Article by Bill Lewis, Director ATMI

This new generation will have to be a people who do not care what the world thinks. Being irrelevant will be their calling card. They will be world changers because the world does not have a grip on them. This new generation will have to be free thinkers in order to set themselves free from the bondages of humanism and other philosophies that poison the soul.

There is a crying need to once again come in the power of the Holy Spirit. This generation will not give itself to useless debate and mind games. Once you touch the power of God, move in it; the philosophies of man do not hold a candle to it.

It is time for us to begin to be irrelevant. It is time to be so different that it pleases God, not man.

I do not believe we will have a reformation. I believe that there is such corruption in the church that many of its expressions will be wiped away. The emergence of a new generation of saints will come forth. Not that we have not seen people like this before in church history, but that it is time for this to happen again, in our day. I seriously believe that we are a part of this. We may only see the beginnings, but we can hasten this movement forward by becoming irrelevant to the world. We can stop compromising. We can stop worrying about being acceptable. We can proclaim the truth. We can renew our minds to uphold God's truth and quit waffling. We can quit worrying about being called weird. It is good to be different.

I think the world has a gross miscalculation of the power of God and the power that is unleashed when people believe. We have been kicked and goaded, been misinformed and lied to, had our own Bible twisted and interpreted by ungodly people and thrown back in our face as the real truth. It is time to stop it. We have allowed Secular Humanists to declare war on God and the church, and we have sat back and allowed it, all the while catering to them with the hope that they would change and believe, if we just served them enough coffee and made our services short enough and our music relevant enough, and if we just were more inclusive and tolerant.

Well, it did not work. It will never work. The church is not to be a dressed up, a better version of the world; it is meant to be the Kingdom of God. It will look different, it will be different, it will be at enmity with the world, and it will be irrelevant.

I am tired of hearing apologies for who we are. I am tired of excuses for speaking in tongues, of faith, of creationism, for healings and miracles.

If you want to remain relevant, you will continue to swim in a sea of compromise. If you choose to be irrelevant, you can move on, obeying God, living as a Christian and just accept the fact that you are DIFFERENT.