Today I'm Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. As I travel around the world, the biggest concern on Christians' minds today is their kids and their grandkids. Many of them have already left the church. Others are in the process of questioning or deconstructing their faith. Today, We're gonna begin talking about how to reach this lost generation with the undeniable truth of the gospel.
Stay with us. There is hope. I'm Dave Druy, and this is Living on the Edge. Our regular Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, is stepping aside today for a good friend of his, guest teacher Aaron Pierce. Aaron leads a global ministry called Steiger International, spending decades reaching secular, non-religious young people all over the world with the gospel.
This week he's helping Chip kick off a series called Caring Enough to Connect, Building Bridges to Those We Love. And today we're unpacking just how much our culture has changed and why the next generation you love is not beyond God's reach.
Now here's our guest teacher, Aaron Pierce, with a message titled, Understanding the Secular Culture. How do we engage? Secular young people in particular. who would not walk into a church. All right, so I want to start by sharing a story about a girl called Sarah.
Sarah was wearing this rainbow-colored resist t-shirt with an equal sign on it. And she was at a pro-choice rally. And she was there with her friends Charlie and Ann. That's not their real names. Each of them identified as gender non-binary or non-conforming fluid, and they're active in a local drag queen scene.
Which sounds crazy and out there, but here's the thing to understand: those that identify as LGBTQ is exploding in growth, especially amongst younger generations. 20.8%, one in five. That's up from 10% for millennial.
So it's growing, and there's a bunch of reasons for that. And that's something we'll talk about when we get to that topic at the end. But the interesting thing about this story, the atmosphere is super intense, right? As you might imagine. Right, because you've got this protest atmosphere.
And of course, there's the pro-life group that's there, and angry shouts are being exchanged between these two groups. And our team was there. Of course, each of them had a pro-life view, but they were there to build redemptive relationships. And so they had a sign that would spark a conversation with people.
So they walked around and just prayed and asked the Lord, hey, would you show me who to connect with? And they found a group of people sitting down and they brought their sign and they began to ask them questions. And as they were doing that, they realized that behind the anger and the hostility, There was a lot of hurt and pain. Each of them, each of these three people, Sarah, Ann, and Charlie, each of them shared vulnerable, raw, and deeply personal stories of pain that they'd experienced growing up. It was amazing how open they were.
And a lot of their pain related back to experiences that they had with the church. And what's interesting is that beneath their seemingly intense moral convictions. it was clear that they were actually very confused and broken. and they were longing for deep relational connection and belonging. And so, as the conversation progressed, Felipe and his team began to share, and they shared that their pain actually mattered.
As a follower of Jesus, Felipe believed that the answer to our problems was not actually political. but spiritual. And he explained that God was not indifferent to our suffering. A lot of people have this view that if God does exist, he's indifferent. And he explained that God is not indifferent to our suffering and that Jesus' death on the cross was proof of that.
At the end of the conversation, they were able to pray with these three people. They were visibly moved and eagerly exchanged contact information and have stayed in contact since then.
Now, here's the thing. There are millions of people like Sarah, Charlie, and Ann in the US today. There's millions of them. Over the last few decades, we have experienced a profound cultural shift. Despite all its flaws and hypocrisy, for generations the U.S.
was a Christian nation. As recently as 1990, 86% of Americans identified as a Christian. And of course, they weren't all committed followers of Jesus. Many of them showed up to church only on Easter and Christmas. and they lived lives that were inconsistent with their Christian beliefs.
but still they viewed Christianity positively. The church was the center of social life. The Bible was a good moral guide. The president was prayed over by a pastor in every inauguration. By the way, from someone that doesn't live in the US, that's weird.
I like to understand that's a weird thing. And Christian ethics of sexuality were broadly accepted. And these were the people that would attend evangelistic rallies made famous by Billy Graham and Louis Palau and others, right? And they would draw on favorable views of the church. These preachers could fill stadiums and make arguments using the Bible as an authority.
But times have changed. We now live in a post-Christian culture, and many people have walked away from the church.
So if you were to take a look. at the church and how people view the church today. You're going to see it play out in a few ways, right?
So, on one side, you have committed followers of Jesus who strive to live their lives in alignment with the Bible. On the far left side of the spectrum.
Next, you have people who have a positive view of the church. They see the Bible as a moral guide, but it's often detached from a personal relationship with God. And then as we move along the spectrum. You have those who are apathetic. Here people are not consciously rejecting God.
They just don't think about him one way or the other, right? And then finally, we have those who have negative. Or even hostile view of the church. And they see the church as a symbol of repression and bigotry. And so, unfortunately, more and more Americans are moving to the right side of the spectrum.
Having an apathetic view of the church, and so that's what we've seen in the last 30 years, especially amongst monks, millennial Gen Z generation. We've seen a shift. And the right side of the spectrum is that post-Christian shift. Right, those on the far right side, the challenge. for us in the church.
Is that the majority of our efforts to reach people? have been geared towards the nominal. Right. And so, what that means is that we use kind of a come and see and bring your friend. style of evangelism to a church event.
And those aren't necessarily bad things to do because they connect well with people on that side of the spectrum. The challenge is that it's a diminishing group. And so the challenge is that we need to go after those on the right side, and it takes an entirely different paradigm shift to do it. And this is not just a trend or a statistic, right? This isn't just an idea out there.
This is deeply personal for many of us because these are our sons and daughters. These are our grandkids. These are our friends and people that we work with.
So how can we respond to that? this post-Christian shift. Part of that is, we need to understand the culture that we're in and continue to look at it from different ways. Another way to look at it is from a Christian's spectrum and how it progresses.
Okay, so this is what's happening a lot in our culture. You start with people that have convictional Christianity. They, like we said, they are following Jesus, fully aligning their lives to it. Then you have cultural Christians, people that just have a nominal kind of view of it, they have a positive view, but it doesn't affect their life. Then you have progressive Christians, people that still identify as a Christian, but no longer hold to the authority of the Bible and begin to basically shape their faith.
according to how they want to you know want to see reality. And then you've got post-Christian, which is the natural shift that happens. Once someone engages in progressive Christianity, they take away the power and eventually they move to post-Christian. And then finally, you have non-Christian, which is actually someone that hasn't rejected the church. They don't even really know about it.
What's interesting is more and more young people in our country today actually fit in the non-Christian category because it was their parents that rejected the church. And so they essentially grew up in a non-Christian home.
So when you're engaging people out in the world, you actually find that they fit in one of these categories and that the way you engage them is different. And often what you find is the progressive and the post-Christian are the most hostile. and the hardest to reach. because of the baggage that they bring. To the table because of their experience that they've had with the church for whatever reason.
And so we have to take a new approach because the truth is people are actually quite hungry. And open. but we can't take the same approach that we did in the past. Essentially, if we're going to engage this generation, if we're going to engage this culture, we've got to become like cross-cultural missionaries. in our own city to our own people.
That's the way we've got to approach engaging this culture.
So, if I were called to be a missionary in China. I would learn the language, right, of the place I'm going to. I would figure out, you know, learn the culture, the history, the philosophies, the influences. I would understand the felt need of the Chinese people. And I would figure out how to contextualize the gospel.
In a way that they can understand. That's what I would do if I would engage in classic cross-cultural missions. And the same principle applies today if we're going to reach a post-Christian culture. Same principle. You're listening to Living on the Edge with guest teacher Aaron Pierce.
We'll get back to the message in just a moment. But first, have you checked out the Living on the Edge YouTube channel? It's not just audio, it's a chance to actually sit down and watch Chip teach on his own schedule of series covering marriage, parenting, leadership, and more. New videos post every week, so there's always something fresh waiting for you. If you learn better by watching, or you just want to put a face to the voice, search Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram on YouTube and hit subscribe.
Now back to to day's lesson.
So that's what we want to talk about is how do we adopt a missionary mindset. when we're engaging post-Christian cultures.
So, first of all, in order to effectively communicate the gospel to a post-Christian culture, we need to understand three key realities. The first is that secular people have become suspicious. of religious institutions. and are far less likely to walk into a church.
So, trust and confidence in organized religion has plummeted in the last few decades. and that affects the way that we engage culture. In fact, one of the key ways it affects is that when we're out in the world engaged in culture, whether it's in an intentional outreach or just organically through our relationships, we don't actually want to be a representative of our church. We want to be a follower of Jesus. Because the fact is, if I'm a representative of my church, and we are, like, this is not saying we shouldn't be engaged and committed to the local church.
It's not what that's about. What it means is that that's putting up an extra barrier. when I'm communicating because now I'm talking about institutional religion. versus just following Jesus.
So that's the first thing we need to understand. Second thing we need to understand is the second key reality is that secular people today do not have the same assumptions. as previous generations. And they don't have the same assumptions about morality. Truth, authority of the Bible, existence and nature of God.
And so, for example, if I would go to the University of Minnesota. And ask a random average secular university student, if I were to go up to him and say, hey, If you were to die today, And stand before God in heaven, and He were to judge your life, would He let you in?
Well, I've just presupposed a whole bunch of things, right, that the average secular young person doesn't hold to be true. And so we have to recognize that secular people don't have the same assumptions. From which we build. And we're going to talk about how do we communicate effectively. And the key principle in communication is understanding people's assumptions.
And so the assumptions are not the same today as they were in previous generations.
Now the third key reality. that we need to understand is that despite all of this, Secular people are open to spirituality. They are. And while many people no longer hold to a biblical worldview, most are not cold atheist either. Right?
They believe in some form of spirituality, even if it's vague and undefined. Give me an example of this. We did a series of focus groups with secular young people, and this is one of the quotes from one of the young women that participated in the focus group in her early 20s. And when we discussed spirituality, this is one of her quotes. Said, I'm agnostic, so I don't know.
But when I personally think about my own experiences of spirituality, it's a feeling for me. Maybe it's not a being or a person, probably not. But I think that there are human experiences when you feel it. Like when you hold a newborn baby, it's common experiences and they're ordinary and really simple. But I think there's energy.
Yeah, like there's a force that lives. This is a really interesting quote to me because it perfectly illustrates that idea of being drawn to something spiritual, even as we reject kind of the religious and the institutional version of that. And people are in this culture are very into meditation and kind of Eastern religious ideas. And a lot of that is because it's spirituality without accountability. You get the spirituality without the authority over me.
And so that's a key thing to understand. And so all of these things, these key realities are important because if we're going to be good missionaries to our culture, we need to understand the context that we're in. And we need to understand what's shaping and influencing the culture as well.
Now the post-Christian shift. That we've experienced in our culture can be traced actually all the way back to philosophers of the Enlightenment. But it's actually been like it exploded into mainstream culture through the global youth culture. That is really what's shaped and taken it into the mainstream. And we live in a time of unprecedented connectedness, right?
Where through mass media, the internet, and all sorts of other ways, we are connected like never before. And so you have this global youth culture. where young people all over the planet. are influenced by similar voices.
So, they're playing the same video games, they're listening to the same music, they're following the same social media influencers, and so they're connected and similar like never before. And they're similar on superficial things like fashion and music trends and things of that nature, but they're also similar on deeper things. like worldview. and morality and lifestyle. And so you have this global culture.
That is incredibly connected, and it's shaping the way that young people all over the planet see the world.
So let's take a look at this as an example, all right? If you would take a look at those guys and based on how they look and where they're from, where you think they're from, I mean, these kids look like they could be at a coffee shop down the road. And the truth is they're from Beirut, Lebanon. in the heart of the Middle East. And so you have this global youth culture that is shaping the way people view the world.
So what are the influences of the Globe Youth culture?
Well, there's basically four key influences. First, is entertainment industry.
So music, film, theater, even sports to some degree. And the idea here is that we're not just entertaining. We're shaping a worldview. We're presenting a way of looking at the world, a moral framework. And so you see that being pushed through the entertainment industry.
And then you've got internet stars. You know, people that are on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. That are producing content and connecting with audiences all over the world in a massive way. It's incredible the kind of influence that these people are having. And I say unfiltered because it is filtered, but there's no corporation, there's no intermediary between the creators and their audience.
So, it's an incredible influence that we have through these internet stars. And then you've got video games. which is massive, bigger than Hollywood. Where the average 21-year-old male has spent 10,000 hours playing video games. Which is, by the way, the same amount of time that you need to master a fine art.
So, it's an incredible amount of time being spent in video games. It's where we find our community. our identity, our sense of accomplishment. And so you have this incredible influence of video games. And then finally, you've got pornography.
which is so common.
So pervasive. It's not even something to be ashamed of. right talk openly about pornography where the the belief that that there's no consequence To viewing pornography, and it comes to a view that sexuality is just a personal pursuit of happiness. Right, and pornography is harmless, and so this is literally rewiring our brains and distorting our view of love and sexuality and relationships, and all of these things come together. to influence and shape a worldview.
And so, what's really driving and shaping our culture is the cultural influencers, the artists, the poets, the philosophers that are shaping the worldview. All right, so what are the philosophical pillars? First one is secularism.
So I've already alluded to this, but the idea here is that people are not necessarily atheist. They just believe that faith is private.
So, you can believe whatever you want to believe, so long as you don't push that on other people. Right, that's the secular mindset. Faith is private, faith is not something to be brought out into the public. And then of course that naturally leads to relativism. that there is no absolute moral truth.
That morality is about preference, that you have your favorites, I have mine, it's like an ice cream flavor. Right, and so you have this relativistic mindset, and then that leads to the idea and the value of acceptance. But then. Actually, tolerance is not enough. You must affirm.
And so it's based on the idea of being open-minded, and it's based on this kind of like authenticity and inclusion, but it's a paradox, right? Because basically, it's inclusion for all except the exclusive. And so that's the paradox that we find ourselves in, where to tolerate someone, to love someone is not enough. We must actually affirm that the way that they live their life. That is the message that you're going to hear in the global youth culture.
And what's interesting is, all of these things, in some way, are just a twist on biblical truth. A lot of these things find their grounding truth and then they're twisted. And it's interesting because in the post-Christian culture that we live, we're still very much influenced by a biblical worldview, even if we've divorced ourselves from that.
So, we are the fight for justice, even if it's twisted, like even those that are pro-choice, it's based on a framework of morality for them of protecting women, right?
So, it's a moral framework that they're drawing on. And that moral framework ultimately comes from a biblical worldview, which is there is a transcendent moral framework. You're listening to Living on the Edge with guest teacher Aaron Pierce and a message titled Understanding the Secular Culture, the first part of a series called Caring Enough to Connect Building Bridges to Those We Love.
Now, if you missed any part of today's message, you can catch up online at livingonthege.org. Reaching the next generation starts with becoming a missionary right where we live. That's why we want you to get the Not Beyond Reach Participants Guide, a 10-week video-based study built around Aaron's ministry, walking you and your group through how to start spiritual conversations and navigate hard topics with grace. And right now we're offering it at a discounted price, so get yours today at livingonthege.org slash offers.
Somewhere in your own life, perhaps in your own family, there's someone who feels like they're beyond reach. And reaching them takes clear, solid teaching, like what we heard today, going out across airwaves and multimedia week after week. And that only happens because listeners like you decide it's worth supporting. You can easily give a generous one-time gift today or set up a recurring donation by going online to livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. You can also send your gift by mail to LivingOnTheEdge, P.O.
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Well now here's Chip Ingram with a few thoughts of his own on what Aaron shared with us today. Thanks Dave. I just want to pause and have just a couple what I think are important comments about something that Aaron said in his message. His key point was what has shaped the youth and actually the culture globally and just they have a different lens. They see life so completely differently.
When I talk to friends that are my age or pastors or people that are really seeking to, man, I can't connect with my granddaughter or my grandson. I talk about your number one need is empathy. And the only way you get empathy is if you could take their glasses off of them and put them on you and see the world the way they see the world. You need to understand: like number one, they don't see the world as this is right and this is wrong. They have been taught in academia and the culture and the music that how I feel is reality.
That's just as true as gravity. It's just as true that two plus two is four. And you may not get that, and you may scoff at that, and you may say that's crazy and that's nuts. But can I tell you something? None of that is going to bring young people to know Jesus.
our sons, our daughters, our grandchildren. And I'm reminded of the prayer of Saint Francis. It's on my wall. I pray not so much to be understood. but is to understand.
To be loved as to love. And what I have found is it really is building this relationship and listening and kind of keeping at times a straight face. with real empathy and taking seriously, this is how they see life. This is how they see the world. But you know what?
They want to belong. They want to be loved. They want to be accepted. It doesn't mean you agree. It doesn't mean you affirm their views on things.
But will you stick with me and Erin and really learn how to connect with the next generation? Coming up, Aaron Pierce shows us exactly what the next generation believes about where we came from, right and wrong, and what happens when we die. Join us next time here on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge. Uh
