Part 2 The Challenge of the Times for the next Kingdom Generation

This is a call for the Church to have another look at the "signs of the times" and what are they telling us about the challenges ahead for the next generation of the Church.

Introduction: A Multi-Generational Inheritance
We stand at a critical juncture in the history of the global Church. As we look at the shifting tides of our culture, economics, and global demographics, it becomes undeniably clear that we can no longer coast on the inherited momentum of past strategies. The pastoral and strategic methodologies that served us well in the twentieth century are proving inadequate for the structural shifts of the twenty-first. The Church urgently needs a "new agenda" designed to project our faith, our resources, and our missionary mandate into the next 40 to 50 years. We must step out of the reactive posture of immediate crisis management and enter the proactive posture of multi-generational disicipleship.

This imperative is deeply rooted in the timeless truth of Holy Scripture. The Book of Proverbs reminds us of a fundamental kingdom principle: "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children" (Proverbs 13:22). True spiritual health is not measured merely by the success of a current generation, but by the resilience and equipment of the third generation. As a healthy family leaves a tangible and lasting inheritance for its posterity, a healthy, living Church must shift its mindset toward long-term planning and next-generation thinking.

We are leaving the next generation with a legacy of debt, cultural confusion, and institutional decay. This is a challenge and an opportunity. We must soberly read the changing signs of our times, adjust our strategic execution, and pass down a well-fortified repository of faith, wisdom, and resource for them to take the Kingdom forward. We need to are building an infrastructure that will support our children and our children’s children as they advance the banner of Christ into the decades ahead.

The Good News: The Multitudes of the Harvest
Before we examine the sobering geopolitical and socio-economic challenges of our day, we must pause to celebrate and anchor ourselves in the incredible historical victories of the recent past. We do not look out at the world through a lens of fear or defeatism. Rather, we stand on a mountain of divine blessing.

Let us praise the Lord for how He moved in the latter half of the twentieth century. The Baby Boomer generation (1946–1965) was used by the Holy Spirit to spark a global explosion of faith. Through dynamic missionary expansion, indigenous revivals, and pioneering media evangelism, they witnessed the worldwide Pentecostal and Charismatic movement grow to an astonishing 650 million believers globally. When we look across the broader spectrum of our global family, combining all Bible-believing Evangelicals, we are looking at a vibrant, cross-cultural, and resilient family of over 750 million believers worldwide.

This is the great baseline of our current reality. The geographical center of gravity for the Church has shifted to the Global South—Latin America, Africa, and Asia—creating a multi-ethnic global force that is unprecedented in church history. We are not a dying minority; we are a vast, cross-continental harvest. This explosion of numbers, resources, and indigenous leadership forms the strong foundation of faith upon which the next generation must now build. Our children are not starting from scratch; they are inheriting a global network of faith, prayer, and institutional presence. It is from this position of historical victory and spiritual strength that we courageously face the global crises threatening our future.

The Core Challenge: The 4 D's Challenging the Three Commissions
To successfully navigate the next 50 years, the next generation must understand the nature of the global crises that challenge our divine mandates. As Evangelical believers, our mission has always been anchored in three great mandates:

1. The Dominion Commission (Genesis 1:26), which calls us to reflect God's image and exercise godly stewardship over all creation.
2. The Fruitfulness Commission (Genesis 1:28), which commands us to be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and build godly family structures.
3. The Discipleship Commission (Matthew 28:19), which mandates that we make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything Christ commanded.

Today, a quartet of massive, systemic cultural and material shifts—which we will call The 4 D’s—presents a direct challenge and opportunity to the execution of these three commissions. We must analyze these signs of the times with sober, biblical discernment and pastoral clarity.
And I make this bold assertion: If we execute our Lord's Three Great Commissions with boldness and Spirit filled power then we solve the universal crises now facing the world of the next generation.

1. Depopulation (The Crisis of the Family)
For generations, the global Church assumed that population growth would continue unabated. However, one of the most stark signs of our times is the collapsing global birthrate. Across the industrialized world, and increasingly within developing nations, fertility rates have plunged far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. We are facing a distinct lack of babies being born, coupled with the rapid fragmentation of traditional, biblical family structures.
This demographic winter poses a direct challenge to the Fruitfulness Commission of Genesis 1:28, where God commanded humanity to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth". The family is not merely a social contract; it is the primary engine of the Kingdom of God, designed to propagate the image of God across generations. When a society ceases to value children, and when the church fails to model robust, multigenerational family life, the foundational unit of creation stewardship begins to erode.

The next generation cannot view children as an economic liability or a lifestyle hindrance. We must re-establish a cultural agenda that honors marriage, celebrates the blessing of large families, and protects the sanctity of life from conception to natural conclusion. If the Church does not multiply biologically and spiritually, we voluntarily cede the future to ideologies that do not fear the Lord and will further depopulate the earth.

2. Debt (The Crisis of Stewardship)
The global economic landscape is currently defined by an unprecedented phenomenon: staggering, ever-higher levels of national, corporate, and personal debt. Modern economies have decoupled wealth from productivity, choosing instead to live on borrowed assets and fiat expansion. By pulling economic value forward from future generations to pay for present luxuries, modern society is effectively enslaving its children.
This systemic financial destruction directly challenges our mandate to exercise the Dominion Commission of Genesis 1:26. God called us to subdue the earth and manage its resources as free, independent stewards under His sovereignty. Scripture explicitly warns us about the spiritual and practical realities of financial leverage: "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).

When our young families, our local ministries, and our national economies are drowning in debt, our capacity for radical generosity, missionary funding, and long-term kingdom investment is severely constrained. Living on borrowed wealth compromises our spiritual independence and tethers the work of the Gospel to the volatile whims of global financial markets. The new agenda demands a return to biblical financial stewardship, aggressive debt elimination, and the establishment of generational wealth that can fund global missions without institutional hindrance.

And we have the Biblical solution: God's Jubilee Economy!

3. Depletion (The Crisis of the Earth)
As stewards of God's creation, we must look honestly at the material condition of our globe. We are witnessing the rapid depletion of critical natural resources, including easily accessible energy, vital industrial minerals, and the fertile agricultural soils necessary to sustain life. Industrialized consumerism has treated the earth as a limitless warehouse to be strip-mined for short-term profit, rather than a sacred garden to be cultivated for long-term sustainability.

This resource crisis directly impacts our execution of the Dominion Commission (Genesis 1:26), which calls us to responsibly cultivate, manage, and protect the earth. Biblical dominion is never an endorsement of reckless exploitation; it is a mandate for righteous husbandry. God formed man from the dust of the ground to keep and care for the environment He created.

When agricultural soils fail, when clean water is scarce, and when energy costs skyrocket, it is the poor and vulnerable who suffer first and most severely. The next generation of Christians must lead the way in developing innovative agricultural technologies, clean energy solutions, and sustainable resource management. We must reclaim a robust, biblical theology of creation care—not out of pantheistic environmentalism, but out of a deep love for the Creator and a pastoral commitment to preserving the physical foundation of human flourishing for future generations.

4. Degeneration (The Crisis of Society & Relationship)
Finally, we must confront the relational and moral degeneration driven by rapid, unchecked technological shifts. While digital interconnectivity promised to bring us closer together, it has instead fractured genuine human connection. Hyper-individualism, social media algorithms, and virtual isolation have eroded our capacity for deep, face-to-face community, while contributing to a breakdown of societal morality and a crisis of mental health.

This relational fragmentation strikes at the very heart of the Discipleship Commission of Matthew 28:19. True biblical discipleship cannot be automated, digitized, or reduced to content consumption on a screen. It is an intensely relational, life-transforming process that requires physical presence, shared life, and deep spiritual accountability. The Apostle Paul modeled this when he wrote to the Thessalonians, noting that he was well-pleased to share with them "not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us" (1 Thessalonians 2:8).
The Psalmist expresses this wonderfully (Ps 68:7) "For places the lonely in families"

There is an epidemic of loneliness in the world of the unmarried, the single, the isolated. They need family. God's family

If our young people cannot communicate deeply, resolve conflict in love, or commit to a local covenant community, our capacity to build mature, resilient disciples collapses. The new agenda must prioritize the reclamation of real-world relationships. We must intentionally build spaces for radical hospitality, deep spiritual mentoring, and robust community life that can withstand the isolating forces of our digital age.

Conclusion: A New Agenda for the Unshakable Kingdom
The "end of the world" theology of the Boomer Generation is passing away along with the institutional and doctrinal structures that supported it. The dying and death of "Zionism" will finish it and with it "Christian Zionism"

And with it the theology that we can leave all these issues for Jesus and the new Millennial Kingdom that will soon come after He takes us out of the world.

These sobering "signs of the times"—depopulation, debt, depletion, and degeneration—call for a renewed, courageous, and clear-headed strategy from the global Church. We cannot afford to be passive spectators of cultural decay, nor can we retreat into a posture of fear and alarmism. The challenges before us are immense, but they do not catch our Sovereign God by surprise. He has already equipped us with everything necessary to overcome.

We also cannot leave these challenges to the governments and corporations and institutions that caused them in the first place.

The Pentecostal, Charismatic and Evangelical expressions of the Church need to tackle these issues. There are many other church expressions not part of our fellowship....but they are all dying out!

We are the only ones growing.

And one of the most exciting things I see worldwide in our community is the incredible diversity of skills the Lord has raised up for a time such as this.

We have the people, we have the skills, we have the technology but most important of all we have the mandate and the anointing of the Holy Spirit to recreate the world.

It is time for us to set a new agenda to Jubilee the nations.

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