Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s)
A friend of ours who currently resides in Las Vegas, NV has been on an interesting journey over the past several years. He has chronicled a bit of that for a class he was teaching at a mid-western Bible college. He shared that paper with us when we were out there in October last year, and I asked him if I could share it with you. He happily agreed.
It is written in a few parts, so as to not overwhelm you I will post it in those parts. Perhaps I will even comment in between. Perhaps not. But with our move towards simpler life these days, and some really well spoken (written) thoughts by Greg, it just seemed the right time to post these.
Enjoy! And feel free to comment as well. More to come.
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Keeping Church Simple
By Greg Hubbard
PART I: THE JOURNEY TOWARD A SIMPLE UNDERSTANDING OF CHURCH
My story from the past fifteen years is so intertwined with my beliefs about church that I could not begin to separate one from the other. So, I am going to weave my story and my convictions about church together as I retrace fifteen years of my life for you.
In 1989 I made a last minute decision to go to Cincinnati Bible College & Seminary (CBC&S) to prepare for ministry of some sort. I made this decision based on the feeling I had after taking two short-term mission trips during high school. One trip was to the Caribbean nation of Haiti, the other to the Central American nation of Honduras. On the return flights home from each of those trips, I had an overwhelming sense that for the first time in my life I had been part of something that really mattered. This was a confusing thought, though, because I knew on the one hand that I was not gifted to be a third-world missionary. I also knew, on the other hand, that I was not gifted to be a pastor in the traditional American sense of the word. Yet I felt a sense of longing to prepare for ministry.
Out of blind obedience, I decided to scrap my college and career plans. I changed my plans three weeks before my first semester of college was to begin, and enrolled in CBC&S instead of Indiana University.
During my four years of undergraduate study at CBC&S I began to put words to something I had sensed for awhile: “Something was wrong with the church in North America.” Partially motivated out of youthful rebellion, yet partially motivated by a sincere notion that something wasn’t right, I set out to figure out and, hopefully, remedy what was wrong. Little did I know where that journey would lead me over the subsequent fifteen years!
I first suspected that the problem with the church was a generational problem.
During my undergraduate years at CBC&S, I began to study church growth and church planting. These subjects were not part of the mainstream curriculum of my conservative college, but they were creeping into the curriculum through some more progressive-thinking professors. I learned that the church in North America was experiencing most of its numerical growth from rapidly-growing suburban mega-churches and from new church plants. Much of the material I studied concerning mega-churches and new church plants dealt with a specific target audience: the Baby Boomer Generation (those born roughly between 1946 and 1964).
I was fascinated by mega-churches, new church planting, and the corresponding demographics of the Baby Boomers. These theories were combining two areas I had previously seen as distinct: world missions and pastoral ministry. The lines were now being blurred. I began to feel like I had found my unique niche for ministry.
It all made sense except for one glaring inconsistency: I was not a Baby Boomer! I was born in 1970. As I studied the demographics of the Boomers, I realized that I was not studying the demographics of myself or of my high school friends. We were very different. Only later would I learn the labels for our generation.
Still, the whole idea of a church targeting a generation with the gospel was exciting to me at that point in my journey. As I learned more about my own generation, I became aware of the longing I had within me to see my generation come to know Christ in a real and relevant way. I began to have a heart for my own high school friends.
All of this led me to believe that the problem I sensed with the church was directly related to generational issues. The North American church had just begun to understand the Baby Boomer generation. This understanding led to massive growth in mega-churches and new church plants. I wondered what might happen if the North American church began to really understand my generation. I was excited by the possibilities. After attending a nation-wide, cross-denominational conference with two hundred other people who were wondering the same thing, I decided to get serious. I decided to devote my life to seeing the church reach my generation for Christ.
Only later would I realize that this generational issue was not the core problem of the North American church. Instead, this generational issue would turn out to be the first piece to a puzzle that I would have to put together in order to get to the core what was wrong with the church.
Supplemental Readings:
• Psalm 78:1-4
• Jesus for a New Generation by Kevin Graham Ford (InterVarsity 1995)
• 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail, by Neil Howe & Bill Strauss (Vintage Books 1993)