Church

“One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts. They speak of the glorious splendour of your majesty — and I will mediate on your wonderful works.” Psalm 145:6-7

Followers of Jesus are connected in His Church to a great host of witnesses. The writer of Hebrews insists we “are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” and therefore must throw off the sin that would entangle us and keep us from running the race marked out for us by Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-2) The evangelical impulse is to join in the pioneering or in-breaking life of Jesus’ Kingdom but we do not actually live the Christian life as innovators of a new spirituality. We draw from for in living well of Christ and the testimony of God in the Scriptures.

But It’s easy to be short-sighted and selfish.

I serve Jesus and His church in a university campus community. I have met people within the academy who know they are seeking to grasp the knowledge drawn out from Creation by those who have gone before them. But for the students of these professors the pursuit of new futures frustrates them. The looming need for a good paying job, for taking care of parents and siblings, and for paying for the “education” they have signed up for drives them to make the grades at the expense of deeper understanding and retention of knowledge. I believe the need to succeed limits the growth of character possible through our engagement with knowledge and each other. Their teachers are particularly aware of the corpus of knowledge that the students don’t know so they seek to stimulate learning. However time is limited. All learning must happen fast. The end of the term is coming. Fast learning is the plan. Fast money is the need. Some students confess — the ones who are doing best are the ones who have stellar short-term memory and can take up the strategies necessary for getting facts and formulas into place quickly. And though I haven’t read it yet, I have come across at least two professors know we need to slow down. I can’t wait to read The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy.

Our North American culture seems short-sighted. I’m not sure if it is a global phenomenon but perhaps it is. We have a difficult time planning ahead with the generations to come in mind. It’s as if we don’t care. Like generations before us we adopt the stance of “Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we will die” (Ecclesiastes 8:15 and Isaiah 22:13) Like Hezekiah we know enough to know that the future for our children’s children children is dim on the planet. But we shrug and say, “At least I have peace in my generation” (Isaiah 39:8) and become careless.

That was never to be the way. In the Torah God directed His people to commemorate the Passover and His deliverance of them from Egypt’s enslaving powers when they had “settled down” by making it their habit to talk with their children about the Word of God and to derive the meaning of this peculiar way of life by recalling what God had done. “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand… to bring us into… the land he promised on oath to our ancestors. The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are carful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness” (Deuteronomy 6:21-22). God wants us to live with the coming generations in mind by keeping Him in mind.

God has the generations in mind. Jesus treated the generations as a living reality. He grew weary of his generation that sought a sign as if faith had no personal living point of reference (Matthew 16:1-4). He was the living sign right in front of them. While previous generations had put down stone markers in the land as reminders of God’s activity, Jesus rolled the stone away at His resurrection, fulfilling the Law and the prophets. He lives and is able to call us into a living relationship with the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob (Mark 12:27). The Holy Spirit makes generative community life a reality (2 Timothy 1:6). The promise of the Resurrection draws us forward into days and The Day in which all things are made new. (Revelation 21:1-8)

Some may hear this promise and retreat into pessimism taking up a license to consume the earth with abandon. But others, anticipating their participation in the new Creation and the ethic of the Kingdom — loving your neighbour, and loving as the overflow of life in Jesus’ Church — try not to disconnect their life today from the life of others in the future. (Matthew 22:36-40) We are thinking of the children. Maybe. During the pandemic I realized that I have cynicism about the forward thinking and supposed generational vision of the church when pandemic remakes of The Blessing swept the globe. Here’s Canada, The US, Ireland, and the chorus, “and the children rang out in my head” and across our living room on more than once occasion! But I want it to be true and I want to offer God’s blessings to those to come!

Thinking Ahead

It’s hard to take what we learn and experience (what we know) and then think ahead and act accordingly for the benefit of others. Bina Venkataraman in her book, The Optimist’s Telescope (published by Riverhead 2019), has scanned the planet for stories of “thinking ahead” for the benefit of the coming generations. I was challenged by the stories of two villages, Aneyoshi and Murohama in Japan that successfully guided future generations on how to survive a tsunami in their areas.

In Aneyoshi, Japan, an aging stone tablet stands sentinel, warning future inhabitants, “Do not build your homes below this point!” No homes stood below its elevation in 2011. The waves of the recent tsunami lapped just three hundred feet below the marker.

These two communities are exceptions, not the rule. Hundreds of other stone markers commemorating tsunamis are scattered across Japan, many erected after devastating tsunamis in 1896 and 1933. According to a study by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, virtually none of the other communities with such markers heeded them as Aneyoshi and Murohama did.

What made these villages, but not the others, heed history?

The communities in Japan where the historic markers made for effective warnings were small villages, with cultural continuity across generations. Schoolchildren learned the history of the past tsunamis and the need for vigilance. And the stone markers in Aneyoshi and Murohama stood out relative to the hundreds of others in Japan for offering specific actions rather than just vague commemorations of history: Do not build homes below this point. Do not flee to this hill.

The spiritual legacy of the church of Jesus is not marked on a stone. The most significant “stone,” the one covering the tomb of Jesus was rolled away and discarded. However, what remains is the capacity of Jesus to raise up living stones for Himself. Our future is not in our buildings nor in our digital markers. Our future is in Him. We receive from Him a living trust that includes the Gospel, this Creation, and His children. Every wise steward thinks ahead. Generational stewardship is one in which we think ahead and act with the best intention to generate conditions in which they may thrive too. Now we write not on stones but one human hearts. This has been the way of the church from its conception. Paul says of the Corinthians, “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tables of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

I have the Rich Mullin’s song The Other Side of The World in the front of my Bible. It’s a song that sees the present church but also the church to come. Whether Rich was considering the other side of the world or the New Jerusalem, he was seeking to live in what some may call hard places with love and with the promise of Jesus’ sure destruction of the powers of Hell through His Word.

But I see a people who’ve learned to walk in faith
With mercy in their hearts
And glory on their faces
And I can see the poeple
And I pray it won’t be long
Until Your kingdom comes

As a follower of Jesus I am having to ask, “How does having an eye on the future and a vision of people in the future influence the decisions we make today?” Are we treating what we know as things to commemorate or as reasons to give clear directives and invitations? This is wisdom — but it must be done gently, not passively, but with a presence that is non-anxious. The conveyance of generational benediction cannot be done with a heavy hand. Instead by having an eye on the future we seek to create the conditions in which the possibility of thriving in the communion of God and the knowledge of His Word and the creative power of His Spirit is present. We manage the tension by valuing both old and new wineskins (Mark 2:22) but perhaps giving preference to the new as often as possible.

The purpose of the post is not to line out all the aspects of this kind of stewardship. This post is a shout out commending generational vision. That’s a starting place. Whether we are caring for the environment or caring for the political futures of a people, or caring for Jesus’ church, followers of Jesus are not to just live for today thanking God for our good fortunes while caring little about the future of our neighbour’s children’s children’s children. Generational vision in the Kingdom of God has to think about a place, but also accepts that Jesus may call some to leave. In that case we are thinking of what and who they carry in their hearts. Thus at Origin Church in a University campus community we are seeking to joyful invest in people to spark a life journey with Jesus!

In the maskil of Asaph that we call Psalm 78, the Psalmist encouraged a generational vision and recommended leadership under the call of God.

Generational Vision: “…things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power and the wonders he has done. He decreed statues for Jacob and established law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.” Psalm 78:3-7

Leadership Under the Call of God: “He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens; from tending sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.” Psalm 78:70-72

Such a high view of David’s messy leadership right!? But what can be said of David is that at some points he was not thinking just of himself, but was considering what the future generations could be in relation to God. He wanted to build a temple, but God only let him do the work of getting things ready for Solomon to do it (1 Chronicles 22). When that limit was clear David didn’t quit, he actually gave himself in his later years to gathering what Solomon would need.

I have a friend, Peter, who serves with me at Origin Church and who often points to Psalm 78 as part of God’s call in his life and for the church to care not only for our generational cohort, but also for the generations arriving on the scene. Oh that our leadership may be done with skill and integrity of heart!

In campus ministry and in the church these generations are actually in front of us, so we are doing what we can to plant the seeds of the Gospel and God’s Word in their lives while also creating space for them to serve, to lead, and to have their own stories of God’s wonderful grace with us. This requires making space for emerging leaders to have their own adventures in trusting and obeying God in all their relationships. Sometimes a leader who is ahead in years and experience just needs to listen, other times the leaders need to provide clarity and some boundaries, and other times we let the emerging leaders be freely with Jesus in the wild goose chase of His Kingdom.

In the book, A Church Called TOV, Scot Mcknight and Laura Barringer are calling on the church to think and act with generational vision. They are hoping that churches will learn from the scandals and pain before us in the North American church to value the formation of “a goodness culture that resists abuses of power and promotes healing.” Ultimately churches nurture christliness. McKnight and Barringer commend pastors as men and women who have been called by God to “nurture people in Christoformity.”

Generational vision is about people but must applied to more than the people. When it is applied to the land and a place we ask, “Does what we are doing today negatively impact the generations to come?” and “What practices are we doing today that continually re-give into the land — soil, air, and water? Likewise generational vision when applied to a community and congregation compels us to ask, “What are we doing to create an environment where followers of Jesus can thrive? What are we attending to the makes Jesus known and cooperates with the Holy Spirit so people are free to respond to Him and to let His new creation power flow through them? In both of these arenas — the land and the church — people who are shepherding have to be realistic about the human condition and our propensity to be greedy and short-sighted steals from the generations to come. After seven generations, even after three generations, you and I may be forgotten, but what we do to today in Christ and with love (John 15:1-8) has promise to bear fruit in generations for years to come!