Swash

What the Surveys Don't Say About the Next Generation

Swash is a fun term I love from the world of surfing. Swash, or fore wash, is a turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken. Picture yourself standing on the beach shoreline deep enough that the water covers the top of your feet. The waves crash, and the water rushes over, around, and perhaps under your feet. That’s called swash. But swash has two phases: Uprush and backwash. Uprush is what I just described—the water rushing up the beach. Backwash is the feeling you get under your feet when the water begins to rush back out to see, taking water and the sand under your feet with it. Uprush lets you know a wave happened. Backwash lets you know another is coming. Even surfing offshore, one notices the current pulling out to sea, while the water level drops. The backwash makes the wave.

I’ve been asked what I think about the state of the next generation on college campuses in the last few months than have in the rest of my life put together. The reason for the frequent inquiries is at least two-fold. First, there are numerous surveys, articles and books leading us to believe the next generation, generally, hates religion, church, God, and is completely disillusioned with all things Christianity.

We older folks often carry with us a sense that, “the kids are not alright.” We do so because it is natural to be concerned about what is coming after us. Where does the worry come from? We worry in part because of what we read, what we hear, and some anecdotal evidence provided by some encounters with teens or college students out in society.

We are now living in the soon-ending backwash—an era where things are shallowing, but in a way that gives birth to a new wave. People with boots on the ground can tell. Something is going on with the next generation, and it’s good. Asbury. Auburn. Faulkner. Churches. Unquestionably, Pepperdine can tell.

Here’s my answer to the question of the next generation (16-25-year-olds) from a spiritual standpoint: This generation has more spiritual potential for world change than any I’ve seen—and the swell has begun. Just before the swell is the backwash. That’s where we are now. We feel the water heading back out to sea under our feet and focus on that, rather than remembering such backwash is what helps create the next wave.

I know what the surveys tell us. They point out the backwash.

I know what our collective gut has told us. Backwash.

Backwash, backwash, backwash, but no vision for the wave that is forming as I type. We shouldn’t be looking at the water rushing over/under our feet right now. We should be looking offshore, because the backwash is feeding the next wave, which is near or already here.

I see hopeful, energetic young people hungry for God. They prefer a lower drama, more positive, less politically oriented Christianity. They desire intergenerational relationships and are hungry for a functional (not dysfunctional) family. In fact, dysfunction bothers them more than previous generations. They are more naturally prayerful than previous generations—it comes so innately to them. They are hungry for Scripture—because they haven’t grown up with it as much as previous generations did. It’s fresher to them. Most of all:

They want to experience the true God.

All of Him.

Transcendence and Immanence.

We can help them with that and allow them to bring their gifts to the future. Or we can spend time reading cynical articles and books about them that make them appear faithless and us feel irrelevant and hopeless (upwash). Or, we can shrug our shoulders and go about our lives.

What a mistake that would be!

In their immensely helpful book, Leadership and Self-Deception, the Arbinger Institute researchers note this (memorize it, get a tattoo of it, and write in on the walls of your house): "No matter what we're doing on the outside, people respond primarily to how we're feeling about them on the inside. And how we're feeling about them depends on whether we're in or out of the box concerning them."

How we feel about the next generation matters. Our influence upon them is likely to be proportionate to how we feel about them. Our lack of impact may have as much to do with our cynicism, judgment, and generational caricature as anything. How can we expect to have influence with people we don’t respect?

There is something else we need to consider, as well. People tend to live into what they are told about themselves. If a child is told, from birth and throughout his or her life that they are no good, dumb, ugly, etc. They come to believe the story they are told about themselves. Alternatively, if they are told they are depressed, sad, crazy, self-centered, soft, pre-occupied with their phones, aspiritual, faithless, etc., they will have a greater tendency to fulfill those prophecies.

We not only need to change our perspective on the next generation—we need to tell them what their future is in Christ. We need to speak life to them. Not because they are the center of the universe, but because Christ is, and we are people of Good News. We are about the ministries of reconciliation and hope. Don’t worry, the tough stuff will come for them. But they will be in a better position to deal with the trials of life from a position of health than hopelessness.

And so will we.

Ignore the swash. Look for the swell. It’s just offshore.