Blogotional

The house lights go down. Spinning, multicolored lights sweep the auditorium. A rock band launches into a rousing opening song. "Ignore everyone else, this time is just about you and Jesus," proclaims the lead singer. The music changes to a slow dance tune, and the people sing about falling in love with Jesus. A guitarist sporting skinny jeans and a soul patch closes the worship set with a prayer, beginning, "Hey God …" The spotlight then falls on the speaker, who tells entertaining stories, cracks a few jokes, and assures everyone that "God is not mad at you. He loves you unconditionally."

After worship, some members of the church sign up for the next mission trip, while others decide to join a small group where they can receive support on their faith journey. If you ask the people here why they go to church or what they value about their faith, they'll say something like, "Having faith helps me deal with my problems."

Fifty or sixty years ago, these now-commonplace elements of American church life were regularly found in youth groups but rarely in worship services and adult activities.

Still, churches new to juvenilization would do well to consider its unintended consequences. Juvenilization tends to create a self-centered, emotionally driven, and intellectually empty faith.In their landmark National Study of Youth and Religion, Christian Smith and his team of researchers found that the majority of American teenagers, even those who are highly involved in church activities, are inarticulate about religious matters. They seldom used words like faith, salvation, sin, or even Jesus to describe their beliefs. Instead, they return again and again to the language of personal fulfillment to describe why God and Christianity are important to them. The phrase "feel happy" appeared over 2,000 times in 267 interviews.

I believe one key is to renew our commitment to the church as an intergenerational family, in which each person has a unique role in helping the others toward our shared goal of maturity in Christ (Titus 2:1-15; Eph. 5:21-6:4; Col. 3:18-4:1; 1 John 2:12-14). Adults need children and adolescents to draw out their committed love and provide concrete opportunities to care for others. Adolescents help adults reconnect with the passion of a life devoted to Christ, what he called the first love of the Christians at Ephesus (Rev. 2:4). Young people need adults in their lives who are modeling a vibrant spiritual maturity. One reason no one wants to grow up in America is that many adults don't make their life stage look very attractive.
Teenagers can legitimately follow Christ in adolescent ways, including participating in age-appropriate youth ministries. But those ministries must also help youth catch a vision for growing up spiritually. Churches full of people who are building each other up toward spiritual maturity are not only the best antidote to the juvenilization of American Christianity, but also a powerful countercultural witness in a juvenilized society.

Ezekiel 47 offers a vivid picture of fruitfulness, one that instructs and encourages us. In last Friday's reflection, I focused on the first part of this chapter and its vision of a river flowing from the Temple in Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. This fresh water of the river transforms the salty deadness of the Sea into a body of water filled with fish. As the river flows from the Temple down to the formerly "dead" Sea, it nourishes "all kinds of fruit-bearing trees." Unlike normal trees, these will not wither or stop being fruitful. Moreover, their "fruit will be for eating, their leaves for healing" (47:12).

Why are these trees so fruitful? Why will they never wither? Because, as the Lord says to Ezekiel, "their water comes from the sanctuary" (47:12). The sanctuary, more literally the "holy place," represents the presence of God on earth. It is the place God lives, so to speak. Thus, the life-giving river in Ezekiel 47 flows from God, the source of all life. Extraordinary fruitfulness comes when trees are blessed by God's own nourishment.

The implications for us are obvious. If we want to live fruitful lives, we need to be consistently fed by God. We need to "eat" his Word and "drink" in his Spirit. We need God's gifts and wisdom. We need the fruit of the Spirit. When we try to live productive lives apart from God, we soon run out of energy and our leaves begin to wither as our branches stop bearing fruit.

In his revelation to Ezekiel, the Lord uses the unique character of the Dead Sea in order to make a point about the Temple, which lay about 15 miles away from and 3,800 feet higher than the Sea. He describes a miraculous river that flows from the Temple down to the Dead Sea: "These waters go out to the eastern region, flow down the steep slopes, and go into the Dead Sea. When the flowing waters enter the sea, its water becomes fresh" (47:8). Thus, "great schools of fish" thrive in the Dead Sea because of the transformative power of the water from the Temple.

This vision in Ezekiel 47 demonstrates what happens in us when the water of the Holy Spirit flows into our hearts. It touches and transforms every part of us, so that we might be more fully alive and life-giving to others. The dead parts of us are invigorated by God's Spirit, so that we might live more abundantly now, in anticipation of the life that is yet to come.

Perhaps you should choose one or two of these, write them down somewhere you’ll see it often, and commit it to memory.

I've been in plenty of church meetings that seem to pit the "spiritual" people against the "practical." The "spiritual" people want to raise the mission budget in the next year; the "practical" people wonder how we're going to pay for it. The "spiritual" people want to let the Spirit be free in worship services; the "practical" people wonder when the services will be over so the Sunday School teachers can plan adequately. Sometimes, the "spiritual" folk get exasperated. They think that they can play their "spiritual" trump card, which means that the "practical" folk should back down. Is this right?

In fact, Scripture often balances the "spiritual" and the "practical." It might be better to say that Scripture doesn't recognize such a distinction. The God who created the heavens and the earth to be orderly seems to understand that the "spiritual" always takes shape in the "practical."

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So, if you happen to be someone with "practical" talents, if you're an engineer or a planner, if you're an accountant or an attorney, don't feel as if you have to always play second fiddle to the visionaries and mystics. All of us have gifts to contribute to the body of Christ, and God has formed the body so that all of us matter. Deep spirituality is not incompatible with realistic practicality. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, "Everything should be done [that is, all spiritual gifts should be exercised] with dignity and in proper order" (1 Cor. 14:40).