The only way to reach our young people is no longer to call on them to maintain the status quo. Instead we must teach them to be revolutionary, as Jesus was revolutionary against both Sadducees and Pharisees. In this biblical sense we must be revolutionary. If we are going to say anything meaningful to our generation, whether for individual conversion or for cultural transformation in which Christ is Lord of all, we must build upon the understanding that the generation in which we live is plastic. "Plastic" is a good word here, for plastic is synthetic and it also has no natural grain or form. The church has failed to speak anything like the way God would have had it speak. It largely acted as though the Christian base could be removed, and it would make no practical difference to society, culture or its own young people. The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (Complete Works, vol. 4, p. 24)
Suppose we awoke tomorrow morning and we opened our Bibles and found two things had been taken out, not as the liberals would take them out, but really out. Suppose God had taken them out. The first item missing was the real empowering of the Holy Spirit, and the second item the reality of prayer. Consequently, following the dictates of Scripture, we would begin to live on the basis of this new Bible in which there was nothing about the power of the Holy Spirit and nothing about the power of prayer. Let me ask you something: what difference would there be from the way we acted yesterday? Do we really believe God is there? If we do, we live differently. The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (Complete Works, vol. 4, p. 40)
What men find ugly is what they see in Christians who hold to the orthodox doctrine that men are lost, but show no signs of compassion. This is what is ugly. This is what causes men in our generation to be turned off by evangelicalism....
If we are Christians and do not have upon us the calling to respond to the lostness of the lost and a compassion for those of our kind for this life and eternity, our orthodoxy is ugly. And it is ugly in the presence of anybody who's an honest person. And more than that, orthodoxy without compassion is ugly to God. Death in the City (Complete Works, vol. 4, pp. 285, 286)
