Everywhere I go everyone is keeps saying; “God is up to something.”  In other words people are feeling more of a draw towards him and to one another.   I had the opportunity to sit in a meeting at a very traditional and religious church that is struggling.  The churches youth pastor invited me to help facilitate their meeting.  They are losing their young families by the dozens and have members whose average age is sixty.   The good thing is they desire change and know they need to have a major paradigm shift. 

With the permission of the youth pastor I began to guide them to create a new vision and youth mission for their church.  But first look at the dynamics; the youth pastor is an African American male and the youth center is a multi-cultural group of community students.  The Sunday morning audience is white and elderly.  Talk about your mixer-uppers! 

As I challenged them to brainstorm by helping them to figure out what their strengths and weaknesses where I received more confirmation on few things that we need to take note on…

people in the institution of the church need to have more clarity of vision, mission and objectives
people in the institution of church need to be more in touch with indigenous people of ethnicity and culture in their neighborhoods
people in the institution of church need opportunities to be trained in the BIG basic 3…
multiculturalism
mentoring and…
evangelism
people in the institution of church need to understand that institutional church is not a community in today’s cultural.  Community is where you spend the majority of your time and that is not church.   

So do I believe that God is up to something? Yes!  That something is simple and plain.  You better get train, get transform or get terminated.  You must realize that there is a new culture and generation of young people on the scene.  If you think that old methods and traditional ways are going to win a millennial culture of young people and families then think again.  This is a time of casting new vision for a new people in a new age.