.: contemporary exodus :.

It breaks my heart that the younger generations have abandoned the Church in such a wide scale exodus. People that I have grown up rubbing elbows have come to that same place with me (wherever that place specifically is) and as I have chosen to remain, they have chosen to leave (for reasons that I honestly cannot disagree with). And what breaks my heart is the fact that they cannot see how much we need them (and maybe that is the result of older generations not making that crystal clear in light of their experiencing a total loss of grip of control upon the churches that they attend, case and point being traditional worship services). Those people have something incredible to offer the church, but they have left in droves, choosing other venues to make their presence felt. And we as the Body of Christ suffer for it.

And maybe it begins by changing the reality, that being that those who hate the hypocrisy (though in all fairness, they forego realizing their own) of the Christian community have quit on the Church as they know it. My desire would be that they remain, and that the true hypocrites (those who have no intention of changing in light of what Christ wants to do) would abandon the Church - that they would leave in droves. The Church needs a cleansing, no doubt about that! But we need the people hungry for a change to remain where they are in order that their passion and deeply rooted visions to impact the places that they attend.

There are plenty of angles here that we could deal with. The angle that the Church is and will always be just that; a place of failing people, people who cannot quit their hypocrisy (we all have the same reality of sinfulness that we wrestle with), people who say one thing and do another thing. So it's not as if there are just a large group of people doing it - we all struggle to be what Christ wants us to be as His people. Or the angle that people may just be using the above excuse as nothing less than that; an excuse. An excuse to leave their fellowships with what feels like justification. The reality is that God isn't done just yet with what we know as the Church today.

And that is just it! If we don't have those people involved in the process, we are going to miss out and suffer for their absence in terms of the Church's identity, goal, leadership, worship, and participation in the sacraments. Even as I write those last words, a part of me cries out about those being so far from what younger people see as important, even fundamental to life and reality. But I am realizing that such cries come from the same aged perspective that we have all accept as being what will always be. That is just it! We are needed in those places that we have left in order to play a major role in the shaping and shifting of those elements of the Kingdom of God that He is bringing about through "faith communities" throughout the world.

I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that this is reality of the Western world only - that it is only in our part of the world that young people have given up on the Church. And I don't think it's too far of a stretch to suggest that our leaving may contain selfish reasons that lie beyond our siding with Christ's perspective of His Body, but rather choosing to side with ourselves. But beyond lies the opportunity to us to step up and fill the roles left vacant because of our lack of interest and vision for what is to come. I certainly don't speak from a fear that the Church as we know it will ever cease to exist, for Christ tells us that not even the powers of Hell will be able to overcome it. The Church will continue to exist, praise God! But its public presence within the world is changing, moving from old cathedrals into living rooms... from chapels to strip malls. And the invitation stands for us to come carry the torch of where the Church is headed in the near future. We need to invest ourselves, even if it begins by moving beyond ourselves and our own desires for how things must be (we play a role, not "the" role). The invitation stands: come offer who you are in the context of something greater than we could ever imagine! Come and offer your gifts and abilities in honor of One greater than ourselves! We desperately need your voice, your vision, your talents, your influence, and your leadership at a time such as this.