Latest / Centrally Speaking / Engaging Youth In our Day: A conversation with Dave Coryell from Christian Endeavor

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Engaging Youth In our Day: A conversation with Dave Coryell from Christian Endeavor · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the central strong church's communication.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're very pleased today to be able to talk about engaging youth in our day with Dr.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Dave Coriel.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: And Dave has been someone who's been involved with youth ministry for many, many years.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's been serving with Christian Endeavor for 18 years.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then the past uh eight uh years, he's split his role between Christian Endeavor USA and Christian Endeavor World.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: He serves as an adjunct uh youth ministry professor at Lancaster Bible College, and he's been a speaker and trainer at uh various denominational gatherings, uh retreats, uh and various youth uh meetings.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: He received his doctor of ministry at Gordon Conroe Theological Seminary, his master at Evangelical Seminary, and his undergrad at Messiah University.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: He's been married to his wife Jen since uh 1994.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: They have four children and they reside in Effreda, Pennsylvania.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Dave, we're very glad to have you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's great to be with you.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for the opportunity.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to be able to have you and uh great to be able to talk with you about uh Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: A number of our listeners will be familiar with the group, uh, but some not.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe we could just start with talking about how we got involved uh with the Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor at the church.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we've had uh the connection with uh Dr.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Jack Rothenberger for many, many years.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it was uh turned out to be a very formative experience for me and uh growing up at the church to be involved with uh Christian Endeavor with its youth retreats and uh other uh activities that we had.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: How'd you start to get involved with this uh organization, uh Dave?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, well, first of all, Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor over time ended up uh absorbing the efforts of Christian Endeavor all across the United States because it was the the strongest group remaining.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then when there was a rebirth of Christian Endeavor in the United States about 13 years ago, it was the the leading voice in that.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so really became Christian Endeavor USA, and as we just call it Christian Endeavor, because God's using it and and even taking it uh uh the materials we provide, taking it beyond our our borders into other countries.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: But how I got involved, it it's kind of a two-pronged question.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh on the one side, I was uh it was years ago, and I was uh a youth youth pastor, and some representatives of Christian endeavor came and said, Hey Dave, will you speak at this uh this event?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was a week-long summer event and called Summer Assembly, and they asked if I would be the speaker.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was my introduction to Christian Endeavor in terms of the events and and the formalized organization that was there.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: My connection with Christian Endeavor goes much further back than that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the uh the essence of that story was in 2010, I was asked if I would take a group down to the World Christian Endeavor Convention outside of Lima, Peru.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so I led a delegation of like 82 people that went down to this uh this convention.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: While I was there, I'd been nominated to be part of uh a leadership team within the World CE.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so I attended this meeting.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: At the end of the meeting, there was uh a female from Guyana, a country down in South uh South America, and she had been asked if she would close the meeting in prayer.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so she had us stand up, grab a hand of the person next to us, and she repeated the MISPA prayer, which is a prayer that uh you know originates in the book of Genesis, and she just said, May the Lord watch between me and thee while we're absent one from another.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone else just said amen and went to leave, but my mouth just dropped open.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason my mouth dropped open was I hadn't heard someone pray that prayer since I graduated from eighth grade.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: Every single Sunday for me, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, our Sunday school teacher, Mrs.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: Josephine Klopp, she would close our time with that exact same prayer.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought she had invented the prayer.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I heard her say that, I said, Where does that come from?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, Oh, people have been praying that prayer through mission prayer circles that the founder of Christian Endeavor, Francis Clark, his wife, Harriet, had started these mission prayer circles and they spread all around the world.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so when I went home, I did some more digging and I found out that the church that I had grown up in had a merger shortly before I was born.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: And in that merger, they were told their youth ministry had to be called the denomination's youth ministry.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: And up to that point, Christian Endeavor had been how they did youth ministry in their church.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: So these youth workers that were leading our Sunday school class, they ran our Sunday school like it was this mini Christian Endeavor group.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: And the uh the youth ministry of the whole church did the same.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: They uh they were compliant, they didn't call it Christian Endeavor, but everything we did, we we uh we did it like Christian Endeavor.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so really I'd say my first introduction to youth ministry with Christian Endeavor goes back to when I was 12 years old.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: I guess that's about uh age uh 14 for me, that when uh I started connecting with Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor as a as a youth organization through our church too.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it's just interesting the way that uh that the Lord leads in these various uh circumstances.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: After uh being involved with Christian Endeavor as a as a youth, though, I found uh eventually coming back to the church to work uh with youth, and we I connected once again with uh Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor, this time with youth work camps.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we went to Arkansas and North Carolina, West Virginia and New York, uh rebuilding homes that have been damaged uh from flooding or uh tornadoes or um hurricanes.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: And these were very valuable uh things uh for our our youth, uh the fellowship uh time that they had with other churches, evening meetings, but then also uh uh doing something positive uh for the community, uh whether it be repairing windows, laying concrete, or though I must say our group excelled most with uh demolition.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: So um does uh Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor uh still uh do these type of activities with youth currently?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or what other ways are there is Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor working with youth now?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we we segued out of the the mission weeks or or what used to be called work camp ministry just uh actually just uh this past summer was the first time that that we hadn't done that in I think 27 years.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was kind of a moment of uh a moment of sadness, but uh it was a little bit of a of a pandemic casualty when uh we came out of the pandemic or were trying to come out of the pandemic.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: There just wasn't the number of churches signing up to be part of an experience like that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: And what's interesting as I've networked with other youth men organizations across the United States, many of the uh the organizations that do work camps or mission week kind of experiences, they've seen their numbers significantly drop because the mindset has just significantly changed with uh with families and youth and their activities and what they feel good about them being able to go out and do.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: So that was an opportunity for us to pivot as an organization and really just invest more energy into what we have already seen and seen for years as the major thrusts of Christian endeavor.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that's coming alongside of churches and really helping them be equipped to have a system, an intentional strategy for how they are going to help young people go deep with Christ and then be engaged with their faith, actually doing ministry.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so that is our primary thrust.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: We have to realize that Christian Endeavor exists currently in 56 different countries.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: So we have quite a network.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: And now, as you mentioned earlier, I serve with one foot in the United States and also one foot in the world.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, as of January 1st, my role with the global side of Christian Endeavor has actually been enhanced.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's the majority of my function is is on the global side.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now, because I'm an American, I'm still going to be talking to people here and connecting with things here.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: But the nature of what we're doing is we are providing the materials and the coaching and then also the inspiration and motivation to do what it is that has been proven for 144 years to be a process, a ministry that allows young people to engage their faith.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think that will dovetail with some things that we're going to talk about later on this podcast, but that's our major thrust, our major focus of what we Christian Endeavor today.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if it is about the youth, there's some staggering statistics that you have on your website about uh youth and how they're taking less interest in Christianity.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Just for our listeners on from the Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor website, one million young people are walking away from Christianity every year.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just curious uh where you've found a statistic like that and uh what do you think those factors are for so many youth to be walking away from the faith?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: The Pine Top Foundation is the the group that sponsored that study.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: And it's been quoted by quite a number of youth workers or youth ministry organizations.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: I know one of those that Christian Endeavor is starting to partner with more is called Dare to Share.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: One of their leaders, Greg Steer, has mentioned that quite frequently.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, but yeah, that's it's a staggering statistic.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: And if you think about the ramifications of what it will look like if this continues through 2050, that uh from the time that that this started, they're they're talking about there being 35 million yet less young people involved in our churches and our ministries and and yeah, staggering.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now there are efforts that have risen up.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: Those efforts are trying to turn the tide.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: So, what can we do to keep these million from walking away and instead have them be engaged in the church, but even more importantly for Christ, uh, or in Christian endeavor, as we say, for Christ and the church.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's really our hope.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's a group out of Fuller Seminary called 10 by 10 that has been linking together different organizations that are trying to take a stand and say, this has got to end and we're gonna do things differently.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: So for us as Christian Endeavor, we we connected with 10 by 10.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you can find our logo on on their website, and we're in the process of putting more of our materials up there and actually applying for some grants through 10 by 10 so that we can expand the ministry of Christian Endeavor even more into just even more regions of the country.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a little bit of a reality.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, that we do have young people walking away.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: And and so then we have to pause and we have to say, well, why is this happening?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Why is this happening?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: And is this truly going on?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: And and so, you know, I I talk to people in their churches and they'll go, Oh, yeah, well, you know, we have a few less young people than than we used to.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's amazing when you extrapolate a few less young people from various different local churches, and you realize there's more than 300,000 local churches across the United States.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if everybody reduces by a certain percentage, guess what?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: You can get to a million pretty fast.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's the nature of what we're seeing happen.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: Either that or we're seeing youth ministries kind of be siphoned off, and we're seeing the young people, if they do connect with a youth ministry, they're connecting to some of these larger youth ministries.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: And and I'm not against that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there uh we're in a culture where there's churches of all sizes and shapes.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: If youth can go to a program with a huge church, well, that that can feel pretty good to them.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: And the challenge with that is everybody still still feels like everything's okay.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh well, all these youth, they're not attending our youth ministry, but they're at least attending XYZ youth ministry.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: So everything is still okay.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: But what these studies are coming out and showing is that the net results are not okay, and that we we have less youth engaging than than what we have before.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's a challenge for us.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: And we can either just put our heads in the sand and keep doing what we're doing, or we can adjust a little bit.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that I think we need to adjust is how we actually engage young people.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: In our churches, we often have certain things that we like to do a certain way.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, in the midst of a culture that is changing so rapidly.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: And when I say a culture, I don't just mean American culture.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: Global culture is changing at the fastest pace that it has ever changed.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: And if you stop and you think about that change, think about how it has impacted every area of our lives.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, every single area we have had monumental changes.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: The one place where those changes generally do not happen, or if they do happen, they don't happen nearly at the speed of culture that's in the church.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: And really that's on us.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: But one of the reasons we see young people walking away is they go, you know what, this just isn't relevant to us.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Let me give you one example of that.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you uh you mentioned that I teach uh a course at Lancaster Bible College.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've been an adjunct there for some time.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: Over the last maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 years, there's been this whole shift of what happens with music in our churches.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're still in churches trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing with music.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: While at the same time, we haven't adjusted what we do with learning styles or with our atmosphere to truly help people engage community.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: So if I go into, you know, I could probably go into a thousand different contemporary, and and I use the word contemporary, but I put it in quotes, contemporary worship services.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: And and that that would be just just in our region of southeast Pennsylvania.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: And if I if I did that, I would most likely find that there's some kind of band.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then a pastor gets up and and talks at the people for 30 to 40 minutes.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now, some churches might be 20 minutes, but basically we talk at the people.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: We have young people that are used to engaging content and they engage it in sound bites, and yet we get up and we give the drawn-out epistle sermon.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just not how they engage content.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: But how many churches have we walked into that we see meetings around round tables, that we see sound bites of information given for three to four minutes, maybe, and then conversations happen around tables so that they can engage community and they can engage content.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: That would be a truly contemporary service.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: But because we have done church the way that we have done it for so long, we have a difficult time making those transitions.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, oftentimes our worship spaces are designed so that we can't even make a change if we want to.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm saying all these things, I'm saying them without any attitude of uh of being critical towards the local church.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: I love the local church, I am a local church guy.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: I believe as we look at scripture, we are told that Christ is coming back for his church, the people, and that the church is his pure and spotless bride.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: So when I say this, I'm not saying it with a critical attitude towards the church.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying it as a point of explanation.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm a young person and something screams at me that it doesn't connect with me, then I'm gonna disengage.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's what we see.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: The motto of uh Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor being for Christ and his church, it's interesting that you're making these comments, but still not wanting to break off from the church or siphon people away to some other activity is the church is intergenerational, the church is the place uh where uh word and sacrament uh are found.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the church is the place uh where exposure to the broader body of Christ is.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so to just break off doesn't fit.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but to not engage with the younger people was actually, yeah, it doesn't fit with uh there I I wouldn't say that they're not uh plugged in in the right way, or are you just um the connection hasn't been made?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's that's better said.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think the connections aren't made.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think they are coming into a setting where their opinions are not harnessed.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: So often churches they have silos created for young people, and those silos become the youth ministries.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: Now, now I am pro-youth ministry, but I believe that there needs to be a safe space and place for age-specific ministry, but there also has to be an intentional effort to engage young people across the whole life of the church.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: That is what creates a healthy organism.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, any organism that just ages out, it's gonna die.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: But if you keep the integration of the generations in everything that you're trying to do, it's just gonna be uh be a healthier space.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: But the challenge with young people is that their attitudes and uh just how they they think about things, they're usually not engaged in the broader life of most churches.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh just in the youth industry.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe some of our listeners are might be saying, uh, are youth different today?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh some people throw around the the term Gen Z.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Can you explain Gen Z uh uh to us?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh or maybe you wouldn't call youth today Gen Z.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: So some people call them the next generation or rising generations, I think is a is a better way to talk about them.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: So right now you have uh Gen Z is approximately 13 years old to about 27, 28 years old as we uh as we look at things today.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: When uh when we talk about youth ministry, oftentimes talking about Gen Z, but uh we also have the generation that's younger than them, Generation Alpha.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: And whether we like it or not, generation beta, the the betas are are now about three weeks old.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so they're out there, and uh the the news on them is that they are manipulating their parents with crying.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: So just to get what they want.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, at this point, you've you've mostly have your your Gen Zers that are pretty soon, just the next couple of years, they're not gonna be the focus of our middle school and high school ministries because they're gonna be strictly young adult, but they're still at the point right now where they're young adult in high school and and whatnot.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that's who they are.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's exciting because you can you can read some books that uh emphasize some of the differences between generations.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: I always encourage people to take that with a grain of salt because I think oftentimes those uh those broad-reaching stereotypes of a generation, they're they're on target, but there's always plenty of exceptions within that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so when we paint a whole group of people with a broad brush, then we're always setting ourselves up for something that that can uh, well, it it may not just be the most positive.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so I say that caveat before I say anything else with this.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: That being said, the Gen Zers, they have so much talent and ability.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: They also have so much passion to actually be an entrepreneur.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: I was speaking with one uh one guy, uh, his name's Tim Elmore.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: He's a pretty prolific author and speaks uh across the country and in high schools, uh, whatnot.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: So his focus is uh his Gen Z and younger, younger people.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: He quoted a study when I was with him.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: He said that 72% uh of young people actually believe that they are going to work for themselves someday.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: So you stop.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: You stop and you think about that.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: What is in their mind?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, back in the day when I was growing up, you know, you're like, okay, hey, I'm gonna do this career, I'm gonna do that career, you know, whatever.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: There is no way that 72% of the young people when I was growing up were thinking about being entrepreneurial.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: A small percentage decided to do that.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: But today it's different.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's different because young people are creating content all the time.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: So they're they're the creators, they're the curators of content.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: And they do that through social media.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: They also are stimulated to do that in different projects through some classes that they have in school.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: They just are naturally collaborating with other people around ideas and looking to see how they can initiate those ideas and launch those ideas.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's believed that something like 10% of young people have already initiated some kind of nonprofit or business or some kind of thing through their internet connections.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: You stop and you think about you've got 72% that want to do something entrepreneurial.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: You have another percentage that's already launched things or dreamed about launching things if they haven't.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then they show up at a youth ministry where all the decisions have already been made for them.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: Program has already been put together, and they don't have to make any decisions at all.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: What they receive from that is the only thing that's valuable is their rear end sitting in a seat so they can become numbered.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so that is a huge, huge insight for us to take away as we think about youth ministry today.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: And when I say youth ministry, I don't mean just what a church does with their youth ministry program.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking about the youth ministry that happens for parents as they're raising youth in their home, parents and caregivers.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I'm talking about the interactions that have with older generations, with people in their church, just in the relationship building and the connection and all of that.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: If we approach young people as a resource to be tapped into, not to be used for our own purposes, but so that they can be unleashed to use the gifts and abilities that God's given them, then that is just a recipe for us to have young people engaging instead of walking away.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because they have something to contribute, which which may be a change uh from uh the youth of the past, uh, that were maybe more passive than Gen Z is.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: What would you think?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do would you agree with that?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think God has always created this spark inside of his people because we are we're God carriers, right?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we're we're created in his likeness.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: Whether or not particular generations have had the openness for people to live into that creative spirit that God has placed there, uh, I think that that could be debated.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I do think since 2007, when the iPhone was launched, and then Facebook in the same year, and I know Facebook amongst young people in the United States is not a is not a big deal, but Facebook was kind of an initiator.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there was MySpace before that, whatever, but but then Facebook gave way to to other things, and now we have Instagram and and and all of that.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: 2007 was was huge.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so you think about our 17-year-olds right now, our seniors, juniors, and seniors in high school, they have grown up in a world that only knew people walking around with computers in their pocket.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: They've only known a world where people are intimately connected with people that are called friends or or you know, their connections there, even though that has kind of cheapened the understanding of the word friend.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because we can have lots of friends, but we don't have intimate connections with people.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that has that that poses a huge challenge for us.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to move on to some uh discussion about uh your book uh that you've just written on uh Reddit.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh less like hippos, more like honeybees.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my guess is that it haven't dovetail with a lot of number of the things we've been talking about, uh, Gen Z and their their interests in being involved.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: I've I found this interesting that you talked about uh uh people like honeys, uh like uh hippos and uh more like honeybees.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: I know you've seen some hippos on your travels.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I've never seen a hippo in your church, uh, but you make a case that you uh you see some hippos in church um figuratively.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: What are these hippos like?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, you know, so these these hippos are are consuming.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, when you think about a hippo, you think about this huge beast with this enormous mouth.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: And quite frankly, these beasts, they're in the water for 18 hours and then they come out every night for six hours and they do nothing but eat vegetation every single day.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: And they can eat up to 110 pounds every day.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just crazy.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: All that to say, they're consumers, they just eat and they eat and they eat.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: What we do with our young people is so much of our discipleship with young people is passive.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so we invite them to come and fill the chair and then just eat whatever program we have.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: And now, this is where people can people can uh can give me the business a little bit.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: They can say, Are you saying we shouldn't give young people God's word?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Are you saying we shouldn't get young people to pray?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I will say, I am a huge advocate of prayer.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a huge advocate of Bible intake, and I would love to talk with anybody about my own habits and how I've tried to reinforce them in my life and how I've tried to reinforce them in the lives of my own children as well as other people I've networked with in ministry.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: But as we read God's word, we have to recognize that reading God's word and being in prayer, though parts of it are active, they're more passive activities.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: But scripture also talks about our attitude of serving and the sharing of our faith.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, that actually does mean from an evangelistic standpoint, and we all have a responsibility to do that, though some are more gifted than others, but also worship.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: And these are active things, and we have a challenge when 95% or more of our discipleship efforts are just consumeristic.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Come and hear about these great things, but don't actually apply them.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: So this is what we do from a cultural standpoint, and Pastor Drake, I know you've had uh a lot of time in other cultural contexts and other other countries.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm sure that you've seen some different ways that this plays out as well.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: But the the church in our context in the United States is almost predominantly designed to attract people through consumerism.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I I don't want people thinking that that oh, okay, here we've got some guy that's anti-American or whatever.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: I love my country, and I I've traveled to probably close to 60 different countries and and have had a chance to see a lot of different ones.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: I always love coming back to the United States.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's my home, and uh, I'm thankful for our country and I love our country.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: But every single culture I go into, there are aspects of that culture that become a god.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: And what happens, it's it's like for us, it's like being a fish that is ax asked to describe water.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you don't describe the water, you just live in it.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's similar for that with consumerism in uh in the United States context.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we look at scripture and we see what the early church was.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: The early church was survival.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, early Christians were they were getting a daily beatdown because they were the minority.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they they weren't respected and they were seen as a threat, and they needed to connect with with other believers because they needed encouragement, they needed to be spurred on to continue living for Christ and living for him.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we see that in our culture, we connect with churches out of out of an initial convenience.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that church, I really like the preaching.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: That church, I really like the programs that they have.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Don't take that that's bad.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's good that our churches are offering excellent programs, but then we have the challenge of how do we help people pivot from something that attracted them from a consumeristic standpoint and shift and go deeper with Christ through activity that is not just consumer-based.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: And and I know that that might sound a little complex, but in in essence, that's kind of what we're talking about with how we treat young people in this book.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: And uh engaging with them rather than, as you say, uh creating hippo factories.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, hippo factories, uh, because that's many, many churches again, it it's with the best of intentions.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Churches are not out there trying to create this hippo factory, this place where a young person is just placed on a conveyor belt and just fed stuff, and then they're you know cranked out the other end, and then we start, you know, building the next hippo that comes after them.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Churches and the people that that are part of them, they don't have this mentality.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: They believe that they want to do the very, very best for the young people that they possibly can.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: But in the midst of trying to do what's best for them, we have been coddling them and doing everything for them and just inviting them to attend instead of giving them the opportunity to be the ones that actually create and make the decisions and and do ministry and learn how to do ministry for the long haul.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: So some at some point they can be tapped upon for other responsibilities across the broader life of the church.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so yeah, so you can see we want to do more than hippo factories.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: We want to we want to create honeybee hives where churches are incubators for impact.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: I love that phrase, incubators for impact.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: How do we set youth free to actually do that?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, talk about honeybees for a little bit.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: We've had uh now and then we have bee problems at the church, usually in the in the spring, uh after uh a long winter.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but what what do you see the characteristics of a honey bee as opposed to a hippo?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for first of all, they are collaborative in nature.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: Honey bee hives, they they don't exist with just one bee doing its thing.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: Some people would say, well, the most important bee is that that queen bee.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're you're right.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: Very important function of the queen bee.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if you didn't have worker bees to take care of the hive, to take care of things for the queen, then then the the hive wouldn't exist.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you wouldn't have drone bees, uh, because there's three types of bees, the drones, the workers, and the queen.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: If you wouldn't have drone bees, then then you wouldn't have the ability for the hive to just just procreate and continue to do what the hive does.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you have this intricate collaboration which exists, and that exists so that they can also create.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: They create what I think is one of the the most incredible substances known to uh known to man.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I love honey, uh, have a spoonful of it every every morning, and it it's so good, so sweet.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: But they create this, and so they're they're creators, they are collaborators.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: But the other thing, and some might say that this is a little bit of a stretch, but I also think that honey bees, at least in this sense, you take any metaphor far enough and it breaks down, but but in this sense, honey bees are are Christ-like, and they are Christ-like in that they follow their leader, so their leader is the queen.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: And if the queen has a bad attitude, they're just mean, then that hive will be mean.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: And if they have a different countenance, then then the hive will have a different countenance.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the thing that I learned from a friend in Scotland that that actually keeps bees.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: He one day was talking about this process he was going through called re-queening because the hive was really mean and a lot of people were getting stung for no reason.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, even when people weren't bothering the hive, there were bee stings and all this kind of stuff.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: So he went through a process called re-queening.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: He actually replaced this mean queen with another queen, and then the bees were able to take on the personality, take on the characteristics, take on the likeness of that new queen.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: For us, as we are coming alongside of young people, we have the opportunity to treat them in such a way that they will move themselves to take on the personalities of our leader.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: So now we don't have a queen bee, we have a king.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we are sons and daughters of the king, our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: And we have the opportunity for young people to take on that personality just like bees do in a hive.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so those are the three different characteristics that I pull out that I say, this is how we need to treat young people.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: We need to treat them like they are the collaborative wonder that they are.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: And Gen Z is so much more collaborative in nature.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: They actually believe that they can just work together.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: You get them in a room and they will break down the walls and they'll just say, How do we get things done?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a beautiful thing.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: Now they don't have experience, they need us to walk alongside and help us see some of the pitfalls that they don't see.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, but they're incredibly collaborative, they're incredibly creative, so much talent, so much ability, and we can point them towards Christ so that they truly align themselves with our leader, the true king.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, would it be fair to say that uh you're suggesting through uh less like uh hippos, more like honeybees, that you'd you'd ask the church to be more collaborative uh with its youth, uh engaging them for their opinions at an early age, uh, rather than um having them uh sit and wait until they're older.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: But is that a fair thing to say?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is fair.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: And in one of the chapters, uh use the acronym B, uh B-E-E.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I I believe that we as the older generations, we need to believe in youth.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we say that, yeah, they're important, we love them, blah, blah, blah, but do we truly believe in them?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's first.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Second is we need to we need to not only believe, but we have to we have to engage with them.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh, you know, in in doing that, we actually we form this relationship with them and then actually expect them to do something.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: It it's one thing to to believe that something can happen, and it's another thing to actually expect, expect them to do something.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then finally, after believe and that to expect, third is exchange.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the hardest one for us, I think, as adults, older adults.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: We have this mindset that well, we'll go halfway, you have to go the other halfway.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: And the younger generation, they need us to go the whole way, and that doesn't seem fair to us.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like we're doing all the work, but in order to actually engage them, they need to see us going the whole way and engage in that relationship with them.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: One example uh of this is actually letting them know that we can learn from them.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: So my wife Jan and I, we did a kind of we did this with our kid.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: We have four kids, as you mentioned, and they're all young adults at this point.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, 27 is the oldest, the youngest is 20, so they're across that age span.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: One day we uh we sent them all a text message independently.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: And in that text message, we just told them what they have done to help us pursue Christ in a better way than what we did on our own.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were praising and affirming our kids for the impact they had made on our lives spiritually.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: What that did was it provided an opportunity for us to just let them know that we're in an exchange.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's things that we are gaining from them, and there's things that they have that they can gain from us as well.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: The younger generation needs that today.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that's part of helping them recognize they are valuable.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: And when we do that in the context of the church, that helps them recognize that God sees them as valuable.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because whether we like it or not, the church represents God to people on the good side and on the challenging side.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: So when we do that, it it makes a profound and significant impact in people's lives.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for uh your thoughts and uh in sitting this interview today.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: For our listeners, once again, uh the book that uh Dave has written is uh less like hippos, more like honeybees.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you can find it on Amazon if you're interested.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Dave, thank you so much, and uh may God's blessing be with you uh and your wife and your family, and also with uh Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's it was great to be with you.