything. If we do not release the next generation into ministry and leadership, we will lose them.
This takes some patience and humility to do. This is what John Arnott says, “Young people need an entry point, an opportunity to get involved in ministry that includes opportunities to preach the good news of Jesus Christ and begin to pray for the sick and see healings, signs and wonders happen when they pray. They need to learn as we did, by doing, by trial and error, that God wants to use them and indeed can and will use them in surprisingly powerful ways.”
We must open up our lives so that the young people among us can minister and lead.
Paul tells Timothy to not let anyone look down on him because of his youth. (1Tim 4:12) We need to hear that command from this side and not look down on our youth, but lift them up to minister.
The word for Gen. X and the youth
It is not just that the Baby Boomers need to open up and release the Gen. X and youth of the church, you Gen. Xers need to step up to the plate as well. I want to read to you the Prophetic word that David Damien had to Generation X.
David’s word
Walking Backward, Running Forward
A Prophetic Call to Generation X
From the first gathering in Whistler in 1995, our hearts’ longing has been to train and release the younger generation. The Lord has led us on a journey to raise up the covering and protection of true spiritual fathers and mothers in our nation, those who would walk with the younger generation and speak into their lives. This journey reached a climax in September 2001, when more than 110 leaders from across Canada entered a covenant to lay down their lives and ministries for one another to see God’s kingdom advanced in Canada.
Soon after the covenant, the Lord spoke to us that now, with a covering of fathers in place, He desires to release the children to walk with the fathers. When we asked Him how this should happen, His answer surprised us. “This next generation,” He said, “must learn to walk backward before they run forward.”
Covering the Fathers
Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”
He also said, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.” (Gen. 9:20-27)
Noah’s sin led to nakedness and shame. And to a destiny-shaping test for his sons. When Ham chose to expose his father’s nakedness he unleashed a generational curse upon himself and his lineage. When Shem and Japheth made the effort to walk backward to cover Noah, their act of humility and love brought blessing and enlarged inheritances.
Breaking the Curse
“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” (Mal. 4:5-6)
Since Ham the root sin of uncovering the fathers has turned the hearts of the generations against one another. And held the destinies of people and nations under a curse.
But as the time draws near for the “restoration of all things,” we believe the calling of the next generation, Gen. X, is to reclaim the God-ordained relationship between the fathers and the children that His favour may rest on our land in an unprecedented measure. This is the hour of visitation for Gen. X. Now is the time for them to redeem their destiny.
The Destiny of Gen. X
The enemy has ruthlessly sought to steal, kill and destroy the destiny of Gen. X by using abortion and abuse, both natural and spiritual. They have been a forgotten and fatherless generation.
But God has remembered Gen. X and has placed His seal upon them. Unmistakably. Irrevocably.
They are a generation gifted with a passion for intimate relationship. And when they are released, they will walk with wholehearted abandonment to His will and His ways.
Gen. X has come into the kingdom for such a time as this, to uproot an ancient foundation of the enemy in the church. Young visionaries, the “sons”, struggle to communicate with the older established ministries, the “fathers”. Sensing they are misunderstood, the sons rebel and dishonour the fathers. The fathers, feeling rejected and wounded, abandon and oppose them. The sons, unprotected and uncovered, are attacked and wounded by the enemy.
But in Canada, true fathers and mothers are being set in place, those who long to see the next generation surpass them in anointing, in authority, in every way. Under this covering and by God’s grace, Gen. X will reverse the curse in Canada and build a new foundation. Gen. X will embrace the call to walk backward before running forward. God will grant them a spirit of humility and brokenness to walk in accountability with the fathers. The fathers will release a blessing over them. And Gen. X will run like a fire in a dry land: unrelenting and unquenchable.
It will be the enemy’s worst nightmare.
Bridging the Gap
I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father. (1 John 2:13)
As the apostle John wrote to the early church, we believe the Lord is restoring the generations to walk together with Him. So the position of Gen. X becomes pivotal. They are a link, a bridge across three generations. They are called as sons to the fathers and as fathers to the children. And we believe the Lord is about to release a dual anointing upon them to walk in both these callings with favour, wisdom and grace.
Releasing the Sons
Now is the time, through mutual humility and self-sacrifice, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers.
Now is the time to establish a plumb line in the heavenlies of right relationship between the generations that will impact Canada and the nations of the world.
This summer the Lord is calling the church of Canada to Charlottetown as a next step in our journey toward Canada’s destiny. There God desires to release the sons and daughters to walk with the fathers.
Let us come, old and young, in obedience to fulfill the desires of His heart.
It is so easy for one generation to criticize another – either to just mock, or to blame, but what this word is calling Gen. X Christians to do is to have mercy on the mistakes of the previous generations, and in love, to cover their sins.
! Peter 4:7-8 says “The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.”
I believe that God is about to do a great work among Generation X and the youth of today. But we need to step into that work and be as part of it. Part of doing that is sending Mary and Julie to The gathering – a Baby Boomer, and a Generation Xer!
I’d like to call them up now so we can pray for them.
But I’d also like to send the plate around again, because I believe that by giving money to send these two to Charlottetown, we are saying a prayer to God saying, “Lord what ever you are doing in Canada here today, I want to be part of it, and I want my church to be part of it.” So lets take up that special offering to send these two to Charlottetown.
Prayer for Mary and Julie
