Re: Young people; Let's assume Myspace is an analogy for everything they will ever do!

I talked to this AJC reporter for almost a full hour, and thought I said a lot of good things about why I'm not ready to give up on traditional church models or give in to consumer-based church models because I believe in resurrection, but that didn't really make it into the article. He also interviewed Sierra but didn't mention her in the article at all. He also thinks I am from Cobb County, Ga. So it goes.

AJC: Meet the next generation of Christian leaders

David Allen, 25, a Fund for Theological Education fellow at Duke University, recalls going to Washington with his church youth group from Cobb County. A tour took them past the marble halls of power, then it wended into some of D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods, to tattered streets where hope was wrung out long ago.

"That was jarring to me ... and this was three miles from the White House and Congress," Allen said.

It helped point him toward the pulpit. If he doesn't wake his future congregations up to broader social problems, he will consider his ministry less than successful, he said.

I wish the article weren't quite so soaked in this language of generational difference. I think the assumption is that our generation's church is going to be distinct in the same way as our generation's culture and society are unique. I could pick it up in the reporter's questions that the story would tell of young people ready to do church their way, which is an attitude I find highly problematic. This article actually made me feel less hopeful about the future of the mainline Protestant church in the U.S. "The church leaders of tomorrow: who knows what the hell they will do?"