Towards the end of next month, I will be running a 5-week course to discuss the future of ministry with younger generations in our parish. These sessions will be based on a few resources I’ve come across over the last decade which have researched why younger people have been disconnecting from Christian churches and make suggestions about what we could be doing differently to pass our faith on to them more effectively.
One resource we will be looking at is a book called You Lost Me which is based on research done by the Barna Group in the United States. In the video series which goes with the book, one of the younger people that was interviewed says that younger people ‘will go where the love is, or where they think the love is.’ We all need to be loved and to find significance in meaningful relationships. One of the key findings of the You Lost Me research was that younger people haven’t been finding these relationships inside the church and so have looked for them in other places. Unfortunately, many places where younger people can look for something that resembles this ‘love’ they’re looking for can actually be damaging or destructive to them and their wellbeing.
While You Lost Me explored why young people have been leaving Christian churches, the Fuller Youth Institute researched what churches that are successful in ministry with younger generations are doing and released their findings in a book called Growing Young. This resource offers six strategies which the Fuller Youth Institute discovered were in common among those churches which were effective in their ministry with young people. One of these strategies is to ‘Fuel a warm community.’ By this the authors of Growing Young mean having a sense of community in our churches where young people are engaged in warm, genuine, caring relationships with each other as well as older, more mature Christians.
There is an obvious connection between the problem You Lost Me found in younger people leaving churches because they weren’t finding the love in their Christian communities, and the solution suggested by You Lost Me to fuel warm communities for our young people. The common element is making genuine, caring relationships a high priority for our congregation and parish.
Another way to put this is to ‘love each other deeply, from the heart’ (1 Peter 1:22 NLT).
It might sound too simple to point back to Jesus’ new command to his disciples, to love one another in the same way he loved them in John 13:34, as a way forward for us in our ministry with younger generations. When we read the New Testament, however, the word for this particular kind of Christ-like love appears either as a verb or a noun in every book except for Acts. This shows us that a central theme throughout the entire New Testament is God’s self-sacrificing love for us in Jesus and the ways God wants us to show this same love to others. It has been said that Jesus’ command to love is central to the New Testament and everything else is commentary on what living out that command looks like. One way to read the New Testament is that the Apostles wrote their letters to help guide young Christian communities in loving the people around them in the way Jesus taught and lived out, in a range of different circumstances and situations.
Recognizing Jesus’ command to love as the central theme of the New Testament can challenge our understanding of what ‘church’ is all about. There are a number of different ways people understand ‘church’, such as an organization, building, or service which happens in that building. In the early days of the Christian movement, when the New Testament was written, followers of Jesus had none of those things. Instead, the ‘church’ was communities of people who had encountered the life-giving love of God in the good news of Jesus and were learning to live a different kind of life by loving each other in the same Christ-like way.
This is why the Apostle Peter urged the readers of his first letter to ‘love each other deeply, from the heart’ (v22 NLT). Peter knew from personal experience the difference God’s love had made to his life through his relationship with Jesus. He was encouraging the people reading his letter to love each other in the same way. The Greek word Peter uses means to love each other fervently, earnestly, even strenuously, so they could discover the difference that Christ-like love can make to their lives, as well as to the lives of the people who were experiencing God’s love through them. As we hear these words today, Peter is urging us to love each other deeply, fervently, earnestly, strenuously, from the heart, making it central to everything we are and everything we do, so we can find the difference this love can make in our lives, as well as the difference it can make in the lives of the people we love like Jesus.
In the verses that surround verse 22, Peter points us to why this love is good news for us in a few different ways. God ransomed and redeemed us, not with silver or gold, but with the ‘precious blood of Christ’ (v19). Jesus’ sacrifice gives us an incredible amount of value and self-worth because Peter is saying that all the silver and gold in the world doesn’t compare to the value God placed on us when he gave the most valuable thing he had, the life of his own Son, to redeem us. That’s what we’re worth to him. Peter goes on to write that in his love for us, Jesus cleansed us from our sin and made us pure (v22), so nothing can ever spoil or corrupt us again. Jesus’ love has given us a new life as God’s born-again children through the good news which the Holy Spirit planted in our hearts like a life-giving seed (v23). This love which Peter urges us to show each other comes from God to us in Jesus through the Holy Spirit to give us value, to make us clean, and to germinate a new, eternal life in us.
This conversation around ministry with younger generations isn’t just about our children or grandchildren. It’s actually about what kind of church we want to be in the future. In the past, many have understood ‘church’ in terms of membership and attendance, as a building, organization or service. While these have their place, the New Testament gives us a very different picture of our identity and purpose as ‘church’. As we look to the future, how do we grow as a community of faith which is loving each other deeply with all our heart? By remaining in God’s self-sacrificing love for us in Jesus, and loving each other in the same way, not only will we grow as loving people, but others, including the younger people of our congregation and parish, will encounter God’s life-changing love in Jesus through us.
More to think about or discuss:
- What do you think of when you hear the word ‘church’? An organization? Building? Worship service? Something else? Why do you think that comes to your mind…?
- How might our identity and purpose be different if we understood ‘church’ as a community of faith which is learning to ‘love each other deeply, from the heart’?
- When you think about your children, grandchildren, or other younger people, what might ministry look like if it was centred on loving them like Jesus?
Pastor Eugene Online 
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