Tag Archives: the orphaned generation

ATTIC Radio Tonight: The Orphaned Generation

Hi friends, It’s Scott Wilcher!

Tonight I’m on the air at 8:30 Central (9:30 Eastern) and I want to remind you what I asked you last week. Will you contact all of the adults in your life and have them listen in tonight?  I’d be grateful and I think they’ll be blessed. I’m looking forward to hearing your questions and your comments.

Last story: Last week, out of  the blue I got a donation through PayPal from a girl I’ll just call E. Wilcher. Obviously we share the same last name, but I had no idea who she was, so I sent her a note thanking her and asking who she was and what prompted her to give to my ministry.  Here is the response I got:

“I guess I should give you a little bit of background.  I’m nineteen now. I just started my first day of college today, and I’m getting married to the most incredible man who has a deep thirst for the Lord. I also have a growing relationship with Him and I’m still learning with every day.

My life hasn’t always been so good. My parents were never kind to me growing up. I’m an only child, but they were relatively abusive. My father especially… It was always verbal and emotional abuse, the kind that didn’t leave visible bruises and scars… But my rebellious and disobeying behavior always reflected how I had been treated at home.

Both my mother and father are atheists, and that’s how I was raised. You fend for yourself, you trust no one, and you stop at nothing to reach YOUR goals, even if that includes jeopardizing others. They put me into psychotherapy at the age of three and kept me heavily loaded up on psychiatric medications from age four until eighteen.

When I was eighteen, I met my fiance, David. We worked at GameStop together. He was raised in a lower socioeconomic background by Christian parents. He and I became so close, and he heard that I was on endless medications. He simply asked me, “Why?” I said I really had no idea, I had just blindly accepted taking them my whole life. He recommended trying to get off of them.

So, I did. My psychiatrist approved. My parents, however, did not. They were furious. So they kicked me out.

I moved in with David’s parents within twenty-four hours of being asked to leave my parents’ home. I was still an atheist, still angry, and still a liar. They were all wholehearted loving Christians and they accepted me 100% and loved me like parents I never had.

I started to attend church for the first time in my life with David. I became a Christian at the beginning of this year. 

Anyway, I was googling around one day at work and I searched for “Wilchers” and I found you. Then I found out you were a pastor. And then a youth pastor… And then I read about your Upstream Project. I was so overwhelmed when I found you. I called David immediately and he and I agreed to donate to your project. We don’t have much money, but I felt that God was giving me a sign to give a large amount to you. I love what you’re doing for God’s young adults. It’s incredible.

So, anyway, that’s my story. Thanks for being so cool. I hope God continues to bless your family immensely.

E. Wilcher

E’s story might not have taken such a positive turn if David’s parents hadn’t loved her so well. They let their lives be a picture of Jesus moving to an orphan, but E. is no longer an orphan. She’s found a family. The fun part of this story is that E. and I are family too. Not just in our last names; we have the same Father. We share the bloodline of Christ by faith. We are brother and sister. Anyone who is in Christ is part of the same family.  We’re not abandoned.

If you’ve not contacted the adults in your world, will you do it now?

I want them to hear the message of “The Orphaned Generation.” And gather your family around the laptop tonight and listen as Steve and I unpack these ideas a bit more.

Also I hope you’ll check out my Facebook page for the book by just CLICKING HERE.

Thanks for reading.

Scott Wilcher

http://scottwilcher.com

The Orphaned Generation: Answering the Cry of the Culture

How many of these movie characters are you familiar with?

Harry Potter, Spiderman

Superman Frodo, Luke Skywalker

Anakin Skywalker, Batman, Wolverine

Slumdog Millionaire, Boy in Gran Torino, J. Kirk in Star Trek

Lewis Robinson, Nemo, Karate Kid

Ironman, Will Turner of Pirates of the Caribbean, The children of the Liminy Snicket film and book series

Indigo Montoya of The Princess Bride, Truman of The Truman Show, Elf

Alejandro inThe Mask of Zorro, All of the X-Men, Will of Good Will Hunting

Maverick in Top Gun, Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bee, The children inThe Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Benjamin Button, Eliot in ET,  Wall-E,  Sandra Bullock’s character in The Proposal

Sandra Bullock’s character in While You Were Sleeping, The Boy Scout in UP Bambi

Snow White, Cinderella, Lewis in Meet the Robinsons

Lilo in Lilo and Stitch, Aladdin, Belle in Beauty and the Beast

Tarzan, Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, Peter Pan

The Children in Escape to Witch Mountain, Ariel in the Little Mermaid, James of James and the Giant Peach

Simba of Lion King, Mighty Joe Young,  Hiccup

Michael Oher in The Blind Side, William Wallace in Braveheart, Aang in The Last Airbender

 What do those characters have in common?  

They are all orphans.

Hollywood understands young people, that they feel orphaned or abandoned these days. Hollywood knows young people don’t simply sympathize with an orphan heroes; they identify with them. But the Church is unaware of the amazing opportunity right in front of us: nearly every orphan hero requires an older, wiser person to connect them to their destiny. Without Captain Pike, young James Kirk in the latest Star Trek never gets to Star Fleet Academy. Without the older Spock, he never gets back to the Enterprise in time to be its captain.  What does Luke do without Obiwan or Yoda, Simba without Rafiki? Batman without Alfred? Harry Potter without Hagrid or Dumbledore? Karate Kid without Mr. Miyagi? Wolverine without Charles Xavier? Frodo without Gandalf? Sandra Bullock in The Proposal without Betty White?

 We have a culture of young people that are hoping for their Yoda to show up. Hoping that some older wiser person, maybe even a parent will walk into their lives and say, “Come on, Harry.” Just like Hagrid did for Harry Potter, and then let us follow. The crazy part of that scene is it’s just like Jesus saying “Follow me” to Simon. Our whole culture is crying out, “Where is the older, wiser person who will lead me into adult life and adult faith?

Who will connect me with a significant community?

Who will connect me with the power?

Who will connect me to a new identity?

The young cry out for their wise guides; the older for some purpose, some way to leave an impact or a legacy. 

Why not leave your safe routine move toward a young person and ask to hear their story? Start small. See if something clicks.  They’re orphans, for God’s sake. It’s up to the mature to make the first move.  Try it this week and let me know what happens on Monday night.

Scott Wilcher

http://scottwilcher.com

TEENAGERS: Rate the Church!

Monday night on ATTIC Radio, Scott Wilcher and I will be discussing his book, “The Orphaned Generation”, which is all about connecting adults (the older generation) with teenagers (the next generation).

Take just a second and answer this poll!

The Orphaned Generation: Adolescenophobia

Adolescenophobia: The Irrational Fear of Teenagers

In my experience, pastors can tell adult church members all stinkin’ day, “Reach out to young people. Reach out to young people. Reach out to young people!”  And those adults will feel guilty for a while and they will want to reach out, but their fear will stop them. They’ll stay in their safe places.

But, as I wrote yesterday, if we are to imitate Christ, then we must leave our safe places, in the same way that he left the safety of heaven. We must move into the lives of others in the same way that Jesus moved into ours. When we do that, our lives become an illustration of the love of Jesus.  But still, I understand why they are afraid. It’s not just a matter of our pressing past our fear through our will or our discipline. It’s a matter of how we think about young people.

You can tell how people think by listening to what they say.

Remember, Jesus said, “From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45) If you listen to adults in your church talk about young people, you can hear in their words what is in their hearts.

From what I hear, adults think of young people in several ways, but most often they think of young people as aliens. Adults say stuff like, “Those kids aren’t like us. They don’t know how to behave here. They’re from a different culture. They speak a different language, enjoy different music, dress differently.”  Clearly young people are not US. THEY are THEM, strangers in this adult world. So we treat them like they are from a different culture and hire a youth pastor who we hope understands their culture and can “speak their language.”

However, I would argue that rather than deal with young people as aliens, we need to rethink the picture in our heads and replace it with a new picture. The new picture I suggest in my book is that we see young people as Orphans, hence the title The Orphaned Generation. Young people outside the church are separated from their heavenly Father and need adopting into the family of God. Those inside the church have been largely separated from the adult church by our age specific programming. When they graduate from high school, they often leave because they don’t know anybody in the  adult congregation.

If we get this new picture of orphans in our heads, then our fear decreases, and our compassion rises, because we know orphans need us. And we know there are lots of verses in the Bible about caring for orphans. We feel bad if we don’t help orphans. Ponder that a bit and tomorrow, I’ll tell you why I think the orphan picture works so well in our culture.

Scott Wilcher

http://scottwilcher.com

The Orphaned Generation: A New Picture of the Gospel

HI! Scott Wilcher here!

Honored to be guest blogger on GodLovesTeenagers. I’ll be on the air on September 19 with Steve to talk about my book, The Orphaned Generation. I wrote it to turn the heart of the adult church toward young people. Just to give you an overview, the book has three parts. The first answers the question, “Why are young people leaving our churches?”

The second part works to renew thinking about four things:

1. The Gospel

2. Young People

3. Adult Roles in Young People’s lives

4. The Church

And the third part works on answering the question, “What do we need to do now if our thinking about these four areas is changed.”

To start this series of blogs, let’s talk about the Gospel.

The way I learned the Gospel was that God loved the world so much that He sent Jesus to make a way for us to have access to Him across the chasm of sin that separates us from God.

I got this little picture in my head or drawn on a napkin.

 

 

The way most of us see it, through Jesus, we can now come to God, come to salvation, come to Jesus. That’s the reason we ask people to come to church. . .so they will come to faith in Christ.

The problem with that perception of the Gospel is that it makes Jesus little.  In that view of the Gospel, Jesus is an instrument of God, sent by God, to do God’s work and reflect his love through the sacrifice on the Cross, so we can get to God who remains in heaven. It works. I got saved when someone told me the Gospel that way.

But. . .It’s not fully biblical and not as amazing as what I see in the Bible.

A New Picture of the Gospel.

Read through this passage from Philippians 2:5-8

 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

 6 Who, being in very nature God,
   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
   by taking the very nature of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!

What we see in verse 6 is that Jesus is God, equal to God, in the form of God. That’s important! Think about it for a moment. . .Emanuel means “God with us.” Jesus is God.

This will mess with your picture of who God is.

He is not the distant, stern, passive father who sits in judgment.

He is the one who made himself nothing to save us while we were his enemies and adopted us into his family and made us sons and daughters.

He is Father to the fatherless. (Ps. 68:5)

If we picture the Gospel in our heads as, “God left the safe, easy life in heaven, humbled himself and made himself nothing, and died for us,” it’s much more amazing than “Jesus died to make a way for us to get to God who remains distant on his heavenly throne.”

However, the hard part of that Phil. 2 passage for us is the first line, “Let your mindset be like that of Christ Jesus.”  That means we, (young and old) must be willing to humble ourselves and move toward others in sacrificial ways, leaving our safe places and going out.

If we understand that, then the adult church cannot sit and hope their programs make a way for young people to come to know and love God. They cannot sit and call for young people to join the church. They can no longer simply offer invitations to come to church.  They have to go and meet young people where they are, just like Jesus moved toward us.

That new picture is central to the rest of the book.

But many older people are afraid of young people.

We’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Scott Wilcher

http://scottwilcher.com