Apprenticing the Next Generation

Value 1: Apprenticing the Next Generation

I had a really cool moment the other day. I was watching my 17 year old son and some of his best friends lead worship at a Christian high school. Their band HighPoint had been mentored by a young man who had come to our church when he was eighteen. He was a fantastic keyboard player and also had a wonderful mind for finance. He later came on my staff as our business manager but still took the time to teach my son and his friends how to lead a praise and worship team. He taught them how to manage practice sessions, how to run a sound board, how to make a song theirs instead of a reproduction of a studio track, and how to put together a worship set. That morning he and I sat smiling as we watched our kids lead several hundred students in worship. They were great, not only were they musically great but they were sensitive to the Spirit. They listened for God, and ushered those kids into a time where Spirit came and ministered in a very powerful way. These were things that they had learned as they were apprenticed by the generations that had come before them. We were all blessed by this.

As I sat there and watched this I had the satisfaction of knowing another generation had really gotten the heart of the Kingdom. That these young men would take what they had learned from me and the men and women I had mentored and pass it on to the generation underneath them. When I think about that I want to get up and do back flips, because that’s what it’s all about and you know the Bible seems to back me up on that.

In the book of Acts we read about the birth of the church on Pentecost Sunday. The church is the community of the “age to come”, the time when Jesus returns and sets all things to right, as it exists in the midst of this present age. The church plays by a different set of rules than the world does (or at least it should). The church is ruled by the values and characteristics of what the world will be like when everything is set to right. In the church love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, selflessness, gentleness, and kindness are the daily DNA of life because that is what life will be like in the “age to come”.

On the day the Church was established, the Spirit of God came and empowered each person who had placed his or her faith in Jesus. All heaven literally broke lose at that time. Manifestations of the life of the “age to come” began to break into this present age through God’s empowering presence at work in the followers of Jesus. The gift of tongues went forth reversing the curse of the confounded languages at Babel. The followers of Jesus began to proclaim Jesus as the true Lord of all, their fear of retribution overcome by the courage the Spirit brings. To explain all this Peter says to the crowd that had gathered:

AC 2:14 Peter Addresses the Crowd

…"Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

AC 2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.

AC 2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.

God’s Kingdom was forcefully breaking into the world. What Jesus had set into motion through his death and resurrection was continuing through His people who were empowered by His Spirit. This is what had been promised by the prophets of the Old Testament, a reversal of the way things were, an end to the status quo. This Spirit-empowered people were bearing witness to the world of the complete reversal that Jesus would bring in all of it’s fullness in the “age to come.” Peter, quoting the Prophet Joel, says that one of the major signs of the in breaking of the Kingdom is young and old engaging in Spirit-empowered ministry side by side.

Listen to the language; sons and daughters, young and old, men and women! When the Kingdom comes young and old, male and female will be serving God side by side! Therefore, one of the signs of the “age to come” breaking forward into the present is young people being empowered by their spiritual mothers and fathers to engage in Spirit-led ministry.

This is a reoccurring theme with the Old Testament Prophets. Listen to the last sentence of the Hebrew Scriptures found in the book of Malachi.

MAL 3:16 The Reward of the Faithful

Then those who revered the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD took note and listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the LORD and thought on his name. 17 They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them. 18 Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

MAL 4:1 The Great Day of the LORD

See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.

MAL 4:4 Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

MAL 4:5 Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.

Just like the rest of the Old Testament prophets Malachi is looking forward to the Day of the Lord, the day when God will decisively act in setting the world to right. Malachi says part of what prepares our hearts for this event, part of what makes us ready to experience God’s Kingdom in all its fullness, is the hearts of the parents being turned towards their children and the hearts of the children being turned towards their parents. This is an incredible picture, a picture of seasoned adults not being focused on achieving for themselves but their desire is for their children to be all they can be. It’s the children not looking at the older generation with suspicion and rebellion but acknowledging the gift that is being given to them by their mentors. Out of that knowledge is born a love and respect for those who are sacrificially focusing on them.

God says this has to happen so that the land is not struck with a curse. Think about that for a second, when the older generation refuses to invest in the younger generation the land is cursed. I can think of many reasons why the land would be cursed when the older generation refuses to invest in the younger generation because of the things I’ve seen in my quarter century of experience in ministry.