Today's Generation vs. Men Like Dat and Little Joe

I’m in Boston’s Logan Airport, listening to our President give a speech about Veterans. As I sit in Johnny Rocket’s, a place to get an awesome retro burger off the grill, I realize that this is the first Veteran’s Day without my grandfather, Josh Cruise, a.k.a, “Dat.” I gave him the handle “Dat-Dat” as a lady boy back in the 70’s. I guess I could not say Granddad. I don’t know, but it stuck.

Dat fought in WW2. He was an amazing man. He did not talk of the war much, but for some reason, he’d always tell me things when I’d ask. I guess a young boy doesn’t understand that many vets would just rather move on. Yet those stories fascinated me. Fighting in France. Walking on the sand of Normandy Beach. Staying in bombed out houses. Trading famous actress Marlene Dietrich his German Luger for a fifth of whiskey. Hearing him talk about guys named Little Joe, who carried his pillow in his backpack through the war. Staying in the cold snows of the German forest.

I have to wonder … does my generation have the guts those guys did? Honestly, I don’t think so. Overall, I don’t think my generation has the commitment to America that they did. I really don’t. I believe we’ve far too long listened to Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Bill Maher, and Bill Clinton instead of listening to Teddy Roosevelt, Oliver North, Ronald Regan, or Norman Schwartzkof. Why Oliver North? Wasn’t he the guy who lied to Congress? Yes. But he was literally taking the hit for the team. He let himself be the scapegoat … think about it … if what he did was so wrong, why did he receive so little punishment? (Because the government let him go lightly if he’d be the face to take the fall for Iran Contra.) What he did was honorable by taking the fall, not in lying, but in being loyal to go down with the ship.

The way I see it, most of America is like Sheryl Crow, who said, “I believe the best way to avoid war is to not have enemies.” Well Sheryl that’s great – sounds good. Feels good. If this were a college class on being politically correct … great gravy you’d get a 100 A+ with a smiley face. What happens, though, Sheryl, when people decide that whether or not you like it, they are just going to hate you and fly planes into your buildings, bomb your ships called the USS Kohl, and bomb your embassy buildings.

How do you negotiate with a group of people who say that the first point of the negotiating process is that you must die?!!

How do you treat that democratically? Sheryl’s a great singer, and a seemingly fine person, but God save us from this cancerous liberal mentality.

Honestly, I believe that most liberals today will stand by why our nation is just taken from us one piece at a time. Just standing there saying, “Please don’t be so mean. Let’s talk about this.” I wonder how successful Sean Penn’s movie career would be if he were to move to Iran and seek movie contracts there? He could, it’s a free country and he’s free to leave it. I wonder how well her songwriting and performing career would be if Natalie Maines and her other Dixie Chicks tried being country artists in Afghanistan?
I’m not speaking hate. I’m just asking some questions. I’m saying that the way we get to be free is through being the strongest people on earth who can preserve it. You keep your freedom through the threat of war.

Free nations do not attack free nations. That’s a historical truth. There has never been, in the history of the world, a democratically free country who has attacked another free country. Look it up and see for yourself. Yet to keep that freedom, we have to return to being men like my Dat and his fellas with him like Little Joe.

It’s those great men who gave us this freedom, and we’d better find more like them for our future because when we leave Iraq, there will be other 9/11 days in our future, and it’s then that we’ll have to look deep within to see if we have what it takes to preserve this country we call home.

Please Come To Boston ...

I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just feeling a wee bit pessimistic (not my usual caliber fo’ sho’), yet I’ve had something on my heart for a while and tonight it seemed only to deepen.

I’m sitting in a Radisson in the greater Boston area. I’m here for a conference where a lot of pastors/church leaders gather annually. And tonight I heard Henry Blackaby speak. Now a lot of you probably don’t know who he is, but he’s an older fella who, around the late 80’s, was really used by God to ignite churches across the US with a study he did called “Experiencing God.”

More on Blackaby in a minute.

The thing I’ve had on my mind … I believe the church is just losing the war. Now this is no shocker, and it’s not as if we’ve all be “unaware” of it until now! I’ll bet you’re going, “Wow, Cruise, you’re some gifted prophet – to recognize the decline of the church, as if there were no evidence prior to today!”

We’ve all known this, but I believe God has been dealing with me some on a few of the reasons where all of this stuff got started. Not that I’m a historian, nor do I want to be, but there’s something bothering me which I believe has something to do with the state of the church today and how we got here.

If I were to bottom line it, I’d say that we’ve been far down the road of playing “religion” – and it’s a “learned habit.” And we’ve been taught how to do it by our elders; not necessarily senior citizens, but in general many who have come before us who led our churches over the past 40 years.

I’m not blaming all of them because I for one don’t like placing “blame” nor do I like to use sweeping generalizations. Yet the truth of the matter is that in every church I’ve ever served the many of the people who were the “oldest” in the faith were the least spiritually mature. Now please don’t get me wrong. I’ve had many of older people, many in the WW2 generation, who’ve been great mentors to me. Shared much wisdom, and some great attitudes they possessed. Even still, I kid you not when I say that every single pastor I know has a difficult time getting his older crowd to embrace anything that doesn’t look, feel, taste, smell, and remind them of 1955. Every single pastor I know or have ever known does not enjoy dealing with his older crowd. Yet they won’t say it publicly. Because they fear the backlash.

I had one fella, who is 67 years old, tell me that our older folks have been the lifeblood of the church financially, and through holding much of the power in mainline churches, the direction of the church in general has been steered by them. Therefore, they never passed the torch to the younger crowd. Thus, we now have generations of people who have no real leadership maturity in the body. Wanting to preserve a way of life they once held dear, they did what church growth gurus often call, “Circle The Wagon.” That is, when threatened by the enemy (pop culture or a changing culture), you circle the wagon (the church) and keep the enemy out until they either quit bothering you (ain’t gonna happen) or until they come around to your way of thinking (really ain’t gonna happen because they are lost!).

Tonight Henry Blackaby said that the reason we can’t see a movement of God in our churches is because God’s people won’t repent, and they have “settled for being religious.” To the point that “we can’t even recognize when God is moving anymore.”

I want to make something clear: I realize that some folks will see me as picking on “old people.” If they do, that’s there right to be wrong! I’m not doing that in any way. I’m simply saying that at some point, we’ve got to recognize that the church can no longer try to sell nostalgia as genuine worship.

America isn’t coming back to God. Read the last book, it’s pretty clear!

What I’m dealing with is the fact that I believe the state of the American church today is basically like that of the children of Israel in Numbers 11-13. The older generations had to die out before any of the new could experience the promise. And at some point those of us in the “next generation” are going to have to say, “enough already … we are not afraid of the giants in that land. We want the best of what God has promised.”

Reggie McNeal in his book “The Present Future” prophetically said that today’s church has basically become a spiritual club where the club members (Christians) pay membership dues (tithes) and expect member services (ministries that serve ourselves).

If you treat yourself honestly, you’ll agree that the vast majority of what we do in the church today is self-serving. I had that revelation at the last church I pastored. I looked hard at where our budget money was going … and it was, for the most part, going to feed ministries that served those already saved. We may give money to missions, but our daily ministry life is, for the most part, serving our own needs. Not that we don’t want the outsiders to come in, but we’re expecting them to value what we value, like what we like, sing what we sing, and think what we think. Then, they can be in the club, too.

So here I am at the Radisson solving all the church’s problems. I know. Yet still I’m bothered by the fact that we’ve so easily admitted that culture has left us, when the hard reality is that we left it. So we cry out to God to do something about it. While we sit, stand, sing, listen, give, and pray. Then go home as if He’s just not ready to move yet. So we move on with our Sundays. Right over to lunch after church, only to face another week, and then do it all again.

At some point, today’s young leaders are going to have to choose to live life differently. Perhaps best said last night by Henry Blackaby that we must choose “to have a qualitatively different relationship with Christ Jesus.”

John Denver Was Right

I've always loved John Denver. Never forget that day the news was showing his downed plane in the Pacific. One of my favorite songs was "Back Home Again."


"Hey it's good to be back home again. Sometimes this old farm feels like a long lost friend."

My travel life is not too bad, but it comes in spurts, and this fall is one of the big spurts. It's tough to be away. And it makes me sit in awe at how some men can be totally uninterested in being a dad when their kids are dying for face time. I just don't get that. You have to pull a major plug to disconnect from your kids. I just can't imagine it.

My dad was great at investing in me. I guess you often parent the way you were parented, and he was, thank God, a super example in that area.

My son just came up and said, "lap." He wants up here. He just got through eating "toast." His life is consumed in one word sentences. "Milk" ... "Eat" ... "Boon" (balloon) ... "Shide" (outside). It's a genuis concept, really. I think I should employ it more. Say one word, and people give you exactly what you want. Makes you think about our society's obsession with communication and marketing doesn't it? We say too much and achieve so little. Like ads on the radio ... every single one of them drive me nuts. They are unbelievably painful to the mind and ears.

One word sentences ... get what you want. Yep, that's where I'm headed. Ah, who am I kidding. I can't even think in one word sentences. Maybe Cole can learn that if you can't be bright, be brief!