By Rogier Bos

There are not many resources available for people who really want to reach postmodern people. One of the best available ones is Young Leader Network, which endeavors to connect leaders who desire to minister ‘on the new edge.’ While there are similarities between Young Leader and Next-Wave, the first has been going for a few years already, and has developed more momentum. As I write this, Young Leader is in the process of conducting regional forums in six different locations in the U.S. Next-Wave attended the West Coast forum, held in April in Costa Mesa, near Los Angeles. Here’s a report.

Encouraging

The first thing that stood out about this three-day forum, was the amount of people that participated that actually came from different ‘new’ churches in this part of the country. Some 150 people came from a variety of churches, most of them already actively involved in ministry towards postmodern people.

Seeing how many ‘Gen-X’ church plants are going on right here in Southern California is very encouraging. Young Leader should be complimented on finding all of them and putting them into contact with each other! When you don’t know how many people are traveling the same road as you, it is easy to feel lonely. Conversely, when you know the ones that do, you can travel together!

Program

The nature of conferences is that it is easy never to really connect with anyone. The way Young Leader set up this forum did not allow for that; it seems like wherever you went there was a discussion going on, and you could dive right in. Most of the plenary sessions featured panel-discussion, which unfortunately did not always bring out the greatest content. Most of the seminars, called ‘journeys’, brought both good teaching and good interaction. Right from the start it seemed like everyone was involved in discussion.

Special guests

Special contributions were made by people like Brian McLaren, author of ‘Reinventing Your Church’ and ‘Finding Faith’, self-described ‘evangelical vandal’ Andrew Jones, and Tracy Radosevic of the Network of Biblical Story-tellers. Dieter Zander, who has just left Willow Creek to move to San Francisco, also made a great contribution.

Brian McLaren opened Monday afternoon with the illustration of the 1500’s. "Imagine that it is 1500, and you are a monk in Germany. In Southern Europe a movement called the Renaissance is going on, and it is bringing very challenging ideas to your world. From Spain you hear reports about the discovery of a new world called ‘the Americas’, and closer to home some German has invented this machine ‘the book printing press’, and it is simply revolutionizing the way you’ve always looked at books. Now imagine your name is Marten Luther.’ Then he asked the audience what they would say to Luther.

Answers varied widely, from ‘be careful of the pope’ to ‘you’re on the right track, but it will cost you’.

Then Brian turned it around, and started drawing parallels between the cultural transition of the 1500’s to the current cultural changes. He demonstrated how in so many ways we are experiencing the same tumult that Luther and associates must have sensed. Changes in worldview, new insights into language, scientific answers and quandaries, and political developments that create a whole new world.

It was obvious that Brian struck a chord. The discussion was lively, with questions such as ‘is there a new persecution coming?’, ‘Is this transition really of the same magnitude?’, and ‘what should our attitude be?’. Clearly much of the audience sensed an emerging tension, and sought to grapple with the issues.

Andrew Jones described his stance to me later: "We are in this time of change, and we don’t know what is on the other side. It’s like we are in mid-air, and I am waiting for us to come down. Until we do, I think we should resist coming out with definitive statements of any kind. We’re not ready to go public with the things we are thinking yet."

Journeys

Besides the main sessions there was the workshops, called journeys. Here are a few of the topics discussed:

• Biblical Story telling 101
• Utilizing the arts
• Narrative Preaching
• Adjusting Modern Ministry for a Postmodern world
• Thinking Radically… Worshipping corporately
• Thinking Ethnically, ministering locally
• Image and Affliction: Towards a Postmodern Embodiment of the ascetic lifestyle.
• Leadership Transitions - Leaving a Ministry Honorably
• A call to youth pastors - Launching a church within a church.

Most of the journeys has excellent content as well as very interesting discussion.

In conclusion

Young Leader should be congratulated on pulling together a wonderful group of like-minded people, and giving them this much space to discuss ideas and exchange experiences. Compliments go to Doug Pagitt, who has managed this network for some time now, and who is about to leave Young Leader to start a church plant in Minneapolis.

About Young Leader and Next-Wave

Both organizations are very similar, albeit Young Leader has been in operation longer. The objectives of both organizations are the same, in that they want to pull together leaders and thinkers ‘on the new edge’, who desire to plant churches that are culturally relevant to the increasing postmodern world in which we live, and who want to see a generation of postmodern people reached for Christ.

Next-Wave differs from Young Leader because we are using the World Wide Web do draw people together. Many people who would like to be part of this discussion in fact cannot do so, because they lack the time and resources to travel to a forums, or because they live outside the US. This is why Next-Wave has chosen the World Wide Web as its locus of operation: internationally accessible it offers us the opportunity to meet each other, share experiences, tell stories, and learn together.

This is not a criticism of Young Leader, just an explanation or how the two are similar and how they are different. From this forum it is obvious that nothing can really substitute meeting each other face to face, and we are thankful Young Leader made it possible for us to do so!