I am single, love my single life, never never dated, just always felt called to this. I don’t have kids, I don’t foresee myself having biological kids. So technically it ends with me, like the biological generational line. But I would be naive—any Christian leader—any Christian, I feel, would be naive … and if I say it in stronger terms, ignorant of how God works, if you do not understand that there is a generational strength that we can accumulate, rather than cut off and start over every time there’s a turnover of generation. I don’t know that we’ve done it well—I don’t think we’ve failed at it—but I think that there’s room for optimization, especially when the generations there’s what, five, six generations living together. Now look at the pool of wisdom we can draw from, right? So what do I need to do to set up the rising generations in such a way that they look back and they have a heart of gratitude? Because we did the best we can. Not because we’re so amazing of ourselves, but because we did the best we can and they recognize that.

I think that when we live in the developed first world, if we can put it that way, we will find that the population, generally speaking, is aging. And we will find, generally speaking, that in the developing nations they’re very, very young. Like you’re talking, I read somewhere, and this was a couple years ago, but I don’t imagine that it’s changed too much, that the average or median age in Niger, average age is like 15. Like that is so young. Africa is a young continent. India, South Asia, is young, right? You’ve got these populations that are growing, and it’s so significant that we’re aware of these demographic patterns because if you overlay them with the geographical regions that have the most unreached, unengaged people groups, it’s very consistent. Very consistent. So you’ve got all these unreached, unengaged people groups in developing parts of the world where they’re so young. Right? So I think that we ought to think about those variables and those facts and how are we supposed to understand this, right? And how are we going to equip their counterparts who are growing up in our parts of the world, like me, in Toronto or stateside or Europe or Korea or Japan? How are we gonna raise them up so that they’re thinking like a global generation? Because that is exactly what they are. How do we break them out of their first world bubbles so that they are kingdom minded and not influenced to live a life that is not necessarily evil but it’s not eternally invested.

Dr. Gina Zurlo, she’s an acquaintance and she is part of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity that’s rooted out of Gordon Conwell. She wrote a book that’s called Women in World Christianity. She is so brilliant and her research shows that in all parts of the world and all denominations, women are the ones who come out to church more often. They lead like the daily, you know, laywork most often. They pray more. This is observable fact that women pray more. And so when you see the engine and the demographics of the church attendance, it is women. And so I think it would be significant for leaders to recognize that women ought to have a say because they’re on the ground floor, they know the community. Women, regardless of how progressive a nation is, or a society is, women will always be the gatekeepers of the next generation. There is a nurturing side. Even me as a non-mother, like I’m not a mom, but I do have that side. I think as females we kind of think differently about social relationships, which complements our men, our godly men who lead out in wonderful ways. But women will be the gatekeepers. They gestate inside our bodies, the next generation. And we educate them, maybe not formally, but certainly in the ways of life and how to speak and how to do all the things that we take for granted. It’s the moms, right? And so I think it’s significant for us to recognize that and if you’re trying to reach the next generation, to try to do so by bypassing women, I think you’re really cutting yourself off at the knees. But to optimize them, to empower them, to release them, to support them, I think that it would just be a world of a difference when we begin to understand what it means to really bring the gospel through the marginalized, so to speak. The poor, the impoverished, the young and the women.

How does ministering to women impact the next generation of believers? I believe and I have believed it because I have that testimony of reaching out to women—looking at myself, ministering to the little children and these children today, among the children, this is a true story: Among the children, we have a lawyer. One of those little ones––I wish I could show you the picture––one of them will be graduating as a doctor. I have a nutritionist out of that. I have an architect out of that small group. I have one working in communication. But it all began with a mother taking time to sit with the little children, then the little children, and today we have young professionals. So in that spirit, I believe if a mother is impacted, if a mother is discipled, that mother will be able to disciple not only her children but the children in the neighborhood. And when her own children are impacted, those children will share a little word in the community, maybe in the school, taking simple things like a child saying, “Don’t eat before you pray. For us at our home, we pray before we eat. Hands together. Let us pray.” That will impact another child who will go back home and say, “We learned how to pray for food before we eat it.” And she said, “Hands together, eyes closed.” And that will be an impact just because one mother was impacted and impacted her own children and the children are going on to impact another child. And then women in Africa have uh connections. They will connect at the well. They will connect in a salon. They will connect. So we see that spiral going on. One woman connects to another woman, the woman connects to the children. That is what I think connecting with the women will impact the next generation. Thank you.

I know that there are great resources out there, but I tend to err on the side of don’t rely solely on those things. So the first thing I want to encourage folks is that we need to get out of this mentality that a 12-week course that we meet weekly at Starbucks or whatever coffee shop and just have an hour time and go through the questions or a summer camp, youth summer camp, VBS, is going to train them up. It’s not. It is the long game, it is always the long game. And so to rewire ourselves not to outsource mentoring or outsource teaching about the word of God. And this is where the family is very significant. And let’s be real, there are families that are broken. There are families where the kids are the first believers. There are families where they’re broken to the point that the kids don’t know who their parents are and they’re going from one situation to another. So it is challenging. But for those of us, like again, I don’t have kids of my own, but when the opportunity arises, know that it’s gonna take a lot. You have to really count the cost not only of discipleship but of discipling. Right? The cost for Jesus to disciple 12 men, and not all of whom followed him ‘til the very end, but a good number did, was for him to give up everything he had in heaven to come down and spend years growing up in a human body and three years invested into these guys that questioned everything, doubted, denied, rejected. And yet these were the ones who carried it on. So I think to have the long game in mind would be significant.

It’s not just about like a book that you read and go through with somebody else. It is an examination of your life and understanding how that can feed into the life of a younger person. Because Ecclesiastes, yes, is true. There’s nothing new under the sun. The desires of—okay, yes, there’s you know, different technology—but the point of Ecclesiastes is that the human behavior and the life journeys, there is an echo. I think it was Mark Twain who said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.” Right? There are echoes of it, right? And so I think that is significant for us to do, but it’s far more easier to park my brain and park my heart and not do the hard inner work, pick up a book and say, “I’m gonna mentor this student.” I’m not saying that’s not useless. I am saying that it could be much richer if you did the hard work for yourself to recognize what God has done in you, then perhaps picked up a book and use that as a guidepost for you and the person that you’re mentoring. But if it’s just the book, that’s somebody else’s brain child. That’s somebody else’s stuff. It is you’re not using everything that God has deposited into you. I think you’re also underestimating yourself and how much God can use you as an individual in mentoring the next generation. Everybody’s got something to give.

You don’t have to spoon feed missions to them. It’s the heart posture of what it means to love this world that God so loved. With all the conflict that’s going on today, with all the hatred, with all the discrimination, there’s still so much beauty. And God so loved this world—so just opening them up. Like, you don’t have to force into their minds, you know, Matthew 28 or John 20 or Acts 1:8 and the Pentateuch, like that will come naturally, the Lord will draw it out. Don’t miss those, but you don’t have to spoon feed them and force feed, I should say. You don’t have to force feed them because God has deposited into them. This is again Ecclesiastes, this is 3:11. God has put eternity into every person’s heart. There was a longing to live forever, which we can kind of see echoes of. You know, everyone wants to stay young forever. So there are echoes of that even in the secular world, but everybody wants to live forever. And the truth is that through Jesus Christ we can because of Him, right? And when we kind of like love on our kids, like when I go out with some of the young people, and a couple that a few of them were teenagers and now they’re like full-fledged young adults with kids of their own. When we go out, it’s not like we always talk about Bible stuff. We talk about life. And it’s how we talk about, how we have our conversations, how we carry ourselves, that really I think enables us to be the salt and light. And then for young people to be around that, I think again, they’re sponges, as you know, right? They just take it all in. It’s not just the words, it’s everything, the environment that we create for them. And I don’t know that we’ve created or cultivated soil for our young people in our churches and our organizations so that their roots can grow deep. And so that’s the challenge. I don’t, again, I don’t think we failed. I think we can do better.

I don’t think we need to operate out of a position of fear. That is never a position that believers should take. God is sovereign, he wins the day. And yes, there are hard moments in between today and that day, but whether we are approaching young people in a culture that is very new to us or technology, we do not operate out of fear. That is not the stance that we take. We operate out of the fact that God has allowed this or He has given this to us. So where is the wisdom in how we approach something like technology and AI?

There is something about the incarnation in the flesh, right? When we’re grieving a loved one’s loss, it’s one thing to get a card and a quick text, and we love that too, but to have somebody just sit next to you, that presence is radically different. And I feel like sometimes we swap it out with something that’s digital. And I think that if you don’t know what it’s like to have somebody next to you, you think that’s it. But when you have that presence, I think that there’s nothing like it. So all that to say, I think that we still need to continue to innovate. I think we need to create next-step discipleships, but I will encourage your team and actually any digital team out there, and you could disagree with me, it’s fine, but my encouragement is to find a way to connect it to the real world. There’s nothing like breathing real air. There is nothing like connecting with a real person, having the hearty laugh with somebody in front of you, right? That I think is the same with discipleship and reaching the next generation. And because they’re so digital, part of me feels like they don’t even know what they’re missing out on. And that’s where I think we can offer that to them.

There is a rising global youth culture that is connected in a way no other generation is before. And I think you can see evidence of this when the Korean K-pop group, BTS, and there are people who are singing along, and I’m like, How do you know Korean? Right? Like it wasn’t like that before. And they all kind of know each other, and that, and they go to the same concerts, and it’s like they are connected in a way. Because when I was growing up, people were like, Where’s Korea? Because there’s just not this awareness. But they are more aware. They’re more culturally interested. It’s just crazy how much they are integrated. And again, that’s just a natural characteristic. So why not leverage it for kingdom work?