If you get this clear in your thinking, as a parent, you will know how to prepare your kids for vocations of the next wave of technology.
This picture of the future also shows Bible believers the challenge today. The picture of a pastor, evangelist, and Bible teacher in the New Testament is a life of service. There will always be a need for Christians who serve others. Technology cannot figure out the need and meet it where service is the need.
If you are a pastor, are you preparing your young people to serve, both in life vocation AND in the Lord's Church. Faithfulness to Christ has ALWAYS included serving others. If your idea of the perfect church is a place where people "show up every time the doors are open," you are growing robots, not servants.
Here is a situation to illustrate the point:
You have an older lady in the church who is shut in due to health issues. You have a young man in the assembly who has zeal to serve the Lord. Could you find a way for this young man to minister to the shut in lady on Sunday morning? If you are a clone of recent dogma, no, absolutely not. The young man must be sitting in a pew on Sunday morning listening to YOU preach.
Or, suppose you ask this young man to join you during the week as you study for your Sunday sermons. Many of you have stopped studying anyway, so this will terrify you. To those of you who work at the Gospel and study to show yourself approved unto God, this could work. The young man will be prepared to go Sunday morning and minister the Word to the shut in lady.
You will boast of your live online feed of the Sunday service. That is robot service. It is not personal and does not allow for someone to be present and intuitive as to the lady's needs and comprehension. A "live feed" is dead works to living people.
And, you will have prepared a young man to serve in both open society AND in the Lord's Church.
But, you have noticed something, right? The future for Christian pastors will be in personal training of servants. Most of you diddle heads will refuse to go to the trouble.
It is all about going back to the methods of the Apostle Paul:
1 Corinthians 4:17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church.
1 Thessalonians 3:1 Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone;
2 And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:
Acts 19:22 So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season.
23 And the same time there arose no small stir about that way.
1 Corinthians 16:10 Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear: for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do.
11 Let no man therefore despise him: but conduct him forth in peace, that he may come unto me: for I look for him with the brethren.
1 Timothy 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;
2 Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine,
It is very clear from these texts that preparing young Christians to serve the Church is hard work. The end of the process is that the servant can be trusted to go forth and repeat what the Holy Spirit did in the teacher.
Are YOU up to it? Or, does everything in the local church have to revolve around your shoulders?
