seeing in a mirror dimly

From the many young Christians I’ve worked with over the last years, I’ve not seen many putting substance over style, or commending rather than contending – though I must admit that some I’ve come across do those things.  Actually, some of the most passionate advocates of this New Calvinism are serious readers and thoughtful Christians.  And where there is a disdain for previous generations (and I know that exists), perhaps a healthy dose of some of Robert E. Webber and a short trip to L’Abri UK might help…?  I’ve found that using the Prayer Book in creative ways is seriously appreciated by the younger evangelicals!

Anyway, I’m not so sure that the current movement of younger Evangelicals is just reacting against Evangelical culture, but mainly acting from the external forces coming from society at large.  Whether it’s an anti-institutionalism, or anti-simplistic-meganarratives, or anti-propositionalism – the last thing we want to do is to convey a message of “Shut-up and sit-down, Billy.” That’s why I think it’s a great start that Moore College has tried to listen to some of the younger evangelicals and enable them.  Wouldn’t it be great to see this energy and enthusiasm channelled in a good direction for the Lord!

This quote of Francis Schaeffer from The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, is helpful here:

“One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative.  Christianity today is not conservative by revolutionary.  To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservatism means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo no longer belongs to us.  Today we are a minority.  If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.”