Winning Back Generation Y

Society is crying out for answers that only the church has, but it often wants them without the values and faith that make the church what it's called to be.

The Hampton University Ministers' Conference is one of the most influential gatherings of black church leaders. And HU chaplain Debra Haggins O'Bryant is the event's driving force.

A growing and diverse movement of urban Christian leaders reminds us that the beauty of art is also an effective instrument for sharing the Good News.

The Information Age has changed the cultural landscape, and our models for ministry must change along with it to stay relevant -- and raise more effective urban leaders.

As I watched countless groups of white kids invade our inner-city neighborhood to do "missions," I grew to depise the idea of "drive-by" urban missionaries. But years later, God gave me a new perspective. How I learned to love short-term missions.

Our spiritual restlessness is often a precursor to something big God wants to do in the world -- and in us.

How many eighth-grade Bible studies lead with Lamentations? Or Leviticus? Not many that I'm aware of.

Yet last I checked, Lamentations and Leviticus are part of the biblical canon, along with Romans and Revelation and lots of other heady reading material.

Should it matter to pastors, then, that the average graduate of America's city schools reads at an eighth-grade level and that many high school graduates don't even rank that high?

"He who sings prays twice." -- Saint Augustine

"What's going on?" -- Marvin Gaye

The soundtrack of the 1970s still speaks to us. Life, as many had known it, was rapidly changing back then. A generation had found its revolutionary voice and was confronting oppression domestically and abroad. Disenchantment with status quo Americanism had sparked the nation's social consciousness. And from the center of this whirlwind emerged a cry for deep justice.

If spiritual renewal breaks out in a forest and no American Christians are around to witness it, does that mean it never happened?

Pardon the paraphrase of the old philosophical riddle, but this probably sums up the thinking of many in the evangelical community in years past. But the times are a-changin'. According to Soong-Chan Rah, author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (IVP), if the American church is going to be a relevant participant in the future of global Christianity, it had better recognize the church's new multicultural reality. And the future is now.

Greetings from Brooklyn, the most populous borough in New York City. Birthplace of Jay-Z. Home of the integration of Major League Baseball. And site of the largest battle of the Revolutionary War. If Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the fourth largest in America.

My name is Jeremy Del Rio, and I'm an addict -- if you can call ministry to young people an addiction. Or if you can call city life addicting. Either way, I'm hooked.