Our Teenagers–One Nation Under God

Standing in the midst of teens, each one swaying to the extra-loud music and singing with nearly-supernatural gusto, I felt my senior heart being enveloped by a burning sense of hope for our nation. This concert lifted up the name of Jesus and proclaimed the sovereignty of Almighty God. My eardrums throbbed, and being blind, I couldn’t sing the words projected on the huge screens, but my body urged me to join the adolescents.

My hands clapped with the changing rhythm and my lower half moved just like the dipping and swaying shoulders. Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, my feet never left the teensy wooden spot on the bleachers to which I’d mentally nailed them. The earthquake-like undulations behind and beside me let me know my young friends had no such inhibitions.

I’d been to a Chris Tomlin concert a few years back, so I knew that the first two bands—so full of percussion, volume and youthful rhythms—would be followed by the master of worship. Chris Tomlin doesn’t perform at a concert. Instead, he leads the entire arena into the presence of God with what can only be called genuine worship. Would the kids still display such enthusiasm when Chris took the stage?

During the set change, a video urged the audience to tweet anything they wanted Chris to answer during the new feature of this concert—a live Q and A session. Being old doesn’t mean I’m not with it. I whipped out my I Phone, and passed it to my sighted friend to type in my question. (I knew I’d never get Siri to receive a dictated tweet in all of this noise.)

“What should we ask him?” the teen behind me said to her friend.

“How about asking him what his favorite thing to do is when he’s not singing or writing songs?”

Okay, I admit it, eavesdropping brings me a lot of ideas for writing, and sometimes, as it did in this case, a lot of pleasure. I wanted to know what a sixteen-year-old girl would like to ask the forty-something singer.

Her question showed a certain identification with him as a real person, with real-life preferences to which she might also relate. The response of her friend showed the distance we, as missionaries, also experience when meeting people for the first time. Folks don’t always see us as normal people, enjoying normal things and activities.

“No, don’t ask him that. Everyone already knows the answer to that question. He likes to pray when he’s not singing. Let’s ask him if he’s ever been to Ephrata?”

Since Chris is a married man, with a two-year-old daughter, I’m fairly confident his answer would have been more along the recreational lines, but I thought it sweet that she saw prayer as a “favorite thing to do.” Her opinion of him developed quickly as the concert progressed.

When the music slowed and instrumental accompaniment melted into harmonious background, the teens demonstrated the same enthusiasm for each song. When Chris invited the audience to join him in reading Psalm 100 out loud, the volume of the voices around me shouted every bit as loudly as when singing the rapid rhythms of the earlier refrains.

“I really like this guy,” said the adolescent behind me several times throughout Chris Tomlin’s presentation on stage, even following a mini-sermon he’d shared between songs.

The truth energized me. Oh, I knew the kids wouldn’t be hobbling out of the arena after three hours of standing and moving to the music like me, but the important point couldn’t be missed: The teens loved worshipping God as much as I did. No one had dragged them to this concert.

Chris Tomlin’s musical talent and anointed charisma led the entire multi-generational audience through a worship service I‘d imagined would only be found in Heaven. The truth that the youngsters enjoyed it as completely as an old lady like me profoundly touched me. It felt like a brightly-lit rainbow of hope pierced the darkness of skepticism for our nation’s future generations. Certainly thoughts of God and the Bible hadn’t turned off this large assembly of teenagers to the truth about the Bible and the Creator God Who loves them.

Yes, statistics abound on teens leaving the church for a variety of reasons, but that’s not all there is to the story. There are some Christian kids making it to university with their faith still intact. The 2013 membership records for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) totaled close to 40,000 students, and that’s just one of the organizations working on college and university campuses today. In December 2014, CRU, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ, made it to number nineteen out of the fifty largest US charities on the Forbes list with a total of more than $544 million being raised to support their secondary and higher education programs. Not every teen is turning away from church.

As a career missionary, I’m thrilled with the IVCF Urbana stats. Every three years, IVCF holds an Urbana Conference, geared to deepening the student’s relationship with God, as well as exposing the student to a lot of mission organizations. The 2012 conference had 16,000 student participants, with nearly half making a commitment to missions.

I longed for these kids to make it out of high school with their faith and belief in God solid. Every song I lacked the words to sing, I prayed for the kids belting it out all around me. I prayed for their homes, their schools, their friendships, and their futures. There’s hope for our nation—one nation under God—because these kids prove that there are still a lot of adolescents who care what God thinks.

Do you have any teens in your life that would have been singing and swaying right along with these adolescent strangers and me? Does it bring hope to your heart as it does to mine?