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A Passion for Homeless Christians

The U.K. and the U.S.have much in common: you speak our language, and we watch you speaking it on our TVs.

There are differences, though. We're less demonstrative; politically we lean slightly more to the left; we think soccer is really interesting;...and we are a post- Christian country.

I live in Leeds, which is roughly equivalent to a city the size of Boston. Recently, a local Christian organization that does outreach in high schools did a survey of all the local churches in Leeds to discover how many teenagers attend regularly. The number was just over 300.

That's Not Very Many.

Bad, but not unexpected. Outside the educated middle classes, where Christianity is still respectable, we're meeting kids who are third and fourth generation un-churched. They don't know why churches have crosses on them; they don't know who died on the cross. If they meet Christians (which is rare—church attendance in Leeds is about 4%), they don't even seem to speak the same language.

The church in the U.K. is either enthralled by historic Christianity—a 17th century Bible and liturgy—or, perhaps even worse, in love with the regurgitated worship product that dares call itself contemporary. There was some good music around when our church leaders were kids, but they must have been listening to something else. For kids listening to Limp Bizkit or into the U.K. Garage scene (or even those listening to Britney), Christians live in a totally different universe.

This is a problem.

If you're dealing with kids who've grown up in church, they know that even when the youth group and the evangelistic event are cool, church never will be. They put up with that. Kids with no church background might come along to your youth group, get into what you're saying, and even decide to become Christians. Yet if you take them to church, they often say, "This isn't what I signed up for! This is boring! I don't get it! Byeee!" They don't stay long enough to learn what the gospel is really about, and they're hardened to the message of Jesus.

That was my experience at least, so I started just to disciple kids I knew. Not too many. We started attracting young adults who preferred our grungy style and democratic structures. Then a few young people joined us from other churches—and ones from no previous church. We relocated to the bohemian part of town, where most of the young single people live in our city, and we started finding people who were clearly spiritual, but hated the idea of religion. Just like Paul in Acts 17, we were able to put a name to their unknown God. Wow!

We Became a church.

It hadn't been our intention. We'd tried going to our mother church (one of the few successful churches in the city) and asking them to recognize what God was doing among the young people, Acts 15- style. The leaders were very supportive, asking the young people to lead services and be more involved in leadership, but the church itself revolted. The call ended in tears (quite literally). Looking again at Acts 15, perhaps it was always going to be the case that there would be a Jewish church and a Gentile church. Perhaps.

So I'm now a church leader, working primarily with those who belong to youth culture, whatever their age. We're still very small, and we've learned to love that. We're glad that we're growing slowly so that each person who becomes part of the Revival can be welcomed in as a family member. Because nearly every person in our community wouldn't be in a church if we didn't exist. And that might just include me.