A Church the Next Generation Calls Their Own

Pastor Chris Paavola:
NOTE
Our kids love St. Mark. It’s a second home for them. They’ve been coming here since they were babies at our world. For children. They love Sunday school and having a volunteer role because of St. Mark. They know Jesus and their whole family has been strengthened through their participation in the youth and family ministry.

Jesus said, let the children come to me. And I think he knew that families would come because of their children. I mean, how many families have tried out St. Mark because their children were at OWC or their kids came to church with a friend? How many families have stepped away from church and then returned because having babies and they want their kids to know the Lord too. Children have a way of changing the way we see life and what’s important. Children bring families to Jesus, and there’s a lot of beautiful power in that.

It was our children that brought us back to St. Mark 10 years ago, and I love watching them grow in their faith here.

WELCOME
Well, good morning everybody. My name is Chris Paavola and I get the honor of being the senior pastor here at St. Mark. And I’m just excited because we are on the front side of, it’s not even a series. It’s more like this effort that we’re in for the next 50 years and taking the last 50 years. We’re honoring the sacrifice of those who built this sanctuary and laid the foundation for us to be here today. And we’re honoring that sacrifice by considering our own legacy that we want to leave and how we can update this campus and make room to grow in this capital campaign, this effort, this series that we’re in called the next 50 years. And what we’re doing each week in the series is we’re looking at different vision statements of the church.

We’ve got six vision statements that we’ve put together, and these are the vision statements that guide us and that we just orient ourselves around. And so if you’re a guest checking things out today, you picked a great day to be here because you get to hear what St Mark is about and what we’re focused on. But last week we looked at the first one there to be a church growing in prayer, and we handed out prayer booklets on the way out, 29 day prayer devotionals corresponding with the series. And you can grab, there’s some more in the lobby or the cafe. If you didn’t get one last week, you can be praying with the rest of the church. Just grab one on the way out. But that’s what we talked about last week. This week we’re looking at a different vision statement though. We’re going to be looking at the vision statement to be a church the next generation calls their own.

It’s a really rich vision statement. There’s a lot to it. There’s some depth to it, some theology behind it, why we say it and phrase it that way. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about now each week during this series though, what we are doing is we’re looking at these vision statements, and we’re not just talking about the vision statement for the next 20, 30 minutes or so. What we’re doing is we’re asking two questions with each vision statement.

One in the next 50 years, what happens if we don’t live out this vision statement?
And then in the next 50 years, what happens if we do so?
What happens if we don’t and what happens if we do?

So we’re going to start with what happens if we don’t? What happens if this is a church that the next generation doesn’t call their own?

What happens if this is a church that the next generation calls irrelevant? Or what happens if this is a church? The next generation calls grandma’s church and you’ve been to churches that are like that. Kids don’t call their own. You’ve been to those kinds of churches. It’s very much a kids can be seen but not heard kind of church or out of sight, out of mind. They go do their thing, but the real church happens in here or growing up. This is grandma’s church. And if you make too much noise, then you get the fingernails in the thigh from grandma. Anyone else? Anyone else get that? No, just me and PTSD after that. But anyway, that’s what it is. I mean, it’s like a church that the next gen is just kind of not there. Actually nationally, this is going on. There’s a research group called Barna. They’re like a Christian faith-based kind of a research group. They study religious bodies and just report the data. And Barna did a study in 2011 asking people who grew up in church, so grew up in some type of a faith community, and what is your faith life like now? So 18 to 29 year olds who grew up in church but have moved out of the home and all that kind of stuff. So 18 to 29 year olds, what is your faith life right now? They found that 41%, I’m sorry, 49% of them, almost half don’t even attend a church anymore. They’ve just kind of stepped away. They grew up in this.

And then they were so taken aback by this, these results that in 2019 they decided to do the same exact survey and see what happened. And in 2019, the numbers skyrocketed. 61% of 18 to 29 year olds who grew up in church had stepped away. And then they kind of dug deeper. What is the reasons? What’s the data behind it? And the answers ranged, and you can assume what these are, but it’s irrelevant. It didn’t connect. They weren’t talking about issues that I care about. Church is full of hypocrites. Church is boring, grandma’s church. And then as you would expect though, because this is such a man, I don’t even know what the word is, an endemic, this is such staggering results that we shouldn’t be surprised then when we look at average age of attenders at a church. So they’ve done studies of age distributions in a average American Protestant congregation.

And so, the age breakdown looks a little bit like this, that in the average church in America, one third of the attenders are over the age of 65. And it’s like an upside down Christmas tree, right? It’s top heavy. So if you’re just listening to the podcast or listening online, the largest number is the oldest number. And then at 50 to 64, it goes down to 28%, 30 to 49 years old goes down to 18%, takes a little bit of a jump from 18 to 29 years old at 13%, and then zero to 17 is less than 10%.

I mean, so this means in the average congregation, less than 10% of the people there are under the age of 18. Now, if you look at this and you’re like, yep, yeah, I’ve been to that church. I think if you’ve ever visited a church, you’ve been to churches like that for sure. And if that was a country and that was the age distribution of a country, it would be panic time. This is why economists and global theorists and stuff are so concerned about China right now because the bottom has dropped out because of their one child policy that they don’t have the replacement level of a workforce of this coming generation. Once boomers, China looks just like this, and once the boomer generation passes, their economy is in danger of crippling. It’s hollow. They don’t have the support underneath it.

And the same would be true of our church especially when you consider that bottom number. That’s that 9% right there for zero 17 year olds when you realize that 61% of them aren’t going to stick around either. I mean it’s foreboding. And this is why I think in the scripture we just read from Deuteronomy why God is pressing so much on the faith of the next generation. He presses on it because, okay, a little bit of context for what we read or we heard Grant read from Deuteronomy. This is the nation of Israel. This is the people of God before they enter into the promised land flowing with milk and honey. And they’ve been wandering for 40 years in the desert and he’s like, guys, guys, when you get fat and happy and life is good and you’re prospering, don’t forget there’s this natural gravitational pull when you’re surrounded by wealth and luxury and good times that you forget what’s important.

It has a way of disorienting you. So he’s like, don’t forget and instill these values on your children. Your children have not seen the Red Sea parts. Your children have not seen manna fall from heaven. Your children have not seen water come from the rock you have, they haven’t. And so you need to tell them, ’em, impress this on them, instill this on them, remind them again and again and again. And this is not the kind of thing that you can put off and oh, we’ll do it once a year or we’ll do it at the end of my life and we’ll tell the kids how this is important. No, no, no. Consistency beats intensity. 10. Impress this on your children again and again, and this is the theme of the verse that we heard, but this is the theme all the way throughout Deuteronomy.

Chapter 4
9 Teach your children and to their children after them what the Lord has done.

Chapter 6
7 Impress them on your children.

Chapter 32
Command your children to obey carefully all the words of the law.       

Take a look, chapter four, “teach your children and their children after them what the Lord has done.” Deuteronomy six, “impress these things on your children.” Deuteronomy 32, “command your children to obey carefully all the words of the law.” Don’t give up doing this. This is a repetition. This is a rhythm of worship. If you want your kids to be a part of the household of faith, you cannot compromise on this. And that’s why I love on Sunday morning when I watch parents walk in late because I know that they check their kids in and they’re running frazzled and their purses is hanging all over and they got stuff falling, but they’re here. I love when I see kids come to church and soccer cleats because it means that you’ve got this question that faced you on Sunday morning of What are we going to do?

We’ve got soccer and that’s at noon or 1215, so we could go, but you’ll have to, okay, if we leave church right away, but you got to be dressed in your soccer cleats and your soccer gear or whatever, or your dance gear or whatever. I guess she wouldn’t wear her dance apparel to church. And don’t even get me started on travel sports hockey. It is my goodness. Don’t be surprised if my kid is wearing hockey gear in the back of church one day because this is a priority for us. We can’t compromise. I love it because I know that you had a decision to make and you decided, Nope, we’re going to do this as a family. It’s too important. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Bravo, mom and dad. I’m proud of you.

…we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord
Psalm 78:4

And this is why then in scripture, God lays this precedent on us, and then the people of God respond to him again and again. Yes, we will. We train up a child in the way they will go. So when they’re old, they will not depart from it. Yes, yes, we will raise the children in the faith. Yes, we will as our theme verse for this entire series, yes, we will tell the next generation the praise worthy deeds of the Lord. Yes, absolutely. And that’s why our age demographic breakdown looks different. Take a look at this. This is us doing the best, best guess that we can using our database. But there’s the average congregation again, and then here’s our congregation. About 17% of our congregation is 65 years and older, 20%, 50 to 64, another 22%, 30 to 49. That’s a lot of young families at our world.

And then that 18 to 29 number is 16%. But look at the bottom one there. 25% of the people at St. Mark are under the age of 18, 25%. Last Sunday, we had 71 kids, fourth grade and under at our kids’ ministry on Sunday morning, 71 for a church that’s scratching at 400 people on a Sunday. And then you add to that the 40 kids or so that were at our color clash for our middle school and high school youth ministry that night, right? It was 40 50. Some kids, you add that number and you’re like, oh my goodness. It’s a quarter of our congregation is under the age of 18. That’s healthy. This is what you want your country’s demographics to look like, right? And I’m proud to be a pastor of a church, the values and said, yes, we will tell the next generation, the praiseworthy, the deeds of the Lord. That’s why we have so many kids in our confirmation program. That’s why we have kids at our youth nights on Sunday nights because we want to tell the next generation that this matters. We want them to meet Jesus and fall in love with him and call him their best friend. And that’s why families with kids with special needs feel welcome here. Take a look.

(VIDEO):
When we were searching for a church, we were looking for community, and we were looking for a space where our girls could grow up in the faith. We have a daughter who has a congenital heart defect, and she was born with that. And we knew with that diagnosis would come some pretty strong need for faith. And we really needed that for our girls. We needed them to grow up in a space that they know Jesus and they know how to lean on each other and lean on their faith through the hard times that we experience. And when we came to St. Mark’s, what was really great is the first time we came, we met Ashley and Ashley took Skylar Wright in and she just, it was the first time we had come to a service where we knew that our daughters were all cared for, and we were able to sit through the service together, just my husband and I, and we were able to be fed the word. While we knew that our girls were getting to experience Jesus in the room down the hall, and we knew that Skyler’s needs were being met, we didn’t feel like we were going to be called out to have to deal with her needs. It was just this mutual feeling that we both could be taken care of in our faith.

Pastor Chris Paavola:
Praise God for that. That doesn’t just happen. It takes an army of volunteers to make kids’. Ministry happened on Sunday morning. A lot of people who are in the room right now, we’re serving at nine 30. A lot of people who were in the room at nine 30 are serving right now so that we have enough volunteers for those kids. And specifically when children do come with special needs that we have helpers for them. We have trained volunteers who know how to address different situations and help be a regulating presence. And man, oh man, that’s huge. That doesn’t just happen. That takes intentionality.

IF WE DO
And that’s why we’ve talked about what happens in the next 50 years if we don’t. But I get excited when I talk about what happens if we do, what happens if we continue to be and move towards and continue to live out this vision of being a church the next generation can call its own. And I’ll tell you what I see in the next 50 years.

WHAT HAPPENS IF WE DO
In the next 50 years, I see our world for children continuing to be the tip of the spear of youth and family ministry here at St. Mark. You guys realize that over the last 22 years, over 4,000 students have been served by that school. Just do the math. 200 kids times 22, over 4,000 kids have been touched by the ministry of St. Mark in our day school. It’s awesome. But I see that continuing. I see us continuing to have our world for children. We have, but we’ve got to also be nimble and involved to a changing culture like the state of Michigan just started the GSRP program. Help me out. What is that GS Start readiness program? Yeah, great start readiness program. Thank you educators in the room.

And that means basically for everyone, just like kindergartens for everyone, it’s public, but to do so, they don’t have, obviously the facilities on a lot of these campuses are maxed out, so they need partner programs. We’re exploring that. Will we do it? I don’t know. We might, might not, but we’re exploring what does it look like to be a host site for your GSRP here with our world? But that takes a lot of conversation and thought and to make sure that we are able to be on mission and do that as well. But I see our world continuing obviously in the next 50 years. I see. I mean, just do the math. I see thousands of kids being baptized here. I do. We believe that baptism is a gift that God gives, and baptism is God’s work, not ours. This is what God does for us, not what we do for God. And I kind of want to preach another sermon right now, but I’m going to stay on track here for this one.

But when a child is born, we give gifts to the child that they can’t play with yet that they can’t enjoy yet, but one day they will. And it’s part of the reason we carry on a very historic tradition of baptizing babies. But I see we’ve baptized elementary aged kids here too. We’ve baptized adults, but I see us baptizing thousands of kids here in the next 50 years. Do the math and think about what baptism means though. I mean, when scripture talks about it, you’re baptized into the faith. You’re baptized into the church. These kids are not half citizens of the kingdom of heaven. They’re not half members of God’s family. They’re not stepchildren. They are God’s children just as much as you and I. And that phrase, that’s why the phrase being a church, the next generation calls its own is because they are the church now. The next generation is really their kids. They’re this generation. In the next 50 years, I see our Sunday morning kids program having hundreds of kids down the hall every Sunday morning, I see our youth nights that are twice a month. I see that becoming a weekly thing. I see hundreds of teenagers here, hundreds of kids. Why not? In the next 50 years what’s possible? We just continue to step towards this vision. Come on, why wouldn’t that happen?

But if we’re going to do any of this, whether it’s GSRP programs or youth nights or afterschool tutoring, what if we partner with local schools and become champion volunteers for Mingus or Lakeview schools or Harper Creek or Penfield? If we’re going to do that, we have to talk about where we would host all of these kids. And the number one space for this is our multi-purpose room is this room has served us so well. This is actually, this is the first building of St. Mark. So when St. Mark started in 1958, this was the building they constructed great vision actually, because they built this versatile multipurpose room. And they said, okay, a lot of things can happen in this space. We’ll worship in here, we’ll have volleyball in here, potlucks in here, Sunday school in here. And then they added additions. We praise God for their vision and how this room has served us over the years, but man, it hasn’t really been touched in decades. I mean, the walls are green.

It needs more than a coat of paint, though. It does. Okay, so just imagine this, okay? Imagine you’re a teenager and someone shows you a picture of that and then another, and then they show you a picture of full blast, and they go, which one do you want to go to tonight? There’s no question that they’re going to be, this does not look inviting or compelling at all, or put yourself as a five-year-old, okay? Imagine you’re five. You know how when you’re a five-year-old, and you ever go back home to the home you grew up in and you’re like, oh my goodness, it’s so tiny. You guys raised me in a closet. I’m calling CPS. You know what I mean? Just everything that when you were a kid that seems so big all of a sudden seems so tiny. It is the same thing. Imagine being a little kid walking into this giant vacuous space that’s dimly lit in the corners.

It’s terrifying. And that’s why we work so hard to compensate for it. I mean, she puts color dot things up there on the stage and decorations, and she puts little blow up things on the stage, not ka bluey blow up things like blow up things on the stage. Just we don’t blow up things on Sunday morning with kids ministry, okay? Not always anyway. But yeah, we have to work really hard to try to make the space fun and exciting and inviting to kids. Or if you’ve ever gone to a funeral luncheon in there, we’re like, sorry, we’ve had weddings in there. And it’s like, golly, they decorate the heck out of it, trying to make the space look nice. Or we’ve had women’s events in there like the cup of good cheer or the blessed is she event, you’re just like, okay, I’ll put some flowers on a table and there’s a lot of work that we could do.

We need to address the lighting, the flooring, the walls, and that’s going to take a little bit of work. And that’s why this campaign, we are asking a hundred percent of the people at St. Mark, every single one of you to be a part of this and to make a commitment to this next 50 years, because that’s not going to happen without a lot of intentionality from you. And now we’re not talking about money today. You don’t have to worry about that. But I will say this. You got a booklet in the mail this week. You should have got a booklet in the mail if we have your address. And it’s like 12 pages outlining just what is the program? What does this campaign, what does it look like? What are all the details of it and all that kind of stuff. And if you didn’t get one, we’ve got a bunch of them on the tables out there, and there’s all over the cafe and out in the lobby.

Grab one, learn more about this program. But here’s what my fear was in mailing these out, is that you would receive these and then instantly come up with a number, okay? That’s what we’re going to do. And that’s not what I want. Honestly, over the next few weeks, what I’m asking each person to do is to pray one prayer with us. And we’re going to pray this every week during this series, and we’re going to pray it right now. And it’s, God, what do you want me to give? Next slide, please. What do you want me to give to the next 50 years? That’s it. God, what do you want me to give? And then listen, let the Holy Spirit lead you. Whatever he tells you to do, do that. Nothing more, nothing less. And so if you’ve already got a number in your mind when you read that, please, please, I’m just asking you to have an open heart and an open hand, and to be vulnerable for the next few weeks, and to pray that prayer and have the bravery, the courage, the faith to maybe bring to you a different idea than the one you brought to him to guide you and lead you.

What does this look like? I don’t know.

So we’re going to pray that prayer this morning, and we’re going to continue to pray this prayer in the weeks to come as we look through more of these vision statements together. But thank you guys for making St. Mark a place that the next generation can call the room. Here we go.

LORD, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO GIVE TO THE NEXT 50 YEARS?

God, what do you want me to give to the next 50 years? And Lord, that’s our prayer this morning. We thank you, God, for the service of so many incredible volunteers over the last 50 years, whether it’s Sunday School or Youth Nights or confirmation, or at our world for children, so many people who have worked so hard to tell the next generation. We thank you, God, for the way that you’ve raised up so many kids in the faith here, and we pray that it would continue. We pray that in the next 50 years that we would continue to live out this vision you’ve given us, Lord, that St. Mark would continue to be a church. The next generation calls its own. We pray for the kids in this community who don’t know Jesus Lord, who don’t know that there’s a God who loves them and has a plan for their life. We pray that you would give them the gift of faith. And if it would be, we would be so honored, God, if you would draw them here, bring them to St. Mark where they can fall in love with you and call Jesus their best friend and enter into your family through the waters of baptism that they may believe in their hearts and confess with their mouth that Jesus Christ has Lord and risen from the dead. What an honor God, what an honor.

So just continue to help us live out that vision, exceed our expectations, and God, with this campaign, we ask that you just would speak to us, just not our ideas. What is it you want us to give? And we pray now the prayer your son taught us to pray, saying together, our Father who art in heaven, hall it be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.