Jenny Salt, dean of students at Sydney Missionary and Bible College and a noted conference speaker, earned her master of divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in December 2009. She will conduct a workshop during The Gospel Coalition’s 2011 national conference in downtown Chicago. Registration is open for the conference, which offers three rounds of workshops. I corresponded with Salt to learn more about her workshop topic, “Women Teaching Women the Bible: A Suggested Model.” She will also lead a session on “One-on-One Discipleship: Grass-Roots Church Growth.”

How did you get involved in your ministry of expository Bible teaching for women in Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand?

I started working as the dean of women at SMBC in 1997. Almost from the beginning of my ministry there, I had opportunities to give Bible talks at various women’s events. I was struck by the varied (and sometimes unhelpful) approaches to these events. Many of the women speakers were taking a topical/thematic approach. During my studies at SMBC I had been challenged to approach the preaching of God’s Word in an expository way, so it was natural for me to prepare Bible talks for women in that way.

As I gained more experience, I also had more opportunities to speak beyond Sydney. So over the years, I have spoken at women’s conferences in many cities of Australia, including Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, and Launceston. I have done a few conferences in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durbin, and Port Elizabeth in South Africa.

Why did you decide to attend seminary in the United States?

I completed a diploma of theology at SMBC and wanted, as well as needed, to upgrade my qualifications. I was due for study leave, and my school was willing to support me during my time away. Why Trinity Evangelical Divinity School? My school has had connections with TEDS over many years, with visiting lecturers such as Don Carson. Quite a few of our faculty have also done their post-graduate studies at TEDS. They were helpfully stretched by sitting under God’s Word and learning in a different culture from Christian brothers and sisters with the same love for God and the Bible. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to get out of my own zone and study overseas.

What are a couple tips you can share for women interested in teaching the Bible to other women?

One big issue is to allow the text to drive the Bible talk. That’s the beauty of expository preaching: It forces the preacher to explain the Bible passage in its context. Unfortunately, too often women Bible teachers take a theme and and then go from verses scattered through the Bible without explaining the context. It’s too easy then to bring in our own ideas. I love to encourage women to work hard at explaining what God says to us.

Another issue is the importance of knowing your audience and being able to explain the text and apply it to people’s lives in concrete ways. Generally speaking, women understand women. We know what makes women tick. There are such great opportunities to teach the Bible and show how it affects our lives at every level.

There is also something wonderful about teaching from parts of the Bible that women don’t seem to teach from, such as Numbers. By the grace of God, we see the lights go on as a previously untouched part of his Word is understood in its context, as more of God’s character is revealed, as the cross of Christ shines more brightly, and people see what it means to live in the light of God’s self-revelation. It’s a wonderful thing!

How do you counsel church leaders who are planning women’s retreats? What should they include, and what might they exclude?

First I would encourage church leaders to include women so they can be the ones planning these days/weekends. Second, I would want to engage speakers who have a priority of expository preaching. Also, I would want to plan the whole day/event so that the Word of God is central and Jesus is proclaimed. That means singing songs that reflect the truth of the Bible talks, promoting books that are connected to the Bible talks and recommended by the speaker, allowing time to pray in the light of God’s Word, and hearing testimonies that speak of God’s grace in women’s lives.

Registration is open for The Gospel Coalition’s 2011 national conference in downtown Chicago. Married couples who register early pay $300 for the three-day event, running April 12 to 14 at McCormick Place.

History tells sad stories of good churches that calcified as monuments to former pastors. Few churches we closely associate with prominent ministers maintained their influence when the pastor left. Fire twice destroyed London’s famed Metropolitan Tabernacle, once in 1898 and again when the Luftwaffe dropped an incendiary bomb during the Blitz of 1941. But these tragedies did not inflict so much damage as that caused when long-time pastor Charles Spurgeon departed in 1891 and died in 1892.

Charles Spurgeon

The “last of the Puritans,” Spurgeon reached millions through his sermons, both spoken and published. But he did not train willing leaders capable of carrying on his theological legacy in his absence. Cleanup crews sifting through the bombing rubble in 1941 discovered the church’s 1680 confession of faith, which Spurgeon had symbolically buried beneath the foundation in 1860. Writing in The Forgotten Spurgeon, Iain Murray found in this recovery a metaphor for the state of Metropolitan Tabernacle and the evangelical movement in England.

“There was in 1941 no influential congregation in England known to stand for the theology which that document contained; nor was there any college preparing men to preach that faith,” Murray wrote.

Notable exceptions to this worrisome pattern merely prove the rule. Martyn Lloyd-Jones thrived at Westminster Chapel in London following G. Campbell Morgan’s distinguished tenure, which ended in 1945. Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia has enjoyed the leadership of Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, and Phil Ryken. But even a track record that defies the trend offers no guarantees the next search to replace Ryken, now president of Wheaton College, will identify a worthy heir to the Tenth pulpit.

Perhaps God isn’t so concerned that churches should pass from glory to glory, if history is any indication. Or is it we who become so enamored with star preachers that we don’t share responsibility for the ministry and plan for the future in their absence? Many large, thriving churches today have been blessed by God with gifted preachers whose ministry spans the globe. As those preachers approach the end of their pulpit ministry, however, local churches face difficult questions about how they should prepare for life after their leader leaves.

Succession Without a Successor

Working with a small Bible study group, Tim Keller planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in 1989. The transition from a church’s first to second senior pastor is particularly difficult for a thriving congregation. So Redeemer isn’t even bothering to try. Instead, Redeemer revealed in June that it plans to eventually divide into four distinct but networked congregations, each of which will try to plant another church. Redeemer leaders selected four pastors—David Bisgrove, John Lin, Scott Sauls, and Leo Schuster—to lead these neighborhood-based congregations. But for now these men will share preaching and leadership responsibilities with Keller, who will mentor them closely.

“My ‘successors’ are a new generation of a half-dozen to a dozen pastors,” Keller said. “The difficulty is that to even talk of this as a ‘succession plan’ gives the impression I’m stepping out of my job and retiring soon, but I’m not. I’m 59, and we expect the transition to take eight to ten years. So we don’t call it a succession plan, but that’s what it ultimately is, among other things.”

Indeed, the succession plan corresponds with a larger ministry reorientation for Redeemer. For about 20 years, Redeemer grew as members invited their friends to hear the exceptional music and Keller’s compelling sermons. Without Keller as a draw, however, the church’s strategy will need to change. Church leaders and members will need to become more missional.

Tim Keller

“Now, however, we enter a new season, that, God-willing, will last much longer than 20 years,” Keller wrote to the Redeemer congregation. “Our ministry will now be ‘Go and Tell.’ Redeemer is going to systematically impart what theological and ministry wisdom we have to its people and empower them so that, instead of only inviting people in to hear teaching, they will in the power of the Spirit go out into the neighborhoods to love and winsomely share the biblical gospel themselves. It means a culture of training such as we have never seen before at Redeemer. It means coming to grips with one of the most radical aspects of biblical teaching, that every single believer is a prophet, a priest, and a king, not just a bringer and attendee. According to Jesus, ‘the least’ Christian is endowed with the Spirit and is ‘greater than John the Baptist’ (Matt 11:9-11). It also means raising up a new generation of pastor-leaders. The vision is for a family of eight to twelve sister churches-covering Manhattan—ministering in their communities.”

Divesting Power to Empower Others

Pastoral succession looks different depending on a church’s size, personality, and convictions. But Sovereign Grace Ministries has won widespread acclaim for modeling gospel-centered succession. Many are familiar with how C. J. Mahaney, founding pastor of Covenant Life Church, invited the young Joshua Harris to live in his home and learn from him. Mahaney eventually resigned as senior pastor so Harris could take over. Another Sovereign Grace pastor, Dave Harvey, writes in his book Rescuing Ambition about stepping down in 2008 as senior pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church in suburban Philadelphia, the body he led for 19 years. Like Mahaney, Harvey gave way to a much younger leader, the 28-year-old Jared Mellinger. Showing just how deeply succession was ingrained in church culture, Harvey led Mellinger by asking him to respond to this ordination vow the day he was installed:

“Do you promise to begin praying for your ultimate replacement in ministry, with the hope of one day identifying, training, and transferring your responsibilities to him, so that this church may continue to grow and mature in future generations, for the glory and honor of God?”

Jim Collins writes in Good to Great that an organization becomes a monument to the leader’s outsized ego when it falls apart in his absence. Mindful of this problem, Harvey sought to put subsequent generations’ interests ahead of his own by setting up the church for success after he stepped down to take a leadership role in the Sovereign Grace network. But this wasn’t simply a matter of organizational success. Indeed, Harvey contends that succession testifies to what a church believes about the gospel.

Dave Harvey

“A true test of gospel application is seen in succession—in the health of what we leave behind,” Harvey says. “It’s a biblical way to measure success. If we simply build a church that fragments upon transfer, how does that glorify God or really serve the next generation? It doesn’t. Transfer isn’t about merely protecting programs or salvaging a legacy. It’s about preserving the gospel and passing it on to others.”

And yet few pastors seem to view succession this way. Human nature makes succession plans like those plotted by Keller and Harvey difficult to pull off. Senior leaders don’t want to let go. They realize too late that they’re slowing down, a process that begins in many cases around age 60. Various aspects of the church’s vision become neglected, and the church stagnates. The senior leader’s gifting and experience mask underlying structural weaknesses, as in the case of Spurgeon. Meanwhile, younger leaders don’t want to wait around to take charge. Many capable young leaders know the long odds of a successful succession. So they prefer to plant their own churches or invest in smaller ones they can grow by God’s grace.

Even before the senior pastor steps down, generational tension may be evident as a warning sign that succession will be a struggle. The senior pastor with a long tenure may surround himself with leaders around his same age. Preaching load, administrative tasks, writing commitments, and even personality traits may inhibit him and his colleagues from investing in younger leaders who can eventually take their place. Conscious or not, Hezekiah syndrome sets in, and older leaders leave major problems for the next generation to tackle. “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19)

To avoid this problem and foster continuity, healthy churches incorporate leaders from several different generations. They also rely on a plurality of leaders together seeking the Lord’s leading for the church and sharing the burden of responsibility. In this model, trusted peers can persuade a reluctant senior pastor to take tangible, self-denying actions to divest his power so he can empower others to act in his absence. For example, a senior pastor might return from vacation on Sunday instead of Monday so he can sit among the congregation during the sermon, limiting himself to announcements or prayer. With this simple gesture, the pastor shows he can share authority and recognizes another leader’s preaching gift.

Succession isn’t simple. It isn’t smooth. It’s not often successful. Yet it’s a matter of gospel integrity. God doesn’t promise our churches will evermore yield wide influence through a preacher’s exceptional leadership. Surely, however, we can testify to his steadfast love by making more of Jesus Christ than ourselves. And that means planning ahead for generations who will never hear the great preacher’s voice.

There are several new additions at TGC Reviews – the book review site of The Gospel Coalition. Here are the highlights:

Interviews:

Justin Taylor, Collin Hansen, Kevin DeYoung, and I recently discussed the importance and practice of writing well. Why should Christians write well? What does good writing look like? How do you improve, and how do you find the time?

Reviews:

Christians should not “chase cool.” No one will disagree with that, right? But there are a lot of Christians who look cool – is anything wrong with that? Brooklyn hipster Kristen Scharold gives an honest assessment of Brett McCracken’s Hipster Christianity (Baker, 2010), which looks at the phenomena of chic Christians. Kristen attends Resurrection Presbyterian Church, one of the “Christian hipster churches” that McCracken profiles in his book.

Just what is Evangelicalism? It’s becoming harder to define without giving in a number of qualifying statements. Something New, Something Old: Evangelicals points to Christopher Catherwood’s new book, The Evangelicals (Crossway, 2010), which takes a shot at profiling the movement, also pointing to Mark Noll’s influential The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994).

Think worship wars have gone away? T. David Gordon ensures that the waves will not remain settled much longer in Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns (P&R, 2010) – reviewed by Todd Pruitt.

For our readers, there probably are not two topics more dear than the Gospel and the glory of God. Chet Daniels reviews The Gospel Centred Life (The Good Book Co., 2009), by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester (Just a heads-up, be on the lookout for our review of The Gospel Centred Family and Church) and Nick Roark reviews The Glory of God (Crossway, 2010), edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson.

Also, don’t miss Franklin Payne’s review of Wired for Intimacy (IVP, 2009), by William Struthers, on the problem of pornography and the male brain.

Don Carson preached on five Psalms at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia in August 2010:

1. Psalm 1
2. Psalm 2
3. Psalm 40
4. Psalm 48
5. Psalm 110

I’ve always felt like I’m the odd one out . . . like everyone else is on the inside and I’m standing there, tapping on the window pleading in a whiny-sounding voice, “Hey, guys . . . I’m out here . . . can I come in, too, pleeeaaase?”

When I was a child I had a terrifying recurring dream, especially when I was fevered. In it I was standing on a dark stage and I was completely alone. I was aware of the fact that I was alone and had no place to hide. The isolation was horrifying. Five decades later, that dream still affects me.

Then, when I was a teen, Petula Clark recorded a song called “The In Crowd.” In the song she boasted, “I’m in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd goes . . . I know what the in crowd knows.” Well, needless to say, most of us never really hung out with the “in crowd.” Most of us relate more to tapping on the window, hoping to be let in. But even if you’re one of those popular people who always found yourself “in,” you know that sense of belonging doesn’t last for long, because there is always another group that’s more in than yours. We weren’t meant to find our identity in the “in crowd” or the cool, loser “out crowd,” or in the “isolated, I-don’t-give-a-rip” crowd. We are meant to find our identity in Christ.

Adam and Eve never experienced this awareness of alienation before the Fall. In fact, wasn’t their sin and subsequent exile from Eden the genesis of our sense that we “just don’t belong”? Ashamed, banished from their true home, we’ve all been wandering ever since . . . seeking and never really finding that one place where we know we’re loved, welcomed, accepted for who we are: home. None of us really fits in here because we’re not meant to find our primary identity in family or friends. We’re meant to find our identity in Christ.

Why is there such alienation? Why do we feel so alone? Our problem is that we are sinners. Our sin separates us from each other. Others sin against us, and we turn from them in disappointment or disgust. We sin against other,s and they turn away from us, too. We see their sin and feel self-righteous and wary of relationship with them, as if their sin might contaminate us. We see our sin and feel guilty and self-condemned so we hide, hoping that the “good face” we put on will be enough to fool them and open the door to relationship, to home.

And, worst of all, at the bottom of all this separation, we feel alienated from God. “How can God love and welcome me?” is the question at the heart of, “How can you love me? How can I love you?” These questions plague us, so we continue to hide, tap on the window, hope that we’ll be let in and while fearing that we will be. We think that we’re different from everyone else when, in fact, we’re all the same. That’s the secret that our enemy keeps trying to hide from us all. We all feel alienated. No one is ever assured that she’s really in the “in crowd,” no matter what Petula Clark says.

The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ, the High Priest who became one of us, was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He became part of the “loser” crowd. He was tempted to experience sinful self-consciousness, self-protection, self-pity, isolation, comparison, and judging. He was tempted to disassociate himself from the sinners around him. He was tempted to idolize the love and support of friends. He was tempted to worship the opinions of others rather than the opinion of his Father. He was tempted to love popularity with people more than he loved people. He was tempted to find his identity apart from his Father.

The gospel tells us that because of the Incarnation, we are not alone in our temptations. But his identification with us is not the only good news he brings. He has gone before us, yet without sin, so his perfect record is ours: He took up the towel, he laid down his life, he prayed in anguish alone, he was crucified outside the city, he was forsaken by his Father.

Remember that in all this, he never sinned. Justification means (in part) that his perfect record is now ours. His servant-love, his self-sacrifice, his faith in the midst of abandonment is now how our record reads before the Father who isn’t fooled by our outward appearances. Amazing grace! When the Father sees us he sees loving, sacrificial servants who find their identity in him. We’ve been let in because he was alone (amazing!) and sinless (more amazing!) and that’s our record (shockingly amazing!).

The blessing of justification is that it not only makes us welcome before the Father, it also frees us to love and welcome others. Because everything that we’re vainly trying to hide has already been publically declared about us (we’re so sinful we deserve to die!), we don’t need to fear relationships. We don’t need to hide, because we’ve been forgiven and declared righteous. Welcomed and loved by God, we don’t need to fear rejection either. He was righteous and rejected for us. We can forgive, love, and serve because we’ve been forgiven, loved, and served. Isn’t that the message of 1 John?

When you step off into eternity and wonder if you’ll be tapping on the window of heaven, hoping to be let in, or if you’ll be on that blacked-out stage, standing completely isolated on your own, your husband, Jesus Christ, will come to you, take your arm, and say, “She’s (he’s) with me.” Then when our faith becomes sight we’ll know that we’re part of the only “in crowd” that will ever matter . . . and all because of what he’s done for us.

Expositional preaching for high school students? Are you crazy?

Expositional preaching—moving sequentially through a book of the Bible, seeking to discover the main point of the text, and making that the main point of the message—can’t work for high school students . . . can it? Don’t they need something more attention-grabbing, flashy, and topical?

Responding to this thinking, which dominates youth ministry circles, I’ve come up with a list: Top Reasons for Expository Preaching in High School Ministry. I should note that my conviction regarding expository preaching extends to the whole church. I am here simply expanding that conviction to include the smaller gatherings of the church’s young people. So why expositional preaching for high school students?

1. They can handle it.

Adults in the church have pitifully underestimated the capacity of young people to grasp biblical truth revealed in the very structure of the biblical text. This failure has led us to summarize the message of biblical texts. We water down each passage and mold it into easily digested morsels that the students can take home and apply. In short, we do all the work for students in our teaching. We move from observation to exegesis to exposition to application to “kiddie-size” translation all in course of preaching from one text.

In so doing we have stripped our young people of the opportunity to think with us as we take them through the logic of a text. First we observe how the writer has carefully put it together. Then we lead listeners to the main point that the passage’s author sought to get across to his original readers. High school students can follow that kind of careful exegesis. We simply haven’t invited them to try it.

2. It helps them learn to read the Bible.

While topical teaching can be helpful at certain times, a steady and unbalanced diet of it undermines students’ understanding of God’s Word. God’s Word does not come to us in one-sentence blurbs, laid out under various topical headings, like an extended concordance. God’s Word comes to us in stories, parables, poetry, prophecy, and song. Students who have been fed a constant stream of messages on “What the Bible Has to Say About Relationships” will be in for a nasty surprise when they open up the book of Leviticus. We youth leaders have a blessed responsibility and opportunity to teach students how to read, receive, and understand the Bible as it is put together in the way that God ordained: book by book and chapter by chapter.

3. It protects us.

A commitment to expositional preaching protects youth ministers from students and from ourselves. Unless we commit to preach through a book of the Bible, we have two choices. We can poll the students and hear what they want to learn. They’ll likely mention relationships, sex, dancing, or maybe even free will and predestination. Or we can teach a topic of our own choosing. Both of these options could be much more closely linked to a human agenda than to God’s agenda. Only by elevating the Word of God in our teaching, letting each passage along the way dictate what we teach our students, do we ensure that we consistently and faithfully teach the revealed Word and will of God for students’ benefit.

4. It makes you a model, not a celebrity.

It will not be difficult for a witty, good-looking, fashionably dressed youth pastor to entertain a group of high school students with dating stories and relationship advice as part of a catchy series on “Guys, Girls, and SEX!” The question is what such a pastor has modeled for the students. They may learn truth from a biblically based topical series. But do they learn how to handle the Bible for themselves? Or do they learn to cling to their pastor for the answers? In faithful, clear, and interesting expositional preaching, a youth pastor has the opportunity to demonstrate and model to his students how to approach, understand, teach, and apply the Bible. Then they can actually begin doing exactly that for themselves.

In other words, a biblical goal for a sermon to youth might be to teach a passage carefully and faithfully, so that students listening say to themselves: I see what he did! I could get that from this passage! This model shapes the way the students do devotions, listen to sermons, and one day teach Sunday school and lead Bible studies on their own. As youth pastors discipline ourselves to teach the Bible in this way to our students, we take what we have learned and pass it on to faithful Christians who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2).

We just added a PDF of this recent book by D. A. Carson to his bibliography:

From the Resurrection to His Return: Living Faithfully in the Last Days. Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2010.

It’s a lightly edited sermon manuscript on 2 Timothy 3:1–4:8.

It’s not long—only 48 small pages with large print.

Related:

(1) Sermons by D. A. Carson on 2 Timothy

(2) Justin Taylor, “Imitate Me”

(3) TGC hosts PDFs of seven other books by D. A. Carson:

1. Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life (Crossway, 1993)
2. Holy Sonnets of the Twentieth Century (Baker, 1994)
3. For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word, Vol. 1. (Crossway, 1998)
4. For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word, Vol. 2. (Crossway, 1999)
5. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Crossway, 2000)
6. Love in Hard Places (Crossway, 2002)
7. Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (Crossway, 2008)

The lastest refresh of The Gospel Coalition homepage includes several changes revealing a new editorial direction. While we continue to host several blogs, the homepage now features an assortment of news stories, commentary, videos, profiles, interviews, and more. We’re devoting our editorial energies to publishing in-depth cultural analysis, hosting vigorous and edifying discussion over key topics, and identifying stories about the advance of the gospel worldwide. Readers will also notice what we expect to be one of the most popular new features. The “Right Now” section in the homepage’s top right corner highlights the most recent articles, events, and posts making news.

This refreshed homepage also signals TGC’s desire to include a variety of voices and perspectives that share our theological confession and vision for ministry. We’ll introduce a number of new contributors with varied experiences. And we invite anyone else to participate by commenting on articles, sharing them through Facebook and Twitter, and telling us your own stories of God’s extraordinary grace shown to sinners.

Through this new site, The Gospel Coalition aims to offer discerning, thoughtful content covering all aspects of Christian life even as we engage the world around us. Above all, we celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15). By God’s grace the gospel is “bearing fruit and growing” around the world today (Col. 1:6). We’re excited and grateful for the opportunity to proclaim that good news to the glory of God.

You can hardly exaggerate the effects of the burgeoning social revolution among 20-somethings today. The New York Times Magazine turned its attention this month to what sociologists and psychologists variously call delayed adulthood, extended adolescence, or merely a newly discovered life stage between 18 and the mid-20s. Writer Robin Marantz Henig observes:

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be—on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

Myriad factors combine to create this new dynamic. The competitive job market demands a college or even graduate degree for many entry-level positions. Social stigmas against premarital sex have largely disappeared, removing a strong incentive for marriage. Birth-control pills reduce the likelihood of unplanned pregnancies. And women who want to have children feel little pressure to begin before age 30 if they can afford to pay for reproductive assistance made possible by new technologies.

A generation or two ago, many men and women by the time they reached 30 had said goodbye to their parents, found a spouse, welcomed at least a couple children into their family, and secured economic stability. Now the American male has achieved quite a feat if he’s moved out of his parents’ basement by then. Psychology professor Jeffrey Jensen Arnett leads the way in attributing these changes to a recently identified life stage he calls “emerging adulthood.” Emerging adults, according to Arnett, are concerned for themselves, unsure about their future, but hopeful that life will be good to them.

We have plenty of reason for concern about dramatic social changes unfolding before our eyes. Henig points out benefits while identifying the costs:

It’s easy to see the advantages to the delay. There is time enough for adulthood and its attendant obligations; maybe if kids take longer to choose their mates and their careers, they’ll make fewer mistakes and live happier lives. But it’s just as easy to see the drawbacks. As the settling-down sputters along for the “emerging adults,” things can get precarious for the rest of us. Parents are helping pay bills they never counted on paying, and social institutions are missing out on young people contributing to productivity and growth. Of course, the recession complicates things, and even if every 20-something were ready to skip the “emerging” moratorium and act like a grown-up, there wouldn’t necessarily be jobs for them all. So we’re caught in a weird moment, unsure whether to allow young people to keep exploring and questioning or to cut them off and tell them just to find something, anything, to put food on the table and get on with their lives.

Reflecting on these challenges, Albert Mohler calls on the church to “demonstrate the power of the gospel in a whole new way by assisting young people into the successful and faithful transition to adulthood, celebrating this transition as a matter of spiritual maturity to the glory of Christ.”

His call raises important questions for Christian leaders about the best way to respond. We’re agreed that chastity is the Christian’s calling outside marriage. Still, “emerging adulthood” cannot help but affect the strategy of Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries. In recent years, the traditional path to ministry has changed for many pastors, a path rerouted no doubt by new patterns of behavior by 20-somethings. Some still attend Bible college, enroll in seminary, then find a job in a church when they finish. Today, however, a prospective pastor may spend years working in various jobs to support a young family while taking classes part-time. In fact, some churches leaders and members regard this “real world” experience as vital for pastors who want to understand and tend their flock.

What do you think?

• How do you see “emerging adulthood” affecting Christian education?
• Was the traditional cycle of pastoral training due for a change?
• Do pastors need “real world” experience before leading a church?

Feel free to offer your thoughts in the comment section.

The Gospel Coalition council members Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris sat down with Francis Chan and asked why he resigned as senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, California, and what he plans to do next. Brushing aside the planned discussion topic, Driscoll took charge of the conversation and says to Chan, “Everybody thinks you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You’ve got a good church going on and you hit the eject button and now you’re an international man of Fu Manchu mystery. What is going on? What are you thinking? And what’s going to happen to your church?” See how Chan responds.

A What’s Next for Francis Chan? Conversation with Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris from Ben Peays on Vimeo.