Bob's Blog

I've been on jury duty the past few days. It's the first time for me. After years of postponing, because I was either living in Indiana or out of state, my time has come to serve as a juror at the Superior Court in downtown LA. The drive isn't too bad but I don't think I want to spend a couple of hours on the freeways each day.

I usually don't go to downtown LA very much. I don't have much reason to go there. My mom use to live in Los Angeles and tells me that it once was the hub of southern California back in the 50's. Now, all the major department stores have left and those huge buildings they once occupied are vacant. The city officials are trying to lure people back to the city center by renovating buildings into lofts and constructing new music centers and hangouts, but it's still not drawing anyone. I told my mom that I feel like LA has lost something, almost like it has lost its soul.

For those going to downtown area, the courts are usually the main attraction for one reason or another. The immigration and passport buildings are located there, and you can't walk the streets without bumping into a lawyer or a police officer. During my lunchtime, I headed down to the Grand Market on Hill and 4th Street, where there are great authentic food eateries with reasonable prices (I had a falafel with a Pepsi at Schwarmers last Monday!). The people you meet around the area reflect the new LA. They are immigrants from all over the world. Some are from Mexico or Central America. Others are from the Middle East or Asia. They are mostly the old and the forgotten. One of the neighboring communities called Boyle Heights is one of the meanest and poorest sections in California, so bad that one of their public high schools has been taken over by the government so they can finish the school year.

I share all this with you because I hurt for this city. The week before, I had lunch with a friend of mine who oversees a college group in a large suburban church in Orange County, which is south of Los Angeles. He shared that some day he would like to plant a church that would reach a twenty-something crowd. There are no mega churches of twenty-somethings in Los Angeles. There is no one looking to plant a church in the neediest areas of this city. There still are churches that remain in the metro area, beautiful Gothic structures, but they have lost their influence long ago. It's hard to start a church in these places. The language is foreign and the culture is so strange. Every night I watch the local news reporting from the war zones of Los Angeles. I see the faces of mothers, kids, old men wishing things could be different for where they live.

My generation has left the cities to fend for themselves. My prayer is that a new generation will return to restore hope for a hopeless people. Maybe my friend and his generation will be those people. We need a generation of heroes that are driven by the pulse of God, who care enough for His creation to plant His Church. We need to help our churches to look to the future and encourage a younger generation to act for others before it is too late, before all our cities start to resemble the streets of LA.

The other night (11/30/07), the NBC Nightly News ran a report about young evangelicals in the political arena. In 2005, a survey was given to evangelicals ranging from age 30 and younger. The survey revealed that 55% claimed the Republican Party as their political party of choice. But just two years later, a similar poll showed that the numbers had dropped to 40%. The news report suggested a shift is taking place within the right-wing party of the Republicans. The NBC report identified a new group of young evangelical Christians within the Republican Party as being a part of the Emerging Church movement, which is strong among twenty-something Christians and more interested in showing the power of God's love to others, than in flexing their political power within a system.

The news piece centered in on the changing political environment within the Republican Party, emphasizing the differences, especially in moral issues, between younger evangelicals and their Boomer counterparts. A segment featuring Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, expressed Mohler's concerns about younger evangelicals watering down biblical orthodoxy within Evangelicalism. One of his main concerns was if young evangelicals continue to move away from traditional churches, then many of the older evangelical churches, including mega-churches, will lose people and leaders for the future.

The newscast was a very clear picture on what is occurring with many young Christians here in America. As for me, I don't think I had ever seen any of the major news media do a report on the transitioning political movement taking place within the churches in America. This showed me a couple of things. First, the media is slow to recognize, as has the Republican Party, the changes happening in many churches across the country. These changes with younger evangelicals have been going on for at least a decade (read Robert E. Webber's The Younger Evangelicals), so it should come to no ones surprise to see what is happening within the Republican Party. Second, older Christians are recognizing that young believers are leaving their churches. The Southern Baptist denomination is taking the lead in proactively searching out the reasons why this is happening. A recent survey by Life Way Research, part of the publishing ministry of the Southern Baptists, is revealing sobering numbers of just how many young Christians have left evangelical churches.

For NBC, it was just another news item to fill a spot. For evangelicals, it was a reminder of how a generation seems to be reevaluating and rethinking what it means to be "Christian". It made me think about what God is doing in our Country, and what is the role He has for me. I don't want to ignore His movement, nor do I want to respond too late to what He is doing among young believers. Time will tell of whether this younger evangelical group will redefine themselves in such a way that no political party will be able to claim them as their own.