This Is Not Your Boomer’s Generation
What works-and doesn’t-in reaching busters for Christ.
The Great Room at the Navigators’ Glen Eyrie castle never rocked like that before. When a high-decibel praise band and around 200 people involved in ministry to Generation X descended on Colorado Springs last March, more than windows quaked. Those evangelizing and discipling this post-baby-boom, post-Christian generation called for a reappraisal of Christian mission every bit as radical as that demanded by the Jesus People twenty-five years ago.
“For many of the nearly 40 million young people between 18 and 34,” said Ken Baugh, director of Frontline, a ministry to baby busters at McLean Bible Church in McLean, Virginia, “preachers are like used car salesmen or politicians. But if your relationships with them are good, and if you are perceived as being authentic, then they’ll follow you into the church through the back door.”
Throughout the three-day Gen X Forum, sponsored by Leadership Network, speaker after speaker emphasized the importance of authenticity, quality relationships, and new ways of doing church. Kevin Ford, an evangelism consultant (and nephew of Billy Graham), opened his talk by playing Joan Osborne’s Grammy-nominated song, “One of Us” (“What if God was one of us”), one of many contemporary songs exploring spiritual issues. Ford then asked his listeners to create biblically-based narratives that touch busters’ imaginations.
“Don’t destroy a good narrative by breaking it up with points,” he said. “That’s condescending. Just tell a story. And don’t explain it.”
Pollster George Barna agreed on the importance of stories. “[Busters] are non-linear, comfortable with contradictions, and inclined to view all religions as equally valid. The nice thing about telling stories is that no one can say your story isn’t true.”
Christendom’s cracks
In 1995, buster pastor Chris Seay helped launch University Baptist Church in a Waco, Texas, movie theater. Seay, with palpable passion, said he fears that busters, a spiritually needy population, are “falling through the cracks of Christendom.
“This generation has rejected the church,” said Seay, whose baggy clothes, short-cropped hair and beard signal Gen X. “But it hasn’t rejected Jesus Christ. They desire a dialogue with a church that won’t listen.”
Seay’s Waco praise band rattled a few windows and touched a few hearts at the conference. Their song, “There’s No Chain,” was particularly evocative, showing how Jesus answers the spiri-tual cravings of a generation living in the shadow of divorce, inflation, global disasters, and Howard Stern.
Seay said he respects the baby-boomer model of ministry but that it won’t work for his generation: “When you coordinate the color of your shirts with the color of your lights, people don’t see that as authentic.”
Can the old wineskins of established churches stretch to hold the Gen X vintage?
Not according to many leaders at the conference. “We do our Gen X ministry at a local hotel,” said one attendee.
Numerous speakers said churches serious about reaching busters need to recruit and empower buster leaders. Some said the future of Christianity in America depends on new patterns of leadership and outreach.
But what are these new patterns?
Willow Creek Community Church buster pastor Dieter Zander, who previously founded New Song Church in Covina, California, spoke for many at the forum when he said, “If you feel like you’re fumbling around in the dark, you are.”
Steve Rabey free-lance writer Colorado Springs, Colorado
Preaching to Generation X
“In a culture steeped in cynicism, the use of sarcasm in preaching, ironically, provides a valid point of contact for the gospel. It exposes inconsistencies and shallowness. Basically, sarcasm is just telling the truth. It removes obstacles so the truth can be seen.”
Daniel Harrell associate minister Park Street Church Boston, Massachussetts
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP, journal.
Last Updated: October 7, 1996
