Adultolescents and the Church

A friend sent me a recent article by John Piper.  It didn’t mince words about the epidemic that is facing America.  Termed “Adultolescence” by sociologists, this phenomena is crippling a generation of young men and women (though mostly men).  Simply put, it a person’s postponement of adulthood until they are in their thirties.

The characteristics of the 18-30 year-olds that suffer from “Adultolescence” include:  (1) identity exploration, (2) instability, (3) focus on self, (4) feeling in limbo, in transition, in-between, and (5) sense of possibilities, opportunities, and unparalleled hope. These, of course, are also often accompanied by big doses of transience, confusion, anxiety, self-obsession, melodrama, conflict, and disappointment.

As the pastor of a very young church (average age around 25) and an average age in our community of 29, the problem seems very real to me.  Unfortunately this problem is not isolated to urban centers, but seems to be present even in small towns and communities across America.  So what is the church to do?  Some have tried to start special ministries to this age group, but they seem to be focused on keeping these 18-30 year old’s entertained and out of trouble while they are passing through this “phase” instead of helping people make the transition to full adulthood with wisdom and urgency.

Piper suggested several ways the church can respond.  I can hardly improve on anything John Piper says and this case is no exception, so here are his suggestions:

1. The church will encourage maturity, not the opposite. “Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).

2. The church will press the fact that maturity is not a function of being out of school but is possible to develop while in school.

3. While celebrating the call to life long singleness, the church will not encourage those who don’t have the call to wait till late in their twenties or thirties to marry, even if it means marrying while in school.

4. The church will foster flexibility in life through living by faith and resist the notion that learning to be professionally flexible must happen through a decade of experimentation.

5. The church will help parents prepare their youth for independent financial living by age 22 or sooner, where disabilities do not prevent.

6. The church will provide a stability and steadiness in life for young adults who find a significant identity there.

7. The church will provide inspiring, worldview-forming teaching week in and week out that will deepen the mature mind.

8. The church will provide a web of serious, maturing relationships.

9. The church will be a corporate communion of believers with God in his word and his ordinances that provide a regular experience of universal significance.

10. The church will be a beacon of truth that helps young adults keep their bearings in the uncertainties of cultural fog and riptides.

11. The church will regularly sound the trumpet for young adults that Christ is Lord of their lives and that they are not dependent on mom and dad for ultimate guidance.

12. The church will provide leadership and service roles that call for the responsibility of maturity in the young adults who fill them.

13. The church will continually clarify and encourage a God-centered perspective on college and grad school and career development.

14. The church will lift up the incentives and values of chaste and holy singleness, as well as faithful and holy marriage.

15. The church will relentlessly extol the maturing and strengthening effects of the only infallible life charter for young adults, the Bible.

Piper closes, “In these ways, I pray that the Lord Jesus, through his church, will nurture a provocative and compelling cultural alternative among our “emerging adults.” This counter-cultural band will have more stability, clearer identity, deeper wisdom, Christ-dependent flexibility, an orientation on the good of others not just themselves, a readiness to bear responsibility and not just demand rights, an expectation that they will suffer without returning evil for evil, an awareness that life is short and after that comes judgment, and a bent to defer gratification till heaven if necessary so as to do maximum good and not forfeit final joy in God.”   AMEN.

View Piper’s full article here: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2007/2487_A_ChurchBased_Hope_for_Adultolescents/

The Brookline Project Strategy

We are blessed to be connected to Hope Fellowship Church, a six year old successful church plant in Cambridge, MA. Our connection with them provides a truly unique opportunity for us as we seek to plant a church. In the fall of 2007, Hope started a Sunday night service, just like their Sunday morning one (in Cambridge), in the Coolidge Corner area of Brookline. They took this step for a couple of reasons. One, they did it because there two Sunday morning services were filling up and they had a number of people attending who lived in the Brookline area, a 25 minute drive or 45 minute subway ride away! Two, they did it because there were no evangelical churches in that area of Boston and they wanted to make an impact there with the Gospel.

The elders at Hope believed from the beginning that this Sunday night service would eventually become the core group for a new, independent church. As this service was gaining momentum I came in contact with Hope and began developing a relationship with the pastor. They knew I was coming to the city to plant a church and that I felt called to an area not far from Brookline and their Sunday night service. They approached me about the idea of taking a lead and transitioning that campus to a become a new church. As of the Spring, 2009, we are on the front end of that process. The goal is to help the people in the Sunday evening service to transition to my leadership in a comfortable way since they are members/attenders at one church (Hope) that is becoming a new church under my leadership. Since we have not settled on a name, we are calling our mission, “The Brookline Project” after the community in which we are planting

Sunday Worship Gathering - August 2009

In the winter of 2008, the service in Coolidge Corner (Brookline) had grown to 35-40 and the elders and members of Hope officially approved the plan for me to transition that group to a new church. The process began over the summer when I will begin to preach every week at the Sunday night service in Brookline. In August, we started being responsible for every aspect of what happens at our church.  Until sometime next year, we will still be under Hope as a church since we will not be a 501(c)3 organization yet and will not have a constitution and bylaws. We will begin working through the process of becoming a legally incorporated church. In the meantime, working under Hope’s leadership helps reassure the core group in the Sunday night service that things are not changing radically, helps bear some of the cost of our getting going, keeps us plugged into the ministries that we can’t offer yet, and helps provide encouragement and direction as we move forward. Our goal is that sometime in 2010 we will officially incorporate and become independent of Hope.

Build-a-Bear and the Sovereign Love of God

OK, so I don’t  normally make a habit of going to children’s stores in the mall, at least not since I was a child many, many, many years ago (back when cell phones and the internet did not exist – insert scream here “_________”).  In this case, however, it was my daughter Sarah’s 8th birthday and I would do anything for my kids, from crawling on my belly through shards of glass with my shirt off to watching all three High School Musical movies until I knew all the words to the songs (the latter I actually did and I’ll need therapy for it someday I’m sure). So, I’m walking into Build-a-Bear Workshop with my family to let my daughter select, stuff, dress and adorn a bear for just slightly less money than it took to send the last space shuttle up, but its my daughter and I love her very much more than I love money.

While I am standing around waiting for her to decide which color bow to put on the bear’s head, I noticed a sign that caused me to think of the love of God.  Here is the sign:

As I looked at the sign longer and longer, the more I thought, “That’s what the love of God is like” (not a perfect analogy, but follow me on this).  God is the one who says I am special, not in-and-of myself, but because of Him declaring it so.  He is the One who gave me life and chose me as an object of His grace.  Granted, he didn’t stuff me (unless the Holy Spirit counts!), but He did promise to take me home with Him someday and, through Jesus, we are “friends” of God like Abraham was.  Far better than being God’s “pal for eternity” (whatever that might mean), we get to be called “children of God” (John 1:12). 

The whole experience of reflecting on how far God’s love really reaches and what it means for my identity reminded of a text I came across a few years ago in my reading:  But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  (Isa 43:1)  That is the sovereign love of God and while the bears that are made at the Build-a-Bear Workshops will one day be discarded or forgotten, God’s love will remain, forever.  Amazing how a childish promise on a sign in store can remind you of something so weighty and beautiful.

Students, Students, and more Students

It’s that time of year again.  All across the country college students are packing minivans and U-Hauls to the gills to make the move to college.  According to the U.S. government (which is always right), there are approximately 15.9 million college students enrolled in schools across the U.S.  Here in Boston, there are about 250,000 students at the more than 70 colleges and universities.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of college students on the local population in the area around our church in particular.  According to my research, right now, there are over 110,000 college students returning to school at one of the nine colleges located within a 3 mile radius of where our church gathers for worship.  Most days I have gone out over the last week my drive looks like a everyone has traded in their cars for a U-Haul, Penske, or Budget truck (think Cash for Rental Trucks program).

To put this number in perspective, the number of college students within 3 miles of our church is roughly twice the population of Bowling Green, KY (for those of you in the bluegrass state) and twice the size of the population of Pensacola (for those further south).  For those in my home state of VA, the number is equivalent to almost 2/3 of the entire popluation of Newport News.  For those of you locally in MA, the number is a little more than the population of the city of Cambridge. 

I hope your thinking, “that’s a lot of college students!”  It is, indeed, a lot, but what is even more amazing is the fact that they make up less than 1/3 of the total population within 3 miles of our church site!  What is even more overwhelming and breaks my heart is that only 2.5% of that group claims an evangelical faith in Jesus Christ.  It is easy to get lost looking at the sheer number of people in our church’s community.  I feel sometimes, “How can we possibly make an impact here?”  Then, God in His kindness, reminds me, “what is impossible with man is possible with God” and that excites me.  

I think, “Is God incapable of glorifying His name in this city?  Is Boston any further from the grace of God than the entire Roman Empire in the first century?  Is the Gospel not able to penetrate the hearts of sinners anymore?”  It is when I remember these things that the city seems so much smaller and God seems so much bigger.  Not only can God glorify His name in Boston, but I believe it is His ordained will to do so.  So come, students, come by the tens of thousands, and come, Holy Spirit, yes, come glorify Jesus.

PHTA (People for the Heavenly Treatment of Animals)

Do you have a dog that needs some encouragement?  Maybe an iguana who is struggling with depression?  Or maybe you just want your cat to experience a full and meaningful life.  Well, you should have been in Boston on May 2 for the  Blessing of the Animals at Old South Church.  Old South church used to be a gospel preaching church many years ago, but now they are concerned with people’s pets.  We have doggie spas and doggie psychiatrists so why not a church that has a service that ministers to Fiddo? Its just one more example of the state of the church in Boston.  I just wonder if they sang the song, “All Creatures of Our God and King?”

Worship Leader, Matt Scott

We are so blessed to have Matt Scott joining us as worship leader.  Matt has a great heart for the Gospel and is a very talented musician.  Matt regularly plays and sings at local cafes and coffee shops around Boston.  He writes his own music and is preparing to go to Nashville in a few weeks to record his first EP.  You can listen to some of his music at his Myspace music page.   We’ll let you know when his CD becomes available.

Here’s an excerpt from his bio:  

My wife, Kristen, and I are currently living on the campus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA. She is working as a Marriage and Family Therapist for South Bay Mental Health while I am pursuing a Masters of Divinity at GCTS. We have been married for a little over two years and we enjoy cycling, visiting festivals, cafes, and exploring new places together.

 Having grown up in Southern Baptist families and traditions, we both have been following Christ since the early years of our lives. In our individual spheres/areas of influence, workplaces and relationships, we aim to build the Kingdom and share the love of Christ. We also aim to do this in our marriage and times together. As artists, we see the opportunities that music, photography, poetry–and the like–have to transcend culture and language, in such a way that enable us to build relationships and community. Moreover, some of the things we value are the following: family, the Church, the arts, and life lived together in community.

Summertime & Singleness in a Boston Church Plant

Leading our church plant in Boston over the summer is very different from any church I have served or even been a part of.  The typical summer in the churches I have served is characterized by three things: big fluctuations in attendance, very few “new” people, and lots of children’s activities.  Here in Boston our summer has seen only a small impact on our attendance (mostly college students leaving for the summer), but we were actually very consistent in attendance in July and we saw new people every week!  In addition, we have not had one children’s activity this summer at our site (Hope’s main campus has had several).  You might ask, “why not?”  Well, about 70% of our Sunday night attendance is actually still single and the married couples are very young and don’t have children (except Teresa and me!).  So if we did schedule any children’s activities, we could just do them at my house since my kids would be the only ones attending.

I have to admit that this summer I have been privy to something I have never seen: real Christian community among singles.  It has been a beautiful thing to see singles come together as part of God’s family (Eph 2:19) and love each other as family in a city where they have no “family.”  We have singles from all over the world; some are from Boston, some from across the United States, and some are from as far away as Africa, Asia, and South America.  It has been a joy of mine to see these singles hang out after Sunday night worship gatherings for 45 minutes or more and then plan to get together to eat, play games, and talk about life.  Community is a core value of our church plant and it is exciting to see God already building that in a very real way.  What a great witness to the grace of our God in our city.

A Blessed Time of Easter Worship

There we were last Sunday, several dozen believers, worshiping the risen Lord Jesus just like Christians in churches around the world.  There was one thing very unusual about this Easter service though.  It took place in a Jewish synagogue.  You see, for the last 18 months Hope Fellowship Church has been having their usual Sunday morning gatherings at their facility in Cambridge, MA but then each Sunday night they would lead the same service again this time in a Jewish synagogue in the Coolidge Corner area of Brookline, about 25 minutes away.  This synagogue graciously rents their fellowship hall to Hope Church to hold their worship gathering each week.

This Sunday night service is the core group that I am working with to launch as a new church this fall.  So this Easter was a sweet time for me as I was able to celebrate our risen Lord Jesus with the church (though in core group form) that I will, by God’s grace, spend the rest of my life serving to the glory of God and the good of the city.  The proverbial “icing on the cake” was that I saw Jesus the Christ lifted up in word and song in a Jewish synagogue.

The Brookline Project Video

I recently produced a video to overview our vision, calling, and strategy for the Brookline Project.  I’m really not sure why I chose to do it in the dead of winter in Boston but if you see me shivering, you know why. 

As a side note, I have spoken in front of crowds with people talking, children screaming, people coming in and out, students texting and cell phones ringing but I was ill-prepared for speaking on the street in Boston.  I can honesty say I have never faced a more challenging context to speak than on a street corner with a hundreds of people walking around me and a subway training passing by just feet from where I am standing.  For someone with ADD, like me, it was amazing I managed to get a complete thought out!

Check it out:

Hannah’s Choir Concert

Check out one of the songs from Hannah’s recent choir concert at school.  She looks so grown up its hard for her old dad to even look at it!