I made my first overseas trip – to Central America – when I was 18. I was 21 when I first went to Asia. At 24 my wife, our daughter and I, moved to Taiwan for our first two-year term of missionary service. At 28, I started AsiaNet Ministries. By the time I was 35 my family and I had traveled in over 20 nations, helped plant 25 churches in Sri Lanka, and were leading a team that included seven missionary families.
Today, at 52, I sometimes reminisce about those years and can’t believe I had so much energy and got so much done! I also remember the passion and almost endless self-sacrificing vision of my youth.
Every generation produces new young people. From these youth new sources of energy, passion and vision are bestowed on the world. And, the older generation that spawned them, who are now slowing down, must come to terms with their zeal, their hope, their innocence, and their potential.
If you are over 40, you probably have begun to forget some of the power of being young. You have lost much of your youthful passion. Your energy levels are lower. Your vision is more “refined” which definitely includes maturity and wisdom, but it might also mean it is more cynical or cautious. It is certainly more realistic. Your passion is more compromised, meaning you now balance sold-out service for self-serving interests and life obligations. You now think about retirement, not just winning the world for Jesus. You look back with regret as often as you look forward with hope.
Youth aren’t encumbered with such conflicts of interest. Their life is ahead of them, and they are ready to live. In the words of Saturday Night Live character Matt Foley, young people want to “grab life by the tail, pull it down, tie it in a knot and put it into your pocket.” They are willing to make big sacrifices for what they believe. They don’t have much experience, and they lack knowledge, but they want to change the world.
Young people also don’t know what many older folks now believe, that – again in the acrid words of Matt Foley – they probably “won’t amount to Jack Squat.”
Cynical, yes. But too often the sentiments of the older toward the younger.
David accomplished his most famous deed when he was a teenager. By himself, despite his elder brothers’ scorn and the army’s mass cowardice, he confronted Goliath and killed him with a stone and a sling. King Saul had offered a huge reward – money and his daughter – to the man who killed the giant. David, however, didn’t fight Goliath for money. He did it for an ideal. He loved God and His people and would not stand idly by while both were mocked by a tyrant. David’s faith, borne on the wings of youthful zeal, killed a giant and inspired a nation.
Everyone who knows me knows how much I love surfing. People joke about Doug Gehman’s passion for surfing. In the 1960s, when I was a teenager, surfing became one of the icons of a generation who were turning their backs on “The Establishment” and the greed and war it had come to symbolize. A whole generation – hippies, flower children, surfers, run-aways and rebels “turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.” Our parents did not know what to do with us. We marched against Vietnam. We stood up against big money. We quit college and got stoned. We rioted and protested on college campuses across the nation. It was a messy time in America. Yet, out of that cultural conundrum God brought forth the Jesus People. I became one of them in 1973, at “Jesus ‘73”, the first big Christian youth rally for our times. 15,000 young people gathered on a Pennsylvania farm for three days of music and Christian ministry. I gave my life to Christ at that rally.
There were no churches for us in those days. Not a single youth-focused church existed in my home area. In the early 70’s one Presbyterian pastor started a Saturday night meeting for young people. It drew hundreds of high school and college kids. When I went to college in Indiana, there were only two churches in the county that centered around marginal youth. I joined one of them, Zion Chapel. I grew up in the Lord in that church. I met my wife there, got married there, and got sent to the mission field from that church.
On the other side of the nation, in Costa Mesa, California, Pastor Chuck Smith started welcoming hippies into his church – the first Calvary Chapel. In Pensacola, Florida Pastor Ken Sumrall began reaching out to young people, loving them into the Kingdom. Liberty Bible College and Globe Missionary Evangelism were born from that love, and from Brother Ken’s belief that youth would change the world for Jesus Christ.
Many of these churches and ministries still thrive today. Many are now huge and are still growing. Others have become stale, middle-aged, and almost irrelevant to this generation. But, their legacy is profound. God moved on young people, and a few leaders said yes to God and loved them, trained them, and turned them loose on the world. Many of Globe’s senior missionaries are the fruit of that time.
Fast forward to the summer of 2005. In July that year, I attended the Christian Surfers National Conference in Honolulu. At that conference a young man named Mike Doyle spoke about a new ministry called Walking On Water. Walking On Water was making Christian surf films. As Outreach Director, Mike had helped bring the message of Jesus Christ, through the sport of surfing, to thousands of young people all over the world. In a few years Walking On Water had touched over 85,000 young people in 15 nations! It was an amazing story of youthful faith, vision and passion for Jesus Christ. I was mesmerized by Mike’s testimony, delivered (you gotta know Mike) in his modest, matter-of-fact conversational style.
After the session I introduced myself to Mike saying, “You and I have got to talk. I would like to partner with Walking On Water to do an outreach with Globe.” That conversation led to the Scotland outreach with Bob and Melissa Hill, and the starting of “Deeper,” a skate outreach church for young people in Dumbarton. Over 120 kids attend every week. Deeper is now one of the biggest youth ministries in Scotland.
This past summer, we did a second outreach with Walking On Water in Bielefeld, Germany. One of the couples on Brad Thurston’s team, Johannes and Esther Baumann, are now planting a new skate church in Bielefeld. My hope and expectation is that within a year or two we will be hearing similar reports.
Another young man, Ian Skelley, is helping Globe make cutting edge television programs that feature our missionaries’ ministries. Ian has already done three – in Cost Rica, Scotland, and Nicaragua – and three more are planned for this fall. Ian is willing to travel anywhere in the world. We just give him a plane ticket and he’ll go and make a missionary film and tell a missionary story. Ian’s work is featured on the “All Over the World” television program.
A steady stream of young people are coming to Globe to talk about missions. They are signing up for intern assignments, outreaches, Boot Camp, and our Institute for Global Ministry. I am continually amazed at their willingness to give their lives, and make huge sacrifices, for what they believe is a noble cause – to reach the world for Jesus Christ. And we are retooling everything we do to connect with and serve them.
I want to challenge you. If you are over the age of 40, take some time to reconnect with the journey you began with Jesus as a young person. And find a way to get involved with young people. Look around! Thousands of young people today need the love, the encouragement, the guidance, and the wisdom you can provide. It doesn’t matter if they are from Indiana or India, from Pensacola or Peru, they are ready to be radical and will follow Jesus to the ends of the earth if we can inspire them with who He really is.
You MUST be willing to make some changes in your life to get their attention and earn their respect. They can spot a phony a mile away. You must become youthful at heart and allow God to give you a genuine love for young people. In my case, it was (and still is) important that I know how to ride a surf board. Surfing buys me respect. I surf because I love it, but I need to be a surfer to keep me connected to youth culture.
Young people today are a distinct people group – with their own language, dress code, worldview, and culture. To reach them we must get on the inside. Just like any cross-cultural work, reaching young people requires a missionary mind. But, there are incredible dividends for reaching this generation. In them and through them is the power complete the greatest mission in history!
