Filling the Christian Generation Gap - 2

From HERE
Paul Fleischmann, Chair of the World Evangelical Alliance Youth Commission, says integrating youth into leadership positions is the key to the future.
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Fleischmann agrees that young people must be integrated into the church as a fellow group with its own culture – not as a mere subgroup of a larger demographic cohort.

“We’ve often looked as youth as part of family and not as a separate entity,” he said. “But over the last 20 years or so, the MTV generation has given a different feel to the youth culture and showed us there is a definite youth culture around the world.”

One of Fleischmann's main roles in the World Evangelical Alliance is to help set up special youth ministries in each nation that needs it.

“We want to help the church have a vision to do special ministry to the youth, to reach every young person, and to disciple them. But each nation has different needs, and we don’t pretend to know what those needs are,” he said. “We, the Youth Commission, are just trying to connect the nations to help them accomplish their goals.”

Exact figures show there are 223 chapters of the World Evangelical Alliance in the world, but only 60 with youth commissions. Therefore, one of Fleischmann’s foremost goals as Chair of the Youth Commission is to expand his ministry’s reach across the 200-plus WEA chapters.

This November, Fleishmann will be traveling to India as part of that plan. The trip, which he calls “one of the most historic," will challenge the top 20 international leaders from the Commission to find out how they can expand their reach.

“Our big job is to establish as many of those youth commissions as there are evangelical alliances,” he said. “We want to set up leadership so every single young person in the world can be reached.”