As I have been considering topics and methodology for teaching Generation Y, I have come to the conclusion that the church, in general, and I specifically, have often been a step behind culturally.

I remember as a child of the 1970s hearing the conflict between older teachers of the church with the youth over rock music, as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) was invented through groups such as Petra, Love Song and 2nd Chapter of Acts. The problem, as I see it, was that the musical shift had already taken place, otherwise those groups would not have existed. The church was fighting a battle that was already lost. In the 1980s, when I became a teenager, CCM was what our Christian parents preferred we listen to.

In the 1980s, I remember the big issue being abortion. In youth group we were being taught “good doctrine,” so we would not be tricked by a cult or play Dungeons and Dragons, while many adults were out at clinics with pro-life signs. The Roe v. Wade decision was in 1973. Although the debate was still hot in the 1980s, the culture was moving on to something else. We teens learned our own pro-life lesson; a lot of us were having babies.

In the 1990s, I was a youth pastor, and to be honest, I think it blew it. I grew up in a time when homosexuality was generally considered aberrant behavior, not just in church but also by the culture. Many of the teens were dealing with parental divorce, and I dealt with that, and I also focused on sexual purity, which was our problem in the 1980s. I missed the cultural shift they were seeing. It was becoming okay to be “bi-curious” and high school students were “coming out” at high school. I was incompletely addressing sexuality. Now that those 1990s teens are adults, homosexuality is considered a normal acceptable lifestyle for some of them, instead of a sin as defined by the Bible.

The fact that states even had to vote in the 2000s regarding homosexual marriage tells me that the cultural shift has already taken place, and while the church spends resources on constitutional amendments, perhaps we are missing the boat on the current cultural shift. I am not saying that we should give up on proclaiming what is morally right, but I am affirming that ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I do not know what the next cultural shift is, but I intend to find out what it is before it has passed, and would welcome input on the subject.