Book Review : The (Not-So-Secret) Secret to Reaching the Next Generation

By Campbell Markham

I’ve just completed my first six months at Scots’ Church in Fremantle. I inherited a fine group of elders, deacons, and board members, a committed organist, and a strong preaching heritage. I did not – like so many other new ministers in denominations of mixed orthodoxy – have to fight for the right to preach repentance and faith in Christ. Praise God, and honour to my faithful predecessors.

But Covid took its toll over recent years and there have been some challenges. Our old church building has very little parking, no cooling or heating, poor lighting and sound, wooden pews, no “music team” or network of Bible studies, no youth or young adults ministry, and precious few people capable of filling rosters. In short none of the things that are often counted as essential for growing a vibrant church.

But we do have Jesus Christ. And because we Jesus, we have everything.

So I vowed from the start not to blame any lack of growth on our lack of mod-cons. If Christ is seen in His Word, and if the Spirit blows mightily through the congregation setting each one ablaze, then hard pews and parking complications will be immaterial.

Kevin DeYoung’s booklet – you will read it in the space of a cup of tea – is a charming reinforcement of this doctrine: that it is Christ who builds his church, and that unless the LORD builds the house the builders build in vain.

The focus of Reaching the Next Generation is in fact more on retention than addition. DeYoung points out that most church-leavers, after having observed their parents and church leaders at close quarters, check out in their teenage years.

He suggests that the church in which Christ is at work, and that is most likely to retain its young people, will have five attributes:

First, it will “Grab the next generation with passion.” Lukewarmness is just as nauseating to the young as it is to Christ. I like the way DeYoung measures passion not by some arbitrary yardstick, but by spiritual growth. Christians who strive to grow from whatever point they are at are those who exude the passion that will attract the young:

“They need to hear of the mighty deeds of God. And they need to hear the message from someone who not only understands it but has been captured by it.”

Second, churches must win the next generation not by obsessing over “cultural engagement”, but with love. In a narcissistic social-media culture, where curating my online magnificence is my raison d’être, real selfless love, “not with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18), is radically and noticeably different and attractive.

Third, churches will “hold the next generation with holiness.” After Easter I ran a five-week introduction to the Gospel of Mark and numerous seekers and new Christians attended. At the start of each session I played three chapters of Mark, uninterrupted, from David Suchet’s outstanding reading of the NIVUK. I wanted attendees to get an overall impression of Mark before engaging with questions and interpretative minutiae. And they were impressed by Jesus Christ: by his authority, perfect self-certainty, and lack of doubt. He knew exactly who he was and what he had to do. His sheer difference is an aspect of his holiness: he walks though creation and yet stands above it; he lives among the broken and sinful and yet exudes an otherworldly wholeness and moral perfection. This is the person that will hold our young people; the person whom we must commend by our own holiness.

Fourth, churches must “challenge the next generation with truth.” We have lived through postmodernism, the rejection of “absolute truth”, and the embrace of “my truth.” (Can truth bear any adjective?) Yet our souls, parched with confusion and exaggeration and false claims, still thirst for truth. DeYoung writes that the next generation wants “truth straight up, unvarnished, and unashamed…. When it comes to reaching outsiders, bold, deep, biblical preaching is not part of the problem. It’s part of the solution.” A Bible teacher standing with the Scriptures open in front of him, boldly and clearly proclaiming the truth of God, is compelling.

But quantity matters too. Our churches, raised on a diet of weekly thirty-minute sermons and an hour of “Bible study” that is too often a mutual sharing of ignorance, have grown to be woefully biblically illiterate. I was pleased to inherit a church with a second service on Sunday evening. And instead of going down the growth group path we have initiated two-hour Bible lectures on Tuesday nights. My brothers and sisters need a lot of God’s truth and they need it fast; we thank him for a strong attendance so far.

Finally, we must “amaze the next generation with God.” DeYoung refers to Christian Smith’s oft-cited 2005 study of American evangelicalism, which found that most young professing Christians hold to a toxic soup of “moralistic therapeutic deism.” The good news of God’s mighty deeds has been displaced by a shallow moralism: “here’s how to live your life.” Soli Deo Gloria has been displaced by “give me what I need to meet my needs and to make me feel better.” God himself is no longer immanent and transcendent, but just transcendent: no longer is “the king’s heart a stream of water” in the LORD’s hands (Prov. 21:1); no longer will not “one sparrow fall to the ground outside of your Father’s care” (Mat. 10:29); and no longer does God “make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come; saying, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please’” (Isa. 46:10).

God made us but he lives offshore. He need not be consulted or considered in my day-to-day struggle for online fabulousness. DeYoung says that we must counter by giving them “a God worthy of wonder and fear, a God big enough for all our faith, hope, and love.”

Long ago my pastor and mentor drummed into me that there are no ministry shortcuts, no secret sauces, no magic bullets. Instead we must devote ourselves to the basics, the “Three P”s of Prayer, Preaching, and Pastoral Care. These are the things that we will focus on when we know that it is Jesus Christ who builds his church.

Kevin DeYoung opens up the character and content of the church’s basic task in an excellent fifteen-minute read. I intend to buy a pile of these for our church, so that we might all be on the same page as we labour together in the LORD’s Kingdom.

Originally published on the AP Website: https://ap.org.au/2024/05/15/10442/