Hi Gerard/Jerry, I have been trying to understand your four comments (the first of which I think you posted in error?) but I think you may have misunderstood the tenor of this piece.  It is in no way a complaint but an honest recognition that the Facebook generation is completely other that any which we have ever known.  I don't know whether this is a U.S. experience yet or whether the U.K. has transitioned more rapidly into this context; perhaps you are able to advise there?

In any event, I am glad that your experience of following Jesus has been all joy and that you have found the 'toil' of spiritual disciplines to be helpful in showing you where you are 'off the mark', to use your phrases.  I wholeheartedly agree that this is their purpose and that, used rightly, their pain is tiny compared with the joy we gain through learning to abide more fully in the Father's love.  However - and it is this which is the crux of my argument - it takes maturity to think this way as well as an ability to choose what is hard for the sake of the joy set before us, yet this is something which is increasingly not hard-wired into the Facebook generation, who often see no reason to pay the price of discipline now for the sake the joy of a life more rooted in Christ later.  I think this tendency is partly attributable to postmodern culture, as well as this generation's experience of liminality in their context: in essence, everything seems temporary to them and the present is often the only reality they can conceive because the future seems so unsure.

Hopefully, this explains where I am coming from.  I love this generation; they are my primary ministry context and I have been making disciples amongst them, as well as leading a church full of them, for about six years now.  They are the future of the church and, though they bring challenges like any other (half-)generation such as mine or yours, I trust that God will work sovereignly through his Spirit to give them (and us, I pray) a new vision of his glory in Christ.  <em>And that, friend, will be enough for them and for me!</em>