The Younger Evangelicals
Robert Webber

For a summary of the difference between traditional, pragmatic, and younger evangelicals, see the chart made available by Jordon Cooper at his site.

"Here then is how I'm using the phrase younger evangelicals. The younger evangelical is anyone, older or younger, who deals thoughtfully with the shift from twentieth-to twenty-first-century culture. He or she is committed to construct a biblically rooted, historically informed, and culturally aware new evangelical witness in the twenty-first century." Pg. 16

Characteristics of Younger Evangelicals pg. 54

1. Grew up in postmodern world
2. Marked by a post-9/11 era
3. Have recovered a biblical understanding of human nature
4. Are aware of a new context for ministry
5. Differ with the pragmatist approach to ministry
6. Minister in a new paradigm of thought
7. Stand for the absolutes of the Christian faith in a new way
8. Recognize the road to the future runs through the past
9. Committed to the plight of the poor, especially urban centers
10. Willing to live by the rules
11. Facility with technology
12. Highly visual
13. Communication through stories
14. Grasp the power of imagination
15. Advocate the resurgence of the arts
16. Appreciate the power of performative symbol
17. Long for community
18. Committed to multicultural communities of faith
19. Committed to intergenerational ministry
20. Attracted to absolutes
21. Read to commit
22. Search for shared wisdom
23. Demand authenticity
24. Realize the unity between thought and action.

Communication
"The idea that the 'medium is the message' holds important ramifications for the communication of the Christian faith. First, the real message of Christianity is not rational propositions but the person of Jesus Christ with whom a personal relationship is possible. Second, this personal relationship is experienced and communicated in a community-the church, his body. Third, to communicate a relationship with Jesus Christ, the church must be an embodied presence, an authentic and real community in whom the Spirit dwells. Fourth, the primary concern of the church is to communicate not dogma, though it does have its place, but faith. Fifth, the primary way of communicating faith is through a combination of oral, visual, and print forms of participatory immersed communication (or oral transmission)." Pg. 65

"Considering the current shift in communications, Babin has translated the teaching of McLuhan into three basic principles:
1. The message of faith is primarily the effect it produces in me
2. Faith is communicated through complex and variegated means.
3. The content of communication is the listener as he/she is affected by the message." Pg. 65.

Theology
"The younger evangelical sees theology as the way to understand the world. It is an understanding based on the biblical narrative. This is the approach to faith that has captured the postmodern mind. Postmoderns have abandoned the modern worldview in which the supremacy of interpretation is given to science. In this context younger evangelicals are calling on us to see the world primarily through the Christian story. They believe in the God revealed in the great events of creation, incarnation, and re-creation, interpreted first by the prophets and apostles in Scripture, protected in creeds, and handed down to us in the vision that stands within the historic confession of faith. Theology is not a science but a reflection of God's community on the narrative of God's involvement in history as found in the story of Israel and Jesus." Pg. 92

Apologetics
"It seems clear that in a postmodern world, many younger evangelicals have shifted to the "communal affirmations" of faith which are rooted in the early consciousness of the Christian church and which have been handed down in the life of the church and its worship. The modern distortion of this focus has now been exposed and rejected as an aberration shaped by the secular notion that truth can be determined by reason outside of the Christian community. The future of evangelicalism lies in the rejection of this modernist notion and in the affirmation of the historic tradition that truth is embodied in the incarnate Christ, revealed in the narrative of Israel and Jesus, interpreted in the writings of Scripture, and embodied and handed down in the local church as a living experience of truth in a particular time in history, in a particular geographical place, and, might we even say, "in a particular person." Pg. 105

Ecclesiology
"The pre-Constantinian view of the church calls Christians into a visible demonstration of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. In this view, the primary issue of the church is not to have all the theological issues settled but to be characterized by a commitment to be a disciple. Commitment stands at the heart of younger evangelical faith." Pg. 110

"To say the church is the body of Christ is to affirm the church is the continuation of the presence of Jesus in the world; its life is sustained by the energy of the Spirit who is "the Lord and giver of life"; there is a divine side and a human side to the church; the church is a witness to the drama of salvation; and the church is the presence of the eschatological future of the world. In this sense the church does not "have" a mission, it is mission, by its very existence in the world." Pg. 113

"In the pre-Constantinian and postmodern paradigms, the church does not "send" missionaries nor does it have "a missionary program." Instead it is mission, no matter where it is geographically. The postmodern church invites people in its neighborhood into the new alternative community of people who embody the kingdom, and it promises them an experience of the kingdom that is to come." Pg. 121

Being Church
"The church's mission is to show the world what it looks like when a community of people live under the reign of God. The true gospel is portrayed best by the community that believes it, embodies it, and testifies to it in the midst of any given culture in all places and at all times." Pg. 133

Pastors
"Many younger evangelical leaders are frustrated with the leadership of both the traditional and contemporary boomer church. In the start-up church movement, younger leaders are more free to express themselves in ways that they believe are consistent with biblical principles and the situation of the church living in a postmodern culture. The rejection of business models of the church and embrace of "every member ministry" working together in team ministry under a commitment of servant leadership is a new kind of leadership for the twenty-first century. Pg. 153

Worship Leaders
Younger evangelicals want God-centered worship that emphasizes the following nine features.
1. A genuine encounter with God
2. Genuine community
3. Depth and substance
4. More frequent and meaningful experience of communion
5. Challenging sermons and more use of Scripture in worship
6. Participation
7. Creative use of the senses, visual
8. Quiet, characterized by the inclusion of contemplative music and times for quiet personal reflection and intimate relationship with God
9. A focus on the transcendence and otherness of God. Pg. 189

"The younger evangelical understands the order of worship is not a presentational program. Many older evangelicals understood worship to be primarily an opportunity to present the gospel to seekers, so they formed believers' worship around this priority. The ultimate effect was a worship service that consisted of a sequence of programmed acts of worship with a musical piece or drama inserted here or there. In contrast, the story-formed view of worship, popular among younger evangelicals, interprets worship to be an unfolding of the narrative of God's story. The narrative is expressed in four movements. First, the people gather. This is a theological act in which the church is actualized and brought into being. Second, the church hears the story of God in Scripture readings, the Psalms, and the sermon. Third, the church responds with praise and thanksgiving at the table, enacting God's redeeming story with bread and wine. Finally, the community of God goes forth, empowered by the Spirit to be a living member of God's story in the world." Pg. 200

Artists
"The arts take the very stuff of creation (e.g. stone, wood, sound, and light); vessels made of creation (e.g. textile, glass, gold, and silver); elements of creation (e.g. water, bread, and wine); and the human body (e. g. movement and gesture), and make these tangible expressions of redeemed creation. The arts open the portals of heaven, where all creation is in continual praise. This is the objective side of the arts, a side we see in Revelation 4-5. In this beautiful description of worship, there is not hint of performance or an audience-only a transfiguration of creation imbued with the magnificence of God's splendor and eternal glory.

On the subjective side, the arts both embody the historical events of God's saving action in history and evoke the experience of transcendence, wonder, and awe. They transform the natural, the human, and the material in the disclosure of otherness. They lift the ordinary into the extraordinary and return the transformed reality into the experience of the ineffable. In the way the arts lift us up into the transcendent reality of the future, into a momentary existential experience of the kingdom that is to come." Pg. 211

Activists
"The younger evangelicals' presence in the world is clearly a threefold tension. They live in this world and want to be good responsible citizens, yet they are not of the world. They are moving away from the moral relativism of their postmodern world, seeking to offer a sharp alternative to the dominant culture. In personal and family and church life, they hope to be an embodied presence, and alternative culture that acts as salt and light, transforming society toward the kingdom ideal" pg. 235

A New Kind of Leadership
"I have attempted to show throughout this book that the leadership of the younger evangelical will be distinctly different than that of the twentieth-century evangelical. It will be biblically informed by the Missio Dei to rescue the entire created order; it will be theological, rooted in the trinitarian and christological consciousness of the ancient creeds; it will be spiritual, reflecting the purposes of God to restore the fullness of his image in us and bring all creation to its redemption and reconciliation to God; and it will be conscious in its action in and to the world of the new cultural situation in which we live, taking into consideration the new realities of the twenty-first century." Pg 243

Copyright ©2002 by Wade Hodges, All Rights Reserved