24 Apr Culturally Engaged Keywords: Generational Change
I’m the kind of person that gets to the theater early, not so I can snag the best seat, but so I can watch all the previews for upcoming movies, especially when they’re as captivating as the trailer for Magnolia. I love movie trailers!
I confess that I’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time on the iTunes Theatrical Trailers page, but it’s hard to pull away. I think trailers work so well because, by the nature of what they are, they leave us wanting to see more. They present an idea or a story, raise a bunch of questions, and then proceed to resolve nothing for us. Why do we love that? I think it’s because stories exist in order to draw us in and make us want to take part. Trailers draw us into a story, but since they don’t conclude the story, we’re left to continue living as part of a story that has not ended. Maybe such a predicament resonates so well because all of us live in a theatrical trailer. As Christians, we have faith-eyes that help us see how the story will resolve gloriously, but we live out our existence in the tension of a story that has not ended. Our story is ongoing because God’s story is ongoing. And, since God’s story is ongoing, the mission of the church to engage culture with the gospel is also ongoing.
We know that the story that we’re a part of–the story of redemption–is all about transformation. The entire world is moving out of brokenness and into goodness, truth, and beauty as a result of Jesus’ victory over evil. This process is far-reaching and works against the holistic death that sin has ushered into God’s world; therefore, we can conclude that the transformation we long for must be sustained over a long period of time until true change has reached into the very heart of darkness and made it bright with God’s redemption. True change is glacial. True transformation is generational. It happens a generation at a time, each generation building off the assets of the previous one. We stand on the shoulders of those who went before us, just as those that follow will hopefully stand on ours. With that in mind, we need to recognize that all our missional efforts will be most effective when they have the capacity to cultivate transformation over a course of generations. This is why sustainability (buzzword though it may be) is such an important concept for us to grasp. True transformation cannot happen without it.
As we seek to bring about generational change for the sake of God’s Kingdom, we will inevitably be drawn into the tension of having to wait for Kingdom results, and that can be a long wait. Unlike theatrical trailers, our story won’t allow us to forget the tension after a 2-4 minute video, and we have to trust that God is using us in ways beyond what we can see. A commitment to generational change forces us to live out our mission by faith. As an illustration, Bill White, Teaching Elder at Grace Church, has often commented that, for our work in Kenya to be a success, we are dependent on so many things working that are completely out of our control, from stability in government to economic growth to the faithfulness of Kenyan church leadership. Thus, our work for Christ ends right where it started: with faith and hope. “And hope does not put us to shame,” as Paul says, because we believe we have a faithful God who will bring about the generational change we long to see. Only he can make it happen. May we have the faith to take part in what only he can do.
–Jonathan Allston