It’s not called the Grand Canyon for nothing.
Practice 5
Curb Entitlement and Self-Centered Tendencies by Engaging in Countercultural Mission
Engaging in countercultural mission means living as a faithful presence by trusting God’s power and living differently from cultural norms.
A walk in the woods is good for the soul. For the Kinnamans, hiking the national parks is worshiping in cathedrals of God’s making.
It’s the spring of 2016, and the five of us are heading down into the Grand Canyon—very down. Starting from the south rim, the trip is about ten miles one way, all downhill, to Phantom Ranch. We are planning to camp at the bottom. Hikers descend nearly forty-five hundred feet, almost a mile, down. Then there’s the ten miles back. We not-so-intrepid explorers must ascend that forty-five hundred feet back up.
It’s not called the Grand Canyon for nothing.
Emily, our oldest daughter, forgot to pack a jacket (I’m not bitter), and so we are doing some last-minute shopping at the Grand Canyon Lodge. A woman in her midtwenties who works at the store helps us find the right merchandise. As she does, I notice she’s limping.
Sometimes Barna research pops into my head at weird times, and this moment, shopping for a jacket, is one of them. As the clerk shows us overpriced jackets (we are far from the places where provisions are available at reasonable prices), I visualize the statistic that 52 percent of adults think praying out loud in public for a stranger is extremist.
Despite the risk of social awkwardness, I feel compelled to offer to pray for her.
“Thanks for helping us find the right size,” I say and then, after a pause in which I calculate the pros and cons, offer tentatively, “Hey, I notice you’re limping. You okay?”
“No, my leg is really sore. I went on a long hike yesterday and hurt it.”
“Bummer.”
“I sort of had to come into work today.”
I nod, imagining a boss she’s trying to appease and bills she has to pay. “I know this may sound a little strange, but would you mind if I pray with you—for your leg?” I ask with as much nonaggressive conviction as I can muster.
She looks at me with the kind of head tilt that dogs do, and I can tell she’s doing a mental calculation similar to the one I just performed. I can also feel the what-are-you-doing-Dad stare from my then-twelve-year-old son, Zack, standing beside me.
“Sure, that’d be okay with me,” she says with a sincere smile. I glance down at Zack, who’s looking at me with emoji-wide blue eyes.
“Cool, let’s pray,” I say and bow my head just enough. “God in heaven, would you please help my new friend Shannon to feel better? Her leg is causing her a lot of pain, and we know you can heal people. So I am asking you to heal her and to take away her pain so she can work today. I pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.”
I open my eyes just before she does. She smiles again and thanks me. “Sure, no problem, you’re welcome”—those kinds of words come out. Nothing seems to have miraculously happened at that moment, but she seems grateful.
As we walk away, Zack half whispers, “Dad, we really believe this stuff, don’t we?”
On a Mission from God
Thinking back to that experience, I can’t help but believe that Christianity is meant to be at odds with purposeless, going-through-the-motions life. (I also can’t help but remember how sore my calf muscles were after the hike, but that’s another story.) Although most people think praying for a stranger in public is religious extremism, we have an obligation and an opportunity as Christians to be the right kind of extreme.
Keep Christianity weird.
This leads us to the fifth and final practice for raising resilient young disciples: engaging in God’s countercultural mission. Let’s break this down a bit. The idea of being “countercultural” generates many images, from eating vegan to composting to tie-dye to bell-bottoms. The way we’re using the word, countercultural is a way of life in Jesus that runs against the grain of the world. This connects back to our original definition of discipleship, covered in an earlier chapter: to develop Jesus followers who are resiliently faithful in the face of cultural coercion and who live a vibrant life in the Spirit.
The Christian community, when it is most faithful, runs contrary to and is distinct from the systems and structures of power, sexuality, and money, among many other things. We are called to be a counterculture for the common good.1 Scripture says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think” (Rom. 12:2). This is at the heart of being countercultural.
The word mission calls to mind everything from impossible exploits (Tom Cruise jumping out of an airplane) to visiting five stores to find the right pair of shoes. In the realm of faith, we might picture a missionary working in dusty, far-off places of the earth. But the idea of mission we’re conveying here is that God is powerful, active, and intentional, and he wants his followers to play a part in redeeming people and restoring the world to himself. Biblically speaking, this includes a wide range of aspirations, including serving others, caring for creation, receiving God’s blessing in order to bless others, and seeking to save the lost in Jesus’s name.
That God chooses to work his mission in part through his people is astounding. The God of the universe wants us to be part of his mission! He doesn’t need us to do his work, but we have the privilege of joining with him, the master craftsman, in the mission to reconcile the world to himself. Why does he want us to join in?
Have you ever done something you really love to do with someone, maybe one of your kids? Hiking is fun. Hiking with my family is even more enjoyable. God shares his grand mission with us—and wants us to live out his mission with others too—because he loves to love with us.
We now have the building blocks to further define the fifth practice of resilient discipleship:
Engaging in countercultural mission means living as a faithful presence2 by trusting God’s power and living differently from cultural norms.
This sounds awesome! However, it is especially hard, uphill, soul-shaping work for people in exile. It makes the Grand Canyon look like a walk in the park.
Resilient and Resolute
This fifth practice represents the most elusive of the five. We looked at more than a dozen factor combinations for how best to understand it. Our team kept sifting through threads of evidence and data, searching for how to best isolate and identify the factors at work. Analysts looked first at outward-facing elements, factors that show young disciples caring about Christianity being expressed for outsiders, not just for those already inside the tent. In the end, we landed on the idea that this factor could best be described as a sense of mission for the cause of Christ in the world—and a resolute orientation toward walking against the grain of culture. This is not easy, but the research shows that young resilient disciples are doing just this (see table 14).
How does countercultural mission relate to the other practices we have been exploring in Faith for Exiles? Intimacy with Jesus is the deep source of our identity here on earth and in eternity. Cultural discernment involves the life of the mind and the robust perspectives we must cultivate together in order to think Christianly about ourselves and the world. Meaningful relationships are about devotion to other believers who shape us to become more like Christ. Vocational discipleship relates to personal calling and finding what God has made each of us to do. Countercultural mission is the outward-facing expression of all the other practices—what we do together as the body of Christ for the sake of the world. It is about the people of God resolving to be on mission together to influence the world toward God’s good, original intentions.
In the research among resilients, we found some startling patterns.
Resilients exhibit a powerful, resolute commitment to serving and sacrificing for others. These are the kinds of young people we want to produce—and the kind of people we want to be! However, this is certainly not the norm—and it is not how most people perceive young adults.
Entitled and Self-Centered
When you think about Millennials—and about the next, next generation, Gen Z—what are some of the words or phrases that come to mind? David routinely asks this question when speaking in front of audiences of pastors and Christian workers. Here’s a sample of words offered by a group of pastors and church leaders in Sacramento. (Seriously, this is based on a transcript from that day.)
lost
hipsters
tech savvy
flakes
gamers
entitled
foodies
self-absorbed
lazy
incredibly good looking (That came from—you guessed it—a Millennial.)
courageous (This was the first genuinely positive comment from any of the older adults in the room. As you can see, it broke open a different direction.)
passionate
sincere
hopeful
pressured
unparented
overparented
Surely you have heard some of these negative Millennial stereotypes. By the way, history records many instances—one even shows up in ancient Athens—of older people complaining about the next generation. This is an age-old problem; we worry about our youth.
But in our particular moment—in digital Babylon—it’s interesting that so many Boomers and Elders are complaining about Millennials. Here’s our question: Who raised the Millennials? How is it that the people who raised them are the ones complaining most vociferously? We grumble about handing out participation trophies, but who bought those trophies and handed them out?
Disparate life experiences lead generations to dismiss and devalue one another. But the church must be the place we give no quarter to that destructive thinking. We need one another to get on with our mission.
Still, many of us sense something in the air, something that feeds entitlement and self-absorption.
Curbing Entitlement
Any parent will say they want to avoid raising entitled kids. But this is almost like swearing we will never be like our parents: what we resist persists. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Avoiding entitlement is difficult when we tend to make little idols out of our kids. Once a neighbor observed that Zack Kinnaman, a little boy at the time, was essentially the prince of the house. David felt pretty defensive at the time. But the truth hurts.
We’ve just joked about participation trophies, but there is some truth to the entitlements that come when we create everyone-deserves-to-be-acknowledged schools and everyone-is-awesome workplaces. When it comes to finding their destiny, we feed the next generation all sorts of myths about being able to achieve whatever they want, about becoming anything they can dream, about finding what their hearts desire most. Most twentysomethings expect to have attained their dream job within the next five years, but only half as many say they have clear goals for how they’re going to get there.
Part of the reason older adults chafe at their interactions with younger adults and teens is that they genuinely can’t relate. I (David) always felt inadequate when I worked for George Barna, like he was going to find out what a poser I really was. For years, I felt that way. One of my Millennial staff, only six months on the job, told me she felt like her career had plateaued. Another twentysomething team member came out of a client presentation and announced, “I pretty much nailed that, right?!” I couldn’t even imagine having that kind of confidence when I was their age.
A legendary music producer, musician, and songwriter once commiserated, “These Millennials come into my studio and treat me like I am their peer, not just in terms of age but in terms of experience and accomplishments. It’s so rare to find a good musician or singer these days who doesn’t think they deserve to be a star.” Welcome to the YouTube era and the expectation of making it. Like, now.
A thirty-year veteran of the airlines recently observed that what’s different about fliers today is that “everyone thinks they deserve the royal treatment.” Sure, many Millennials are entitled. But perhaps they are a product of their environment. They are children of entitled parents who can’t help but spoil their beautiful, amazing kids.
As Christians—whatever our age—we have to practice a countercultural mission on this level. We have to curb our sense of entitlement. We have to fight the zeitgeist when it sneaks in like an unseen digital cookie on our web browser. Being countercultural means being dead set against entitlement in our lives. And to do that, we’ve got to work to develop the muscles of sacrifice and service. The Scriptures point the way. We must decrease so that Jesus can increase (John 3:30). The first shall be last, and the last shall be first (Matt. 20:16). Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5).
Turning from Self-Centeredness
In addition to swelling problems of entitlement, society is plagued by self-centeredness. These problems ride together, like a bank robber and a getaway driver. Jean Twenge, whom we mentioned earlier, has written extensively about the narcissism epidemic.3 There’s actually solid social research showing that a higher proportion of people in our society today display characteristics of narcissistic behavior compared to people in the past. (How cool is it that social scientists can measure something like narcissism? Long live the geeks!) Twenge believes this is tied, at least in part, to pervasive screen use. The objects themselves do not make us self-centered but the way we use them does. These tools create a my-sized experience all day, every day.
The signs of self-centered, self-indulgent, me-first mind-sets are all around us. They are often disguised as “the pursuit of happiness.” David’s dad, Gary Kinnaman, who served as a pastor for decades in Phoenix, was once asked by a woman who wanted to get divorced and remarried, “But the Bible says God wants me to be happy, right?” When we survey the leading edge of Gen Z, we find that 51 percent of teens today say their top goal for life is happiness.
Self-centeredness can also masquerade as society-wide perspectives, such as the belief held by the vast majority of Americans that people can believe whatever they want as long as those beliefs don’t harm anyone. And as we’ve discussed, most adults say a person finds their truest self by looking inside. Neither of these ideas really work.
Now, before we cast all the blame for self-entered behavior on everyone else, we should also look close to home. We can spot self-centered tendencies in the pulpit and in Christian ministries. There are broken human beings there, so of course that’s true. In our efforts to live a countercultural mission, however, we must diagnose and fix self-centeredness in our churches. Here are a few things to ponder.
The point here isn’t to rag on pastors but to suggest that, in order for the church to engage in healthy mission today, we need strong leaders who aren’t focused on themselves—who embody the countercultural, kingdom way of deflecting attention to Jesus. This may seem counterintuitive, but we need more leaders who accomplish less in the limelight and more behind the scenes to shape the hearts, minds, and souls of the next generation. We can’t power our way to kingdom impact. It just doesn’t work that way.
At the same time, this is a call for all of us—leader and laity, younger and older, child, parent, and grandparent. In digital Babylon—in the era of YouTube, Twitter, self-promotion, and the humble brag—we must learn to put self aside. This is the countercultural way of Jesus.
What will it take to rid us of our self-centered ways? It will require the same kinds of practices that help to check entitlement: service, sacrifice, silence, solitude, letting go of control, thinking less about ourselves, and so on. It will mean having an engaged heart toward one another and for the sake of others. One of the many remarkable facts about the Bible is that the Old Testament ends, as it turns to the story of Jesus, by saying that God will turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children and the hearts of the children toward their fathers.
Having a shared mission is one way of thinking about ourselves less.
God’s People in Exile
In one of the most beautiful passages of the Bible, the prophet Jeremiah predicts the coming exile. His powerful, poetic language doesn’t persuade all his hearers. Not everyone considers his warnings to be accurate; many suspect Jeremiah of taking crazy pills. Understandably, they don’t want to leave their comfortable way of life in Jerusalem.
But Jeremiah proves to be right, and his prophecy offers practical insights about living as God’s people in exile. Here are some of the insights Jeremiah offers (see Jer. 29), set alongside the ways Daniel and other exiles exemplify these principles of countercultural mission.
The point of all this? To remind us who follow Jesus that being in exile is a high and ultimately rewarding calling. There is beauty in exile. To live as God’s people, to follow his Son through the power of his Spirit, requires us to choose—going along just won’t do. The conditions of exile invite us each day to choose whom we will serve.
And in spite of the intense pressures coming at Christians in our post-Christian context, right now, today, at this very moment, millions of young resilient disciples are making their choice. Their lives demonstrate a firm and countercultural trust that God is on the move. Young Christians are coming to grips with how to live as God’s people, embracing the power of exile (see table 15).
Here’s where things get tricky: the Christian community—inlcuding parents, church leaders, and other well-meaning stakeholders—sometimes works at cross-purposes with regard to young disciples’ participation in countercultural mission. We try to keep them insulated. We helicopter-parent them. We imagine that safety and security are kingdom values. We want them to change the world around them, but only at a reasonable distance. We like the idea of countercultural mission, but in practice, here in exile, it’s kind of terrifying. Living faithfully in Jerusalem, when everything is neat and predictable, is a different animal from faithfulness in Babylon. Too many of our ministry efforts prepare people for a world that doesn’t exist, undercutting our witness and passing flimsy faith to the next generation. Because, honestly, we are scared.
Take Courage
Courage is among the most important virtues we can cultivate in digital Babylon. Acknowledging our fear and trusting God in spite of it are job one. Courage helps to empower our definition of discipleship: to develop Jesus followers who are resiliently faithful in the face of cultural coercion and who live a vibrant life in the Spirit. Without courage, we’ll be unable to live distinctly from the inexorable push and pull of culture. Without courage, we won’t think and live differently from the norm. Without courage, we’ll use screens the way everyone
Table 15.
Resilient Disciples
Which of the following, if any, do you regularly experience in your church, parish, or faith community? Please mark any that apply. And if none apply, please feel free to mark that.
Building Courage and Conversational Readiness
Courage to live my faith in public.
73%
Courage to tell others about what I believe.
64%
Wisdom for living with people who believe differently from me.
56%
Preparation for having difficult conversations with others.
49%
Stoking Compassion
I better understand the needs of the poor.
65%
I had the opportunity to serve the poor in my community.
58%
I have found a cause or issue that I’m passionate about.
53%
I better understand what is happening for the poor globally.
50%
I better understand social justice.
44%
I better understand the needs of marginalized people.
37%
Giving Real Opportunities to Contribute
I am given real chances to contribute to my church.
73%
I have learned what it feels like to be part of a team.
57%
I have access to leadership training for ministry through my church.
48%
Preparing a Countercultural Response
Wisdom for how to live faithfully in a secular world.
70%
Wisdom for how to live differently from the culture.
61%
Prayer specifically for the challenges of living faithfully in a post-Christian culture.
55%
Help with living wisely when it comes to sex and sexuality.
52%
Modeling Faithfulness
I have been inspired to live generously based on the example of people at my church.
61%
I have been inspired to be a leader based on the example of someone at my church.
51%
I have been inspired to be a missionary based on the example of someone else.
36%
N
else does. Without courage, we won’t stand up for the right things at the right time.
Resilient disciples take courage from their participation in church. Seven out of ten say that their churches help them to find “courage to live my faith in public” and “wisdom for how to live faithfully in a secular world.” Courage doesn’t just happen; it has to be taught and reinforced. Joshua continually had to be reminded—by God himself, mind you—to be strong and courageous. Jesus’s own words remind us that we will experience troubles in this world but to “take heart, because [he has] overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Don’t Put Safety First
Barna has found undeniable evidence that parents of many teenagers are highly motivated by a desire for their safety.4 This is more than just wanting for them a place free from, say, the possibility of sexual misconduct. Parents and students should want that kind of safety. But the safety some parents want is far beyond what is kingdom minded. Many Millennials who dropped out of church tell us that among their chief reasons was feeling their church was overprotective, keeping them insulated from seeing and experiencing the real world.
Churches should offer safe refuge and respite from the world; disciples in exile want and need sanctuary and rest from the pressures of accelerated culture.5 Yet—and this is a big yet—exile is not safe. God’s mission is not safe. Participating in God’s countercultural mission in exile is certainly not safe—and we do young disciples zero favors by putting safety first. We can be a source of comfort, strength, and like-minded community for Jesus followers in digital Babylon and equip them for fruitful, missional living in exile.
The two of us have recently been learning this uncomfortable lesson, not just because we have kids in college but also because they elected to attend highly secular schools (UC Berkeley and Parsons School of Design) in highly post-Christian cities (San Francisco and New York City). If safety came first, Emily and Skye would be at home right now. But because we want our kids to become ever more resilient, safety has gotten bumped from the top of the list.
Our friends John and Beth Fankhauser left their cushy life in Southern California to serve as medical missionaries in Liberia. They took their children, Josh, Bethany, and Bekah, with them to Africa, and they were all there when the Ebola crisis broke out. They were careful, of course, but the false notion of safety didn’t come first in their decision to go.
The lesson of faithfulness in exile? Life isn’t going to be safe, parents. Put mission first.
Prepare for Difficult Conversations
If courage is among the most essential virtues, the ability to engage in difficult conversations is among the most critical practical skills for life in digital Babylon. We live in a world of openly stated differences and religious pluralism, much like the exiles of the Bible did. Today’s young Christians live and relate in a difficult conversational landscape: more diversity religiously, more empowered atheism, more insulating tribalism, more social media, more pontificating, less listening.
On the positive side of the ledger, resilient disciples show the right kind of instincts when it comes to difficult conversations. Two-thirds say that their churches give them “courage to tell others what I believe.” They are more likely than their peers to say they are interested in learning about the views of others, even if those views are contrary to their own. This is great, because we need young people who aren’t frightened by the big, bad world of ideas around them. They are also more likely than their peers to say that it is okay to tell someone you disagree with their opinion or point of view, which is rare in a time of anxiety-producing political correctness.
However, even resilients need help preparing for difficult conversations. Many say that their churches have left them unprepared to have difficult conversations. Also, nearly half agree that one should not criticize someone else’s life choices—a belief that is inconsistent with countercultural mission because God calls all Christians to bear witness to the truth in Jesus. When others are headed full speed toward destructive dead ends, questioning their life choices is not the worst thing one can do.
When Gabe Lyons and David released Good Faith, a book designed to help equip people for difficult conversations, we heard from many young Christians who felt overwhelmed by the prospect of expressing their convictions with love in our divisive culture. They didn’t want to come across as bigoted or out of touch. For us, this was more evidence that helping people know what they believe and how to express themselves to others in a spirit of love and respect is an area where the church must dramatically improve its effectiveness.
Embody a Godly Sexual Ethic
Sex and sexuality are some of the most complicated issues humans have to sort out—and they often serve up complicated and heart-wrenching conversations. Resilient disciples feel the tension of being countercultural in this area.
While most of society agrees that “any kind of sexual expression between consenting adults is acceptable,” resilients don’t go along with this idea. When asked if they agree or disagree with the statement “Sex is designed by God to be between a man and a woman in marriage,” the vast majority of resilient disciples strongly agree (81 percent), starkly contrasting with their peers. Forty-six percent of habituals, 26 percent of nomads, and 12 percent of prodigals embrace this biblically traditional view of sexuality. Resilient disciples disagree that Christianity’s traditional sexual ethics are unrealistic by a three to one margin (74 percent to 26 percent). Habituals are split in agreement versus disagreement (48 percent to 53 percent). The vast majority of nomads and prodigals agree that Christianity’s sexual ethics are unrealistic today.
Resilients display truly different values when it comes to sex. This is remarkable, given all that’s stacked against them—the hypersexualized context of digital Babylon and the increasing softening of churches’ convictions regarding sexuality—and these young Christians should be commended for their solid beliefs. Still, only half of resilients say that their churches have provided them with help for “living wisely when it comes to sex and sexuality.” This number is not bad, but it ought to be higher, especially since responding well to the anything-goes sexuality of our day is deeply connected to resilience.
The most effective churches we’ve come across take young people through thoughtful, intentional content on sex and sexuality and are careful not to rely merely on Sunday morning sermons to do the heavy lifting on such intense topics. They ask a lot of their young people (reading books and listening to talks and respectfully listening to those they disagree with) and work hard to make a sexual ethic more than skin deep, more than a list of theoretical dos and don’ts. Why? Because living a countercultural ethic when it comes to sex and sexuality is essential to faithful and fruitful mission today.
Lead with Love
In digital Babylon, people come together from a variety of experiences, perspectives, and tribes. Consequently, there is no mainstream way of seeing and interpreting the world, and exiles have to work out friendships and relationships in a context different from that of previous generations. Young resilients want to learn to be friends across differences. They value diversity. They don’t want to vote people off the island.
Earlier in Faith for Exiles, we talked about Christian-to-Christian relationships because these are central to our formation as believers. In exile, however, this is not the only kind of relationship young people experience. Young Christians live in a profoundly pluralistic culture—religiously, culturally, in every way. Difference abounds.
Millennial and Gen Z Christians are trying to figure out how to navigate this culture. They experience empathy for people not like themselves. This is a good and godly instinct. Paul wrote that he became all things to all people so that he might win some to Christ (1 Cor. 9:21–22). He appealed to his Greek hearers by talking about the “Unknown God” (Acts 17:22–23). He advised his readers to have “gracious and attractive” conversations with nonbelievers (Col. 4:6). He went so far as to say that the sexual ethics of Christianity shouldn’t be applied to non-Christians (1 Cor. 5:9–13).
Exiles live faithfully on mission by leading with love, building empathy, seeing people for who they are, and acknowledging the image of God in them.
In our experience, too often Christians put up unhelpful walls and barriers that prevent the forward movement of the gospel. Christians can’t hang out with LGBTQ people, some might say. Christians shouldn’t agree with political liberals. Or maybe with political conservatives. We have heard Christians poke fun at the idea of trigger warnings and safe spaces, which is ironic because Christians have many words that trigger their own fear and loathing. Here in digital Babylon, the expression of mercy and forgiveness toward others is as rare as ever, and maybe more. (Have you seen how ugly things can get on Twitter and Facebook?)
Exiles have both a responsibility and an opportunity to participate in God’s mission, even in the relational tension of our times. To be in but not of. To express God’s love through Jesus’s work on the cross to a hurting and waiting world, regardless of political affiliation, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation.
Work Together for the Sake of Others
Another set of mission-related outcomes relates to working with other Christians to bless others, especially those in need. For example, resilient disciples say that their churches play a significant role in helping them understand the needs of the poor both locally and globally and in giving them real opportunities to serve the poor. They truly feel they are part of a serving team. The statement “I am given real chances to contribute to my church” is endorsed by 73 percent of resilients. A majority of resilient disciples say that they have learned “what it feels like to be part of a team” by virtue of their church engagement. And almost half say that they “have access to leadership training for ministry through my church”—a result that is significantly higher among resilients than among any other group. There is still room for improvement among churches regarding these factors, but countercultural mission is formed in community.
Some resilient disciples also told us they experience inspiration to live generously (61 percent), to be a leader (51 percent), and to be a missionary (36 percent) based on the example of someone in their churches. This is a cool trio of findings! The faithfulness of other (usually older) Christians models the way of Christian mission in the world. These outcomes are more than twice as likely among resilient disciples than among habitual churchgoers and many times more likely than among nomads and prodigals.
Our shared mission together propels the next generation.
Make a Difference
If you’ve been tracking along, you’ve probably noticed that each of the five practices correspond to existential questions every human being asks. Throughout this book, we’ve tried to build the case that following Jesus offers answers to the deepest longings of our hearts.
We suggest that countercultural mission addresses essential questions about legacy and significance.
Today’s emerging generations, like all generations, desire to do something that really matters, something that lasts. Entitlement, narcissism, self-centeredness, consumerism all act as Hungry, Hungry Hippos, gobbling up our time, attention, and compassion. Digital Babylon steals away our precious time for vain and frivolous things. Flimsy, Brand-Jesus Christianity doesn’t have a chance.
But by participating in Jesus’s countercultural mission in the world, we can make a difference. We can carve out a life well lived, for the sake of others.
Reality is both physical and spiritual, and since Jesus has been given authority over all things, we participate with him as restorers in both the physical and the spiritual dimensions of life. We do good to and in the world. We bless others. Jesus’s mission to seek and save the lost, to set the captives free, inspires. It matters. It lasts.
About the time David released the book You Lost Me, he came across the book Kisses from Katie, which describes the missionary journey of Katie Davis (now Katie Davis Majors). At eighteen years of age, she was the senior class president and homecoming queen in her Nashville high school. But when she decided to go on a mission trip instead of attending college, she disappointed her parents and teachers, lost most of her friends, and broke up with the love of her life. None of that stopped her. After graduation, she headed to Uganda, where she couldn’t speak the language and knew only one other person.
After that short mission trip, she found herself so moved by the people in Uganda that she knew she had to return. When she did, she began the process of adopting thirteen Ugandan orphans. And there she lived as a single woman, facing rough conditions, depending entirely on God to provide for the needs of her and her kids. And she found in her life of service a deep joy. Talk about an extremist!
Katie went on to form Amazima Ministries, an organization that matches donors with orphaned children to pay for schooling, school supplies, food, minor medical care, and spiritual encouragement.
Why? Why would someone do something so not normal? Why would she go against the cultural grain, sacrificing a bright and promising future?
Because Katie is a resilient disciple of Christ. Because participation in God’s countercultural mission is a life well lived.
David’s good friend Dudley Chancey is a youth ministry practitioner and professor who also runs projects to help the poor in Honduras. He is another resilient disciple living out his faith in exile, someone dedicated to countercultural mission. The stories he tells of serving children and taking Americans on his adventures bring a lump to my throat. Dudley inspires me, and as I finish up the writing on this manuscript, I’ve got a trip to Honduras coming up with Dudley in about a month. I’ll be taking my kids, Zack and Annika, to work alongside me, helping in whatever ways Dudley has in mind. I’m picturing the various projects we’ll work on and the look on Zack’s face when he sees all the good Dudley and his crew are doing.
At some point on the trip home to California, I like to imagine leaning close to my son and whispering, “See, Zack? We really believe this stuff!”