Wanted: Counterculture Youth
[Regarding "Millennials and the Church," March 2015] You say that today's youth are disinclined toward your church. The reason is obvious. This culture has turned more and more away from Christianity — especially Bible-based Protestantism — for almost a century. And during those times when it temporarily returned, such as during the early Cold War or when it had joined in the publicizing of the rapture cult, it has been because it was wanted for some immediate political purpose by those in power. Instead of trying to be relevant, why not appeal to those youths who reject this culture, its leaders, its heroes, etc.? This is a minority to be sure, but altogether their numbers must be great. The present culture only wants to destroy you.
The Gospel Needs Millennials
[Regarding "Oregon Churches on a Millennial Mission," March 2015] A hundred years ago, my wife’s parents landed on the island of Cebu in the Philippines. He was 24, a self-supporting colporteur, and she was 20, a recent high school graduate. He was very successful in selling his Adventist books. Within a couple of years he was training Filipino colporteurs and conducting colporteur institutes. For over a hundred years, printed literature has been one of our primary tools for spreading the gospel. Today we live in a digital age; the printed page is rapidly disappearing. It is being replaced with smartphones, iPods and iPads, on which users can be instantly be connected to much of the information in the world. After a vision in 1848, Ellen White said to her husband, "I have a message for you. You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people … . From this small beginning, it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world." We do not know what she actually saw in the vision; she had to describe it in terms of what she knew. But could it be that the streams of light that she saw were fiber optics? or streams of digital information being transmitted by laser beams? Incidentally, Ellen White was 21 and James was 27 when she gave him this message. At that time, writing/printing and the spoken word were the only means of communication. Radio came into use 70 years after this statement was made, and television about a 100 years after. The public use of the Internet started about 1995 — that is only 20 years ago. If ISIS can successfully use the Internet and social media to get recruits, why not the church? We have a far greater message. The millennial generation is desperately needed by the church to generate new ideas and develop the new ways needed to finish the work of spreading the gospel around the world. To do this, we need them on our committees and boards at all levels of the church so that their ideas can be heard and implemented. I am a member of a church in the Portland area that is participating in Millennial Matrix 2, and I fully support the activity.
