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jordon cooper

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1) what do you see as the most important issue facing this generation?
Security on several different levels. 

  • Financial: Student loans are severely limiting options once you leave school and burden you down for several years afterwards.  We are looking at a future where we will have less wealth than the boomers.  We also have to plan for longer retirements with higher bills and lower income.  I have friends of mine who are 30 and are panicking at the prospect of not being able to retire comfortably. 

  • Physical: A friend of mine has done workshops in the past year dealing with violence to teachers.  More and more of the women I know have been sexually abused in some form.
    We live in more violent world today. 

  • Family:  My son's godparents are looked up to by numerous people including the friends of their kids.  There are numerous reasons but one that leaps out to a bunch of us is that they have maintained a stable family over the years.  No divorce, no trial separation, no affairs.  A generation ago, that kind of marriage was the norm, now it is the exception. 

  • Job security:  It is easy to say, "there is no for life jobs in the new economy" but it still is scary when you get
    "rightsized"."

2) what do you think the church can do to help us face this issue?
The church has a tremendous opportunity.  The evangelical church is sitting on a lot of money.  The church still has not clicked in to the fact that we are to be a community of believers and not an individual collection.  Tom Sine in Mustard Seed vs. McWorld does and excellent job describing the changed church community if we would only invest in today's generation instead of ourselves.  I know of a small group that actually cashed out some RRSP's to help out a person in debt.  Those kind of acts on a large scale would free so many people.  At Lakeview we are in a middle of building campaign.  We call people to sacrificially give to build a building but how many times have you heard give the call to sacrificially give to help our single parents or put some kids through school?  We need to click into the long term impact of "liberating" our youth for service and from debt.

 

We can also make our churches into a safer place.  I had lunch with Lakeview's youth pastor the other day and said instead of Gear (our youth event) being once a week, start thinking of Gear being 24/7. /maybe it is a 24/7 drop in centre.  During the week there may be big outreach things but the church is a safe sanctuary all week long and not just for youth but for people looking at getting a better job (a computer lab and night classes for learning new skills?), for people looking to escape the rat race, or for people just wanting to be with a normal family.

The church needs to think outside the box.  Maybe it is buying an apartment complex to help out low income families or providing safe afterschool programs or offering help to people suffering abuse.  Look around you, the government is not doing the job, someone has to and if I remember right, God has said that it needs to be us.
 
3) how do you see the internet and the church interacting in the future?

The church has such an amazing chance to make an influence on the net.  While not to downplay the excellence that is shown on sites like ginkworld, it isn't that hard to get a site online and is within the abilities of every single church in North America.  At Lakeview we have a team of four of us who keep us online.  The biggest obstacle that we need to realize is that "command & control" doesn't translate to the net.  The net is chaordic, always changing, always in flux, and always improving.  You don't have to be perfect to be online, just get online.

 

In the future, I hope to see the church realize its potential.  Online video is here now.  If you doubt me, go to BMW Films (www.bmwfilms.com) and check out the amazing short films that they have posted online.  Lakeview is planning to put online a half dozen of our favorite in-house creations this summer.  It costs us $30 for Quick Time Pro or we can also export some to Windows Media for free.  As we buy a second digital video camera this year, we will be adding videos of sermons and teaching online as well.  A much higher percentage of urban Canadians (no, that isn't an oxymoron) have broadband access than Americans so we are a little further ahead of the curve but as DSL and cable enters your neighborhood, you need to be ready.

 

Online community is real.  People crave relationships and community but are scared.  We all scream we that the postmodern generation desires community but we forget that we are scared by it at the same time.  The same brokeness that makes us crave community, makes us scared of it.  A lot of postmoderns have found community online.  It is safe there.  The online church understands it.  It allows Joe with his Hotmail account to log-in to your newsletter, join an online discussion, to read your sermons, and take a look at a 360 degree virtual tour of your church before he thinks of coming into your doors.  Sites like ginkworld and The Ooze are showing the church what the web of today can look like.

 

The Net makes us glocal.  jordoncooper.com is visited by hundreds of people everyday from all over the world.  Lakeview Church's online e-mail newsletter goes out to Africa to Asia, from Cuba to Iqualuit, Canada (capital of Nunavut - a long way north).  We minister to missionaries and American Marines.  The web also extends your global reach.  There are people who drive up to an hour to go to Lakeview on a Sunday and if you have survived our winters, that isn't always possible.  They read the sermons and devotions online.  In an age of telecomuting to work, people may commute the same way to church with live feeds and interactive sermons.  The church has to stop thinking of itself as a group of people that meet in a sanctuary. 

 

Sites like The Ooze and ginkworld do another great task.  They connect and resource us.  I think one of the worst trends on the net is the move to church portals that charge other churches for their old sermons and electronic resources for profit.  One of the things that I have fought for at Lakeview is that we will give away everything.  We have a sharing section on our site that we give away our media graphics, sermons, teaching materials, and video ideas.  This summer we plan to add about 100 new media backgrounds and slides - all for free.  I hope the church as a whole bucks the trend and stays free.  We are all on the same team.  The upcoming years are going to be hard ones to lead through.  Instead of trying to make a buck off of each other, lets see what we can do together.

My one bit of warning to the church is that you risk being left out of the discussion that is happening.  Already there are more and more postmoderns that are thinking of places like ginkworld and Beliefnet as their true church.  Barna tells us that the cyberchurch is coming and if the local church doesn't want to help the conversation, then it will happen elsewhere.

 

4) how do you as a pastor, deal with the issue of "absolute truth" in a "non-absolute age?"

My Wesleyan background comes out in this question but as Wesley points out in his Order Salutis, we are all on a journey and are all on various points on that journey.  It isn't about logical argument that prove beyond a doubt that God exists, that Jesus arose, and that Paul was short and ugly looking (according to church tradition...).  On that journey, some will choose to seek out and follow Christ.  It is a process that is not as cut and dried as we like it and it takes a church community, grace and time to disciple but in time, people discover there is absolute truth and it is in God.

 

The church is really counter cultural in this.  Us and Dr. Laura.  I have some contact with some people where there is a lot of sin that has destroyed a relationship.  Again and again I have brought up what the Bible says (they are professing Christians) to have it replaced with what they were feeling.  When I say something that doesn't jive with Dr. Phil (Oprah's guru), I hear about it.  Some see this as being negative but it disagreement leads us to a place of dialogue.  While we can't rely on the "Bible says so!" argument anymore, if we believe we have the truth, we should not be afraid of dialoguing in our pluralistic world.  We got to move from being afraid of living in an non-absolute world to seeing it as an incredible opportunity.

 

5) many claim music is a key to the postmodern church, how do you see the role of music in the church?

Music is one of the most dominant communication tools in the world today.  According to the search engines, people want mp3's more than they want sex or Anna Kornikova.  Why does everyone have a CD-R today?  It isn't to do backups, it is to burn music CD's.  What really rips me when my internet connection is down is that I can't get to my 3 gigabyte MP3 locker on Myplay.com.  We keep hearing that the church needs to listen to its poets and the prophets.  They can both be found in today's music.  I think that is one of the reasons that churches need to encourage and invest in their own song writers. 

 

6) the same can be said about tech, what role do you believe tech should have in the church?

Technology is changing churches, even if it doesn't exist in the church.  On 40 weekends a year, I drive 2 hours into northern Saskatchewan and preach/pastor at a small aging rural church.  In the last two years they have gotten mini-satellite dishes on the farm and cabin and have gotten online.  I think that the mini-dish is now the provincial flower of Saskatchewan.  This has changed their worldview.  No longer do they two channels but 500 and no longer is information only in the "city" but it is in their homes.

I shake my heads at churches that fight over technology and computers.  No one today goes without a TV in their home but it is inappropriate for one to be used to enhance worship.  It kind of makes you wonder what they are watching at home.

The other churches that I shake my head at are those who want to control how the technology is used.  I know of one church who literally bolted down the computer in the sanctuary so the youth couldn't use it during the week.  Another church's network administrators made the staff sign such a form that when questioned about it, they said that they couldn't even check sport scores on the church internet.  It was for church use only (to this day no one can figure out what is church use and what isn't so they all ignore it).

 

Technology isn't the show, it complements the message or teaching.  If it doesn't help what you are saying, it is a distraction.  Media for media sake or a special effect for special effects sake is an ugly thing.  We just got Adobe After Affects Production bundle at Lakeview.  Just because we can make lightening bolts jump out of coffee now and give the congregation light sabers doesn't mean we need to.

 

Video is the language of 21-C.  If you can't speak that language, people are going to find something that can.  If you aren't technologically competent, people aren't taking you seriously.

7) it's the stanley cup - who's playing, and who wins?

I replayed the Stanley Cup a thousand times as a kid.  The Calgary Flames were playing the hated Edmonton Oilers (a grimy hole of a town in northern Alberta).  I was in net and it was overtime.  Not only did I stone Wayne Gretzky on a breakaway, I set up the winning goal to win the Cup.  In real life, it was Edmonton that won all the Cup's and I developed into a goalie that let in soft goals when the game was on the line.  Growing up in Calgary, I think I threw away enough Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier rookie cards to have paid for my house. 

 

closing thoughts: you can share what ever is on your heart.
Enjoy these years of serving and following God.  We live in an age of tremendous change and discerning the voice of God is never easy.  At the same time we are lucky enough to be called to lead and serve during one of the crucial times in the history of the church.  I believe that God is raising a generation of leaders and will continue to do great things through them.  I don't know what they may be yet but I am humbled and honored to serve Him and his church.