February 2, 2017 Show with Ron Glass on “Why Millenials Are Leaving the Church”

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February 3, 2017

RON GLASS, former Adjunct Professor of Bible Exposition at Talbot School of Theology & senior pastor of Wading River Baptist Church in NY, will address: “WHY MILLENNIALS ARE LEAVING THE CHURCH”

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:32: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.
01:12: This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this second day of February 2017 and we are taking a break from airing the
01:27: G3 conference interviews, the ones that I interviewed or I should say the ones
01:33: I conducted on site there at the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta between January 19th and the 21st.
01:44: I conducted quite a number of these interviews with not only speakers who were on the roster there at the
01:52: G3 conference but also some of the folks who were just guests in the audience, some were pastors and some were just listeners of Iron Sharpens Iron, some whom
02:03: I have heard from regularly who email questions quite often to our guests and some that I had never known existed.
02:12: It was quite a pleasure meeting people from all over the United States and even the
02:17: United Kingdom who listen regularly to Iron Sharpens Iron. So today we are actually taking a bit of a break from that and we will resume airing those interviews,
02:30: God willing, even as a part of live broadcasts with other guests tomorrow.
02:37: But today we are having the honor and privilege of having one of my dearest friends and one of my most enthusiastic supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Ron Glass is our guest today.
02:52: He is the senior pastor of Wading River Baptist Church in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and he is also a former adjunct professor of Bible exposition at Talbot School of Theology.
03:04: We are going to discuss something that's very important today, why millennials are leaving the church.
03:11: And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, my dear friend, Pastor Ron Glass.
03:21: And before we go into the subject at hand, why don't you let our listeners know, because I have been noticing that we have been getting new listeners to this program nearly every week.
03:32: And for those of our listeners who have never heard you on this program before, I'd like you to tell them something about Wading River Baptist Church.
03:41: A small Baptist church, as most
03:46: Baptist churches are, on the eastern end of Long Island. And we are associated with the
03:54: Conservative Baptist Association of America. I am in my, almost been here 24 years, this month actually, 24 years of ministering here.
04:07: In a ministry which is focused on what I believe are the biblical priorities of the church, which
04:15: I may have occasion to mention today, the great purposes of the church, as outlined in Acts chapter 2, of the worship of God in a way that honors
04:27: God, reverent worship, the expository preaching and teaching of the word of God, sound doctrine, fellowship, a warm and loving fellowship, along with a ministry to the people of our church, and also outside in the community as God gives us opportunity to do that, as well as evangelism and a strong commitment to foreign missions.
04:52: So that's our basic priorities. That's what we do. We have a loving and enthusiastic congregation, and it's been my privilege to be here now for over two decades.
05:03: And for those of you who want to find out more about that church, you can go to wrbc .us,
05:13: which stands for wadingriverbaptistchurch .us, and I can say without hesitation that I believe
05:23: Pastor Ron Glass is one of the finest preachers and Bible expositors
05:28: I have ever heard in my life. I have the honor and privilege of editing his sermons to fit into two half -hour programs as a part of his own weekly broadcast, the
05:44: River of Life broadcast, which is aired in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, on WEGB broadcasting or network.
05:58: WEGB stands for Eastgate Broadcasting. And do you know exactly the website where people can listen to that live streaming?
06:10: No, I don't know the exact website, no. Okay, well, I will find that out as we speak, and I will make sure that I announce that.
06:19: If you could also, very briefly, I typically do this when I'm interviewing someone, if they could give, if you could give a summary of your own religion of your upbringing, the religion of your youth, if any, and how you came providentially to embrace
06:41: Jesus Christ and his perfect, everlasting gospel of saving grace.
06:49: Well, I grew up in a Christian home. I went to church from the time I can remember.
06:56: I was a fundamentalist Baptist church in the state of Illinois, and I have been in that type of church all the way through my upbringing, through elementary and high school, and I college.
07:14: I was called to the ministry while I was in the
07:20: University of Michigan in undergraduate studies, and then went to Grace Theological Seminary in Indiana, and graduated from there.
07:31: Also, in a Baptist church during my time there. I came to know
07:36: Christ at a very early age. I was a small child, and I would say largely through the influence, as might be expected, of my
07:46: Christian parents, and the way they reared us in the Word of God, family devotions, in everything that we could be in, in church, just a small
07:57: Baptist church there, and also a couple of Sunday school teachers, particularly one
08:04: I can remember who I believe was very influential in my understanding of the gospel and coming to Christ.
08:13: Well, I found out that the Eastgate Broadcasting website, where you can hear the program that Pastor Ron Glass is the host of every weekend, it's eastgatebroadcasting .com,
08:32: eastgatebroadcasting .com. They are also known as Faith FM Radio, and you can hear
08:40: Pastor Ron Glass every Saturday morning at 930 on Faith FM, eastgatebroadcasting .com,
08:51: and also you can hear Pastor Ron the following day every Sunday, and what time are you airing on Sundays?
08:58: That would be 730 p .m. 730 p .m. So I hope that you all begin listening regularly to River of Life, hosted by Pastor Ron Glass.
09:11: These are his sermons from his pulpit at Wading River Baptist Church, and as I was saying earlier, I have the honor and privilege to edit those programs to make them fit into two separate half -hour broadcasts of River of Life.
09:26: So I'm sure we'll be getting back to that, to plug that towards the end of the program, so our listeners won't forget.
09:35: And today you have chosen a topic that you wanted to discuss, why millennials are leaving the church.
09:42: If you could explain exactly why you wanted to address this issue. Well, I want to address this issue from the standpoint of a pastor.
09:51: Now pastors in different places have different numbers and different flavors of these millennials.
09:59: It's not uniformly consistent, and I realize that. And so some of the things that we'll say today are probably generalizations that may not apply in every case.
10:10: But the issue of millennials and the significance of millennials and the emphasis upon millennials in our churches today is pretty considerable.
10:22: And a lot of pastors are wringing their hands, a lot of church leaders, elders, and pastoral staff are wringing their hands over what can we do with this group of people.
10:33: I'm not so sure they're as utterly unique as maybe a lot of people consider them to be, or as they themselves consider them to be.
10:42: Let's face it, every generation is made up of sinners who need the grace of God.
10:48: And so the millennials are no different. However, there's a great deal of stuff out there, particularly on the internet, that talks about millennials.
10:59: There's a lot of emphasis on millennials in some of the polling that goes on, like George Barna has paid a lot of attention to them.
11:10: And the other polls and research that's gone on into the dynamics of church life today.
11:20: And the general understanding is that millennials are leaving the church.
11:28: That they have somehow been either disillusioned or in some way not treated properly or whatever.
11:35: And so what I thought would be helpful, and I ran across a blog post some time ago that is entitled,
11:47: Twelve Reasons Millennials Are Over Church. Now this particular blog post is by a young man named
11:56: Sam. He doesn't give his last name. The blog is entitled,
12:01: Recklessly Alive. And what you can determine here is that he's a 28 -year -old music teacher who early in his life tried to commit suicide and then at some point has gotten saved apparently.
12:19: And now he's a member of what I can best as I can determine is probably a type of mega church.
12:27: It's a large church that he's a member of. And he wrote this as one of a number of blogs he's put on this
12:35: Recklessly Alive blog site. He wrote this one to tell those who read it why it is that millennials are leaving the churches.
12:46: Why they are quote, over church. His point is that 96 % of millennials are not living out the teachings of the
12:58: Bible. Only 4 % are Bible -based believers. And that he is not finding them living out the values, the morals and so on of Christianity that would be expected.
13:14: So he's going to tell us in this why. He writes like a typical millennial.
13:22: For example he says, I want to send global sky -riding airplanes telling the life change that happens beneath the steeple.
13:31: I want to install a police microphone on top of my car and cruise the streets screaming to the masses about the magical utopian community of believers waiting for them just down the street.
13:43: I desperately want to feel this way about church, but I don't. Not even a little bit.
13:49: In fact, like much of my generation, I feel the complete opposite. Turns out I identify more with Maria from the
13:55: Sound of Music, staring out the abbey window longing to be free. Well, this is the kind of way that they write.
14:04: So he goes on to talk about some of the statistics. Here's what he says with regard to the millennials that he defines as 22 to 35 year olds.
14:17: Only 2 in 10 Americans under 30 believe attending a church is important or worthwhile.
14:24: And he says that's an all -time low. 59 % of millennials who are raised in a church have dropped out.
14:33: 35 % of millennials have an anti -church stance, believing the church does more harm than good.
14:40: And that millennials are the least likely age group of anyone to attend church.
14:46: So this is the kind of thing he says we're up against. Yes, the question, is anyone alive out there?
14:53: Can anybody hear me? And he says that all of this sort of coalesced in his mind as he sat in his large church's annual meeting, looking around for anyone in my age bracket, he says, and yet I felt like it was a titanic search party.
15:12: Tuning in and out of the 90 -minute State of the Church address, I kept wondering to myself, where are my people?
15:19: And the scarier question, why am I still here? So he says there was a deep dissatisfaction that had been growing in him, despite his greatest attempts to whack a mullet back down, no matter what
15:31: I do, it continues to rise out of my wiry brain. So he's asking the question, where is the task force searching for the lost generation?
15:44: Where is the introspective reflection necessary when one -third of a generation is anti -church?
15:50: By the way, I would just say, by way of comment, I'm not so sure that that's unique just to that generation.
15:57: I mean, I think I'm a baby boomer, and I'm sure more than one -third of my generation is anti -church.
16:04: So I don't know how unique that is. So he said, the truth is, no one has asked me why millennials don't like church.
16:12: Luckily, he says, as a public school teacher, I'm highly skilled at answering questions before they're asked.
16:18: It's a gift, really, he says. So, at the risk of being excommunicated, he says, here's the metaphorical nailing of my own 12 theses to the wooden door of the
16:28: American millennial -esque church. And then he goes on, and he talks about these 12 reasons.
16:37: And just to define terms here, millennial referring to the turn of the century, as we entered the third millennium in the year 2000.
16:48: How do you, do you categorize that term the same way that the person you're quoting defines a millennial?
16:55: I think that they usually say that millennials are those who were born, and the number varies.
17:01: I've heard 1980 or 1984, somewhere in the 1980 to early 80s.
17:08: And they would probably, well, he said, to 35 -year -olds.
17:16: So, it's roughly your 20 -somethings and early 30 -somethings.
17:24: Okay. I usually don't take a listener, question or comment this early, but I do have a listener who is a campus staff member at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
17:39: He is with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. And he actually just sent in a comment that I wanted you to address at the very outset of our discussion.
17:50: And he says, his name is Andrew, and he's a minister at two local colleges with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA.
18:01: I do have many thoughts on this subject. Thanks for discussing it. My one piece of advice, do not underestimate millennials.
18:09: I've seen more students become Christians in the past two years than in the ten years before, and that's true nationally for many of my colleges.
18:19: As we enter a post -Christian era in America, young people are hungrier than ever for the gospel and are turning to Jesus in droves.
18:31: Moreover, once they do start following Jesus, they're often more passionate about evangelism than their parents ever were.
18:38: It's true that millennials are indeed leaving the church overall, but there are still some bright spots.
18:44: Thanks and God bless Andrew Berg, campus staff member, Dickinson College, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
18:50: I wanted your comments on what Andrew... I mean, I'm quite sure that that's true, and I appreciate him writing in because he actually works with that.
18:59: This is why my reaction to this blog post with these 12 reasons is that this is not necessarily representative of all millennials by any means.
19:14: I'm quite sure, in fact, I can tell you right now at our church where we have a lot of...
19:21: well, we look at our congregation and we see that we're growing older, that we are actually even praying for God to send us some younger adults, and that's exactly the kind of thing that I'm praying for, frankly, are millennials who perhaps young families in the late 20s into their 30s with small children and so on.
19:47: We need this kind of enthusiasm, creativity, passion, the energy that they can supply, which is dwindling in people who are approaching or past retirement age.
20:01: So I'm excited about that possibility, but the point that this guy's making is that the majority of people this age, and even of those who are...
20:15: at least have professed Christ, are turning away from the church. In other words, if they've come into the church, they've been exposed to Christianity, they may have actually made a profession of faith, but then they feel that the church is not ministering to them or is ignoring them, and therefore they're leaving the church.
20:33: And that's what these 12 reasons are. It shows why this is happening. Right. You know, it's kind of...
20:39: I'm sorry? No, according to this writer. There may be a difference of opinion from other people like our listener who actually works with them.
20:52: But it strikes me, and of course I don't want to belittle anybody else's experience, because I am not a millennial.
21:01: I am going to be 55 years old in just about a week, and so I'm coming from a whole different point of view here.
21:11: But the first of the 12, nobody's listening to us. I'm shocked by hearing that, because it seems that churches are bending over backwards to,
21:24: I think, an unbiblical extreme to cater to this age group.
21:30: They are designing everything they do to appease them in their tastes in music, make the atmosphere most comfortable for them, and I don't even understand that first one.
21:46: Well, I tell you, I agree with you, Chris. I agree with you, absolutely. But that's not what they mean. Here's what he says with regard to this.
21:55: Millennials value voice and receptivity above all else. When a church forges ahead without ever asking for our input, we get the message loud and clear.
22:06: Nobody cares what we think. Why then should we blindly serve an institution, get this now, why should we blindly serve an institution that we cannot change or shape?
22:18: In other words, they want to run the show. That's what it comes down to. And I just ask the question, well, is this really their objective?
22:27: In fact, I would ask the question of a millennial who thinks this way, why do you want to change it?
22:33: Why is it that you want to serve an institution that you change? Do you have, as a young person, do you have a right to step into an institution, if you want to call a church that, do you have a right to step into it with the understanding, assumption, or desire that you are going to shape it, that you are going to change it?
22:55: Now, you see, when he poses solutions to this, one of the solutions he gives is invite millennials to serve on leadership teams or advisory boards.
23:07: Now, this is where, I mean, I have a problem with this, because it seems to me, look,
23:14: I've grown up in church, and I've watched churches, and I look at scripture, and I guess one of the things
23:21: I would say is, you know, in the Bible, they're not called elders for nothing.
23:29: I was thinking the same thing. The pattern is, and we see this with Paul in 2
23:35: Timothy 2 too, where he tells Timothy to teach others, take the doctrine that he taught to him,
23:42: Timothy a younger man, pass that on to the next generation, who will then pass it on to the next generation.
23:49: My conviction is that millennials who are concerned that nobody is listening to them because they can't change things, or they can't shape the ministry of a church, that they need to step back, they need to listen, they need to learn, they need to understand what the church is really all about.
24:12: They need to hear the Word of God taught and preached. They need then to come to a point where they're in subjection, submission to leadership, and then they get into a discipleship mode, where they, as young Christians, are trained by older Christians, so that by the time they become a little older, they are prepared to take leadership.
24:33: But you can't just thrust new Christians who are young and aged to boot, you just can't put them into leadership roles, put them on leadership teams or advisory boards.
24:47: We don't do that with children and young people and pretty much anything else.
24:53: I mean, you generally don't take a 22 -year -old and put them on a corporate board of directors, that type of thing.
25:01: So I think maybe their expectations are unreasonable. Yeah, in fact, the
25:07: Bible warns against laying hands on someone too suddenly, someone inexperienced and so on.
25:16: But you see, I agree with you that much of, particularly the worship style of many contemporary churches has been really dictated by this age, not just this age, because pretty much from the baby boomers down, they have been inclined to rock music and informality and visual versus the audible and so on.
25:47: But they're very much this way, and it seems to me a lot of churches actually have begun catering to that kind of thing.
25:57: In fact, we have a listener right near your backyard, Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, wants to know, why is it that so many evangelicals are curtailing their ministry towards younger people, forgetting that God is a respecter of no persons?
26:17: Well, the reason that they're doing this, I think, is pretty simple. It's numbers.
26:24: And we see this. And I've had conversations and I observe a lot of our conservative churches like ours.
26:31: We are small churches. It's very difficult to grow. But here on Long Island, the megachurch movement, the seeker -sensitive movement, was kind of late in coming to Long Island.
26:45: But when it did, it just drained our conservative churches.
26:51: All our young adults left, and now they've gone to these kinds of churches where they have this informal environment with the rock music, and they've dumbed down the preaching and the doctrine and all of that.
27:08: You gather a crowd, you build buildings, you develop programs.
27:15: Then it takes money to run these things, so you've got to keep the bodies coming into the building, because that's where the money is.
27:22: And it becomes, in a way, sort of a religious business more than anything else.
27:27: Well, we're going to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.
27:36: We do already have a few people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we'll get to you as soon as we can when we return from the break.
27:46: Please give us at least your first name, the city and state where you reside, and the country where you reside if you live outside of the
27:53: USA. And by the way, Andrew Berg, with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, you have won a free
28:03: New American Standard Bible, because you're a first -time questioner on Iron Sharpens Iron.
28:09: So please give me your full mailing address, and I'll make sure that I get that Bible out to you.
28:15: Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Ron Glass on why Millennials are leaving the church.
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32:22: Iron Sharpens today. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the
32:32: Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie
32:42: .org. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the
32:50: Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.
32:56: Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.
33:03: And if you live in the Wading River area, I have one pastor I can highly recommend right now.
33:10: It's Ron Glass, who happens to be my guest today. Pastor Ron Glass of the Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York.
33:19: And you can hear him every Saturday and Sunday on Faith FM Radio, Eastgate Broadcasting.
33:26: If you live out in Suffolk County, you can hear Pastor Ron on the
33:32: FM dial on 90 .7, 93 .3,
33:37: and 91 .7. Or you can listen anywhere on the planet Earth via live streaming at EastgateBroadcasting .com.
33:47: That's EastgateBroadcasting .com. That's Saturdays at 9 .30 a .m.
33:53: and Sundays at 7 .30 p .m. That's every weekend on Eastgate Broadcasting.
34:03: The River of Life program is the name of the broadcast that Pastor Ron hosts, and I hope that you begin listening to it regularly.
34:12: Our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com. If you have any questions, ChrisArnson at gmail .com.
34:18: Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island has a follow -up comment, really. He says,
34:24: Also, since these younger people ultimately want leadership positions, would it be safe to say that they do not like authority and that they are a rebellion to God who designed the ecclesiastical structure of the
34:37: Church? Well, it's hard to judge everybody's motives, but I would say that probably is not far from the truth in many cases, yes.
34:51: All right, before we go on to our next point that you want to make in the list of 12, we have
34:58: Jerry in Charlestown, New Hampshire, who says, Scripture clearly teaches that parents are to play a central role in faithfully catechizing their children.
35:09: For instance, Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 that fathers are bringing up their children in the fear and instruction of the
35:23: Lord, and then in Deuteronomy 6, God instructs his people that parents are to faithfully teach their children, when you sit in your house, walk on the way, lie down, rise up, etc.
35:36: These are just a few of many such verses. Do you think American Evangelical parents have been faithful in keeping this
35:43: God -given charge, or have we in general abdicated this responsibility and expect others to fill the gap, i .e.
35:51: youth pastors, Sunday school teachers, etc.? What role has this played in the apostasy of my generation, fellow
35:59: Millennials? If this is a problem, how can we reverse this trend? Oh, so Jerry is actually,
36:04: I'm assuming, a Millennial himself writing this. Well, he's right.
36:12: It's true that the primary responsibility of Christian parents, or training their children, belongs to Christian parents, and my experience has been that where parents have been faithful in training their children, teaching them the
36:27: Word of God, helping them memorize the Word of God, making sure they're in Sunday school, they're in church, they're in their youth ministries, and so on.
36:35: Those are the young people that are solid. They tend not to reflect the attitudes of these
36:42: Millennials. Now, they may be, in fact, Millennials by age, but their attitudes are not that way.
36:48: They're the ones who are more committed to the ministry of the Church and are willing to be servants of the
36:54: Church without desiring to run the Church. I think that many of the Millennials that we're talking about have come from probably two different situations.
37:04: One, they were saved as older children or as young adults, so they haven't had that background.
37:10: They haven't had that training. They really don't understand what the Church is all about, which I think may come out in some of these additional reasons.
37:18: The other thing is that, well, they may have been converted at an earlier age, but they're part of families that have not been faithful, where the parents have not been diligent in rearing them, where the parents have said, well,
37:42: I've got this job, and we've got jobs, we've worked long hours, we really don't have time to invest in the kids.
37:51: That's when you do get a problem with the parents sort of pushing their kids off onto the youth ministries of the
38:00: Church and hoping that somehow that'll compensate for their neglect in the home. And I do pick up in some of the stuff
38:08: I've read that some of these Millennial young people have, at least under the surface, a resentment or maybe it's just a regret, but that they are sensitive to the fact that their families didn't do the job.
38:28: Well, if you'd like to move on to the next in our list, we're sick of hearing about values and mission statements.
38:38: That's interesting. Yeah, well, and in a way I kind of agree with them, because I'm kind of sick of hearing about mission statements, too, because that's the standard orthodoxy today.
38:49: Every Church is supposed to have their purpose statements and their mission statements. But that's not quite what they mean.
38:56: What they are saying, according to this young man, is that it really is, well, here's his quote,
39:03: Jesus was insanely clear about our purpose on earth. We don't need a purpose statement.
39:10: Jesus was clear. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
39:16: The second is love your neighbor as yourself. There's no commandment greater than these, Mark 12, 13 and 31.
39:22: So, our blogger goes on to say, love God, love others, task completed.
39:28: Well, my question is, is that all? Because he goes on to say, why does every
39:35: Church need its own mission statement anyway? Aren't we all one body in Christ, serving one God? What would happen if the entire
39:41: American Church came together in our commonalities and used the same concise mission statement?
39:47: Yeah, but wait a minute. Is that all there is to the mission of a Church? But see, he says, what we need to do as a solution to this is stop wasting time on the religious mambo jambo and get back to the heart of the
40:00: Gospel. If you have to explain your mission and values to the Church, it's overly religious and much too complicated.
40:08: We're not impressed with the hours you brag about spending behind closed doors, wrestling with Christianese words on paper.
40:16: We're impressed with action and service. Now, one question emerged immediately when
40:21: I read that, and that is, are we, as Church leaders, supposed to be impressing you,
40:27: Millennials? Is that our job, to impress you? And it's wasting time to spend our time talking about issues of theology, issues of practical
40:39: Christianity, wrestling with the interpretation of Scripture, which isn't always the easiest thing to do.
40:45: Is that to be all set aside in the interest of just loving God and loving others?
40:52: And what does that mean? Well, we'll go on to see what that means in the third reason, which he says, is that helping the poor isn't a priority.
41:03: This gets to the heart of the Millennial issue. See, some of you may have heard of the missional church.
41:15: This is an attitude, this is an approach to the ministry of the
41:21: Church that's been popular among this age group for a number of years now.
41:26: When you talk about the missional church, you say that to a baby boomer or a Generation Xer, or even to someone older than that, you say, well, they want to have a missional church, and they'll applaud.
41:39: They'll say, well, good, churches are supposed to be involved in missions. But that's not what they're talking about.
41:46: They're not talking about what we call either home or foreign missions. They're not even talking about evangelism as such.
41:52: What they're talking about is social ministry. It's sort of a reincarnation of the social gospel of the 1920s or so.
42:04: And so what they want is to, well, in fact, in this particular blog, the writer quotes from the book
42:12: Radical by David Platt, you may have heard of him, and it says, if our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to wonder if Christ is in us at all.
42:25: Now, what is radical compassion for the poor? Do they not recognize the great commission of making disciples of all of the nations, of baptizing, establishing churches, and teaching them everything that Jesus commanded that they teach?
42:44: In other words, you know, I think I would say very vigorously to the
42:50: Millennials today who take this view that helping the poor is the priority of the
42:56: Church. I would say to them, the Church is not primarily a social agency.
43:04: Helping the poor is fine, but it's got to be secondary. And in fact, when we look at the command in the
43:12: New Testament, you look at a passage like Galatians chapter 6 verse 10 where Paul says, as we have opportunity, let us do good unto all men.
43:21: But where we start, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
43:27: So the ministry that we are involved in, in terms of material assistance to other people, begins with our brethren in the
43:37: Church, and then as we have the resources and the opportunity, extends outward. By the way, that's the way the early
43:43: Church worked, Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 4, where they sold their possessions and distributed to those who were needy.
43:51: It was those who were needy within the Church congregation. So the idea that the
43:59: Church's priority lies in meeting the needs of the poor in general, out in the world,
44:10: I think is misguided. So he's not happy with the number of hours the average
44:16: Church attender spends in Church -type activities. He says Bible studies, meetings, groups, social functions, book clubs, planning meetings, talking about building community, discussing new mission statements, all that stuff.
44:29: He says, let's clock the number of hours spent serving the least of these. So if the numbers are not equal, in other words, if the
44:38: Church is not spending as much time ministering to the poor out in the world as they are doing all the other
44:45: Church stuff, then they need to, quote, check your Bible for better comprehension.
44:51: In fact, it's interesting that in John 12, when
44:56: Jesus' feet are being anointed with very expensive perfume,
45:05: Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Christ, got very upset by that and he said, why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to poor people?
45:20: Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what he was put into it.
45:34: Therefore, Jesus said, let her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial, for you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.
45:47: I think that there can be an application there of the centrality of Christ in the mission of the
45:53: Church being even above providing for the poor. Obviously Jesus talked about providing for the poor a lot, but that's not to be the primary mission of the
46:04: Church. That's right, and that seems to be what they're advocating. You know, it's fine to serve the
46:12: Church, but is that our primary mission? And I would say no, and I think you'd agree with me that...
46:23: I'm sorry, did you get cut off there? No! Oh, I'm sorry. I just said,
46:28: I think you would probably agree with me, that's not the, helping the, ministering to the poor is not the
46:33: Church's primary mission. Right, exactly. And we do have a listener in London, England, Kofi, who actually
46:43: I had the privilege of meeting at the G3 conference when I was in Atlanta, Georgia. Kofi, who is 26, he says here in his note, great discussion so far.
46:55: As one who would technically fit in the millennial category, I often find the listen to us mentality of my generation highly disturbing, but would also love to know what your learned guest feels is the responsibility of the generation that raised them.
47:13: With a generation raised on the idea that they can change the world and they're all special, is the millennial self -emphasis as much a fault of their parents as well as the generation itself?
47:27: That's a very good insight. Who could forget The Greatest Love of All, that song that topped the charts, that was actually originally the theme for the
47:42: Muhammad Ali story, because of his claim to be the greatest. And this song was basically telling children, teaching children that the greatest love of all was the love that you have for yourself.
47:59: So, if you could respond to Kofi in London's comment there.
48:05: I don't really have too much to say except I agree with you. He's right on. Well, thank you,
48:11: Kofi, and keep listening to Orange, Sharp and Ziron and spreading the word in the UK about it. And we move on now to, we're tired of you blaming the culture.
48:24: Yeah, here's what he says about that. He says, from Elvis' hips to rap music, from Footloose to twerking, every older generation comes to the same conclusion.
48:34: The world is going to pot faster than the state of Colorado. We're aware of the downfalls of the culture.
48:40: Believe it or not, we're actually living it too. That's the millennial. Perhaps it's easier to focus on how terrible the world is out there than actually address the mess within.
48:52: So he doesn't want the church blaming the world or blaming culture for the mess the world is in.
49:02: He wants the church to get busy about addressing that mess.
49:08: So his solution is put the end times rhetoric to rest and focus on real solutions, real impact for our immediate community.
49:16: In other words, don't wring your hands over how bad the world is. Christ must be coming soon or God is going to judge the world or whatever.
49:26: Put all that to rest and explicitly teach us how to live lives that differ from the culture.
49:34: Now, in fact he recommends a book on this by Craig Greshel, which is entitled
49:42: Weird Because Normal Isn't Working. At this point,
49:48: I have an observation. Teach us, he says, how to live our lives different from the culture.
49:56: My response to that is, but you millennials, at least who think this way, you really don't want to hear it.
50:06: Because when we do talk to you about living lives different from the culture, you turn us off.
50:14: For example, if we preach to you, teach you, exhort you to tear yourself away from your social media, get off of Facebook, quit twittering, give up your cell phone, get off the internet.
50:29: If we were to say these things because of the moral corruption that these things foster, you don't want to hear it.
50:38: If we say to you as young adults, you have no business in bars.
50:44: You have no business socializing around alcohol. They don't want to hear that. If you say to them, do you realize that cohabitation is sin?
50:54: They don't want to hear that either. They're living with girlfriends and boyfriends and don't think anything of it, many of them.
51:02: If we say to them, you realize that your responsibility as a Christian is not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together to be in regular church attendance, they don't want to hear that.
51:12: If we say, you shouldn't be watching television or movies where your ears are constantly assaulted by the foulest kinds of language and your eyes are assaulted by bisexual images and by violence, do you realize what that's doing to your soul?
51:29: They don't want to hear it. So I have a little bit of a message that I have a problem with them saying that we're tired of you blaming the culture.
51:41: We're trying to warn you away from the culture, but generally speaking, you don't want to hear that.
51:48: We're going to go to our next break right now, and it's going to be a bit of an extended break because as many of you know, we are going to be added to the lineup very soon of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, and that is on 90 .1
52:07: FM in the Lake City, Florida area and can also be heard via live streaming, and we will give you all of the information about that when we are on the air with Grace Life Radio.
52:22: We thank them so much for being so impressed with Iron Sharpens Iron that they wanted to add us to their lineup, but they require that our two -hour program be given to them in two 54 -minute segments.
52:37: So between each hour from now on, I'm going to have a bit of an extended break, so I just want you to know why as you hear quite a number of ads, and I hope that you remain patient with us as we do that, and perhaps sometime in the near future we can even have some kind of a five -minute program or segment in between the two hours of Iron Sharpens Iron, but we have to accommodate the folks at Grace Life Radio and bring the program to them in a format that they can utilize because we have a whole new audience now over this
53:15: FM station in Florida. So we thank Justin and Brandon Ellickson for their appreciation of Iron Sharpens Iron and welcoming us to their lineup in the very near future, but we are going to a break right now.
53:29: If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Glass, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
53:38: chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
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58:33: I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
58:42: We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.
58:48: We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how
58:53: God views what we say and what we do, than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the
59:01: Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
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01:02:08: And before I return to our interview, I just want to take this time to have another request of our listeners to let me know if you have within your congregation, perhaps you have a friend or an acquaintance, someone you've heard about in your community who is a business owner, or perhaps the leader of a parachurch organization, or perhaps he's even your own pastor.
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01:05:54: Well, we are back returning to our interview right now with Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church.
01:06:01: We are discussing the theme, Why Are Millennials Leaving the Church? And our email address, if you have a question, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
01:06:12: chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And the last thing that we left our listeners with is,
01:06:23: We're Tired of You Blaming the Culture. I don't know if you had anything further you wanted to discuss under that heading, or do you want to move on,
01:06:31: Pastor Glass, to You Can't Sit With Us effect? Yeah, this one, he refers to a 2004 classic movie called
01:06:44: Mean Girls. In this he says the most popular girl in school forgets to wear pink on Wednesday, which was a cardinal sin, to which one of the characters screams,
01:06:58: You can't sit with us. Then he goes on to say, Today my mom said to me, Church has always felt exclusive and clicky like high school.
01:07:07: With sadness in her voice she continued, And I've never been good at that game, so I stopped playing.
01:07:15: And then he says, Well, the truth is I share her experience, as do thousands of others.
01:07:22: And then he points this out. That until the church finds a way to be radically kinder and more compassionate than the world at large, we tell outsiders that they're better off on their own.
01:07:38: And the truth is, many times they are. Now, this raises all kinds of questions in my mind.
01:07:45: First of all, I would like to know the evangelical church that really does have a heart for the gospel and for their community, who has ever told an outsider that they're better off on their own.
01:07:58: I mean, that's not something we communicate. We have worked on it here in our church ever since I've been here.
01:08:04: When outsiders, visitors, people we don't know come into our congregation, we immediately extend ourselves to them.
01:08:12: We make them feel welcome. We do everything we can to incorporate them. We invite them to social activities in the church.
01:08:20: We want them to feel welcome, and we want to. In fact, many cases we do actually minister to them in tangible ways.
01:08:28: Now, he says that the church has to find a way to be radically kinder.
01:08:34: But my question to him would be, What are you doing about it? What is your responsibility?
01:08:40: You see, it's a problem when somebody, let's just say it's a young millennial, walks into a church and the attitude is,
01:08:51: Okay, now impress me at how friendly you are. No, there are responsibilities that are incumbent upon each attender.
01:09:01: You cannot walk into a church just as the service is beginning and walk out of the church at the conclusion of the benediction and expect the church to feel friendly.
01:09:13: You have to hang around. You have to talk to people. You have to at least stand there and let somebody else come up and talk to you.
01:09:20: Now, I will guarantee you that a church where people don't talk to visitors, that's a problem.
01:09:28: That's a problem. But most churches I think you'll find somebody who will extend themselves, who will welcome that person.
01:09:36: And here we seek to incorporate them and minister to them. So he wants the churches to create authentic communities with what he calls a shared purpose.
01:09:47: Well, what's a shared purpose? I mean, the shared purpose ought to be that expressed in Acts 2 that I said at the beginning today.
01:09:55: In Acts 2, what, verses 38, 39, 40, and down through the end of the chapter where you have these five great purposes of the church.
01:10:06: But he says they need to create authentic communities with a shared purpose centered around service.
01:10:13: So that's to the neglect of worship, of preaching and teaching, of fellowship, and of evangelism and missions.
01:10:23: Well, you are denying about four -fifths, 80 % of the church's responsibility.
01:10:33: So then he says stop placing blame on individuals who struggle to get connected.
01:10:38: And again, my impression has been, my experience has been, that people don't have to struggle to get connected.
01:10:47: Yes, there are people that he calls shy or people who struggle with anxiety. But we understand that, and we have people who are willing to reach out and pull these people in and help to encourage them and address their needs and so on.
01:11:03: We have to find ways to bridge the gap, he said. Well, I would just simply say to him, you got any suggestions for that?
01:11:10: He doesn't really give any. Yeah, this is something that transcends any age category.
01:11:16: This is just an age -old problem when it comes to cliques and things in groups of people.
01:11:23: And since everyone in any church, no matter how God -fearing and God -honoring and biblically sound it is, there are sinners there.
01:11:32: There are sinners even in the pulpits of these churches because no one is perfect on this earth.
01:11:38: And therefore, these kinds of problems will exist. And it's up to us when we see them existing somewhere to lovingly, humbly, and graciously approach someone privately about these issues.
01:11:52: Isn't that correct? Yeah, and again, I have never experienced in any church
01:12:00: I've been in anybody, any church member, who would have said to a visitor, to a stranger, you can't sit with us.
01:12:09: I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, I've heard, I guess I've heard of situations where a visitor will come in and sit down and somebody will come up and say, you're sitting in our pew, you know, as if you've got to move kind of thing.
01:12:22: But I think that's very rare. I would hope that in most churches a person would say, if they say it, you know, you're sitting where we usually do, can we sit with you?
01:12:32: I mean, I think sometimes the millennials think that they're the only people who experience any of this.
01:12:40: But just like you pointed out, Chris, every age group is liable to this.
01:12:46: By the way, Pastor Ron, I had an experience years ago in Brooklyn when visiting a church, and I sat,
01:12:54: I was a visitor representing WMCA radio because that congregation happened to be the church of the week, and they were going to be airing their services on the radio.
01:13:07: And so I was visiting there for the first time, sitting in a particular pew or part of the pew, and all of a sudden this gentleman comes up to me with shorts, black socks and sandals and a very big straw hat and began yelling at me at the top of his lungs to get out of his seat.
01:13:29: I later found out, and people got a chuckle in the church about it because it just so happens that this dear brother was or is autistic, and I was sitting in his seat.
01:13:42: So I was breaking his routine there, and obviously that disability sometimes gives people a loose tongue to say whatever they happen to be thinking at the time.
01:13:58: That's a special case. Yes, right. I just thought I'd mention it because it was kind of amusing because I didn't know that this person had autism, and I was looking around me in a state of shock that I was being yelled at at the top of the person's lungs.
01:14:12: But anyway. The next category that we have is distrust and misallocation of resources.
01:14:28: This one's amazing to me because he says, we've been told over and over again that we're supposed to tithe, we're supposed to give 10 % of our incomes to the church.
01:14:38: But he says, where does all this money go? Millennials, more than any other generation, don't trust institutions.
01:14:46: Well, I'm sorry, but millennials aren't the only generation that doesn't trust institutions because he says, we've witnessed over and over how corrupt and self -serving they can be.
01:14:56: Well, I'm a baby boomer, and I saw the same thing even when I was young. So what does he want to do?
01:15:06: Here's what he says. We want painstaking transparency. Now, here's the amazing statement.
01:15:13: We want to see on the church homepage a document where we can track every dollar.
01:15:21: I say, are you kidding? That's never going to happen. It's an utterly unreasonable demand.
01:15:27: I mean, what corporation or business does this? You want to track every single dollar a church spends on the homepage?
01:15:35: All I can say is, get real. In fact, it's a contradiction of complaining about mission statements and things because those very kinds of meetings go into the explaining where money is going.
01:15:50: Well, you see, what his complaint is, and I do have some sympathy with this, why should thousands of our hard -earned dollars go towards mortgage on multimillion -dollar buildings that aren't being utilized to serve the communion or pay for another celebratory bouncy castle when that same cash money could provide food, clean water, and shelter for someone in need?
01:16:13: Well, he's still on this ministry to the community, the poor, and all of that. But I understand the thinking that says, is it appropriate that God's people put a lot of money, multimillions of dollars, into buildings?
01:16:28: That I get. But still, the point is not so well taken as far as I'm concerned.
01:16:36: He says that the churches should go out of their way to make all financial records readily accessible.
01:16:42: Again, I think that's an unreasonable demand. Here in our church, we issue a financial report, a pretty detailed financial report, twice a year at our semiannual meeting and at our annual meeting.
01:16:56: Our financial records are pretty much an open book. If somebody has a question, we'll answer the question.
01:17:03: But we're not going to put dollar for dollar everything that we spend on our webpage.
01:17:08: I mean, that's not the issue. He says we have to do this in order to earn their trust, so that they in turn can then give with confidence.
01:17:19: And that we, by doing that, are creating an environment of frugality. So that's a pretty radical demand, it seems to me.
01:17:29: Yes, I would agree with you. And the next one is, we want to be mentored, not preached at.
01:17:38: Well, here's one that strikes at my heart as a preacher, because he says preaching just doesn't reach our generation like our parents and grandparents.
01:17:48: So he says, and get this, we have, the millennial generation, we have millions of podcasts and YouTube videos of pastors the world over at our fingertips.
01:18:02: And for that reason, this is in bold, the currency of good preaching is at its lowest value in history.
01:18:15: And so, what do you want if you don't want preaching? If you say that preaching is really not to be valued because all we have to do is go out and we can listen to anybody we want from any theological perspective, any church, we can listen to whatever we want, podcasts,
01:18:31: YouTube, it's out there. So what do you want? Well, he says millennials crave relationship, to have someone walking beside them through the muck.
01:18:42: We are the generation with the highest ever percentage of fatherless homes, so we're looking for mentors who are authentically invested in our lives and future.
01:18:53: We don't have real people who actually care about us. Why not just listen to a sermon from the couch with the ecstasy of donuts and sweatpants?
01:19:10: But could there, I mean, obviously, some of these complaints would be even complaints perhaps made by some pastors about other congregations or congregations that they came out of or what have you.
01:19:27: Not every church is like this. I mean, look at some of the great men of faith from history like Robert Murray McShane who died at a very tender age,
01:19:39: I believe he was 30 or 29 or something like that. And he used to visit, he had a very large congregation and he was known for visiting the households and so on.
01:19:49: So this is not just a problem everywhere, but there is a phenomenon known as the celebrity pastor who doesn't even really know anybody that he is preaching to and after he's finished he ducks out behind a stage and he's never seen again until the next time he speaks.
01:20:05: Well, and I would also point out that there is a radical difference between listening to anointed preaching in the sanctuary as the preacher is ministering and listening to it on a tape or even on radio.
01:20:20: The fact is, there's something missing and that something is the immediacy, the presence of the
01:20:26: Holy Spirit working. I mean, if you are listening on radio or a tape, you're probably going about your business doing other things.
01:20:35: You've got your mind half on it and half... You know, whereas if you're sitting in the pew, you are focused and the
01:20:40: Spirit of God is at work. I mean, I have preached at times where, honestly, you could have heard a pen drop.
01:20:47: What people are focused, the Spirit of God is at work. You don't get that in podcasts or on YouTube.
01:20:53: And so I would say, you know, it is not the same. You need to be under the preaching of the
01:20:59: Word of God. Yes, and there is something entirely different about hearing a sermon and hearing the
01:21:08: Bible exegeted by a man who you know and who knows you and who loves you and has a burden for your life than just hearing someone on a
01:21:22: CD, DVD, or on an Internet screen. And obviously, you're not diminishing the value of those things.
01:21:30: I love listening to CDs and watching DVDs of great preachers of the faith. I love listening to you as I edit your sermons for radio broadcasts, and I love listening to the broadcast itself.
01:21:44: So, obviously, these things are very helpful and valuable, but they do not replace being in the fellowship of the brethren and hearing a preacher who knows you, your own shepherd, teaching you.
01:21:58: That's a very good point. And here is one that probably hinges on the one before it.
01:22:09: We want to feel valued. Right. Well, he says that churches tend to rely heavily on their young adults to serve.
01:22:23: In italics, he says, you're single. What else do you have to do?
01:22:29: You know, you serve the church. In fact, he says, we're tapped incessantly to help out.
01:22:36: Well, now, I would ask, are you complaining about this? Because already you've said you wanted to serve, so here's your opportunity.
01:22:43: At its worst extreme, he says, spiritually manipulated with the cringeworthy words, you're letting your church down.
01:22:51: So millennials are told by the world from the second we wake up to the second we take a sleeping pill that we aren't good enough.
01:22:58: My question, who says this? So we desperately need the church to tell us that we are good enough, exactly the way we are.
01:23:08: No conditions or expectations. Ah, now we're getting to the heart of the matter.
01:23:14: We want to be accepted just as we are. Notice the statement, we want to feel valued.
01:23:22: Of course, I'd say, you know, Christianity, Christian theology, worship, these are not about feelings, but that's what they're emphasizing.
01:23:34: So I would say, you want to hear about holiness? You want to hear about repentance? You want to hear about faithfulness?
01:23:40: You want to hear about biblical obedience? Well, the problem with that is that we are telling you that God, through Scripture, is telling you that you need to change.
01:23:50: Well, they don't want that. They want to be told that they're good enough exactly the way they are.
01:23:56: We want to feel valued. We want you to accept us the way we are. Don't expect us to change.
01:24:04: Yeah, it's interesting that you say that. Todd Friel, who you may be familiar with on his
01:24:11: Wretched TV program, he had a conversation. He was letting his viewers know about, with the folks that run the
01:24:22: St. Jude Hospital, where you have a lot of hopeless causes there, children with all kinds of diseases and disabilities.
01:24:34: And he was asking the staff what surprised them most about the families and parents, especially of these children.
01:24:47: And I was really surprised by the answer. It was that they started to wonder about some of the parents, what was the true depth of their love for these children, because they stopped disciplining them, feeling sorry for them, whereas they were hoping that the parents would still continue to behave as if the child was healthy and discipline that child and instruct that child and chastise that child, just like any other child, because that is a demonstration of love.
01:25:27: In other words, they were playing favoritism and using a kid -glove approach and not disciplining some of their children.
01:25:37: Of course, they weren't saying that all parents were like this, but they were saying that it was a basically common problem, that parents may think that that is the way to go when your child has a serious, perhaps even terminal illness, but that actually is conveying a message that you don't love them.
01:25:53: And that's why I think that it goes hand -in -hand with what you were saying. Puffing up somebody's self -esteem is not actually necessarily an action of true love.
01:26:07: There has to be some chastisement. There has to be some warning. There has to be some discipline.
01:26:13: Am I correct? Right. Absolutely. It goes back to that pop psychology thing of I'm okay, you're okay kind of thing.
01:26:24: Slap me on the back and tell me, affirm me, tell me that I'm all right. When in fact, you're not.
01:26:32: You're a sinner, and even if you're a believer, you are in the process of sanctification, and we need to exhort you to come into conformity with the
01:26:43: Lord Jesus Christ. That's the whole point, growing into Christ -likeness. And that seems to be something they really don't want to hear.
01:26:53: And of course, people should. Obviously, I didn't mean to leave out the fact that people should. Parents and pastors should be encouraging people who they see gifts and talents and things like that in the person.
01:27:07: They should be encouraging the person and building them up, not by vain flattery or anything like that, but actual genuine compliments and encouraging words when they see somebody who has a gift that is perhaps not being used or appreciated the way it should be.
01:27:28: But we are going to a break right now. In fact, it's our final break, and if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
01:27:38: chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Ron Glass.
01:27:43: And our issue, our topic for today, why millennials are leaving the church.
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01:31:55: Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every
01:32:01: Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am
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01:32:17: Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.
01:32:23: Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor.
01:32:30: And we're on the air right now with a pastor, a wonderful pastor, a biblically faithful pastor, and a gracious pastor who happens to be one of my dearest friends,
01:32:40: Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. We are discussing why millennials are leaving the church, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
01:32:53: chrisarnson at gmail .com if you'd like to join us on the air. A question of your own, CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, excuse me, wants to know,
01:33:02: I understand that this person who has written this list is using a pseudonym,
01:33:08: Sam, but is really remaining anonymous. Do you know anything about whether he is nothing more than an armchair quarterback when it comes to the church?
01:33:17: Has he actually strived to improve churches by rolling up his sleeves and sitting down with grace and humility to discuss these things with leaders in the church?
01:33:29: Well, I don't know. And I looked through the website of the blog there,
01:33:38: Recklessly Alive, I think it was, and I really can't find much information.
01:33:45: He's very vague. I don't know where he's located. I don't know his real name, or if Sam is his real first name.
01:33:53: I don't know his last name. I don't know anything about him except that he is a music teacher, 28 years old, somewhere.
01:34:03: So I can't answer that question. But just the tenor of his questions and some of the things that he says about his own experience leads me to believe that probably not, that probably he seems to be part of a generation or a part of this generation, millennials, that are looking for the church to reach out and serve them in order that they can then serve the community.
01:34:33: He wants to be involved in the community, ministering to the poor, the needy, of various sorts, and somehow he wants the church to facilitate that.
01:34:44: And he feels that the church is focusing its attention, its energies, and its money in the wrong direction.
01:34:52: To my mind, what this says is he's a probably very young believer who really hasn't been around church very much, even though he says his mother has been in churches.
01:35:03: But, you see, according to what he said, or what his mother said, was that,
01:35:12: I've never been good at playing that game, that click game, and so I stopped playing.
01:35:19: So my guess is she stopped going to church. And so he has a long way to go,
01:35:26: I think, before he really understands what church is all about. I can remember, I don't know whether to call it a humorous story or a tragic and sad and frightening story, but I can't help but find it humorous.
01:35:42: This pastor was relating an incident in the church where he was raised as a child, and his father was on the deacon board.
01:35:55: And the deacon board was approached by a woman who was depressed because her husband refused to go to church with her.
01:36:06: And the deacons came up with an idea. Hey, let's make him a deacon. In order to make him feel valued, and then he'll start coming to church.
01:36:16: That's a great reason to appoint someone to the office in a church. In our own church here, we've had that suggestion.
01:36:26: Usually not deacon, but the attitude, let's give them a job, maybe they'll become faithful that way.
01:36:32: I always say, uh -uh. That's more common than you might think.
01:36:39: Now I know this is not something that you are guilty of. The next one, the next complaint, we want you to talk to us about controversial issues.
01:36:51: Now, since I edit your sermons, it just so happens that because you do expository preaching, the fact of the matter is there is so much in the
01:37:03: Bible that relates to everyday situations in life, even in the 21st century, that more than people might even realize.
01:37:14: Because, as the saying is, there's nothing new under the sun. Some of the things that we think are new phenomena are really rooted in ancient heresies, and ancient activities of wickedness.
01:37:27: But you very often deal with controversial issues, but this seems to be a complaint that surprises me.
01:37:33: Well, the thing is, I know there are many millennial young adults who are fascinated by theological subjects.
01:37:42: They want to learn theology. They want to learn the Bible. But this young man says that people in their 20s and 30s are making the biggest decisions of their entire lives.
01:37:54: Career, education, relationships, marriage, sex, finances, children, purpose, chemicals, body image.
01:38:04: These are the issues that he wants the church to deal with us, with his group.
01:38:10: So we need someone consistently speaking truth into every single one of these areas.
01:38:17: I say again, as I've already had occasion to say a couple of times, but do you really want to listen to this?
01:38:25: See, he says, no, I don't think a sermon series on sex is appropriate for a sanctuary full of families, but we have to create a place where someone older is showing us a better way because these topics are the teaching millennials are starving for.
01:38:42: Well, okay, I can understand that they want to have instruction on some of these issues, but you'll notice he doesn't say, we want to learn more about Christ.
01:38:53: We want to master the Bible. No, what's the battle between Calvinism and Arminianism?
01:39:01: What's the battle between amillennialism and premillennialism? What's the significance of the atonement, of redemption?
01:39:10: Tell us what these great themes mean. No, he doesn't want any of that. They want the stuff that touches their life in the world.
01:39:20: And so he wants the church to do what, this is what he calls, create real and relevant space for adults to learn, grow, and be vulnerable.
01:39:31: Well, most churches have something like that. You have your youth ministries, and then churches that have the facilities and the personnel and the finances to be able to have a young adult ministry of some sort, perhaps young singles or young marrieds, they will address a lot of these issues.
01:39:50: And so I don't think, he wants to connect with mentors. I don't know whether he means by that he wants like a one -on -one situation, but he wants a program that transitions high school kids into adulthood and then intentionally trains them how to live a godly life.
01:40:12: Well, I'm all for that. I'm with him on that one. But the question that I continue to ask is, will they really cooperate and learn?
01:40:21: And sometimes the older adults get a little frustrated with younger adults because we try to teach them what to do, how to successfully cope as Christians in a very godless world, and they really don't want to hear it.
01:40:37: So I'm a little skeptical on that one. Bruce in Center Reach, Long Island, New York, wants to know, to what extent is
01:40:46: Arminianism contributing to the exodus of millennials from the church? In what sense?
01:40:55: I'm not sure. Well, the only thing that immediately jumps into my mind is that Arminianism is a man -centered soteriology.
01:41:06: And whenever anything becomes man -centered, including a church or especially a church, you're going to have people looking at the interests and tastes and feelings and preferences of men being exalted above what is honoring to God.
01:41:23: That's what immediately would jump into my head. But not that Arminians are the only ones guilty of secret sensitive church services.
01:41:34: There are more and more professedly reformed churches imitating the Arminians in this way, really contradicting what they claim to believe.
01:41:43: But that's the only thing that came to my mind immediately anyway. Do you want to follow up on that at all? Well, I just happened to have started reading a book that I just got on the regulative principle of worship, and I know we don't have time to deal with that.
01:41:57: But in that book, he's making the point that many of these churches, including, as you just said, some who claim the label reform, who in terms of their worship and in terms of their programs are basically moving to a man -centered approach, a human -centered approach.
01:42:17: And when you move away from worship as God ordained it, and you start worshiping in terms of what people want, catering to their interests and their desires, he makes the point that it's not long before you move from worship styles and that kind of thing to theology.
01:42:39: Then do we have a right not only to develop our own man -centered worship styles, but now do we have a right to develop our own man -centered theology?
01:42:49: And I think that is a danger, yes. Yeah, and you're basically training up spoiled brats who want everything to go their way according to their tastes, and when they get bored or tired of what you're doing, they just leave.
01:43:04: And you have that going on in the charismatic world, where it's not enough anymore just to raise your hands, to move about, sway back and forth, or even dance and speak in tongues.
01:43:20: They had to get more extravagant and bizarre with their manifestations to keep excited about worshiping.
01:43:27: And you have all these mutations developing with all kinds of bizarre things getting more and more weird as people just become bored with the way that they've been worshiping before.
01:43:39: If you're focused on how you feel during a worship service, eventually anything can become routine and mundane.
01:43:49: That's right. And he really doesn't talk too much about the issue of worship styles.
01:43:55: In the last one of his reasons, he may touch on some of that.
01:44:00: But for the most part, he doesn't address that issue. But, I mean, that's a very relevant...
01:44:06: In fact, that tends to be the driving issue in a lot of these churches.
01:44:13: I mean, if I were to ask them, why is it that you have decided to eliminate the choir and the organ and the hymnal and instead go to a worship team, a praise band, and rock music complete with lights and dry ice, smoke, and all that stuff?
01:44:34: Why have you done that? And they don't really have a good answer for that, except that that's what this generation is used to.
01:44:44: That's what they've been brought up on. That's what they like. That's what they want. Yeah, go ahead.
01:44:52: I just was going to move on to the next one, which is, there's not enough information to even understand what the person means by it.
01:44:59: The public perception. Well, he says it's time to focus on changing the public perception of the church within the community.
01:45:06: The neighbors, the city, the people around our church building should be audibly thankful the congregation is part of their neighborhood.
01:45:13: In other words, the community ought to look at us as a church and say, boy, we're glad you're here in our neighborhood.
01:45:19: He uses a word here that I object to, but this sort of is typical of him.
01:45:26: He says we should be serving the crap out of them. Desperately need to be calling the schools and the city, knocking on doors, asking everyone around us, how can we make their world better?
01:45:40: When public opinion shows one -third of millennials are anti -church, we are outright failing at being the aroma of Christ.
01:45:48: Like I said, I think a whole lot more than a third of my baby boomer generation is anti -church.
01:45:54: So this isn't anything new. They're anti -church because they're anti -God and they're anti -Bible.
01:46:00: Now, obviously, there is an element of truth in what he is saying, because Paul's letter to Timothy spelling out the requirements for elders and deacons, among them are he must also have a good reputation with outsiders.
01:46:23: That's right. So there is an element of truth in what that person is saying. Yeah, and his solutions are to find ways to connect with neighbors within the community and to make your presence known and felt at city events.
01:46:37: Well, I don't have any argument with that. I think that's a good idea, and that's something that a lot of churches have not done so well.
01:46:46: They're content to stay within the four -wall fortress mentality. Whereas, you know,
01:46:52: I think it's good if you can get out into the community and, you know, be part of community organizations or whatever, not necessarily even officially as a church, but members of the church, being salt and light where they are.
01:47:04: That's a good thing. But to say that we're not doing that,
01:47:11: I mean, maybe some churches aren't, but on the whole, that's not necessarily a bad idea.
01:47:17: We do want the community to look at us and say, we're glad you're a part of our community.
01:47:22: And, of course, if you're faithful to the truth of God's word, there are going to be many members of the community who hate you because you are speaking out against the depravity of homosexual activity and all kinds of things that are going on that the world now is celebrating and rejoicing.
01:47:42: We have the next, the 11th complaint. Stop talking to us unless you're actually going to do something.
01:47:51: Yeah, stop talking about us unless you're going to actually do something. He says, words without follow -up are worse than ignoring us completely.
01:48:00: He doesn't like the fact that they're stereotyped, or at least they perceive that they're stereotyped. Listening to phrases being spoken in our general direction.
01:48:09: Lip service doesn't cut it, he says. So what he wants them to do is stop speaking in abstract sound bites and make a tangible plan for how to reach millennials.
01:48:19: And he says, if you want to respect our generation, under -promise and over -deliver. And the last issue, or the last complaint,
01:48:30: I'm actually going to read another follow -up question from Tyler in Mastic Beach because it goes hand -in -hand with the last complaint.
01:48:40: Tyler in Mastic Beach says, It seems that most churches are taking on tactics into the church rather than going to scripture.
01:48:50: I'm taking a class on business and finance. I see many frightening similarities, such as adapting to the wants of the culture in place of congregants.
01:49:01: Is this an adequate observation? And sure enough, the last complaint of this person is you're failing to adapt.
01:49:11: Right. He actually quotes several people.
01:49:19: One, the great theologian Bill Clinton. The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.
01:49:29: Or H .G. Wells, adopt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
01:49:37: And so what he's saying is that the church needs to intentionally move toward this millennial generation that is, as he puts it, terrifyingly anti -church.
01:49:49: Well, again, I say that's nothing new. And frankly, it doesn't impress me that they're terrifyingly anti -church because some of it's their own fault.
01:49:59: And much of this is rectifiable. And so I don't see us catering to this kind of thing.
01:50:07: Now, it's true. It's just what I was talking about earlier. They would tell us we're failing to adopt because we haven't, like in our church, we maintain traditional conservative worship.
01:50:22: We're not attractive to a lot of the millennial generation because when they walk in the doors of Wading River Baptist Church, they're not going to see a worship and praise team up.
01:50:31: They're not going to hear guitars and drums. And they're not going to hear that kind of music that they're used to hearing.
01:50:37: I mean, we have a difference. There's a difference between what you listen to during the week on the radio and what you have here.
01:50:44: We seek to be reverent and dignified in our worship. So the millennial generation probably just rejects us out of hand for that.
01:50:53: It says, admit you're out of your element with this generation, he says, and talk to the millennials you already have before they ask themselves, what am
01:51:03: I still doing here? Well, again, I think this implies that the millennial generation also needs to give on their end.
01:51:14: They need to realize what the church is all about, and I don't think they have adequately understood that.
01:51:20: And so he kind of concludes all this by saying to church leaders that his generation just isn't interested in playing church and that there are real possible solutions to dealing with this.
01:51:36: He says, you're complacent, irrelevant, and approaching extinction. Well, I would simply say that Jesus promised that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.
01:51:49: A smattering of mostly old people doing mostly the same things they've always done isn't going to turn the tide.
01:51:57: So he says, feel free to write me off as just another angry, selfly addicted millennial.
01:52:05: Believe me, at this point I'm beyond used to being abandoned and ignored. See, it's a sort of poor me, almost like we're the victims.
01:52:17: It's a victim mentality, and I would reject that. Yeah, I think that a lot of people, and I even know that they're at different seasons in my own life when sin began to take over, where you look upon the failures of the church in general or specific congregations as a license for you to live on your life without them, that you don't need them, you have your own thing going between you and God, and then eventually your life begins to unravel without that regular fellowship and communication with the body of Christ, and you become typically like a frog in a kettle, just immersed in your own sin, and it gets worse before you even realize that it's killing you.
01:53:19: People use these things as an excuse. As I very often say to people, you can't blame
01:53:25: Jesus for Judas. You can't reject Jesus for Judas.
01:53:31: And a lot of people will point to all kinds of horrific failures within Christendom as the reason why they are no longer a part of a church, but they are in essence rejecting
01:53:44: Jesus because of Judas. Yep. So my counsel to the millennial generation is, don't stand off, you know, isolate yourselves from the traditional church, from the older generations, but become a part.
01:54:03: Learn from the older generations, and in time, then you will have your opportunity to be leaders.
01:54:10: But don't just write off the church because somehow you feel isolated.
01:54:16: Get involved, fellowship, learn, serve, and God will reward you for it.
01:54:23: We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you have any advice to those churches that have become superstitious in the way they view quaint, old -fashioned styles of singing and worship that are really reminiscent of barbershop quartets and things of a bygone era, who think that these things are more holy just because they come from a previous decade, but in reality are no more holy than some of the more
01:54:56: God -honoring hymns and worship songs that we experience from writers today?
01:55:02: I am not a fan of becoming a chameleon to the world and imitating every modern style of singing and musical instrumentation, but I think that some folks have become superstitious in the way that they are stuck in time in the 1940s or 50s in regard to the way that they worship
01:55:25: God, not even realizing that they have adopted traditions of men and thinking that they are merely being faithful to the scriptures.
01:55:34: Yeah, that's a mouthful. I don't deny that.
01:55:39: I mean, I've had to contend with the whole spectrum of this kind of thing as a pastor.
01:55:47: So yeah, there are people who are stuck in the 40s and 50s and some that are stuck in the 60s and 70s.
01:55:54: We understand that, but I think it behooves all of us as Christians to realize that there is a variety of tastes that accommodate to a variety of styles out there.
01:56:07: And, I mean, we use different styles. I mean, we have music in our church, some special music at times.
01:56:14: It's sort of a country style. Other times, very mainline kind of stuff.
01:56:22: We sing some hymns that are formal hymns. We sing gospel songs. We have a variety of things.
01:56:29: But what we don't do is we don't accommodate ourselves to the worst of the contemporary culture, the kind of music that is associated with the counterculture, the drug culture, that kind of thing.
01:56:46: And that, frankly, and this is a long discussion, I understand, but it defies the even biblical standards of what it means to worship and reverence and what beauty is in art.
01:57:01: I mean, I think we should strive for the best. In my opinion, that rock music and all is not the best.
01:57:08: Amen. I don't know if you've ever read the book by T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns.
01:57:16: Very good book. And he was talking about some of the keys to what is conducive for truly
01:57:24: God -centered worship in regard to music. And he was saying that if your music is becoming more like entertainment than something that the whole congregation participates in, then you are treading on dangerous areas because of the fact that much of the modern music is not even written for congregational singing.
01:57:46: It's for one or two people to be singing on a stage and therefore more conducive to entertainment than it is for corporate congregational worship.
01:57:58: Well, Chris, before we bring this to a close, I'd like to just say something, if I could, to your listeners.
01:58:04: Yes, definitely. To back up what you have said, I want to encourage all of you who listen to do what you can to promote
01:58:13: Iron Sharpens Iron. We have wanted to do that here at Waning River Baptist Church, and I know there's more we can do.
01:58:21: But I would encourage all of you listeners, first of all, if you are able to provide some financial support for the broadcast, that's very important.
01:58:30: Chris has bills to pay, he has to live, and there's costs that are connected with this ministry.
01:58:37: So if you would do that. The other thing I would encourage listeners, in your communities you may have
01:58:43: Christian radio stations, and my burden for Iron Sharpens Iron has been to see
01:58:49: Chris's program on over -the -air stations, AM, FM, over -the -air stations,
01:58:55: Christian stations. And if you have a Christian radio station in your town, or even a secular station which is sympathetic to Christian programming, call up the station manager and say, there's a great afternoon drive -time talk show available.
01:59:14: Would you be interested in airing it? And if a number of you would do that, perhaps we can see
01:59:20: Chris saturate the airwaves of America with his program. Thank you so much for that,
01:59:27: Pastor Ron. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, that was not something that we talked about beforehand.
01:59:32: He did that spontaneously on his own. WRBC .us is the website for Wading River Baptist Church.
01:59:40: Please investigate and learn more about that congregation. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater
01:59:47: Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.