Don't Make Me Think About This

Yahoo! News posted a story on Tuesday about why teens and young adults are leaving (or not returning to) church. Actually very little of it is new. It has been building. Here are several of the comments from the article:

* Churches use outdated methods of Sunday School, rotating the same Bible stories year-in and year-out without relating the morals to daily living. When kids want to know why someone like Gabrielle Giffords was shot, they don't need another lesson on Noah's Ark. (Who remembers flannelgraphs?)

* Teens can only eat so much pizza at church social events before they see through this thinly veiled attempt at keeping them occupied and out of trouble. (Faith-based baby-sitting for teenagers to keep them "off-the-street" and away from "bad people.")

* Those surveyed say there aren't enough good reasons given for holding Bible beliefs other than "the preacher says so..." or "your parents say so." (Sorry. No wrestling with the questions, let alone some difficult answers.)

* Young people can see that the Church in general hasn't yet been able to conquer racial reconciliation, domestic abuse and the rampant church divorce rate...sometimes in their own families. (And we don't even talk about the issues here, either. And don't forget addiction, alcoholism, and...)

* Older generations won't blend a moderate amount of contemporary music with traditional hymns, to show young people that newer ideas are respected. (Why can't they sing like we used to? Or like we had to?)

* Or, the Church feels pressured to impress their younger members with new technological avenues. So they discard all the old hymns that were written out of peoples' struggles with life, pride and suffering. Thus, the newer generations don't hear about how God can help them through hard times. (How can I be found if I don't admit I was ever lost or learn to see if I don't even admit I'm blind?)
--Link

Okay, maybe I'm being a little harsh. I have been through more ups and downs of "youth ministry" in the past 45+ years than I care to remember. I have been part of the generation that wanted "relevance" and then discovered "ancient-future" and is now into a "new monasticism." Meanwhile the average every day church down the street or across town is feeling lost.

There are no easy answer, I have come to believe. The easiest answer is to admit there is no ONE answer. What works at St. What's-His-Name Church won't work at the Feel-Good-With-God Church. Neither of them will work with the "Let's-Get-Down-With-God Church" or the "St. Tradition Church." As much as I wrestle with all these the answer is to find what touches our souls- and the souls of our families and friends.

Or is it? To be honest, I get very lost in all this. I am getting to a point where I think Fred Craddock, super-preacher and professor, was right. The best way to preach the Gospel is to allow it to be overheard as we speak it ourselves. Then to use words if necessary, as has often been said.

Or is it?

On and on we can go. So let's just stop and say all of the above is true, none of it is the answer, and perhaps all we can do is to follow the words of Micah:

what does the Lord require of you

• but to do justice,
• and to love kindness,
• and to walk humbly with your God?

Teens and Fake Christians

There was an interesting article on CNN a few days ago. It was talking about youth and church, and probably more importantly, faith and the faith of young people. Kenda Creasy Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of Almost Christian, a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.

Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.

She says this "impostor'' faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.

"If this is the God they're seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust," Dean says. "Churches don't give them enough to be passionate about."

And that's just for starters. But, she says, there are reasons to have hope. In her interviews for the book she did find committed Christian teens:

No matter their background, Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future.

From my work with teenagers over many years, I would agree with her assessment of teens with what she calls a "commitment". For many in my tradition that faith community was the summer camp and sometimes a group that did the mission trips. At times it was Sunday school or a particular group of young people that grew up together. In the end work with youth that focused on fun and games was usually not successful in the long run.

She goes on to name, what I think underlies many of the problems with youth ministry in churches.

Some adults don't expect much from youth pastors. They simply want them to keep their children off drugs and away from premarital sex.


Others practice a "gospel of niceness," where faith is simply doing good and not ruffling feathers. The Christian call to take risks, witness and sacrifice for others is muted, she says.


"If teenagers lack an articulate faith, it may be because the faith we show them is too spineless to merit much in the way of conversation," wrote Dean, a professor of youth and church culture at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Elizabeth Corrie directs a program called YTI -- the Youth Theological Initiative at Emory University in Georgia. She goes on to name another problem often found in churches:

She says pastors often preach a safe message that can bring in the largest number of congregants. The result: more people and yawning in the pews.


"If your church can't survive without a certain number of members pledging, you might not want to preach a message that might make people mad," Corrie says. "We can all agree that we should all be good and that God rewards those who are nice."

What can a parent do then?

Get "radical," Dean says.

She says parents who perform one act of radical faith in front of their children convey more than a multitude of sermons and mission trips.

A parent's radical act of faith could involve something as simple as spending a summer in Bolivia working on an agricultural renewal project or turning down a more lucrative job offer to stay at a struggling church, Dean says.

But it's not enough to be radical -- parents must explain "this is how Christians live," she says.

To which all I can say is "Amen."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/