Intersections

  [NOTE: This sermon was done in note form, so it is not the sermon verbatim. Also for context, I was preaching on the book, "Lasting Change by Carey Nieuwhof] Last week for this sermon series - next week we will have Bashor Children’s Home as guest speaker. I would say I have a lot to cover - about half the book, but come to Sunday School over the next 6 weeks, and we are going to go more in-depth than I could ever do justice for in a 20 minute sermon.  But we will be covering two topics today - Why are Young Adults Walking Away from the Church? And What Cultural Trends Are We Missing?  Why Are Young Adults Walking away from the church?  Culture changing rapidly No group is leaving more quickly than those Carey identifies as “millennials” - generations under the age of 30, which is objectively wrong.  I am from the millennial generation - or at least I feel like I belong more to it than Gen X (the one before). Millennials (in broad terms) are people born betwee...

 Twelve years ago, I was reeling and recovering from my life implosion that happened only the previous year. I had been knocked down and to be honest, I was kind of bitter about it. I was angry that this is how my life was turning out. I knew I had to get out, make some new connections, friends, acquaintances - even. Fort Wayne was a very different place then. As much as we still had the Three Rivers Festival downtown, that was about the ONLY attraction, especially in the summer, that was going on and pulled people in from the suburbs and outlying regions to celebrate, or even to spend much time down there. If you would have gone downtown at any time after 5:00 on a weekday, you might have seen some misplaced tumbleweeds rolling down the street. Nothing was happening.  One thing that had started happening though, that there was a new young professionals group, called YLNI or Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana, who were under 40 and wanted to make Fort Wayne more palatable sinc...