Driving Sixteen Penny Nails

One of my early employments in life involved a stint as a carpenter’s apprentice. We built apartment buildings in the metro Atlanta area. I was told to bring a nail apron, a hammer, and to be wearing steel toed shoes. Arriving at the job site, I was introduced to the lead carpenter and my co-workers. We were known as a “framing crew.” Once the foundations were poured and ready, we came in to put up the structural framework. It was good work for a young man in need of some good hard labor and a paycheck at the end of the week. The skill set for a carpenter’s apprentice was to be constantly learning by doing. I would be given a series of studs to nail into foot boards and top boards, all carefully marked to speed up our wall building, then we would work together to raise the wall, add temporary supports after making sure it was upright and level and then head on to the next. Nailing at first was tedious, I could hit a nail half a dozen times or more before sinking it. Co-workers taught by example, and I quickly learned to let the weight of the hammer being swung do the work and to sink it in three and sometimes just two swings (depending on the hardness of the pine boards.) Today that same work is done many times faster by a tool known as a nail gun. Nails bundled close together and dispensed by a simple contact with the wood are driven by a variety of forms of energy…compressed air, explosive charges, and electrically driven hammer all allow for a faster process. Many fewer nail drivers are needed. Technology has modified many of the working methods of the past. The interesting thing about the way tools have changed in construction, farming, and business of all sorts also applies to the ministry of the church. The tools we use at any period of time may or may not be the most efficient, most effective, or the most useful for the time and place. What we understand is the fact that in every arena of influence, we will of necessity make choices about changing with the times or not. Personally, I enjoy using a paper calendar to keep up with my appointments and meetings. For my younger colleagues in ministry, paper is almost secondary. They prefer to load that information into their laptops or handheld devices instead. Both work. Carpenters can still use hammers and sixteen penny nails to build houses instead of nail guns and electronic levels. The old works, but the new is faster and sometimes more accurate and cost effective. At church, the tools of communication and public ministry contact are equally diverse. As a teenager, we prepared a youth newsletter each month and shared it with the congregation. It took several hours of writing, typing, making a stencil, running the mimeograph machine, and using the church office on Saturdays to make it happen. Our church’s present generation of youth certainly have the capabilities to a similar thing, but the motivation for it is diminished in light of the intensive amount of time they already spend in exchanges of information via phones, computers, and websites, something their parents often use on only a limited basis. Some young people feel the church is irrelevant, not because the work and witness of the church is not important and needed in their lives, but it is often as if no one from church is talking to them very much. The radio and iPods are booming with messages; the TV presents alternative lifestyles to Christian faith in multiple forms; the models of sexuality apart from marriage are as diverse as the number of networks presenting them. We are not facing a shift or adjustment in the way we share the gospel, we are experiencing a tsunami effect of changes in the ways we communicate in our generation. The church must not always be behind the culture, when the culture needs the church to be leading it. It is time for the church to be not just the fad of the hour, but the movement of the day. It is time for the church to bear witness to the power of God in its people and to use the gifts of its people in purposeful service in Jesus’ name. The hammer works to drive a nail. The spoken word still drives the message, but the voice may be shared in this generation to millions in moments, to nations in a matter of minutes, to a world in need of the gospel as often as we are willing to strategize and emphasize and see God energizing the sharing of Christ. It comes when our lives are dedicated to the mission Christ gave us. The success belongs to God. The work is ours. The time is now.

Delayed Maturity

Sociologists are observing an interesting phenomenon in the present generation of young adults. In large numbers, young adults seem to be postponing personal independence and the exercise of what generally would be termed “adult” responsibility. Statistically, evidence points to extended educational processes (college and graduate school), delayed marriage (after school), and economic factors (inability to find stable employment), and even returning to live with parents (after college and/or initial employment).
Older generations may ask, “What gives?” Have we created a generation that is unable to accept responsible adult decision-making or are other factors in play? Some have suggested biological factors may be involved, associated with delayed brain development. Recent studies show that some adults may not have fully “connected” brains until mid to late 20’s or even early 30’s. Part of the problem may be in the way we use our brains or the way we don’t, for those periods.
Electronic visual stimuli in large quantities are components of most adults’ experiences beginning with television in the 1950’s. Since that time, the rate of exposure to media and information conveyed audibly and visually has grown exponentially. Clearly, we are altering the patterns by which our brains operate for the encoding of memory and in the kinds of recall and thinking developed.
Educators point to underdeveloped writing skills and limited critical thinking on the part of many older adolescents and college aged students.. If indeed, brain functions are detained from making critical links at once “normal stages” there would seem to be suggested that some patterns are missing in the current methodologies for both educating and implementing responsible decision-making.
Additional experience factors, or rather, the lack thereof, could be linked to social development delays. Some suggest that younger adults have been handicapped by the unwillingness of older generations to allow for their participation in any number of areas. The sheer age and experience factors involved in new technology are the one area where younger faces seem to have the advantage. At the same time, measures of responsibility in arenas such as community leadership and family life, religious practice and social settings, seems to be postponed or faltering.
A local bartender describes his Friday night crowd, largely young adults, as his babysitting night. He refers to poor decision-making about alcohol use and poor indicators of restraint or control regarding personal safety, health, or the welfare of others. A missing sense of compassion and a “failure to have personal boundaries” are frequent observations. Underdeveloped brains may be the cause of higher risk taking behaviors, not to be ignored by military recruiters of this age pool.
How we respond to these real circumstances among many young adults today will require churches to engage them in more intelligent ways. We must not ignore the technical side of communication as a key approach for reaching this generation. We must also be patient about making quick judgements regarding “not being responsible.” If social and biological factors are delaying the maturation of present young adults, they will simply need more time. And with that time, the church should be eager to utilize every option to enable young adults to exercise their social development in a safe and rewarding community. Mistakes will be a part of growing and learning and should be accepted as a reality for every generation’s maturing process, but the church needs young adults and their enthusiasm and vigor and growing and developing skills.
The church likewise may well supply the missing links. When family is fractured, the church provides a larger family of caring persons. When work is difficult or hard to find, the church can provide avenues for useful engagement with those who may become resources and mentors for learning, growth, and maturity. When social skills are weak, the church can provide a safe place to develop those sharing skills and public capacities. When educational gaps exist, the church can become an avenue for addressing those needs. Whenever possible the church should be crossing the generational divides to engage and provide healthy concepts of personal and community responsibility and capacity for service.
The “young” generation is always separated from its predecessors in some way. At the same time, each generation does “come into its own” in time. Do what you can to prepare those who follow you.

Faith Traditions or Living Faith?

Many people across the globe maintain a particular religious “position” as a birthright. They assume they are “something” because they were born into a community of certain “faith” adherents. Such identifiers lack an association of faith in a dynamic or intrinsic experience of present awareness and understanding of divine influence. Faith lives. Traditions are remembrances of others experiences or worse, remembrances of others practices without a comprehension of meaning or purpose. Those who adopt traditions without personal faith and experience do so largely to the neglect of their own spiritual awareness and authentic faith relationships.
Persons without living faith sometimes adopt eclecticism as a pattern for accepting any and all influences as just that, influences; again without a personal, living faith relationship. Traditions can drive behaviors across generations of religious adherents, but it does not drive faith. It may allow for names and places and personages to be claimed, but it does not allow for the transforming awareness of divine action and presence in one’s own life.
The testimony of Judeo-Christian scriptures bears the marks and witness of many who experience a living faith experience. It also bears the testimony of those who received traditions without such faith experiences. One lives, the other falters. Why?
Living faith is required to comprehend a living God. Those who bury their Savior and ignore His resurrection to life in their own practice of faith ignore the basis of experiences that are transformative and eternal. Jesus saves. He brings the spiritually dead to life. He brings life even to the physically dying. Because in Him there is life abundant. Faith lives!