Inspired

I am setting aside time on Wednesdays to study the Word, pray, and read. Every few months I visit Ron Cole's Blog. Each time I do I find myself confronted, inspired, and occasionally confused... but it's so good for me (thanks Ron). I just read an article that Ron highlited called; "the iGen manifesto" by Rex Miller. This is my first exposure to him as an author, but I like what I read. It's all about this generation's uniqueness, and how it relates to church. Read the full article here. He proposes a list of distinctives that help us understand the culture of this generation. I'd love to read your thoughts on them...

Every revolution needs a manifesto. Here are opening salvos for the iGen Manifesto. But Web 2.0 is collaborative, so I expect to see many additions to the Manifesto. Check out these first 11 items, and see if you can add to them:

We expect content on demand! Access to plentiful, accessible content—when, where and how we want it.
We expect Open Source resources! Content needs to be readily available to rip, mix and burn for novel use.
Amateurs are cool, professionals are old school. The root word for amateur is “to love.” Amateurs play because of their passion, not because of their position. Content is easy—passion is rare.
We expect a Participation Context in every phase of church life. We, the congregation, want to co-create our experience. “Let everyone come with a psalm and hymn and a spiritual song.”
We want a Platform for involvement not a viewer’s forum. We want church transformed from a place of attraction and content transfer to a platform of resources to connect, create and grow.
We do not need more content—we need more Mentors! We want leaders to shift from being prime movers and “franchise” attractions to mentors and catalysts—this was once called “servant-leadership.”
We want contexts for social networking and a radical shift away from the current activity machine. We want church to be more like an extended family and open bazaar of exchange and service to one-another.
We want to redefine the local church as the local church! We want to see ourselves as one congregation interconnected and interdependent with the other congregations in our community.
We want to talk and act globally not as though there were three separate worlds (the good people, the communists and those poor developing countries).
We want to see artificial boundaries dissolve and a convergence of church, charity, community and commerce.
We are the Long Tail. We want to be taken off the shelf and to make a difference. We want to move away from a mass-market approach.

What could church look like? Seriously I want you to dream with me, and help build it!

Partners

If you’re like me, you spend too much time worrying about what people think. Most of it doesn’t matter at all, and much of what I fear people think, isn’t really thought by anyone. The enemy is always after me in this regard. So I repeatedly do battle for my mind – to re-align my thoughts to the truth that... it is what God thinks of me that matters, a distant second is what my wife thinks, and a remote third is everyone else.
In one of these almost daily battles a thought occurred to me...
I am trying to partner with Godly men and women to build a spiritual community of Young adults. BUT, I have actually been worrying too much about what the un-involved people think, and rarely considering what my “partners” think. The people who are investing in the vision with me. How messed up is that? It actually goes against one of my aims... to assemble a community of people who are on the same page FIRST. Then reach out to and include fringe people, seekers, sceptics, and outsiders, from a place of strong identity.

Does anyone know what I mean?

As is often the case, a coffee with one of my “partners” has helped set me straight. And several loving boots to the butt from my wife. Thank you honey.

Finally...
GO FLAMES!