The Lake Union Herald conducted an interview with Timothy Nixon, inreach chaplain at Andrews University and a member of the Pioneer Memorial Church pastoral staff. He gave us insights into the new generation of students on campus.

It’s a growing challenge, and what you hear from a number of our elders is “I can’t recognize my church any more,” or “I don’t understand the young people any more.”

We have not taken a lot of time to really examine the changes that have taken place and how they have impacted each generation. Every generation has this problem—a tug of war—wanting things to remain as they created it. "You can’t change what I built."

When I was growing up, my parents never visited another church. Their church was the Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church, and no matter who the guest speaker was at another church across town, Bethel was their church, and that’s where they were every Sabbath. They were a part of the Builder generation, shaped by the social, economic, and political issues of The Great Depression and war era that gave them this kind of stability. Subsequently, they were strong on service and loyalty to institutions and authority figures. They had very few options for sources of information. Their orientation was a stable environment with clear limits to choices, having set priorities and routines. That social orientation has an effect on your spiritual orientation and how you relate to the church undefined.

The post-World War II Boomer generation saw a dramatic rise in the divorce rate. Their children experienced the instability of a disrupted family. They have gone through changing figures, split homes, and homes without parents present.

The next two generations resulted in young people who have experienced unprecedented instability with the adults in their lives. The notion of a young person giving unconditional trust to adults is no longer there. So when an adult comes into their experience, they’re not willing to trust that person until that person proves that they won’t leave as well. You have to earn their trust.

At the same time, they are very close to each other. The new family for young adults today is their friends. The most popular television program of the past decade was “Friends,” a show about a group (family) of young friends. You rarely saw their parents, and adults were barely peripheral characters. These friends were the primary characters with primary relationships, and they developed their own little network of relationships that they based their lives around.

Another factor that formed the orientation of this generation is that they grew up during major stages of technological advancement—advances in travel, the Internet, and cable and satellite television. Information is available to them in all kinds of ways.

They have so many choices and options, so they do a lot of multi-tasking, sometimes watching or doing two or three things at the same time. This impacts how they relate to spirituality and how they relate to institutions and the church.

Leadership

When Israel came to the borders of Canaan, God told Moses, “You are not going into the Promised Land with this new generation.” Instead, He chose Joshua. The entire generation that came out of Egypt with Moses died in the wilderness, and Joshua took the next generation into the Promised Land.

Every generation has the responsibility of winning its generation. That’s a biblical reality. And they have to be given the room to determine how they will do that.

Everything is in God’s hands—not our hands. It’s not what’s going to happen to my church; this is God’s church! He knew long before the changes that happened in society would happen. He knows the end from the beginning.

We have to learn how to be good mentors and understand how to transition power to the next generation. The only way we can have a real substantive impact is to see leadership as stewardship. It’s not mine to own; it’s a trust given to me. I will only have it for a certain period of time, and the best thing I can do is prepare the next generation to assume leadership.

The outreach program in Benton Harbor was inspired by Dwight Nelson's preaching series on developing the heart of Christ and having compassion for the poor—for those on the edges of life. Andrews University students were under conviction, and said, “We can’t just stay here on campus; we’ve got to reach out to the Benton Harbor community." And of course this is the community that many of our older members keep at a distance. It is almost entirely an African-American community. You know what I’m saying?

This has really impacted me. The students who initiated the program were predominantly Anglo students—not entirely, but predominantly. As time went on, African-American, Hispanic, and other ethnic groups joined them. But that racial difference in no way impacted their effectiveness in reaching the community. It confirmed that true, Christ-centered leadership is never bound by race or culture. When you truly invest yourself in the lives of people, when you exemplify the love of Christ, it breaks down all human barriers.

The students really made a commitment. They developed a mentoring system for new leaders to assume leadership positions when the old leadership graduated. They established a strong community connection, so that when we conducted an evangelistic series we were very favorably received. We had a great deal of respect in the community, and we baptized about 36 or 37 people. It was a five-week meeting, and out of that a church started—again initiated by students.

Lessons to Learn

It's been going on for about eight years now. And there are some lessons for us to learn from this, and they’re hard lessons for us to learn. Most who read this article are probably from a generation where a young person was seen and not heard; the adults ran things. “When we ask you to do something, you do it.”

We can’t continue to operate this way. Young people today are so much more independent. They do much of their learning outside general organized systems. They approach situations with a lot more informational experience and with a greater desire to do something. They see religion and spirituality as an experiential event—not an event to watch or enjoy as a spectator, but to engage as they become involved in it. That’s something we need to look at, not only in outreach but in worship and how we do a lot of things. Today's young person wants to be involved and experience it in order to appreciate it. We need to see that as a value to foster.

We need to learn to entrust young people and young adults with the ability to lead in ministry. We can continue to mentor and counsel, but it must be a cooperative effort.

Multiculturalism

This generation grew up in a more integrated society, as opposed to transitioning from a segregated society to an integrated society. This generation doesn’t have the baggage of how it used to be. What strikes me is that the secular society seems to be doing more in a positive way to remove old stereotypes about different groups of people. I see that as something that modern culture has done. I don’t necessarily see that as something the church has done. I think the church has potentially been the beneficiary. My feeling has always been that the church lags behind society when it relates to social-cultural issues. We’re always lagging behind.

Just before the Christmas break, a young man spoke to me about the separation. “Why? Why? Why are we…? Why do we have…? Why do we do…? What’s the history…?” I gave him a DVD of the history of regional conferences, so he could have a historical context. He looked at it, and said, “I understand all that, but we’re supposed to be God’s people,” and he was as sincere as can be—as genuine as can be—and raised some very legitimate issues.

I hear these arguments a lot. I'm not getting as much of it as I would like to see from some of my Anglo students. I think they appreciate multiculturalism a lot more, but I would like to see them be more forthright about challenging it, or question why we don't reach out to other ethnic groups as we should.

In my view, the church is at a very tenuous place just because of its makeup. When membership is more than 90 percent non-White and non-North American, we have to recognize that somehow, in order for the church to reflect its membership, we have to be changing.

I have been pleasantly surprised at the diversity in leadership as elected by our students at Andrews. It’s a good sign to see students think outside their own cultural group or their own ethnic group to select student leaders. I have encountered some very impressive young adult leaders who show a spiritual maturity in recognizing the value and depth of people beyond their own race.

Individuals who come to Andrews as visitors, people from the public sector, people who speak at our assemblies—some of them prominent members of the community—ask me about our campus. The thing they are always interested in is Andrews’ diversity. What that tells me is that people are looking for an institution—a church—that really is embracing the notion of universality and brotherhood. Even if they don’t live that way in their own sphere, they look for that somewhere. And it seems like at the same time we’re sort of running away from it. We have it, and we don’t want it.

I have tremendous hopes for this generation. I am concerned with how they will deal with the obstacles they encounter when they really challenge those in power. There are those who want to maintain the way things are, those motivated by fears of not wanting change and not knowing where things are going, and feel they must know out of some sense of wanting to protect the future of the church.

It’s very easy to just fall into the system as it is. It’s unusual to have this kind of intentionality like we do in this setting—the college and university setting. I tell students, “You know, this is not the real world. This is nice, but it’s not the real world. This is really not where life is going to be lived for you. It’s going to be lived when you leave here, and at that point you’re going to confront the real realities of the real issues.”

That’s the challenge, and that’s why you need to have conviction that God oversees the church. At very strategic times, He moves to allow things to happen that changes the course of the church when we least expect it. So you have to do all that you can do, and leave the rest in God’s hands.

At Andrews, we noticed there were five or six vespers going on simultaneously every Friday night, along with the vespers provided by the university. We felt the campus needed one Friday night vespers each month when all the vespers came together. United Vespers evolved into Fusion; we became more intentional in sharing, highlighting various cultural expressions of music and worship, and learning things about each other in the worship experience.

Now it’s a kaleidoscope or mosaic. I’ve tried to keep before the leadership to continue to remember that’s the goal and not become comfortable in one kind of set routine. This is true with any initiative when you try to cross ethnic barriers. You have to be intentional. It does not happen naturally. The natural inclination is to do what makes us comfortable and to stay in our comfort zone.

The format includes various styles and forms of presentation with drama and various styles of music as well. I’m encouraging leaders now to do one Fusion entirely a cappella—with no instruments. I’m trying to show them that the greatest instrument is the human voice. I want to change how they think about expression and worship, and teach them to appreciate the voice unaided by any instruments or accompaniment. I suggested they just sing hymns one night. I want them to recognize that there’s a richness in music, and that we need to always be searching beyond ourselves and beyond the comfort of doing what we’re used to.

Kingdom Culture

I begin to appreciate you more when I sing your songs. And when you begin to sing mine, you get a sense of the depth of the experience.

I seek to understand what it means to embrace Kingdom Culture—the only culture worthy of us relinquishing our cultures. My culture is not worthy to ask you to change your culture. Nor is your culture worthy to ask me to change mine.

I see Genesis 11 as very interesting. Earlier, God commanded Noah to spread out and replenish the planet when he left the ark. He said, "Don’t stay in one place. Don’t try to coalesce. Don’t try to maintain one particularity about yourselves." The challenge came when the Tower of Babel builders said they weren't going to spread out. They wanted to maintain one language, one culture, and build one city and a tower. They wanted to make a name for themselves. God deliberately dispersed them by confusing their languages.

This says to me that God wants diversity. He’s not looking for us to all worship the same way; that’s not His style. And yet, at the same time, a spirituality comes out of the book of Acts when He brings these diverse groups of people together through the Holy Spirit.

What confirms the genuineness of unity is what happens in the context of diversity. If you’re seeking uniformity, you don’t need the Spirit of God. But you need the Spirit of God to create unity in the context of diversity. So when I’m talking about Kingdom Culture, at the very least, it certainly means for us to gain a deep sense of appreciation for what every cultural and ethnic group has to offer and how they express their worship to God.

Worship, in some ways, is a very personal thing. How I show my appreciation to God can be very unique to me as well as unique to the cultural group that I’m a part of. In that context, what’s important to remember is that the devotion is not to myself but to God—He is the center of it. And the devotion is not to the denomination—the devotion is to God. Jesus is not a Seventh-day Adventist.

And yet, at the same time, I embrace the idea of the Remnant and want to be a part of it. Remnant suggests that you are the last part from the original, and the original church is the Acts 2 church. So the question is “What were the characteristics that identified that Acts 2 church?"

Christ-Centered

Compassionate Community

Missionary Motivated

Spiritually Gifted

I see this new generation embracing those very characteristics.