The Church of Tomorrow Revisited

For years we’ve heard how students are the church of tomorrow. To be honest, I hate this statement for all kinds of reasons. First of all it assumes a definition of the church that is inaccurate. If the church is a group of people following Jesus and living life together, would we dare say anyone under 21 isn’t a part of that experience?

Saying students are the “church of tomorrow” assumes students will lead someday, not today. Middle school and high school students who are growing in their faith are ready to lead now. We simply have to challenge them and give them space.

Those are the opening lines of a short article “The Church of Tomorrow” posted August 4, 2010 on the IBC website. I first want to say that the article was excellent and shows to me, one of the older members of IBC, that the next generation of “church,” while possibly different than during my day, will continue its grand march through time. But these opening lines lead me in a different direction of thought. I do not diminish or disagree with what the original writer said, but look at a different way to understand that comment about the church of tomorrow.

When I hear “the church of tomorrow” I am reminded that much of Evangelical Christianity, and especially those of what is labeled as Fundamentalism, have tended to live as if a generation or more in the past is the current culture. Only in the past few years (relatively speaking) have many assemblies within those umbrellas begun to move their living toward the present. And that has been at the cost of some who are so certain that what they were doing was “good enough for Paul and Silas so it’s good enough for me” that they have moved on to find places that will continue to live in the past.

Arriving at the present is quite a feat for many of us. It has brought many along kicking and screaming. And yet if you listen to some, it seems that maybe we are still behind.

Tomorrow is an uncertainty even if you ignore the possibility of the second coming of Christ. There are signs that point in many directions. Some of those are clearly in the wrong direction. But what about the others? And what about the signs that show us how to retreat to ordered pews, choirs that help us sing the first, second and last verse of three songs followed by a solo as the offering is taken and then the sermon, all timed so we can get out by 12 and forget it all until next Sunday.

Yes, it is important that the youth of today be part of where we are. And it is important that they take a level of leadership now as they join this journey we call the Christian life. But tomorrow is not today. The church will not be then what it is now. How church responds to the changes in the culture will be determined on how today’s youth come to understand both the timelessness of the faith and the constant change of the culture in which it is lived. It is how today’s youth become the primary leaders of tomorrow that will shape the next generation of church.

How will keeping the apostle’s teaching, and meeting from house to house be played out in 2030? If it looks too much like how it is happening today, then I fear that the church will have once again become Brigadoon, cursed to reappear every hundred years in the highlands of Scotland still living as it was many hundreds of years past. In terms of the church, that is to put the ways of the past on life support. It doesn’t “sell” on today’s college campuses. Why does anyone think it will do better in 20 years?

Yes, our youth must be part of the church experience now, and they must begin to lead now. But in 20 years, I pray they are ones who lead the church of tomorrow, not the church of today.