I believe God is raising up a new generation of innovators and risk takers who are creating important new expressions of church, community and mission. These young leaders demonstrate a remarkable level of imagination and initiative. As we race into an increasingly turbulent economic future and a declining church, we will need the creativity not only of these new conspirators but of all young people.
Let me give you a brief glimpse of what God is doing through these people I call New Conspirators. Then I invite you and all your youth to join them in discovering how God can use them to have a kingdom impact in society and church in ways they never imagined before.
Creating Worship with a Difference
In England, Jonny and Jenny Baker planted a new church called Grace in a traditional Anglican church near Heathrow. Older members can come to this Sunday night service, but they can’t mess with it. It belongs to 20- and 30-year-olds. They are particularly creative in fashioning imaginative new expressions of worship that often have a very strong missional focus (freshworship.org).
These innovators, like many young Christians in Britain, were strong supporters of the Jubilee 2000 Campaign, which asked richer nations to forgive the debt of poorer nations so they could invest in education, health care and economic empowerment for their poorest citizens. So they created a worship experience around Jubilee’s theme of Forgiving Third-World Debt.
Picture yourself entering this elegant Anglican sanctuary on a Sunday night with more than 200 young adults. At the front is a huge block and tackle that could be used to support a truck motor, but instead of a truck motor it supports an enormous block of ice. The ice represents the cold hearts of northern Europeans and North Americans who are unwilling to forgive others’ debts. During the liturgy, these young Christians brought their candles and placed them under the block of ice.
Creating Urban Farming with a Difference
Camden House in Camden, N.J., is part of a new monasticism movement. This community is located in one of the most toxic urban communities in America, complete with three Superfund sites; a barren, brown field; a major sewage treatment facility and a waste incinerator.
Andrea, who is a member of this community, has created an educational venture to teach kids in this community to do urban agriculture at Sacred Heart School. She found funding for two 50′-by-20′ greenhouses, where she teaches kids how to start vegetable seedlings to increase food production for their families and community.
One day when Andrea and the kids were walking past the brown field next to their school, they got a creative idea. They created hundreds of balls of compost filled with clover seed, which leaches toxins from the soil. One evening, they bombarded the field with the compost balls. After several good rains, they were delighted to see the once-toxic field awash in a sea of white clover blossoms.
Re-charging the Imagination and Initiative of Youth
What characterizes all these new monastic, missional and emerging conspirators is that they tend to be highly innovative and proactive. When I look at what we do in youth ministry, parenting and even in Christian college education, I seldom see examples that are this innovative and challenging.
Teens in our churches are building their own Web pages and starting their own online businesses; but when they get to youth group, adults tell them when to stand up and sit down. Seldom are they challenged to use their innovative gifts or initiative.
Young people benefit from discipleship education, worship and relational networks we give them, but we must consider re-inventing our youth ministries so we seriously challenge their creativity and initiative.
Challenging the Young at Home
If I could travel back in time to when my two sons were 8 and 11, there is much I would change about my parenting style. Once, trying to be Super Dad, I spent three weeks planning a three-day family outing. No sooner were my sons in the car than my 11-year-old closed his eyes, folded his arms and dared me to make him enjoy the trip.
Looking back, I wish I had challenged my children to use their initiative and creativity to get out the map on their own so they could plan the trip, plan the menu and even buy the food.
How might it impact our young if parents actually invited the imagination and initiative of their kids? That’s what parents once had to do when more Americans lived on farms. It was an economic necessity.
Challenging the Young at College
Several weeks ago, I met with leaders in the School of Business at Northwest University. They asked me for input about starting a new emphasis in social entrepreneurship. I urged them not only to teach students about this important topic but also to help them create and launch new forms of social entrepreneurship while still students.
Many educators unconsciously, mistakenly assume students can’t come up with really significant ideas until they get a little older and get some degrees under their belts.
I told these educators about a venture called Forge that operates like a birthing center. Essentially, it is a training program in missional church plant in Melbourne, Australia. Alan Hirsch and other educators at Forge insist students not only passively learn about new missional church plants but also actively create and launch their own new models. I found this approach resonated with the business faculty.
What might happen if more Christian educators moved beyond passive/receptive learning models to enabling students to create and launch new ventures on their own? What difference could it make in the lives our students not only to create forms of social entrepreneurship but also create business ventures, new expressions of church and community and new forms of urban mission and advocacy while they are still in college?
Challenging the Young in Youth Ministries
What might youth ministries look like if we re-invented them to challenge the creativity and initiative of our youth? Well, they might look like Launch, a ministry of YFC Toronto.
People ages 15-25, who have creative ideas for making a kingdom difference in their communities and world, are invited to bring their ideas to Launch. If the group finds the missional ideas have potential, they assign those who suggested each idea a business mentor to help them write a business start-up plan.
Ted was 19 when he approached Launch after returning from a short-term mission trip to Africa. He noticed while he was in Africa that pastors often had to walk more than two hours one way to visit their members. Ted is a bike enthusiast. When he got back to Toronto, he collected 180 beat-up bikes, reconditioned them and sent them to pastors in the African region he visited. In short, Launch helped Ted create a new non-profit organization called Africycle.
Ted’s second load included 400 bikes. The cargo container in which they were shipped was designed to be a bike repair shop that would provide an income stream for the community to fund economic development and health care.
Is it possible that we underestimate what young people are capable of doing? What might happen in your youth group if you invited the imagination of teens to create new ways to make a difference in their community by helping families struggling with this devastating recession?
What might happen if you challenged your teens to imagine creating a café church as a place to engage their peers who wouldn’t be inclined to come to traditional church gatherings and services?
What might happen if teens were invited to use the Internet to decode the bogus messages about “cool” that are constantly beamed into our lives from the global mall. How might they use arts or advocacy to raise awareness about the growing plight of our poorest neighbors on this planet or global and local sex trafficking? How about daring to invite your youth to re-imagine and re-invent your church?
Unite with the New Conspirators to Re-imagine the Church
One of the major reasons I wrote The New Conspirators is because the church in North America is graying and declining at a rapid rate, much like the church in most Western countries. We are losing the young at a rate we never have seen before.
Meanwhile, the hunger for spirituality among young people is growing. Fortunately, many young church planters are creating new expressions of church that not only engage their peers but those of all ages who are searching for a fresh approach to faith that is much more outwardly focused on addressing the needs of others.
Young innovators don’t always get it right. Sometimes they fall on their face, just like experienced entrepreneurs who launch new businesses. However, their imagination and risk-taking is impacting the lives of people in our communities and our communities of faith. I am convinced we all can learn from them. We all can discover creative ways God can use our mustard seeds more fully to make a difference in turbulent times.
What difference could it make in the lives or our youth if we re-invented youth ministries to invite them to imagine and launch new ways to have a kingdom impact in their communities, congregations and God’s troubled world?
I think we would be surprised, just as Ted’s friends were when he started Africycle. God might use the mustard seeds of our young people, too, in ways we never imagined possible.
