Contextuality and Sexuality – the Breakdown of Community in the Next Gen

1. Contextuality and Sexuality – the Breakdown of Community in the Next Gen Zachary Howland Spiritual Formations Pastoral Intern

2. Everything Is Contextual • What do you think I mean?

3. Contextual Continued • We become interpreters of what we said 30 seconds ago, 5 minutes, 24 hours • Now think about what “Contextual” means when we think about the separation between ourselves and Scripture? • We must work extremely hard to help the Scripture be radically relevant in our context

4. Doing Contextual Theology • Major Plot Themes • Book Plot Themes • Interpreting the History • Characters • Exegesis – Interpreting Sections of Text • Grammar Analysis

5. Secular – Contextual – Relevancy • The secular culture does a phenomenal job at being contextual and relevant to the masses • Modern “Media” in all its various forms, have mastered their mediums and transformed our human ears to desire an extremely high potency of contextual relevancy • This includes: the telegraph, telephone, cell phone, computer, internet

6. “We are what we eat” • Who has heard this phrase before? • With some exceptions, when most of us eat a lot of fatty foods, we get fat. • But there is one expression that’s true for everyone—We become what we behold!!! • This statement could not be more true for our American context, especially among our younger generations

7. Emotional Dissonance • The modern generations have tasted: • Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging, Texting, Cell Phone Use, Blogging, iPOD, iPAD • All of these mediums grant immediate contextual satisfaction • N.T. Wright calls these mediums selfish orgasms of the mind. That is, they give us temporary gratification, but they leave us continually wanting more. • Lewis Smedes says, “Man cannot live on orgasms alone!”

8. Emotional Dissonance • Mozzarella Cheese and iPADS • The mediums that our younger generations are addicted to (and some of us here), have caused a break in the fundamental theological theme which ingrains itself throughout every Biblical book • That God has intrinsically created us to be in personal relationship with one another, (Kingdom idea in Matthew’s Gospel), and communal relationship with the Triune Deity we know as Yahweh.

9. Emotional Dissonance • This break in God’s fundamental design, has caused an emotional dissonance, from our hearts and the hearts of others. • When we break off our ability to co-relate, that is relate within community, then we suppress the real reality of “Life” presented in the Gospel, and Scripture throughout • Shane Hipps, 51-52

10. The Next Generation • If God’s community wants to stay relevant to the Next Gen, then it must recognize that . . . • Secular culture currently supersedes the contextual abilities of the Church • The Next Gen is the fattened calf begging for a diet from their mediums • The mediums of the Next Gen have broken their ability to successfully relate with themselves and people around them – Emotional Dissonance

11. Everything is Sexual • What do you think I mean?

12. Sexuality • When we talk about sexuality, we are not talking about the hetero, homo, GLBT issues • We are simply talking about relationship • Sexuality is the level of intimacy we choose to visit within our relationships

13. What’s Curious? • What is interesting about the Next Gen, Modern American Culture, and Sexuality? • There has never been a Generation more deceived in thinking that they wholly understand the core of their sexuality • They think Twitter and Facebook are relationally adequate forms of communication • Teen Mom Example (Texting)

14. Sexuality and Community • Hoffstede Data determined that American has the highest level of Individualism on the face of the planet • We find our unique identity within ourselves and our own experiences • The question “Who am I apart from the community?” – is never asked • When Scripture is called us to ask, “Am I anything apart from community?” (Community with others or God) • Shane Hipps, 124

15. Success = Failure • It is in these moments, when we are convinced that we are something apart from relationship with Yahweh and community with others, that we have succeeded in fully perverting what it means to “have life, and have it to the full.”

16. Sanctification Versus Relationship • What is Sanctification? • The process of sanctification has become the church’s orgasmic temporary response to the true contrasting needs of the whole person. Much like Twitter and Facebook have become the Next Gen’s orgasmic response to the true contrasting realities of authentic relationship. • What would happen if we worried less about the “Me” or the “I,” and more about the “Us”? • Less about Sanctification and more about Relationship?

17. “In-Breaking” • The community of God would be an “In-Breaking” (Grenz) reality into the perversions of the secular culture and the needs of the Next Gen • Demands for the “In-Breaking” community . . . • Re-orientation of what it means to be sexual beings. We are nothing apart from intimacy with one another • Re-creation of what it means to be contextual. We are not the church if we are not choosing to evolve the Scriptural message as the Generations and culture evolve.

18. Faith Covenant • A unique pivot point for this particular church’s history • We can work to create a culture here that fabricates a medium of communication that redefines what it means to be relational beings • A place where the individual and community collide—creating elegantly relevant integration for both • A place where contextuality and sexuality dance together—functionally building greaterexpectationsfor the Next Gen