Walt Mueller - Friday Session

Walt is from Lancaster, PA. (that creates a cultural connect with Nappanee, IN)
Parent of four kids... youngest 16, oldest 25.

Walt is 51 years old.

"Facebook is a fabulous thing. What a wonderful way to communicate... more on that in time."

What is the posture you need to take when approaching this current generation?

There is a cultural generational gap.
In the 60's, nobody wanted to come together.
In the 80's, both sides wanted to come together more.

ABC Family added a little subtitle a year ago, "A New Kind of Family."

By the way, you still need to watch "The Breakfast Club". Get the DVD, watch the full unedited version to get the full effect of the language.

We often want to get kids saved, circle the wagons, protect them from the outside, and every once in a while to fire a shot or throw out a life vest. We keep ourselves in that posture until we die or Jesus returns. By the way, that's not a Biblical approach to the world.

I think Walt effectively stepped on some major toes with those last two statements.

Individuation - The phenomenon where youth seek to create their own uniqueness from their parents.

3 postures we tend to take toward youth culture:

1. Unrealistic Optimism: The teenage years are just a stage. I just need to weather it. The problem with this posture is we neglect the significant impact a culture will have on a person.
2. Alarmist Pessimism: Everything in the world is evil. Nothing good can come from it. All we can do is remove ourselves. It's escapist... when taking this approach, we rob our kids of the opportunity to fullfill what God has for him.
3. Biblical Realism: You evaluate everything in light of the Bible. Understand that with sin everything has come undone, but the scriptures lay out the way everything is meant to be.
   Who did this? Paul. Jesus. but also...
   "... the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do."I Chronicles 12:32
   We need to understand the world and engage it in the same posture as the sons and daughters of Issachar.

Introducing them to God's Story:
Chapter 1: We are created by God with a desire to live in relationship with him.
Chapter 2: Everything falls apart due to sin.
Chapter 3: The story of redemption.

How do you introduce a child to God's story?

1. Know God's Unchanging Word.
2. Know changing kids and their changing world (know your mission field).
   Each face has a story, and you need to know that story.
   2 questions to ask...
   What is happening in that child that should not be happening?
   What is not happening in that child that should be happening?
   
3. Take the unchanging word to changing kids growing up in an unchanging world.
   If a person were to come to the pastor and say, "I'm called to be a missionary in China." The worst thing we could do is buy them a ticket and send them out the next day. That person needs time to train and become a student of the culture in order to adequately engage that country for the sake of Christ. This is no different than a parent or youth worker seeking to engage the youth culture.
   

Culture is...

1. The soup they swim in everyday.
   
2. A Map.
3. A Mirror.

Culture is:
Art, music film, philosophy, books & magazines, language & slang, television, ideas, hobbies & interests, extracurricular activities, modes of transportation, values, beliefs, peer group & social organizations, habits, gesture & mannerisms, dress, tatoos, body modifications, hearoes & role models, rites, web sites, spending habits.

Don't be threatened by what is out there!

Every one of us who are followers of Christ should do dual listening...

We listen to the word in order to discover even more of the riches of Christ. And we listen to the world in order to discern which of Christ's riches are needed most and how to present them in their best light.

-John Stott, The Contemporary Christian

We're back at it tomorrow morning!