You may or may not be aware that Mark suffered medical difficulties for over a year now. He encountered great difficulty, suffering the neurological loss of his limbs and bearing up under physical pain. Despite being treated by some of the best doctors, this was all compounded by tremendous difficulty in diagnosing the problem. Recently, the disease was found to be cancer. Significant expenditures not covered by health insurance were incurred through this trying time.

Dear friends and fellow laborers in Christ Jesus,
As you have heard, Mark Lowrey was recently called home to glory. This is to let you know of an opportunity to aid and assist Priscilla Lowrey with Mark’s medical and end-of-life expenses by contributing to a fund set up through the PCA Foundation.
Many of us who have labored in the gospel together with Mark Lowrey are aware of his significant and unusual contribution to the cause of Christ Jesus, especially through the work of Great Commission Publications and Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). In the former, he came into a calling at a time when his education, experience, vision, and leadership served to advance a ministry already in process. In the latter, he was the dreamer and visionary who with several others launched the campus ministry which had the distinction of utilizing ordained ministers trained and equipped in healthy evangelical and Reformed theology and directly connected to the Church.
You may or may not be aware that Mark suffered medical difficulties for over a year now. He encountered great difficulty, suffering the neurological loss of his limbs and bearing up under physical pain. Despite being treated by some of the best doctors, this was all compounded by tremendous difficulty in diagnosing the problem. Recently, the disease was found to be cancer. Significant expenditures not covered by health insurance were incurred through this trying time.
Many of our PCA constituents have been greatly concerned, not only about his health but also this unusual set of expenditures. Friends of Mark and Priscilla discussing these concerns came from a number of ministries: Geneva Benefits, RUF, the PCA Foundation, Great Commission Publications, and the PCA Administrative Committee, among others. We approached the PCA Foundation to see what could be done, and to our great gladness, learned from President Tim Townsend that the executive committee of the board of directors of the PCA Foundation approved the establishment of the Mark and Priscilla Lowrey Relief Fund.
We want to encourage you to join with us in giving to this fund. The uninsured expenses are expected to exceed $300,000. You may give:

By sending a check payable to the:PCA FoundationMark and Priscilla Lowrey Relief Fund1700 N Brown Road, Ste 103Lawrenceville GA 30043
Give Online:Mark and Priscilla Lowrey Relief FundFund Number: CP-1003: https://pcafoundation.com/online-giving/lowrey-relief-fund/
Please help as you are able.
Sincerely,
John RobertsonPaul KooistraPaul Joiner
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The next decade is going to be a challenging time, as we face continued cultural pressure, and as the cadre of Gen-X leaders approach retirement and will need replacing. We need to learn the lessons of mistakes made in the past, but also to continue to sustain and develop our strengths. 

I enjoyed listening to Kevin DeYoung, Justin Taylor and Colin Hansen reflecting on the Young, Restless and Reformed movement on Kevin’s podcast (you can find it here). They did not just have a ring-side seat watching the events that they discuss but were key participants. They set out to explain what the movement was, what it achieved, why it has fragmented and to assess the current context in the US. Although YRR was a US phenomenon, it has had a significant impact in the UK, and there are parallels with our own evangelical context.
In large measure they are positive. They regard the YRR movement as a period of revival which became institutionalised over time, as all revivals in history have done. I was especially struck by the comment that the Great Awakening only lasted 3-4 years. They point to the recovery of Calvinistic theology and a lasting publishing legacy of good books, especially by Crossway.
They acknowledge a number of weaknesses, including the fact that some leaders rose to prominence too quickly, or were accepted on the basis that they seemed to be on the right trajectory – although they also point out that the key leaders (eg Piper & Keller) were in their 50s before they came to greater prominence.
They make several astute observations, including identifying YRR as a Gen-X movement, that reacted against the Boomer-led ‘Seeker Sensitive’ movement. Some of the fragmentation has occurred as new generations (Millennials, Gen-Z) have emerged.
They also note the key role played by digital technology. YRR gained momentum because the internet has enabled sermons and resources to be widely shared, but before social media had taken centre stage. They rightly chart the subsequent difficulty of leadership in a social media age and the way in which any leader or movement that gains success is likely to be attacked and critiqued by its detractors. This has led to a growing reluctance of the younger generation to become leaders because they fear the toxic environment they will inhabit.
The YRR movement fostered a wide unity amongst reformed evangelicals from numerous streams and managed at points to maintain a broad tent, stretching from a John Macarthur to a Mark Driscoll. The unity was rooted in a Calvinistic soteriology and a commitment to complementarianism, which were perhaps key issues in the evangelical sub-culture at the time. The movement also addressed the reality of suffering, for example, in the way that it responded to Matt Chandler’s cancer diagnosis. People joined together on platforms at T4G and TGC.
There is no doubt that there has been significant fragmentation, and this is in part because of the difficulties the YRR movement has faced in dealing with new cultural and political challenges. They date the fragmentation as starting from 2015, and key issues that have caused it are the rise of Trump, race issues, Wokeism, COVID, the hyper-speed social change on eg LBGT issues and evangelical leadership scandals and implosions.
Kevin DeYoung makes the interesting observation that there was a presumption within the YRR that they were not just conservative in theology but also politically conservative and that this presumption has been shown to be false as the political divides in the US have become more sharply polarised. He refers to the way that black leaders were drawn into the YRR movement and its institutions, but did not fit because they had different political views on, for example, race. I found that incredibly sad, as it amounts to saying that the gospel unity was only superficial and that what really brought people together was an assumed political congruence. The lack of unity on culture and politics has been exposed by events.
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Ministering in the age of deconstruction will likely involve attentiveness in conversation, sensitivity to the Spirit, and the risk of investment—knowing the person might end up bailing anyway. Good doctors take time with their patients, and as ministers of the gospel we must too. 

Deconstruction is a symptom, not the root cause.
A proper diagnosis is important because—to continue the medical analogy—each underlying condition has a different cure.
I’ve walked as a pastor with many wrestling with deconstruction. While not exhaustive, these are the four most common root causes I’ve seen. Let’s look at the gospel’s treatment plan for each.
1. Church Hurt
Many who deconstruct have been wounded by abusive or manipulative church leaders, or generally unhealthy church cultures. Often these relationships were intimate and formative: the pastor you grew up with, the mentor you trusted. For others, the relationships are more distant. You grew up under the influence of leaders like Ravi Zacharias, Carl Lentz, or Mark Driscoll—whose teaching and charisma powerfully inspired you and formatively shaped you—but then the curtain got pulled back. The betrayal can make the whole thing look like a sham. The pain can be excruciating and disorienting.
It’s easier to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you feel like you’ve been drowning.
Church hurt is real. But deconstruction is a false cure.
The gospel’s remedy is lament. The psalms often protest mistreatment at the hands of God’s people and petition for his justice. David—who wrote a majority of the psalms—experienced abusive leadership firsthand from King Saul. Yet he sought the Righteous Judge with lament, groans, and tears.
You don’t need to ignore the church’s problems to protect its reputation. Instead, bring the problems boldly to God—like David did—and encounter a deeper intimacy with him as you’re honest about your wounds. Deconstruction bypasses this deeper healing. It’s a shortcut that internalizes grief rather than bringing it before God.
We’re not good at grief today. Much of deconstruction exists because it’s easier to move on than to be sad. But the only true and eternal cure for these deeper wounds is Christ.
The solution to bad community isn’t abandoning community; it’s good community. A healthy treatment plan will eventually involve rebuilding a good church community with good boundaries and good leaders. No community’s perfect, but trust can be rebuilt on the other side of lament, in healthy relationships centered on Jesus and life together as his people.
Diagnosis: church hurt
Cure: grief and lament
2. Poor Teaching
Some Christians have been led to believe they must choose between faith and science, because of poor teaching on Genesis 1. Others have been led to believe God is a vindictive sadist, from a popular caricature of hell. Best abandon Christian faith entirely on account of some dubious or sloppy teaching, right?
But if the problem is bad teaching, the solution is good teaching. There are great resources out there (such as TGC’s recent book, Before You Lose Your Faith, and video series “Gen Z’s Questions About Christianity”) and many wise pastors are walking patiently with those who wrestle with hard questions. Good teaching and good teachers exist.
Jesus is the best model of replacing bad teaching with good teaching. I love his refrain in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard it said…but I say” (Matt. 5–7). Jesus deconstructs bad teaching in order to reconstruct good teaching. Not all deconstruction is bad.
The bad form of deconstruction, as my friend Seth Troutt pointed out, is epitomized by the serpent’s question in the Garden: Did God really say? (Gen. 3). The enemy wants us to break trust with God and distance ourselves from him and his people. This is the way of most deconstruction today.
Jesus shows us a better way. In contrast to the serpent’s question, Jesus proclaims: You have heard it said …but I say. The serpent’s goal is to break trust; Jesus’s goal is to build trust. The serpent’s goal is to distance us from God; Jesus’s goal is to draw us closer to God.
Some mistakenly think Jesus is critiquing the Old Testament when he says “You have heard it said.” But Jesus loves his Hebrew Bible. He’s constantly saying things like, “It is written,” “Have you not read?” and “I have come not to abolish the Scriptures but to fulfill them.” Jesus has a higher view of the Old Testament than most of us do.
Jesus is critiquing not the Scriptures, but faulty traditions and insufficient interpretations. Not much has changed. Inaccurate caricatures and misreadings of Scripture are everywhere today, even promoted within some churches. 
We need to take good teaching seriously. Our refrain should be, You have heard it said, but Jesus says… I’ve written books on hell, judgment, holy war, sacrifice, wrath, and atonement, and I’m writing one on sex and gender. I’m often trying to confront popular caricatures of the Christian faith and replace them with a healthy, biblical, historic understanding. That’s one of TGC’s goals, too.
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