#146 Special Report with David Thomas (The Great Opportunity Unveiled)

Any Christian leader who is not paying tremendous focus to Gen Z just has their head stuck in the sand. They're simply not paying attention. Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports. Music.

Well, hello again. This is the OneCry podcast. So grateful that I get to share with you and you get to share with us some valuable content as it relates to even why OneCry exists, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. And we long just to let God use this little ministry here in Southwest Michigan to inspire you and others to seek the Lord for revival, to resource you as you do.

And as you unite with others, mobilize your heart, your passion, your calling maybe, and others in your community towards another outpouring of God's spirit, even to the extent that we'd see another great awakening. And so I thought it would be really helpful to all of us today if we were to have another discussion with David Thomas, who is the director of New Room, a ministry that really believes God wants to do something new today and to make room for him to do it.

I can't imagine a title that has more significance, David, than what that does. Thank you so much for being with us again on the podcast today. Great to be back with you, Byron. Thank you so much for what you're doing with OneCry. We love and appreciate you and your work. Well, we love the partnership, and I'm excited about how God's going to use that in the future. But also, in a sense, we're partnering with every listener out there today.

Because you listeners, you're intercessors, but you're also catalysts because you're a voice that raised the hope today in the hearts of millions, really, really, that need to know God is on his throne. And as a founder of the ministry I was associated with for almost four and a half decades, he would say, as long as God is on his throne, revival is as possible as the sun rising tomorrow morning. I love it because nothing is too difficult for our God.

But I want to zero in today on a topic that I think is burning, I know, in my heart and many of yours, what is God doing with Gen Z today? We hear these campus stirrings and there are some, I think, and David, I want you to talk about this.

Because you're so connected to the Gen Z there at Asbury University and elsewhere, I just want us to, what is it about the Gen Z today that's causing them maybe to be more responsive than even my generation and some subsequent ones, and maybe a little bit a taste of what's going on in some of these campuses. So let's talk Gen Z and let's talk about stirrings and maybe the hope that's in your heart for that generation.

Yeah, thank you, Byron. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing some focus to this. We need to. You probably have heard of this piece of research called The Great Opportunity. It's a study put out by the Pine Tops Foundation. You can Google those words, The Great Opportunity. You'll get the free PDF download. The best piece of research on the American church I've ever read. Three and a half year project, took a year to write it up. It's outstanding. Lots of conclusions drawn from this.

But the big takeaway, the big net conclusion, the study went out to 2050, 50, kind of the arc of a generation. They said, if we stay on trend, unless the Lord returns or there is an awakening, if we stay on trend, we will lose about a million millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha every year for that period up till 2050.

A total of about 40 to 42 million young people people who today would have any kind of cursory nominal association with christian will at over that span of time will no longer say that they will just completely check out we may not feel that for another 8 to 12 years but it won't be long before our youth groups our christian colleges universities these are things that are just going to start to dry up it'll start to look more like the spiritual sahara of the continent of europe where there's

just such so little but they said That if we could slow the rate of decay from now, from where it is today, back to the decline we were experiencing with Gen X back in the late 90s, if we could just not have an awakening, but if we could just bleed more slowly, hemorrhage less, that we would retain... 20 of that 40 million, 20 million who would still be in the Christian movement.

And that 20 million is more than all who came to faith in the first great awakening, the second great awakening, everything that came out of the Azusa street revival and every Billy Graham crusade combined. That's why they call it the great opportunity. That's our cultural moment, Byron. We are in the make or break moment, Gen Z.

That's why it's just any Christian leader who is not paying tremendous focus to Gen Z just has their head stuck in the sand. They're simply not paying attention. If anyone is within any kind of a drive to any college campus, a little community college, trade school, anything, we need to be prayer walking that campus. We need to be moving in any way we can in a step of faith for this generation.

This is just the moment that we're living in. And Jesus has signaled to us in the Asbury outpouring and everything since that he is hearing us and he wants to rescue this generation. He does. This is what we've, this is a big takeaway from the outpouring. And we're so, we're so grateful for the encouragement we have, you know, we have had, We were hopeful from revival history and from reading scripture. We've been hopeful for a new work of God's grace.

But now we have a concrete hope because we have laid eyes on an historic outpouring of the presence of God. And it was led by and it was oriented to God. Gen Z. It's not, it's no mistake that it happened on a college campus. And then we've been watching these movements on so many large secular campuses where students are responding to the call to repentance, the call to new life in Jesus.

And, you know, the way I see it is there have been, there have been people who have prayed in closets and at altars for years and years and years. And I believe we are really seeing some of the fruit of that praying. Everything that happened in Hughes Auditorium in February 23 was the fruit of prayer. And that's the way Jesus responds to prayer. I have never been so motivated to pray. And so, David, I know in Asbury, it's unique in this sense. It has a history of movements and outpourings.

And certainly that gives, to remember him and his ways, there was some backdrop for that. But do you feel like, because I'm sensing this, that what happened at Asbury this time is not just for Asbury's future benefit, but as you alluded to, campus after campus after campus right now, they're looking at Asbury perhaps and saying, what can we learn? And the simple thing they're learning is, let's get together and pray. Let's get together and worship. Let's get together and seek the Lord.

So you know the names of some of the campuses that I know were since Asbury in the last year. There has been gatherings, and I know you've had a conversation recently with one of the leaders that keeps being used of God at these gatherings.

So what is it that you sense is happening, I guess, at Auburn? Was it Florida State University maybe and Alabama and Georgia and elsewhere? Talk to us specifically about those. and what is your descript on those? I believe Byron is, There is something unique about Gen Z, and that's not to in any way neglect the millennials or the boomers or anybody. It's not like, oh, well, we're done with them. We're just going to give it all and focus on this one generation. No, it's not that at all.

But I do think, you know, this is the first generation to come of age on a smartphone. Phone, if you have survived that and COVID in high school, and then if you've grown up with a little 24-7 porn store in your pocket, if you've grown up feeling plugged in 24-7 to a little shame factory all your life, reminding you growing up who you were not and what you didn't have and who you weren't with and what you weren't doing, and you're still, after all of that, still chasing Jesus.

There is something different about young Christians today. They have a courage and a clarity. I don't think I had at 20. I listened to them. Like I tend to listen to the Old Testament prophets. They have a piercing word for us to hear. And they are also just initiating. They are catalytic. You're right about all these fellowships and moves. This is student initiative. We're watching. They see these years as more than just years of preparation.

These are years of origination, which is only true of awakening history. First Great Awakening, you know, the great paragon of prayer in the First Great Awakening was David Brainerd, college student. You know, Jonathan Edwards published so much. The only thing that's never gone out of print of all that he ever published is that his editing of the diary of David Brainerd, this college student who he believed prayed in the way that would really lead.

You know, the Methodist thing, the whole, the Methodist revival was birthed on the campus of Oxford. The student volunteer movement all rolled out of the second grade of making. This was the big, huge surge of missionary advance. We can go on and on. The young have always played such a, the Jesus movement today, has played such a crucial role. And I believe that we may be seeing that kind of rising, kind of surging move.

We pray that's the case. We believe that it could be, that this is a time when we're seeing a new caliber, a new vanguard of leadership emerging among the young. And I just think, you know, we just want to do anything we can. I don't want to make any move except beside and behind an emerging leader. We just want to, our generation, Byron, I just want to be shade over their boldness, care for their soul, encourage them to go ahead and follow Jesus' calling on their life.

Well, and it feels like to me, the Gen Z is really open, maybe longing for mentorship from older generation. When I was their age, I wasn't looking to older fathers or older anybody to coach me. But it seems like there's an interest in really partnering with an older believer and learning from them. In addition, we hear about authenticity with that generation. So how do you analyze that?

Yeah, I think, you know, the final prophecy of the Old Testament was the call in Malachi 4 for generations to turn to one another. And that multi-generational community is something I do believe that God is looking for and loves to indwell. And I often organize it around emerging middles and elders that, yes, these emerging adults, they have potential. They are carrying it. But then the middles, they have settled their vocation. Many of them have settled whether they're single or married.

They know where they're living, what they're doing. And yet they're still learning and growing. They're starting to step into leadership, but they still are wanting to grow and learn from those who've gone before them. And then you have elders who have had the kind of the big stretch of their experience, and they're just eager to give it away. way.

And as elders can invest in the middles and the middles can receive it, but then give it to the young and in those generations turn toward one another. I think we are seeing a kind of community, you know, denominationalism to a great extent. Is just about over. Emerging adults, they're just done with that. All the trophies and metrics and all the structures and things, they just say, if it's not real, I'm out.

So to think of denominations covering and supporting the initiative of the young is not something I think the young are really that receptive to. But the care of middles and elders, supporters, support, just saying, I got your back. Go ahead and give it a shot. If you mess up, I probably made the same mistake. I'll come by. We'll help you get back on your feet, that kind of thing.

That sort of posture is the one that I believe is altogether is what God is going to be using more and more for the advance of His church. So yeah, I do think that we're trying to think through the generational dynamics in new ways rather than them being generation gaps, generational divides, I think we're really longing to find one another again and actually come back into relationship in ways that are healthy and life-giving and supportive over time.

You know, I was a little surprised we were together there in Waco, Texas, but at least three of the larger local churches there, I mean, they'll have up to a thousand students from Baylor University attending on Sunday morning in their worship services. I'm here nearby Notre Dame, and I was blown away when I went to a new members class and discovered there were 10 or 15 Notre Dame students as freshmen attending a new member.

I can't remember a season when that, yeah, freshmen in college, they're looking for a local church to connect to and relate to. So I don't know. I just find that very intriguing, interesting, and encouraging. It's very encouraging. And we just want to look for every way to support their initiative. One thing that I think Asbury taught us is it doesn't have to be polished. It can be clunky. It's okay. Just let them give it a shot.

Let them bump around and and kingdom work, and get their legs under them, and then just step back and let them go. And I think if we're able to just begin to open up that way and invite them in, not just observe and prepare, but not go, you go do it. You just try. You go ahead. And let them, that we're going to see, I think we'll see the blessing of God on that. And the young respond to that. And I think we all need each other. So that's beautiful what you're seeing there locally, Byron,

there near Notre Dame. That's amazing.

So in closing this podcast, David, I wonder if you would just pray for the pastors, others out there who are really longing to have an impact on Gen Z. But more than that, as you shared, that they are willing to be impacted by Gen Z. And let's just pray that God will give us the heart of receptivity and the eagerness to learn and just be available to him. Let's bow our hearts. Yes, Father God, we know how you love your family.

And you, like any father, loves to see his children and all the generations relating well. I know that you long for that in yours. And we thank you, Lord, for the ways in which you are causing reconciling love to flourish and to flow among the emerging, the middle, and the elder in our day. We pray, Lord, for that to increase. And I do come with Byron in agreement, Lord, that you would help us to just really open up.

The truth of it is we need the passion and zeal and idealism of the young to goad us and to provoke us and to stir us, Lord, to answer their hard questions, to dignify their uncertainties and to live with them and listen to them. That will grow us and keep us fresh. And we thank you, Lord, that they too seem open to learning and living in the experiences of those that have gone ahead of them. And we bless that too.

So Lord, we want to repent of the ways in which we have sequestered each other and split our churches into age levels and age groups and just sort of divided and moved and separated. Lord, we pray that you would teach us this new wineskin of how we can, together, we can really cultivate a culture of openness to the fullness of your love across all the lines of age. We believe you're doing that in our day. We ask you to cause it to increase in us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. And thank you so much again, David. Pleasure. It's a joy to just partner together in all that God is doing. And as you, OneCry family, as you're out there and you're going forward and you want us to just pray for you, OneCry has an intercessory team. Just send us a quick email, OneCry.com, and just connect with us. And we want to pray for whatever it is that God's putting on your heart. So thank you so much for joining us again on the OneCry podcast. Thank you. Music.