the worth of a generation...

it's been a long time since i posted. i promise i'll update soon. anyway, i just wrote the longest comment to a blog post i think i've ever made. it was to a post of the infamous jondale. it was on twenty-something group dynamics. a subject close to my heart. here's the response, but the original's definitely worth a read. thought provoking.

there were a lot of thoughts that came into my mind when i read this post a couple weeks ago, but i put it on the back burner. your reflections are interesting and saddening to me. as someone who is devoting their life to seeing God move through my generation within the cultural context of this society, i hope that this isn't the general consensus and resolve of my peers.

i know what an encouragement and real light those that are just a little bit older than us can be. my threenails cell group over the past year mainly consisted of two other people my age, and two people in their early thirties. we saw the younger couple through their first year of marriage, the older couple through their first year with their first child. we saw me through my first year out of college. we saw each other through job changes, housing changes, you name it. but somehow, even though we were at different places in our lives, we all ministered to each other, either through the wisdom of experience, or the reminder of the ideas and visions and ferver one may have lost sight of through life changes.

threenails, the community i'm a part of, the reason why i'm in pittsburgh is a gathering of twentysomethings that exists to see a contagious release of God's freedom and purpose in the world through connecting, experiencing and living life together. do we talk about the latest movie release sometimes when we hang out? sure. but that's the beauty of the gospel lived out in real life. whether we're talking about Excalibur or hot dogs or how someone worked through their dad's alcoholism or job searching or the personhood of Christ, or guitars, i think that if you are living intentionally to live out Christ's love in the community you find yourself in and the people whose lives you encounter, God will bless that time and He will use you in those conversations to move through people groups for the glory of His kingdom. and you will find that even a conversation about hot dogs can be edifying.

do not so quickly write off 20 somethings. they are the most mobile people group generally regardless of ethnicity, they still have the passion to believe in a vision and the energy, means, connections and not quite enough life experience to be jaded, to see the vision lived out, they are mature enough to be intellectual and young enough to think they might be right...but then they could be wrong, they have the desire to ask and field the big questions at the same time and content to learn how to live in that balance.

at 22 i have nothing to tie me down, i have planted myself in this city for a season, my time is spread out over relationships (not romantic) and i'm still idealistic enough to believe i will scrape by from paycheck to paycheck for the rest of my life if it means i can live a life of ministry and listen to people's stories.

those tables, they're out there buddy. totally imperfect and messy and wonderful. if you push them away as they are, they will never be anything more to you than what you expect them to be.

and then they'll turn 30.