Frank Viola: Up until recently, I was busy establishing and working with organic missional churches in the trenches. Last year, however, I changed the focus of my ministry to the other aspect of my calling for a season: The deeper Christian life. As such, I’ve been speaking (free of charge as always) at various conferences and churches (of all types) on the deeper Christian life.
I’ve also been burdened to help the poor more and develop relationships with those who don’t know Jesus. In addition, I’ve forged relationships with pastors and others in different types of ministry. My convictions on the unity of the body of Christ are quite strong. To my mind, Christians should join arms in the greater cause of God’s Kingdom no matter what their convictions are about church structure or form. Cooperation without compromise is where I pitch my tent.
Another major focus of mine right now is my blog, Beyond Evangelical, which is geared to serious Christians in their 20s and 30s (though we have some older and some younger readers). My blog subscribers belong to all types of church structures and denominations. I blog five times a week and the conversations have been invaluable.
With respect to writing, following the release of Pagan Christianity, I wrote three other books as constructive follow-ups: Reimagining Church (the companion volume to Pagan), From Eternity to Here, and Finding Organic Church. Pagan Christianity really can’t be fully (or properly) understood without these other volumes, as it’s not a complete work on its own.
Following that was Jesus Manifesto, Revise Us Again, and Epic Jesus.
I regard the above three books, including From Eternity to Here, to be my best and most important contributions to date.
The next five books that are in the queue are also on the deeper Christian life. So they too will appeal to Christians in every kind of church form and denomination.
Joe Miller: From my experience on the West Coast, men and women in their late teens and early twenties have lost their bearings. Even those who are attracted to religion gravitate toward groups that are disconnected from the foundations of our historic Faith. Overall, the Church has not been effective in bringing young people to the Gospel. What must we do differently to usher in a Jesus revolution among America’s youth?
Frank Viola: Based on my talks with 20-somethings from all over the country who aren’t Christians, two things come to mind:
(1) Christians would treat one another the way they want to be treated. I’ve written extensively on this, but the fact is, Christians (especially evangelicals) are viewed as being judgmental, condemning, narrow-minded, harsh, and legalistic in the eyes of many young people. Just look at the kinds of awful things Christians say to and about one another online and it becomes patently clear why they feel this way.
(2) Take the time to get to know young people, hang out with them, and love them as people rather than as projects. At the same time, don’t compromise our distinctiveness as believers while we befriend them. It seems that many Christians have a struggle knowing how to love people without selling out to the world system on the one hand and keeping people at a condemning distance on the other.
George Barna: I do not believe that problem is limited to young people or to individuals living on the West Coast. I would attribute it to the gravitational pull of cultural forces, especially through the media. The effect of contemporary media content and media-driven calls to action has been facilitated by ineffective leadership by the Christian church in response to these challenges. At the same time, the role of the family has eroded significantly during the past four decades, making the media and public policy much more powerful in directing people’s thoughts, perceptions, and responses. Children are now being raised with a completely different set of authority figures, core values, and expectations than has traditionally been the case, leaving them defenseless against the onslaught of new and unfortunate ways of perceiving and responding to the world.
So you ask what we must do differently. The needed changes are deep and complex and will take decades, not weeks, to implement. First, a significant body of Christians must be united in this battle to restore biblical principles to the center of our experience. Second, we must be committed to a long-term investment of resources: time, energy, power, relationships, money, and so forth. Third, the family must reclaim its rightful place at the center of child development, accepting assistance from others in the community of faith, but not abdicating its role as the anointed leader in child development. Fourth, we must embrace and support new models of faith experience and expression, to remove existing obstacles to people integrating their faith into every dimension of their lives. Fifth, we need to set maximum transformation as the objective of our lives, and work toward that result. That would include the creation of different forms of community among believers than currently prevail and a new set of and measurement process related to transformational metrics.
