The world: in or out or straddling?

Was going to blog about something John Wesley said , but instead we have that most welcome of all blog entries, the personal expression of confusion over something we don’t understand.

Please note this is more of an attempt to think through an issue rather than attack anything in particular; so if you are offended , I didn’t mean it. I think you’re great.

The issue – for as long as I can remember people have been telling me about a ‘new generation that God is rising up to INSERT ASPIRATION HERE’, and hence we should plunge resources into Youth work. I have many friends who do much youth work, and it manifestly and obviously NEEDS to be done. But I wonder if we write off the current generation too quickly?

If God truly is the God ‘capable of immeasurably more than we can every ask or imagine’ who has ‘incomparably great power’, then God can do lots of things with lots of people lots of the time. Like, now. With me and You. Wherever we are.

I guess this taps into something deep in me – how appropriate is it for a person to be fully immersed in the Christian scene from a work point of view, as opposed to being in the world with all its challenges and inspirations? I can’t see myself working full time for church again at the moment - purely because I feel I learn so much from working where I work. The Christian bubble is a safe place, but it’s also a stifling place. Could I ever be a full time worship pastor?

I mean, just imagine that you had to only listen from now on to Christian Music. I might cry.

I have just come back from a conference where I was working with an NGO who encourage us all to make a difference one life at a time, which is totally spot on. We all have a part to play in changing the world for the better in small ways. But I am more and more convinced that some of us must stand to change to world in massive ways. Like Wilberforce and slavery, or Tutu in South Africa and apartheid. Global and local as the saying goes.

Where does youth work fit in to this again? Hmm - well I guess if I look at the mess my dad’s generation got the world into, and the mess we’re leaving for my potential kids, then I could get very pessimistic and see the new generation as my only hope. Does lack of hope in me and my own generation drive me to look to the next as my saviour?

I think working with people one – on – one is completely necessary. We need youth workers, we need pastors and all the rest. But we also need people who will ‘purify their inner lives’ and wrestle with living out God’s message of the return from exile through JC in the hardest places. By that I mean the DVLA, the MOD, multinational companies, the UN, the academy …

Example: Hugely successful city trader jacks job in to work with street kids and the poor, teaching them about financial responsibility and offering hope. What a sacrifice, we say. When asked whether he thought about staying where he was a working against the macrostuctures and powers that keep people in financial bondage for freedom, he said “you’ll never change that”. Is it just me or is there a fear that drives us to seek manageable and obvious short term results just because to stay and fight e.g in the trade sector for your whole life is just too hard? Or is it that the comfort he had as a byproduct is seen with suspicion? Most full time Christians have at some point lived ‘by faith’, which really means ‘by the faith of other Christians who have money’ . Both the giver and the receiver are blessed by participating in God’s plan – I have no problem with that, and I’ve been on both sides of the equation. But at any given time a certain proportion of the Church must be in gainful employment (in the UK at least church work is far from gainful!) – my point being that they aren’t there to give their 10% and be miserable while the real Christians get on with it, but to serve and worship with their entire lives, just so happening to deserve a wage because of their labours.

In short : not everyone is called to be a full time youth worker, or a full time worship leader, or a full time professional Christian. It is much more likely that the highest calling we can all aspire to is to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God, demonstrating God’s love to a hurting world wherever we are, proclaiming Jesus as the Lord of all the powers and structures. In short (again), to love the Lord with our whole mind heart soul and strength.

Good grief. What nonsense.