what do you see as the most important issue facing this generation?

There are many factors that contribute to this; I’ll mention two.

I’ve lived in the Washington/Baltimore corridor for the last 13 years; people here - and in many parts of the country - are mind-bogglingly busy. People of accomplishment are striving to accomplish too much or, in the alternative, throwing all of their resources at accomplishing one thing with a monomaniacal focus. Either too many goals or too much focus on one goal have the same result: a loss of stability in other areas of life, whether it be family, or work, or your body, or church. And I’m not talking about seasons of chosen imbalance; everyone has those - whether it’s the purchase of a house, the birth of new baby, or getting a start-up off the ground and into profitability. I’m talking about something that’s become routinized.

Another timekiller that effects what little discretionary time these folk have left and totally dominates the lives of those who are bored, burned out, or have given up is an overindulgence in the constant stream of entertainment that bombards us from media sources.

These factors and others rob us of our lives; they also rob us of one another. And they are perfectly natural to the extent that we believe that what we see is all we have and that everything around us is all there is. In other words, people of time must live differently because they must accumulate and then horde all the resources they will eventually lose. Christians are people of time and of eternity. They are right-now and forever people. They can afford to live at a more measured pace because they have a different agenda and a treasure elsewhere.

Unfortunately, forever people increasingly live as if they also are trapped by time. But not those who understand joy.

We often hear - as our Lord taught - that our two highest responsibilities are to love God will all that is within and to love those beside us as we love ourselves. What is not heard as often - but was understood by folk like Augustine and CS Lewis - is that the fulfilling of our highest responsibilities is the path to our highest joy.

This intoxicating joy in the One at whose right hand there are pleasures forever (Psalm 16:11) helps us - to modify a Pauline phrase - to cast aside the light and momentary pleasures that would distract us. And the apostle reveals where else he found joy when we remarked, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?” (1 Thessalonians 3:9, emphasis mine)

So I could superficially answer the question that what we need is a new sense of time. But that wouldn’t address the heart of the matter: What’s the most important issue facing this generation? a new vision of God. We need to drink deep drafts of who He is and lose ourselves in His wonder, enraptured by his love and magnificence. That will then drive our agenda because, like Paul, we’ll be able to say that the love of Christ constrains us. Our PIMs will submit to his passion.

what do you think the church can do to help us face this issue?

First of all, those of us who are leaders have to make sure we are enjoying God and others more than anything. One of the greatest competitors for our passion is the ministry itself. And I think it’s because it’s more controllable. God and people are unpredictable, but my three point sermon with a joke isn’t. And - truth in advertising here - I struggle with this quite a bit. When I first began working with small groups at Cedar Ridge Community Church I focused quite a bit on structure and systems. But toward the end of my time there I had come to the point where I felt that my most important activity was going out to lunch with my core leaders. We leaders must model a preeminent enjoyment of God and others if we want to see multiplying spiritual friendships in our communities.

That’s the hardest thing. Be examples.

Next - and this is easier for us preachers to accomplish - we need to cast a vision. We have to use the power of our stages to create a new corporate culture, a culture where spiritual friendships are exalted, celebrated, and described. This is weird for us because perhaps more than at any other time in history we live individual lives.

And that culture must also include a core value on - now get ready for this one - a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That vertical relationship empowers the horizontal. But that phrase typically is collapsed to an initial salvific event. We have to help people to understand the normality, regularity, and mundane nature of relationship with the Divine. The great Christian mystic Leanne Payne calls it walking alongside of God instead of walking alongside ourselves. I can’t tell you how common it is for me to walk alongside myself instead of walking with Jesus. And when I do that, I’m living a sad superficial life and am usually escaping some fear.

When I walk with Jesus, on the other hand, I walk in confident power. “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights” (Psalm 18:33, NIV). The only thing I do have going for me is that I’m hungry for that and I believe what my Lord said that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.

The classic spiritual disciplines are paths to this. I like the way that Dallas Willard describes the disciplines: They are very intentional ways that we put ourselves into places where we can receive the grace and power of God.

Finally, we have to realize that this Christian community thing isn’t about Sunday morning services. For all the good that it’s brought and for all the new people that have been reached, one of the weights of the seeker-sensitive model is the enormous effort and time that have to be focused on the Sunday morning service. Now I’m not sure now we can ever go back, though the house church movement seems to be picking up quite a bit. But we need something else. I’m now reading George Stephanopoulos’ All Too Human and I’ve been so mesmerized by Hegedus and Pennebaker’s masterful documentary of the 1992 Clinton campaign - The War Room - that I’ve probably seen it like five times. One of things that Stephanopoulos reminded me of that I had seen in the documentary was a whiteboard that James Carville (who was in charge of the campaign) had placed in the war room. I’ll quote Stephanopoulos:

Irrespective of what we might think of the Clinton agenda and legacy, that campaign was disciplined with a laser-like focus on these three themes. Everything they did served these three themes.

Those of us who led churches need to exercise a similar discipline focused on the fact that every program, every service, every bulletin announcement, every activity must be about helping others love God more perfectly and one another. We have to keep our eyes on the ball. That, as they say, is the money. We have to remember that church doesn’t happen primarily when we deliver a sermon - church happens at 2 AM in the morning when someone picks up the phone and hears, “You said call you anytime? Listen I’m about to walk out the door to score but I don’t want to.” That’s church. We must do everything we can to create an environment where these love actions occur - both those heading up and those heading to the side. If we create labs where the miracle can happen, God will create the miracle. Truth is He does it anyway.

So I’ve called into service this metaphor of a map, in that a map does not tell you everything about the terrain to which it refers.

But a map definitely has known reference points. I’m equally concerned with religious folk who take the legitimate insights from people like Derrida and Foucault that we hold truth in paradigm and that language is a symbol system and then conclude that we can know nothing or very little of God. Or those who want to throw out the labors of the many theological geniuses who have labored over the course of the last two millennia to describe divinities. There are matters about which we can have what I’m beginning to call reliable knowledge. Knowledge that we can put to good use.

Finally, and most importantly, a map is used for going somewhere. Systematization of truth and the impartation of information is useless in and of itself. Jesus said that the Bible is built on the two greatest commandments. When our knowledge of the Bible does not move us to love God and others more perfectly, it’s a waste of time. Otherwise James would have written, “The demons believe and then fall down in worship.” A map is used for movement and for traveling.