Question: How to reach the youth culture?
Steve: The student minister asked,
how do we reach college students
and these two extremes?
And I'm sure the secret is
there is no secret.
It's the reality of the power of the Gospel
and the reality and the power
of the Person and work of Christ
unleashed by His Spirit from the Scripture
upon the lives of students.
And the fact is,
so many of these students are unconverted.
And their parents are wanting them to come
and they're not saved,
so they don't have a new mind,
they don't have a new heart.
They have a heart of stone
that's resistant to the things of God.
Their eyes are blind. Their ears are deaf.
So most churches just resort to
a bowling alley or a concert or whatever
just to entertain them.
And that's a very challenging position to be in, Mackie,
because you get a mom and a dad saved
and they come to church,
but all their kids are not necessarily
yet regenerate.
And how you hold their attention,
I think you just have to,
by the grace of God,
every time you are with them
and you minister to them,
again, I don't think there's any secret.
I think you just have to have such a reality
of the living Christ in your own life
and in your teaching and in your preaching
and in your love and your outreach to them,
and pray that God in His sovereignty
will lay hold of them
and arrest their attention.
But I just refuse to turn this into
a glorified club.
And I totally understand
a neo-Puritanical - I'm interested in that,
but they're not interested in that.
And I understand that. I wasn't either
when I was that age.
But I remember when I was in high school,
I grew up in a liberal Methodist church.
I never even heard a Bible message.
My parents led me to Christ
and I had enough there that I was saved,
but I remember in high school
going to certain ministries
outside of my church,
that when I saw and heard
and felt the reality of what was going on
in those circles,
my heart was just drawn to that.
I remember just meeting in living rooms like this
and little parachurch ministry things.
And it was so simple.
Someone stood up and led us in singing,
and there was a Bible message.
And there were snacks afterwards in the kitchen.
It was simple, but it was authentic.
It was real.
I think that somewhere in that
is the reality of first century Christianity.
And it may not succeed.
And I'll have to accept that.
I can't adjust the course for this ship
if people are not hopping on board,
but I don't have a martyr's complex.
I'm not trying to shrink this.
I'm wanting to enlarge this.
I have a positive approach,
but it's just who we are and what we are
and it's like there is no other play to call.
I mean, either God's going to get them on board,
or they're just not going to be on board,
but we're not going to become a different ship
and cater to this.
I would try to get the parents involved.
And I'm coming right back to you -
I'd try to get the parents involved
and have their emotional support -
not just be dropping them here,
but to reinforce what we're doing
as best we can.
But really, what works in big church
is what works in little church
just with some adapting.
But that's a tough question.
Everybody I think around the country
is wrestling with that.
And yeah, there is this kind of new movement
within reformed circles -
the young, restless, and reformed
and wanting to be salty and edgy and crass.
I'm not going down that path.
I think there is a standard of holiness
and purity and integrity
that we've got to maintain.
And I'm not trying to be
a shock jock with young people
where I've got to shock them
by my edginess to get them interested.
The power is in the Gospel.
It's in the message, not in the messenger.