Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Millennials, Mainline, and Methodists: The Cure for What Ails Us

I’m tired. I’m tired of the posts and ads and quick fixes. I’m tired of the head-scratching and magic bullet appeals for how to “reach” millennials. I’m tired of marketing tricks and demographic reports that promise to hold the key to attracting customers. In conversations about the problems with the church, with mainline decline, with the “nones,” etc., in our culture today, I hear recommendations for everything from increasing parking to Instagram to inclusivism, and many sure-fire fixes in between. What I hear woefully little of is the need to make disciples…real disciples.

Churches and leaders feel the need to add descriptors to the word disciples: dynamic disciples, fully-committed disciples, faithful disciples, disciple-making disciples, and on and on. This need for qualifiers indicates to me that we have a weak and desperately underdeveloped understanding of what a disciple even is.  And, thus, we don’t see the value and necessity for disciple-making as the cure for what ails us. 

Read the rest at SalvationLife.com...

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