Andy grew up in a Christian home. His parents are baby boomers, born in the late Fifties and became Christians themselves during the house church movement. They brought their children up attending church and doing plenty of colouring in at Sunday school. During his early teens Andy Though at the beginning to experience some personal encounters with God at youth camps and youth weekends.
Then one summer, at the age of 15, he goes to Soul Survivor and has the best time of his life. God is real and He loves Andy. He experiences worship like he never imagined - lively, passionate, real. He meets God powerfully. He is filled with Holy Spirit. He is full of dreams and potential. He is on fire.
He comes back different. It’s not like coming back from a great summer camp or youth weekend. Andy is a new person - seeking God, believing in His power to change the world and believing his generation can transform the church. He grows in faith and seeks out more experiences of worshipping and encountering God and looks to serve the Church and make difference in the world. He learns about being ‘salt & light’ at school. Slowly but surely being a different kind of person around his school friends. Many even notice the changes - some are even drawn into church and they go to Soul Survivor and they become Christians too.
It is happening. Not all at once. Certainly it’s not easily or simply. But it is happening. The world around him is changing. By the time Andy is 18 he is a fantastic example of a young Christian man. Still on fire, but more experienced and wiser, with a greater sense of calling. He does a gap year - six months working and serving the Church, five months in the developing world, cementing his passion for social justice and making a difference in the whole world. On his return to the UK he heads of to Soul Survivor again before he begins University in September - he sings his heart out, he sets his eyes on God, he is nervous about Uni but excited about what God will do.
The next three years are hard. University life is so contrary to the life he wants but he is not going live like a weird hermit or monk. He is here to be salt and light and he will try his damnedest to do just that. But it is harder here. A lot of the Christians he meets at Uni aren’t like him. Many have been living of their parents faith for their whole lives. They aren’t passionate about God in the same way - in fact after a term or two those ‘Christians’ don’t look much different to everyone else at Uni. The other type of Christian he meets are the opposite. They seem frightened of the Uni life - determined to be good and unwilling to have any of their beliefs and perceptions challenged. Andy finds little companionship amongst either of these people. The CU is dry - full of committees and theological disagreements. The local churches are fine - in fact they much like the church he grew up in, but he is not a ‘son’ of this church and is unable to make a difference here, especially as he is only there for half the year and the 10:30am family service is not that conducive to student life.
These years have been hard but he gets through them. He still loves God, he still believes in making a difference in the world and he is excited about life beyond Uni. He loves the city he studied in and looks to get a job and put some roots there. His degree was in design but is competing with hundreds of other designers so takes a job in a coffee shop. He continues to go to the same church with the family service. There are a handful of people his own age who kind of get this God thing so he can tolerate the stale worship and the dry preaching. A year later he is sick of his job and decides to quit do a further course in web design. Once he has qualified he stays in his job at the book store that he picked up to make ends meet, trying to do some freelance work for his friends in his spare time - he’d love to get his own business off the ground but it isn’t easy. Two years later he is sick of the book shop and has little hope of getting his business going. He had put aside a bit of money for his business and decides to spend of traveling for 9 months. He visits Thailand and Australia, Mexico, USA and Canada and finishes it off with a city tour of Europe. On his return he decides that now he is 28, he needs a career and so he gets an apprenticeship as an accountant. It’s not the creative life he had imagined but it is stable and makes him feel like a grown up - which very little else in his life does.
He no longer goes to church with any regularity. He no longer reads his Bible or prays with any conviction though he would still calls himself a Christian. He has had a few girlfriends, even has one now, but isn’t sure if he has ever been in love. He wants to get married and supposes that one day he will have kids. He likes the Nooma DVD’s and got into Velvet Elvis. He went Soul Survivor Momentum a year ago, which was cool, but it felt like a chunk of teenage nostalgia. He still has a couple of his favourite worship albums on his iPhone. He no longer designs anything. His heart is stirred when he reads articles about famine, sex trafficking and poverty. He gives to Tearfund but he no longer dreams about changing the world himself.
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This is the story as it stands now - and there is much the Church can learn about how it deals with, and invests in, teens and early twenties - but this is not the end of Andy’s story or the end of the story for the rest of his generation. They are still ‘saved’. They have already had a fair amount of experience in serving and leading and being involved in positive Church life. They still have a heart for social justice. But they are numb and apathetic to Church and discipleship. They require a church environment that is authentic and honest. Quality and accessibility matter to them: the quality and accessibility of preaching; the quality and relevance of the worship music; the way the church presents itself. But most of all they are numb and they want to experience God again. They want to feel the presence of God once more. They are full to brim with dormant dreams and unlocked potential. They could still be the generation that changes the world.
