As a Christian university president, I talk to a lot of students, and what I notice most is not doubt, it’s fatigue. Many of them grew up with more Christian content available to them than any generation in history, and a surprising number still tell me they feel spiritually dry. That gap has been on my mind for a while now, and I do not think it is a generational problem. I think it is a Holy Spirit problem, and it goes back further than any of us in leadership today.
The modern Western church has a real blind spot around the third Person of the Trinity. Some corners of the church treat Him mainly as a source of emotional experience, something you feel in a worship set. Other corners barely mention Him at all, worshiping the Father and the Son while leaving the Spirit as a doctrine on paper rather than a presence anyone actually leans on.
Neither one matches what we see in the New Testament. The early church was not powered by good strategy or gifted communicators. It ran entirely on the active presence of the Holy Spirit, a Person with a mind, a will, and emotions, who can be grieved, who intercedes for us, and who seals us for what is still coming.
If we want our churches to hold up under the pressure of this cultural moment, we have to actually depend on Him again, not just talk about Him. Here is where I would start.
1. Trade information for transformation.
We have access to more sermons, podcasts, and study tools than the apostles ever had, and it has not made us more spiritually mature. Paul makes the distinction plainly in 2 Corinthians 3:6: "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." You can know a passage cold and still be untouched by it if the Spirit has not done anything with it in you. He is the one who takes the text and makes it move, convicting us of sin and reshaping us into the likeness of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). Studying Scripture works best when we treat it as an encounter, not an assignment.
2. Choose spiritual power over polished production.
I understand the pull toward better production and sharper branding. I have made those calls myself. But there is a real risk in getting good at the presentation and losing the power underneath it.
God tells Zerubbabel in Zechariah 4:6, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit." When Jesus sent the early church out in Acts 1:8, He did not tell them to build anything. He told them to wait for power first. What followed turned the Roman Empire upside down without a marketing plan. If we want to reach people who have stopped trusting institutions, our production values are not the thing that will do it.
3. Let the Spirit build the unity we cannot manufacture.
Our culture is deeply divided, and our churches often end up divided along the same lines, full of people who already agree with each other on almost everything. That is not really unity. It is just comfort.
Paul's instruction in Ephesians 4:3 is worth sitting with: he tells believers to maintain the unity the Spirit has already created, not to go build one themselves. The Spirit is the one who binds together people who would otherwise have nothing in common, Jew and Gentile, slave and free (Galatians 3:28). A church only becomes a real witness to a divided world once its unity is obviously not something it engineered on its own.
4. Let Him be your Comforter, not just your teacher.
Most of the young adults I talk to are anxious about something, often several things at once. Modern tools for managing that anxiety have real value, and I would never dismiss them. But Jesus did not only leave us with coping strategies. He left us a Person.
In John 14:16, He promises, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever." The word translated Helper is Paraclete, sometimes rendered Advocate or Comforter. Paul writes in Romans 8:15 that we did not receive a spirit of fear but the Spirit of adoption, the one who lets us call God "Abba, Father." That is not just something to believe. It is someone to lean on when the anxiety actually shows up.
Take one step this week.
Before you check your phone tomorrow morning, try one honest sentence: "Holy Spirit, I cannot do this today on my own. I am yielding my mind, my words, and my decisions to you." Say it once, mean it, and see what changes.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/mitchellleach
Before becoming president of SEU, Dr. Ingle held leadership positions in higher education, pastoral ministry, and the nonprofit sector. He is widely recognized as an expert in organizational turnarounds, having successfully led teams through transformational change in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle.
Prior to entering professional ministry, Dr. Ingle spent a decade as a television sports anchor for NBC and CBS affiliates, beginning his career at the age of 18 in Bakersfield, California, and concluding in Los Angeles. During his career, he covered major professional sports teams and interviewed iconic athletes including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Pete Rose, Muhammad Ali, and Carl Lewis.
