Based on my substantial experience, millennials and people of the boomer and builder generations, don't get along together easily or well.
I love my job for many reasons.
There are about 50 people in my department. About 20 of them are 16 - 21 years old and about 20 are older than 65.
And, I see, on a daily basis, that the two groups have extremely diverse worldviews and values systems.
It takes a strong leadership team, made up of people with diverse gifts, to get the two groups to work effectively together.
And, I'm talking about customer service in a grocery store, not ministry in a church.
Based on what I've learned from living in the world as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God,...
...today's hierarchical, institutional, pastor-as-parish-priest, boomer and builder obsessed church will never reach millennials and their families unless serious repentance and turning from tradition takes place within the church.
So, let me say this by way of introduction:
We must repent.
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Even if you buy into the theology that lies at the foundation of the 2017 new New ERC Strategic Plan...
...which I, and others don't,...
...the plan has a deadly flaw.
The plan is vivid in its Middle Ages passion to reform local churches, and their pastors and the church's institutional and hierarchical leadership...
...but, while it uses the church's inability to reach millennials as a justification for the plan,...
...the 2017 ERC Strategic Plan contains no strategy to reach people under the age 40.
Face it: If the hierarchs were really concerned about actively reaching millennials they'd be adding to the expanded Conference staff positions something called, Director of Millennial Outreach or something like that.
Follow the money.
But, none of the hierarch's money is going toward expanding our ministry to younger people.
These guys clearly don't care about reaching millennials. We know that because they don't invest institutional energy or money in it.
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If I'm reading the PDF correctly, there actually is no plan to reach younger people...
...and, incidentally, even people pretty high up the mountain tell me that I read the PDF better than they themselves do...
...there's, very simply, no vision on the highest peaks of the ERC mountain to reach millennials.
In truth, if such a vision existed, the Lord would empower it in apostles and prophets and evangelists...
...not shepherds.
What there is, in the new New Strategic Plan, is a...
...I think, deeply flawed belief...
...that, if the Conference fixes the problems with our churches designed to make happy consumers of the parents, grandparents and great grandparents of people under the age of 40 and their families,...
...we'll see people from aged 0 to 40 knocking down the doors of our churches to be able to squeeze their fannies on to one of the front pews.
That's a delusional fantasy.
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Millennials and people of the boomer and builder generations, have vastly different worldviews and values systems and, even if they are bound by a life-altering belief in the gospel,...
...the idea that we'll attract millennials to sit in the front pews long abandoned by mom and dad and grandma and great grandma is ludicrous.
Geezers are confusing to the under 25s. Millennials simply don't understand geezers.
And, geezers think of teens and 20somethings as self-centered and lazy. They don't like them and many of the geezers I work with moan and groan about their millennial co-workers on a daily basis.
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Memo to the ERC hierarchs: Millennials are never going to sit in the pews of churches you've made comfortable for your geezers...
...and, if the millennials tried to, your geezers'd kick and scream until the millennials understood that they are not welcome!
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Read the PDF. The ERC Strategic Plan contains no strategy to reach people under the age of 40.
The ERC Strategic Plan is designed to buck up ministry to people over the age of 65.
If you approve the plan, where will the Conference be in a decade or two?
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Theologically speaking, the 2017 ERC new New Strategic Plan is a mess.
Even if you buy into the theology, the plan is flawed.
It provides no path to the future.
We must repent.
I'm sticking with the Gospel of the Kingdom Bill because Jesus didn't have a gospel for the Millennials and a different gospel for the Geezers, as you call them. :)
ReplyDeleteJesus was and is exact in His mission and calls us commissions us to join Him. So yes, including you Bill, along with the rest of us we must repent and return to Him. He must increase, we must decrease!
I'm so grateful for His mercy when we repent and His enabling grace helps us move into the direction He is leading those who listen carefully to what the Sprit is saying to the church, the true ecclesia.
I also choose to go back to the original founder, which goes much further back than Weinbrenner. Instead of keeping our natural eyes on what is, let's raise our spiritual eyes higher, to see what He YET wants to do in His church!
Wasn't it Paul who said that, "I have become all things to all people so that I may by all possible means save some." Or, something close to that.
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