Where have all the young ones gone?

Yesterday was one of those days where the intellectual input was discordant all day long. It started with "Senior" Sunday at church. The youth minister delivered a non-sermon about his "vision" for recapturing the youth of America. Terrible statistics, 2/3 of them reject the manifestations of their parents, 70% believe the net will be much wider than their parents. Most never darken the door again after college, etc. etc.
Problem is, I'm right there with them. Over the past three years or so, my bride and I have hung tenuously to the tribe of our youth. Instead of the grip getting stronger it seems to weakening. I look at the folks who are in my generation and realize that spiritual formation was stunted 30 years ago, and very little growth since then. More and more church leaderships are being staffed with my contemporaries, and while we rejected authority in our youth, most of the guys have apparently had a conversion expereince. I now refer to them as "neo-authoritarians." So, instead of having men who are wise and experienced, we have men who are proven corporate managers, with little or no spiritual formation expereince, in themselves, yet alone for a community of faith.
The other problem is we have rejected the strenuous task of teaching the fundamentals. They won't listen, they won't come, we will be deemed irrelavant. Well, guess what, that ship has sailed. If rlevance is our gospel, we need to tear down the buildings and erect Free-WiFi coffeeshops...oh wait, we already and guess what, we are still irrelevant. Unfortunately, most of our professional pulpit guys seem to think that the quality can be judged by the number of cool slides, or the video. There are two ways to plan a sermon 1. Figure out what you want to say and go find the scripture/pictures/video that support your message. or 2. (and this one is, by far, the more rare) Wander through the scripture and see what it says to you, see how it changes you, then share that message.
We have way too much opinion and way too little orthodoxy.
You are thinking to yourself, this will never win back to the young people. I left the assembly and went to have my conversation with my little band of 20-somethings. They love the deep questions, they love the purpose it provides them, they love thinking that they might actually have a place in the kingdom that baby-boomers haven't co-opted.
I am here to tell you, there is nothing wrong with these younger generations that good, old-fashioned spiritual formation won't fix. And there is nothing wrong with my generation that can't be fixed by the same cocktail. The real hitch is that spiritual formation is not easy, it takes discipline, desire, and mentors, which are almost non-existent with my generation. A new way to pick spiritual leaders might be in order.
"Tell me which of the 12 classic disciplines cause you the most angst.
What does your journal say about your growth?
Who are you mentoring right now?"
We may as well try the new approach, the old one sure isn't working.

Does anyone else out there feel that it is a bit ironic that the one group at the church where we currently have camped have asked me..the outcast to teach the other outcasts? The irony is not lost on my bride.

Oh well,
Godspeed
Don