Next Generation

Many years ago, there was a wealthy, powerful patriarch, the head of a huge family who lived in a certain part of the world.

One day, he fell really sick, so sick that he was going to die.

A messenger came to him and said, You don't have that much longer to live.

So the patriarch starts praying and praying for the healing of God, and lo and behold, God heals him.

So the messenger comes back to him and says, You're going to be okay.

Your prayers have been answered.

You're going to live a few more years.

The patriarch is exuberant.

He's so happy.

And so he calls a party of all the people who live in the part of the world where he lives to celebrate his healing.

He even invites in his great joy a rival family who live nearby.

So everyone comes to this party to celebrate, and everyone's bringing gifts.

And the patriarch becomes proud in his heart.

And he has to boast and show off all his wealth.

So he takes every member on the party on a tour of his entire estate to show off his wealth.

He shows them where he keeps the gold, where the jewelry is kept.

He shows them the fancy lock on the safe and how to unlock the safe.

There's nothing the patriarch doesn't show to his guests.

At the end of the night, the guests leave and the messenger comes, and the messenger goes, What are they doing here?

And the patriarch says, I showed them all my wealth.

I'm going to live forever, this is all I have.

And the messenger says, What exactly did you show them?

So the patriarch tells him.

The messenger says, You fool.

That family will take everything from you because of what you've done.

Your children, your children's children will be taken by that family.

Nothing you own will be left.

The patriarch pauses for a minute and thinks.

Finally, he says, I'm OK with that.

Your word to me is good.

At least I'll have peace and security in my lifetime.

What an awful thing to say.

The patriarch had no concern for the next generation.

No concern for his children, his children's children, everything that he had been given.

He lost it all.

He had no concern.

Well, you might have guessed it by now.

This is not fiction.

This is scripture.

2 Kings 20 verse 19 tells the story of Hezekiah, king of Judah, who became ill.

And on his deathbed, he prayed to Yahweh that Yahweh would save him and deliver him from this thing that was killing him.

And God answered his prayer.

So Hezekiah, in his joy, invites the Babylonians who live north of the kingdom of Judah to come and tour the whole palace.

In his pride, he shows them where everything is kept.

I love that picture of telling them how to open the safe.

That's pretty much what he did.

The messenger is the prophet Isaiah, who came to Hezekiah, king of Judah, and said, you've done a foolish thing.

Everything you have will be taken away.

And that's exactly what happened.

2 Kings 20, verse 19, this is the actual word that Hezekiah said to the prophet Isaiah when he came and told him the bad news of what was coming.

Hezekiah speaking, the word of the Lord you have spoken is good, Hezekiah replied, for he thought, will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?

That's scripture.

A real person said that.

He had no concern for the future generation.

And everything that he had, his whole family, was lost when he died.

We are in exactly the same position.

But what I'm talking about is what are we going to do with the gospel and the next generation?

We cannot have the attitude of Hezekiah, look, we're fine, we're in church, let the next generation handle themselves.

We cannot have that attitude or the church will die.

We're talking about the gospel and the next generation, and we will not be Hezekiahs.

At NorthernLife, we must care about next generation ministries.

And we do.

One of our core values under the banner, love others, is canvas of color.

We believe that God is painting His story on a canvas of generations in the colors of the nations.

Here, I look around, I see a richly diverse, yet unified group of people, unified across generations.

And coming out of that core value, we have a strategic key, which is part of our SEE23 Vision, next generation.

We believe the Lord is leading us to focus specifically on next generation ministries.

That's where He's leading us.

By next generation, I mean the sub-18 kids and youth who are coming up, but also just the principle of passing on the gospel to the next generation, whichever generation it is.

So we're being led into this season by the Lord of a focus on next generation ministries.

We will not be Hezekiahs who let the gospel die, who let the kingdom, the story of salvation, die with us.

We will pass it on to the next generation.

This is the challenge before us, to pass on the gospel.

This is a really significant and relevant issue in the Australian church today.

Did you know that the census data comparing 2016 to 2021 has shown that Christianity is declining in this country?

Across the whole population, 11.6% decline in Christianity.

But that decline is not even across generations, it is much more pronounced in the younger generations.

In the age bracket of 18 to 25, young adults 18 to 25, 26.8% decline.

Think about what that means.

That means one in four young adults who in 2016 were in the church, or at the very least, professing Christian faith, one in four by 2021 have walked away from the faith.

This is a crisis in our world and in this country.

And this is the demographic, 18 to 25, who have just left our Next Generation Ministry age slot.

So that tells me that our Next Generation Ministry, broadly in this country, is not making committed long-term disciples of Jesus, not nearly as much as they should.

26.8% decline.

Next Generation matters.

It matters for the present and for the future of this church.

And we're not doing as good a job as we should be doing.

So that's the challenge.

That's the world we live in.

This is the challenge that is before us.

How are we going to take Next Generation seriously?

What processes, systems, ways and means of reaching the next generation with the gospel will we employ at NorthernLife?

That here, in this community, we might curb the decline of young people being followers of Jesus.

That we might develop instead a passionate, multi-generational community of faith where the gospel is passed on from generation to generation in a canvas of color.

That's the vision that we have, a canvas of color with a focus on next generation.

So how?

That's kind of the question that this message will unpack.

And as we come to this question, I think a helpful habit is to go to scripture first.

So we're talking about how do we reach the gospel to this generation, but I want to take us way back 3,000 years to the Book of Psalms.

Carlo read for us Psalm 145 and I'm going to read verses 3 to 7.

Great is Yahweh.

By the way, Lord in all caps is Yahweh.

I like saying Yahweh.

It's a personal name of God.

Great is Yahweh and most worthy of praise.

His greatness no one can fathom.

One generation commends your works to another.

They tell of your mighty acts.

They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty.

And I will meditate on your wonderful works.

They tell of the power of your awesome works.

And I will proclaim your great deeds.

They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.

I think the structure of this portion of Psalm 145 is, starting with high praise to God, a declarative statement about who God is.

Great is Yahweh and most worthy of praise.

His greatness no one can fathom.

And then the psalm moves into, I think, the ways in which the unfathomable greatness of God, which no one can comprehend, is nonetheless transmitted from generation to generation.

I get this sequence, picture, starting with the glory of God, transmitted from generation to generation.

Even the poetic design of Psalm 145 conveys this sequence.

Psalm 145 is an acrostic.

Each line, each new verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, and so on.

The poetic design, the shaping of the psalm, is to communicate this sequence idea.

Not only so, but look at the verbs used.

It changes.

One generation commends your works to another.

They tell, they speak, they celebrate, they joyfully sing.

This is the picture that the psalm paints.

Same God, same glory and goodness, same gospel story, but each generation in the sequence picks up on the gospel, on the character of God in a new way.

I think that's an awesome picture when it says in verse 3, His greatness no one can fathom.

And yet, we try and pass on what God has done generation to generation, because we will never exhaust His riches and His mercy and His grace.

We can never fathom it fully, and yet we pass it on generation to generation.

This touches on an important point as we're thinking about strategies and ways of reaching the next generation.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

The gospel does not change.

Two thousand years ago, humanity had this problem called sin, that the Son of God, Incarnate Jesus of Nazareth dealt with on the cross and defeated in the resurrection.

Two thousand years later, in the present day, we have the same problem of sin and the same good news of what our Savior has done about it.

The gospel does not change.

It is good news for every generation, but the generations change.

I don't need to tell you this.

You know this.

I am just starting to get to the age where I think I'm losing touch with teenagers a bit.

They're saying words that I don't understand.

The way they think is starting to be different to the way that I used to think.

I had a couple of months ago, a teenager in the youth group called me a W-switch leader.

I have no idea what that means.

I've been told it's a compliment.

W meaning, is that right?

Thank you, teenager.

W meaning win or winner as opposed to L meaning loser.

So, it's a compliment, but these teenagers coming through, I'm just like five years out of high school, I'm just getting to the point where we're changing.

The generations are changing.

Timeless gospel, changing world.

Timeless gospel, but a changing world.

And our strategies to meet that next generation have to change with the generation.

We have to work out what's working and find out what's not working.

Because the strategies of yesteryear won't work today and they won't work tomorrow.

Timeless gospel, changing world.

You've heard it said before, the question that used to really work in ministry, in especially youth ministry, was, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you'd go?

But I think the question that this next generation is wrestling with is, if you were to wake up tomorrow morning, do you know how to live?

Do you know how to find peace, meaning, wholeness, a way of understanding the world?

That's the question that I think this coming generation is wrestling with.

Timeless gospel, changing world.

And I think the difference between these two questions, these two frameworks, is articulating one of the big cultural shifts of our world over the past couple of years.

The modernism movement, if you'll indulge a bit of a history lesson, the modernism movement of the early 20th century made us think that we could do anything we put our minds to.

Through science, reason, rationality, the scientific method, we can find truth, and we can make real progress in this world.

Well, two world wars and a great depression really knocked the wind out of that one.

And so postmodernism was born, claiming that truth, reality, experience, everything is subjective.

There is no absolute truth, no truth with a capital T.

So your truth, that if I die, I'm going to go to hell, doesn't have to be my truth.

In fact, it's a little bit full on.

So you have your truth, you have your truth, I'll have my truth.

The postmodern catch-cry is, you do you.

You do you, I'll do me.

I'm going to do my own thing.

Thank you very much.

The problem is, doing our own thing is not working.

It's not working.

I think this is where our world is heading even now, but going to head into post-postmodernism or whatever we will come to call it.

I think when the postmodernist, which is every one of us, it's the air we breathe, the water that we're swimming in in this culture, when you reject any grand narrative about life, any truth, objective truth that could tell me how to live and how to find meaning, when you reject that, you give the finger to anyone who tells you any kind of truth, you are deciding that you will work it out for yourself.

You will work it all out for yourself.

Your truth is your truth.

Let me find my truth.

You do you.

I'm going to do me.

How's that working for us?

Research is showing that Gen Z, which is 10 to 25 year olds born 1997 to 2012, are the most anxious generation on record.

Despite being more digitally, socially connected, research is also showing we're the most lonely generation.

This is my generation.

The most anxious and the most lonely generation.

The COVID pandemic had a disproportionately large effect on the mental health of youth and young adults.

You do you.

Your truth, my truth, let me figure this out for myself, is not working.

And I think the world is starting to realize that.

I think the post-modern rejection of any absolute truth is giving way to the view that there is absolute truth.

There is a reality, but we're all trying to make sense of it.

We're all seeing it in part and we're broken and messed up, and so we can't see the truth perfectly.

And so I think this is a huge opportunity, because if the post-post-modernist sees someone who has found meaning in life, a way of understanding the world, that is compelling, and they want that.

Something that touches on what is real and what is true in this universe, that could help make sense of the anxiety and the loneliness of this generation.

I think that's where the world is moving.

It's a hypothesis, but it's one that lots of philosophers and people are talking about at the moment.

Reaffirming absolute truth, but in maybe a different way.

I think this is a big opportunity for the good news of Jesus.

Because into that generational world view, the gospel is compelling.

It is compelling to the post-modernist.

I think it makes a lot of sense of reality, the gospel.

You look at the problem of sin and evil and suffering in the world and in the human heart.

The gospel really makes sense of that.

And the gospel tells the story of a God, a loving God so committed to the human project that he would give his son to die to redeem humanity from the inside out, that we might partner with him in restoring, redeeming and reconciling this world to God.

That is a compelling vision of life in this world.

And if we can model that to the next generation, I think we can see something significant happen for the kingdom.

To show them, show the next generation, the gospel is the answer to the question you're really asking.

It is compelling.

This is good news and this is our opportunity to share it with the next generation.

Psalm 145 talks about the generations commending, telling, speaking, singing, proclaiming the gospel from generation to generation.

I get this picture of whole life communication, that the gospel would take full root in our lives and we would show others what the gospel does, who Jesus is.

This is next generation discipleship model and this is our vision.

This is sort of a behind the scenes framework for understanding kids and youth ministry here at NorthernLife.

I think we must show the next generation the gospel is compelling in truth, goodness, and beauty.

Show them the gospel is compelling in truth, in goodness, and in beauty.

Philosophers call these three the transcendentals.

They are the properties common to all beings, something that stirs us and unites us.

Truth, goodness, and beauty.

In our kids and youth ministry to the next generation, if we can embody the gospel and communicate it in a way that is bringing out the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel, then we could see something happen.

We show them the truth of the gospel.

Every week, without fail, pretty much, we have a Bible talk at kids and youth.

And that Bible talk is articulating what is true and real in this world.

Who is God?

Who am I?

What is God like?

What has God done?

It gives a framework for understanding the truth of reality.

We do that every week at kids and youth.

We are communicating truth as the next generation, I think, is warming up to truth, especially truth that is linked with goodness.

If we can show the next generation the goodness of the gospel, I think that's an opportunity.

The gospel, when it takes root in your life, produces the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

And that is so opposite to what the world gives, that if we can model the goodness of the gospel heart, the gospel life, that is compelling to the next generation, the goodness of the gospel.

And we show them the beauty of the gospel.

What a story.

The overarching motif of this book of the Bible is a loving God redeeming and making broken things beautiful again.

He did not give up on us, but he is a God of redemption, of restoration, and he invites us into that work.

And so if we can, even in our kids and youth ministries, we tell stories, we live the gospel, we celebrate the gospel and the beauty of the gospel, that is compelling.

Jesus lived a compelling life, a beautiful life.

He gave his life in service of the poor, the blind, the lame, the beggars, the broken, and he made them beautiful in his life.

So our youth and kids ministry, our next generation strategy, needs to communicate the beauty of the gospel, that God would love the world so much that he would give his son to die.

Truth, goodness, and beauty.

That's what we're on about it, kids and youth here at NorthernLife.

That's our strategy.

That's not super practical, but that's the life that we are trying to live, inspired by the gospel.

Bleeding is not a very nice word, but emanating out in truth and goodness and beauty.

To embody the gospel and show the next generation it's compelling, it's true, it's good, and it's beautiful.

But we can't do it alone.

Next Generation Ministry at NorthernLife cannot only be youth on a Friday, youth and kids on a Sunday.

We all have a part to play in letting the gospel dwell amongst us richly, in truth, in goodness, and in beauty.

I think parents have the number one role in the discipleship of their kids.

So what we do here is trying to come alongside parents and communicate the gospel, the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel.

We are, all of us, a canvas of color.

Beautiful, across generations, we're different.

And if each generation, like the psalm says, can commend the works of Yahweh to the next generation, we will be united and we will see the next generation come to know the gospel and to live the gospel in truth and goodness and beauty.

So NorthernLife, let us not be Hezekiahs.

Let us not let the gospel die with us, but let's live in the gospel and let it flow out of us in truth and goodness and beauty.

With renewed passion and purpose and clarity inspired by the Spirit of God, let us communicate the gospel to the next generation, because they need it.

And this is where I'm landing the plane.

They need the gospel out there.

Everyone does, but the next generation, more anxious, more lonely than ever.

If they see the story of what Jesus has done is true, good, and beautiful, and compelling, they could have a relationship with God, and they can change the world.

They need the gospel, but they need us to pass it on to them.

Let your life be a model for the next generation.

In your conversation, in your proclaiming of the gospel, like we talked about, in truth and goodness and beauty, let's model the gospel fully for the next generation.

Let's be that kind of church.

As a sign of unity, would you like to stand as I pray, and the band comes up?

We're in this together.

Hamish and I, who handle kids and youth, cannot do this alone.

We don't want to.

All of us, together, let's model the truth and goodness and beauty of the gospel.

Let me pray.

Our Lord Jesus, we thank you again that you have saved us.

In each of the generations that we come from, you have sought and saved us.

You found us and you are the answer to the biggest questions of life.

And in you, we find life and hope and joy and peace.

And so we are burdened by your calling for us to pass on the gospel to the next generation.

And many of us don't understand how that would happen, and we're still trying to work it out.

But let us today feel the weight of your calling and your prompting to pass on the gospel to the next generation, to let it model, let it shape our lives in truth and goodness and beauty.

All of us.

We pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

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