Notes
Notes
Start Here: Digital Babylon and Resilient Exiles
1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from a sermon delivered at Temple Israel of Hollywood, February 26, 1965, accessed November 2018, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlktempleisraelhollywood.htm.
2. Andy Crouch and Barna Group teamed up to create The Tech-Wise Family (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2017), which helpfully addresses many of the challenges of raising children in the digital era.
3. Thanks to Chad Ragsdale of Ozark Christian College for his thoughtful input on the Jerusalem versus Babylon motif.
4. We recognize there are many ways to define culture and that, in some sense, there is no such thing as a singular culture.
5. Pastor Roger Valci at Valley Christian Center in Dublin, California, eloquently expresses these ideas.
6. Jean Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” Atlantic, September 2017, accessed April 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/.
7. Richard Freed, “The Tech Industry’s Psychological War on Kids,” Medium, March 11, 2018, accessed July 2018, https://medium.com/@richardnfreed/the-tech-industrys-psychological-war-on-kids-c452870464ce.
8. There are many estimates of screen and media use, including some that are even larger than those we describe here. We have used some of our own from Barna as well as drawing heavily on the following secondary research: “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of Eight- to Eighteen-Year-Olds,” Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2010, accessed July 2018, https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8010.pdf.
9. Barna Group, Spiritual Conversations in the Digital Age: How Christians’ Approach to Sharing Their Faith Has Changed in 25 Years (Ventura, CA: Barna Group, 2018), 39.
Practice 1 To Form a Resilient Identity, Experience Intimacy with Jesus
1. You might wonder at prodigals’ apparent inconsistencies. Why would respondents sometimes call themselves Christian but at other times reject that term? At Barna, we often find that people answer religious questions in unpredictable ways. Looking beneath the numbers, we have personally run across many young ex-Christians who haven’t had the courage to admit to others their dwindling faith status. A good friend of David’s, who is in his twenties, a guy raised in the faith from birth, recently texted that he is no longer a Christ follower, but he hasn’t told his parents yet. “I’m not against any of it. I just don’t follow anymore.” In some ways, it actually takes a lot of courage for prodigals to admit to themselves where they have landed spiritually.
2. Credit to my friend Greg Thompson, who I have heard describe “elective identity.”
3. Barna Group, Gen Z: The Culture, Beliefs and Motivations Shaping the Next Generation (Ventura, CA: Barna Group, 2018).
4. Barna Group, The State of Discipleship (Ventura, CA: Barna, 2016).
Practice 2 In a Complex and Anxious Age, Develop the Muscles of Cultural Discernment
1. Henry A. Kissinger, “How the Enlightenment Ends,” Atlantic, June 2018, accessed May 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/.
2. Tara Haelle, “Hospitals See Growing Numbers of Kids and Teens at Risk for Suicide,” NPR, May 16, 2018, accessed May 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/16/611407972/hospitals-see-growing-numbers-of-kids-and-teens-at-risk-for-suicide.
3. Barna Group, The Porn Phenomenon: The Impact of Pornography in the Digital Age (Plano, TX: Josh McDowell Ministry, 2016), 66.
4. Noah Kulwin, “One Has This Feeling of Having Contributed to Something That’s Gone Very Wrong,” New York Magazine Select All, April 17, 2018, accessed April 2018, https://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/jaron-lanier-interview-on-what-went-wrong-with-the-internet.html.
5. For instance, 1 Timothy 1:19 says that if a person deliberately violates their conscience, their faith can be “shipwrecked”—vivid imagery for the care our faith requires.
Practice 3 When Isolation and Mistrust Are the Norms, Forge Meaningful, Intergenerational Relationships
1. Barna Group, The State of Pastors: How Today’s Leaders Are Navigating Life and Leadership in an Age of Complexity (Ventura, CA: Barna, 2017).
2. We have seen this quote attributed to Stanley Hauerwas, but we’ve heard Twitter can be unreliable.
3. Thanks to Eugene Peterson for this phrase, which comes from his book Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1998).
4. These concepts are developed in Bonhoeffer’s Life Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), which my father, Gary Kinnaman, helpfully recommended during a time of my own disillusionment with church.
5. The “Theology of the Body” is St. John Paul II’s integrated vision of the human person. See John Paul II, “The Theology of the Body,” 2016, accessed August 2018, www.theologyofthebody.net.
6. Barna, The State of Discipleship, 46–47.
7. “What Is the Church?” from Covenant Membership, the Village Church, 14, accessed November 2018, https://thevillagechurch.net/Content/ExternalSite/Documents/Covenant%20Membership%20Class/Campus%20SF%20Pastor%20-%202018%20-%20Covenant%20Membership%20-%20Membership%20Covenant%20-%20Revised%20-%20Book%20-%20Web%20-%20Covanant%20membership%20section%20only.pdf.
8. Barna, The State of Pastors.
9. Richard Ross, Twitter post on July 22, 2018.
10. Check out Pete Scazerro for information about emotionally healthy churches and emotionally healthy leaders. www.emotionallyhealthy.org.
11. Richard Beck, “A Peculiar People: Emotions and Spiritual Formation,” Experimental Theology, May 17, 2018. http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-peculiar-people-emotions-and.html (accessed February 2019).
12. Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The Atlantic, May 2012. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/ (accessed February 2019).
13. Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”
14. Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2017).
15. John Rampton, “8 Reasons Why Happy Couples Rarely Share Their Relationship Statuses on Social Media,” Inc., May 1, 2017, https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/8-reasons-why-happy-couples-rarely-share-their-relationship-statuses-on-social-m.html (accessed February 2019).
Practice 4 To Ground and Motivate an Ambitious Generation, Train for Vocational Discipleship
1. Keaton and his family have allowed us to share this story publicly. It also appears in Bob Goff, Multi-Careering (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014). Keaton is a published author!
2. “Teenagers Want Successful Careers and Global Travel, Expect to Delay Marriage and Parenting,” Barna, May 10, 2010, accessed August 2018, https://www.barna.com/research/teenagers-want-successful-careers-and-global-travel-expect-to-delay-marriage-parenting/.
3. We discovered this insight in our work with the Association of Biblical Higher Education, and the findings are included in two reports: What’s Next for Biblical Higher Education (Barna, 2017) and What’s Next for Christian Higher Education (Barna, 2018).
4. The Empire Strikes Back, directed by Irvin Kershner (San Francisco: Lucasfilm Ltd., 1980).
5. Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, December 1743.
Practice 5 Curb Entitlement and Self-Centered Tendencies by Engaging in Countercultural Mission
1. David Kinnaman, Good Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016).
2. James Davison Hunter, To Change the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
3. Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York: Atria Books, 2009).
4. See research on parents’ desire for safety in Barna’s report called The State of Youth Ministry (2016), which we conducted in partnership with Youth Specialties and YouthWorks.
5. See Barna’s report called Making Space for Millennials (2015).
What’s Next: Finding Hope in Exiles
1. Consider checking out Jonathan Merritt’s excellent book in which he addresses the challenge of the fading efficacy of religious terminology and language. Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing—and How We Can Revive Them (New York: Convergent Books, 2018).
2. While the story specifically involved the Catholic Church, it represents the kind of crisis that any faith community can and does face. For example, 2018 saw prominent stories about public moral failure in Protestant churches as well; the point is to consider the impact of something so horrible as clergy abuse and how that affects living faithfully in exile.
3. Susan Reynolds, Twitter post from August 19, 2018.