Winning Back Generation Y

I'm alive today because God used an urban ministry to bring my parents together, and to lead our family to a more dynamic faith.

The term "urban" once described people, places, and things related to the city. Then it became code for anything related to modern "black" culture. Now, according to Regent University religion scholar Antipas Harris, the word needs to be fine-tuned once again.

Why is it that in nonprofit Christian ministry, the work sometimes seems to be valued more than the worker?

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.

After my 13-year-old's jarring confession, I talked to other youth about their impressions of God, the church, and "Christ vs. Christianity." I quickly discovered that my son was not alone in his doubts about the integrity of adult Christians.

My 13-year-old son's shocking confession forced me to confront my tendency to obscure Jesus behind the "religious" parts of my faith.

The new basketball documentary More Than a Game reveals how Dru Joyce coached future NBA phenom LeBron James and his high school teammates to a national championship. But more than that, it shows how Joyce poured his life into mentoring a group of talented but ordinary teenagers.

It was only logical for my student to conclude that society didn't expect much from him and his classmates. As a result, they didn't expect much from themselves.

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?