Reaching Gen Now

Jan 26

Wes GeorgeUncategorized View Comments

Just returned from our State Evangelism Conference.  It was good to see a lot of friends and also get to hear some great preaching.  It was good to John Bisagno and Bill Stafford as they have been preaching for decades.  They both had a fresh word from the Word.  John Bisagno was especially relevant to our current culture.  We had Alvin Reid preach at FBC Rogers and in our drive to the  EV conference, he shared with me that John Bisagno was ahead of his time during the Jesus Movement as pastor at FBC Houston.  He challenged pastors to consider the impact of music on this generation and proposed that music will be major in reaching this generation.  He reiterated that God’s song book (Psalms) preserved the words of the psalms but not the music.  I am not a musician but I have read through Scripture.  While I have heard second hand comments concerning different beats, and off beats, etc.; I am not aware of any biblical evidence of such conjectures.  The caution that I have seen is that music can appeal to the flesh if our focus is on the music above the message (lyrics).  Music gives an avenue of expressing our heart.   So music in and of itself is amoral (it is not moral or immoral); lyrics are the key.   While music can be and is emotional, God’s music (lyrics and music) is also spiritual.  We need to help our kids to navigate the journey where music can teach them Scripture while giving them the words to express spiritually and emotionally their love and devotion to God.

I also had a consideration verified concerning our presentation of the gospel.  The culture that we live in today in the US is more like an international mission field than ever before.  The Gospel has not changed but the world where we live has changed.  We must always start where people are and getting them to Christ and His cross and resurrection.  I remember sharing the gospel with a couple of young muslim men in Paris.  I began with creation and actually culminated with the eternal state.  Upon the completion of that lengthy presentation, my friends responded to the “whole” gospel with the words “wonderful.”  His story is wonderful and in some ways, we may have unintentionally taken the “wonder” out of the gospel.   More later.  Until next time. . . .

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