IM, YOUTH, TECHNOLOGY & CHANGING LIFE & CHANGING CHURCH

I know the world is changing and will change more quickly than I know. My grandchildren at 2, 3, and 4 years of age opened the laptops and went online to network games, mouse around and use the keyboard. Now they are preteens and now what. Look at their peers now.

They are instant messaging each other when they wake, walk, eat and drive, yikes! A major shift is occurring along demographic fault lines in the use of technology. It is a shift in how younger people are interacting with one another. Of course those who are thirty years and older are using IM and Facebook and other networking venues to stay connected with colleagues and friends and their own children. However, teens and twenties today are using technology as no other generation before them has done and for that reason they will change the way work is done. They process tasks at incredible speeds. They write essays while tweeting. They hang out at MySpace not Starbucks. Their use of digital technology is changing society, organizations and the way business is done. It cannot be held back. And this young generation is entering the workforce.

Richard Leyland of Unwired in an article entitled, "Prepare for the Next Generation – Today’s Teens will Change the Way We Work," asks four questions in order to describe what we can expect from the IM Generation.
1. How do they use technology? IM is foundational to their lives communications rather than additional as with older generations. They have developed the skill of absorbing relevant snippets while surfing connections.
2. What skills will they bring? They will multitask, make complex immediate connections, quickly create, access and swap information and collaborate with one or many people.
3. What won’t work? Traditional authority structures, formal communication style, daily office presence and reporting, dull and repetitive jobs will not work. The IM generation wants to contribute and influence outcomes, operating informally and immediately, work nomadically from home, café or beach being utterly dependent on technology and information accessibility.
4. Should this worry us? Yes and No. Yes, because it requires every organization to adjust to these realities and take advantage of them. No, because their skills are suited to this emerging knowledge economy.

Application:

Can the church close the gap between its Message and the IM generation?
If the bottom line is that the Church must embrace new technologies, then what kind of personnel will the church need to employ?
In the ever-changing technology landscape, churches wanting to maintain their relevance, have to consider new options to be the connected family of God.

GRASPING HOW MUCH GOD CARES FOR US

To best understand that God infinitely cares for each of us, I must begin with the Big Picture. Somewhere in the broad window of pre-history God determined to create humanity and a world in which the species would live. You and I are sitting in different places, a library, a living room, a Starbucks, some place where we can read. That’s the small picture. The big picture is that we are at this moment part of a whole human history. Human history had a beginning and it has always been moving toward a target. It is a matter of design, and this design originated with God. That design bears upon the theme that intrigued David, the psalmist, shepherd, soldier and king of ancient Israel. He wrote memorable conversation to God which is recorded as Psalm 8 in the Book of Psalms of the Old Testament.

8:1 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

JUST BE THE CHURCH

Or perhaps something more profound must be said to any of us who may be critical of church as it is being experienced today. Maybe we need to detach ourselves from the chorus of naysayers and lampooners. Maybe we need to reread the gospels and fall in love again with the church that Jesus loved enough to die for her. Okay, so the church with all that property, all that square footage, that fat revenue has not seen seekers come to faith in five years. And true enough, some high profile church leaders and even local pastors have embarrassed themselves and humiliated the church through one scandal or another. And yes, you’re right, the communication of good news gets buried sometimes under the mountains of self-reproach being pumped from pulpits. Then why not be a change agent. Don’t buck a system. Just be the church, you. I’m talking to you, and of course to me. You can let your own faith be so winsome that people will come to faith in Christ. You can identify in practical ways with poor and disenfranchised people. You can love. Strangers, neighbours, friends can be exposed to the love of God simply by you being you, a helper, a listener. You can have church in your apartment suite, your home, at Starbucks, and it is legitimate and genuine. In the process, church will be renewed, reformed.