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Who Stole My Rule Book? How the World Evolved When No One Was Looking

To some it seems like a world gone crazy—a world where truth doesn't mean what it used to and values are judged on the basis of the latest trend. It's a society where individualism is idealized, where it's okay to be what you want to be, and where the only unforgivable sin is to be intolerant of somebody else's beliefs. There are no big stories that explain the meaning of life anymore. Anyone who tries to tell the Christian one is dismissed as irrelevant and bigoted, part of a world that should be consigned to the recycle bin, just like the 100 Hotmail spam letters that we delete every day without reading.

This is today's postmodern world—a world of ambiguity and relativism; a place where ideals go to die. For those raised in the rational world of modernity, where truth was black and white and you either believed it or you didn't, it can feel like a confusing wasteland for faith and belief. Trying to communicate is like sitting down to play chess and realizing the other guy is playing checkers. The old rules simply don't work anymore. The temptation is to dive into Christian bunkers and "do" the occasional bit of evangelism by firing John 3:16 machine gun bursts at people unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire. But to do this is to miss the incredible opportunities that postmodernism brings for telling God's story. It's a new world order, a place of deep spirituality where people are searching for transcendence, for something bigger than their small lives. And God is out there, doing so much more behind our backs than in front of our faces. We must learn a new way of communicating and a new way of being.

Reaching this new world isn't going to be done in the same old ways, because today's teens have no basis for understanding the philosophical underpinnings of how the world worked for the previous generations. It used to be that the main organ for working out what was true was the ear. Someone would stand up at a pulpit, four feet above contradiction, and tell us what we didn't know. Because our enlightened worldview meant that facts and rationality were everything, we would bow to their superiority if he could prove he was right. Hence the great reliance on book-based teaching and knowledge. Today, however, all that has been swept away. The new generation has a different organ for receptivity—and the eyes have it.

Truth is what you see; it's what works, not what can be proved. It's what goes for the individual, not the crowd. That's why our traditional methods of outreach (or, in realty, in-reach) are so terrible at making an overall impact. In 2001, we conducted a survey of a number of youth workers attached to our organization in the Vancouver area. Despite pouring millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours into the lives of nearly 4,000 kids, we found that less than two percent of them went on to have any ongoing relationship with the church. It's caused us to radically retool and rebuild from the ground up.

You see, teens don't want to be talked down to any more. They get over 3,000 advertising messages a day, and they don't need another one from us. Instead, they want to see something that works. They don't want talk-fests, two-hour Bible studies, or 90-minute sermons. They want to be part of something mind-blowing that rocks their worlds, something they see being worked out in their own lives and the lives of their friends. And it has to be real, not some pseudo plastic, pie-in-the-sky religiosity, which is what most of them see us as. That's our bad, not theirs.

We have to see this emerging culture as a radically different mission field. In fact, we almost have to unlearn all we've been absorbing for years. The U2 boys got it right a few years ago on the Zoo TV video. "Everything you know is wrong." Instead, we have to recognize that we have a totally new mission field right on our doorstep. Much as the wave of missionaries leapt into the new territories in the 1800s, we need missionaries to this new culture. Cross-cultural mission has come to your neighborhood whether you like it or not.

It means adopting a new apologetic, a new way of explaining what we believe. If rational propositional truth doesn't cut it any more, what's the point of trying to persuade with facts and argument? What we need now is a new embodied apologetic. I suggest that there are six facets to this new way of communicating.

Relationships

Sounds obvious, but how many of us blow this one? We need to move from a programmatic approach to youth work to one where we're all about building relationships. We'll always need to have great programs that allow young people to have fun and enjoy themselves (snowboarding trips rule!), but, at times, these activities have emphasized content over relationship. In a world where teens are desperate for authentic relationships and at a time of community and social breakdown, friendship must take a greater role in youth work.

This is how they'll see the truth, in lives lived out loud in which they can participate. It's a kind of relational osmosis that's custom built for the post-modern mind set. Teens desperately need authentic role models that scream out the Jesus truth in every situation. Let their eyes see the truth in your life. Take the time for the one-on-ones, the invites home, the hanging out, and the friendship building. If that makes you feel uncomfortable, well, sorry; but that's the Jesus way. It's called love.

Opening the Spiritual Doors

For too long Christianity has been a one-dimensional spiritual experience, lived out on a Sunday morning or at youth group. This just touches the fringes of God's unbelievable spiritual well. The reality is that teens often find far more spiritual experience outside the church than in it. The phenomena of Harry Potter, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings bombard us with the message that teens want something bigger in their lives. Today's top music has massive spiritual depth and yearning. Yet too often we do all we can to discourage them, trying to refocus them on a tiny little corner that we believe is all there is to spirituality.

This summer we took a group of both Christian and searching teens to a Mexican orphanage for abused kids. The days were spent working and building under the burning sun. Every night we met around a campfire and rather than getting the adults to lead these spiritual times, we left it up to the group. It was amazing! Christians and searchers alike met God under the stars in their own way and on their own level. Yet the worship song we sang time and again, the one that reduced us to tears was Green Day's, Time of Your Life. Why? Because it caught the moment and it resonated. God used it, and that's enough. We don't have to sanitize and homogenize God's way of speaking. The Holy can touch us any way God wants.

And spirituality has very practical worldly applications as well. When I went to Ethiopia in March, my friend Steve and I were the first Westerners ever into an isolated, drought-stricken village there. The video and message we brought back touched a youth conference called History Maker so much that they raised the money to bring clean water to over 7,000 villagers. The enormous impact of interacting with our world to make it a better place physically has profound spiritual implications. It's all part of wanting to make a difference that is such a strong motivation for a generation that wants to leave their parents' quest for personal gratification behind. I think the worship of those teens as they gave may have deafened God.

Let's embrace the spirituality of a new generation and use it to commune with them, rather than despising it because it doesn't quote Scripture or mention Jesus with every other breath. All we need to do is start where they are, find connection points, and let them see that our truth works, that our God is true and real and inhabits their world as well as ours. And while I'm banging on, a quick plea—let's stop turning worship inwards and kill off all this "me, me, it's all about me" stuff. That isn't what spirituality is about. Let's start moving our worship outwards as it was meant to be.

Story

Do you know (this may be out there) that Jesus might've had a point when he told stories? Radical thought, huh? In a world where there's no big-picture truth, no story that makes sense of it all, let's embrace a million little stories. In fact, let's embrace six billion or so little stories. Let's start where they are and listen to their stories before we hammer them with ours. In Michael Moore's fabulous film Bowling for Columbine, he asks Marilyn Manson what he would say to the kids involved in the shooting. His answer is: "Nothing. I'd listen to them." For too long we've been shouting answers to questions no one is asking. Instead, let's embrace their stories and then commune as we earn the right to tell ours. That's how we'll start to match all those little stories up to the big, true God story.

Celebrating the Journey

How did we ever go so wrong as to turn a way of life into a set of rules? Let's realize that teens are on a journey that never ends. Though on a good day I can accept the necessity for it, I hate the distinction and one-upmanship implied in the phrase "Christian and non-Christian." The truth is we're all searchers at different stages of the journey. The Bible makes it clear that some will make it to the destination and some won't. It also makes it clear it's not our right to judge. It's that judgment that puts so many people off the church and labels us intolerant. As an alternative, I love Brian McLaren's use of the word apprentice. It embraces the concept of ever journeying, ever learning. It makes it clear that the journey is for all of us. Let's stop making artificial distinctions of "you're in" and "you're out" and let God decide. All we can do is live the life and enjoy the trip as best we can.

Liberating the New Culture Missionaries

The best way to reach into this brave new world is to liberate a new generation of missionaries who were born into it and know no other way of being. They have no knowledge of the dying culture, and embracing the new one is as natural as breathing. The good youth worker is always looking to reproduce herself and generate a fire in those around her. I'm 41. I still love young people and being around them, but I'm not one myself (my wife has just fallen over with shock). My role is to be a releaser and to bring through a new crew who can dance with this generation. It's time to hand on the baton and find the leaders who will put our efforts into perspective. Let's help them and laugh with them (not at them) as they make the mistakes we all did. Let's pick them up, dust them off, and cheer them on as they do things we can only dream of.

Planting the New Culture Communities

Here's the big one, the one we have to grapple with and stop putting off. Kids are not making it into church. Why? Because church culture is totally alien to them. It's not that they don't want to worship or learn; it's simply that they don't understand the archaic language and sub culture that largely typifies Western Christianity in the 21st century. I mean really, how many of you reading this have been bored out of your minds during a service in the last month? And you want to bring teen searchers to that? Who are we kidding here? Yet church is crucial. We need fellowship, and church is God's plan for keeping it together until the big party gets swinging. However, it may be that church is about to undergo the biggest revolution since Martin Luther redecorated the door at Wittenberg.

For the last 10 years, my belief has been that the only way forward for youth evangelism is to release a new wave of church planting. Today I'm more committed to that ideal than ever before. These New Discipleship Communities, or Culture Churches, will take the church back to where it belongs, in the heart of the community.

I've seen these being planted in my native England, in the two years I worked in former Yugoslavia, and now in North America. There's simply no substitute for allowing a new generation to do church in its own way. The most exciting times I've had in youth ministry in this last decade are when I've seen a church release its new generation into planting something relevant and exciting that reaches out into the new culture. Some have done it as an alternative service attached to the existing church, a new congregation under the accountability of the local body. Some have been released into a new geographical area and planted out. The best embrace is what has been called the SLAM of the culture, the Style, Language, Aesthetic (or look), and Music of the world into which they are missioning. Here in Vancouver, we've done this a number of times and one of our projects is a church for skateboarders, run in partnership with a local church. It's theirs and they love it. At other events we use visuals, DJs, art and self-expression, meditation, and raves. Whatever it takes to meet the culture of the people to whom we're reaching out. Really there's no choice. It's adapt or die, the Darwinist school of church [r]evolution.

So let's throw open the doors and welcome in the new world. Come on, throw off the shackles and let loose the prophets of a new generation. This is a time to be bold and adventurous, not timid and scared. God's not in the pews or the sanctuaries. He's out there shouting for us to join in the streets and the urban projects, the small towns and the big cities. Everyone else seems to be innately feeling that. It's time we grabbed it too.

Andy Harrington leads a team of 65 youth workers at Vancouver Youth For Christ and has an MA in Evangelism and Culture. He's a Brit who is coming to terms with hockey and baseball but still knows soccer is God's game.