News break: If you are not aware of the paradigm shift (an example serving as a model; pattern) in the culture of our young people today, you MUST wake up to it. The methods by which we reach young people with the Gospel message today has drastically changed from the way we reached them 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 2 years ago and may I even say in 2008. The one unchanging factor, and it will forever remain unchanged, is the truth of the Gospel message itself...that Jesus Christ came to save sinful people from the wrath of God. (Romans 5:6-11)
Let me get you thinking more specifically. If you were to survey high school and college students on the question: "Do you believe there is such thing as absolute truth", i am fairly certain a good majority of them would respond that they do not believe there is absolute truth. What this shift should tell us is that we must begin conversing with these young people about the Gospel in a very different way than we may have in the past. We have to first and foremost get past the huge roadblock that they don't believe in absolute truth.
This next example comes from Ken Cochrum, he is Campus Crusade for Christ's Vice President for Global Campuses. He oversees all of our college campus ministry work around the world, in some 150+ countries. Here is something he recently shared about, what he calls Generation F. "Facebook hit 200 million users this week, in 40 languages. That's doubled from 100 million just 8 short months ago. The NY Times graphed the progress, including the generational element. If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's 5th most populous nation, following China, India, the USA and snuggled between Indonesia (220 million) and Brazil (190 million).
The under-25's are the people that have never known a time when they couldn't know more about a subject than their professors could teach in a 45-minute lecture simply by exploring the top 10 Google hits. No wonder this group is a bit skeptical of leadership authority culture based on traditional currencies such as age, position or tenure." Whether this grasps you or not, the youth culture is changing...daily!
I will be continuing this series in the days to come with some specific methods that Campus Crusade and others have been using to reach young people in light of today's culture changes.
I end on a personal note: My son, Azariah, just turned 7 months old this past Sunday. He is really starting to enjoy when we read books to him. Since he was 1-2 months old we began reading to him out of "The Jesus Storybook Bible- Every story whispers His name". Through these simple, rooted in truth Bible stories, through prayer and by the grace of God, our hope is that Azariah will believe in the absolute truth of the Gospel from an early age and that he will love his friends and family well...in a way that will lead them to the foot of the cross of Christ!
Joshua
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