the state of christianity and youth…
Posted by: stuartdelony in Adam LaRoche, Blogroll, Christianity, Church, Conservative, Uncategorized, christians, emergent, evangelism, youth 
This whole thing came rolling out of an blog (by Chris Summerfeld) I read today:
Stephen Crittenden from the ABC’s the Religion Report said this on a show a couple of weeks a go.
In the last couple of weeks, The New York Times ran a very interesting article, in which it claimed that evangelical leaders in the united States were warning each other that their teenagers are abandoning the Protestant faith in droves. And I’ll give you some figures that compared with 35% of their baby boomer parents, and 65% of their grandparents, only four percent of this current American teenage generation will be Bible believers.
This paints a pretty bleak picture and one that I assume is somewhat similar in Australia. So what’s the problem? I think it’s more than just how we do church…
What was really amazing is the fact I just had a conversation about this with a student who want’s to quit going to church. I work for a christian para-church org with youth. The student had lost his faith in the church (and wrapped up his faith in Christ with it).
You can look at this 2 ways (I choose the latter). 1)Things are going to get worse with the youth leaving their faith (or never having one) or 2)They just don’t connect with organized religion. That doesn’t mean that Christ is irrelevant to them, but so often they can’t see the difference between Christ and the church and chuck the whole thing.
We need to get back to our roots and quit doing church and start to simply walk out our faith on a daily basis. The students need to see faith in action, not simply tradition and routine. We are called to be image bearers of Christ.
When they look at church, they see nothing that fills that Christ shaped hole in their lives. They have a need, and the church isn’t filling it. Is that their fault? Should we say ‘woe to the youth’!?! We need to look in the mirror and look at ourselves.
What’s encouraging is that the youth of today have need for Christ and want it… they just don’t want church (as it stands today). There is new life in Christ and that’s what we all need to see.
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It is a desperate time when we start to attach hope to the church and not to Christ. Which has been prescisely what we have lead our kids to belive. What is worse is we expect them to devote themselves to it just like we have, even when they realize that there is no hope there. The outcome is their rejection in the imige of Christ that the Church is presenting them. This inturn leads them to believe that they are ultimatly rejecting Christ, when in reallity it is only an obscured preseption of Him. It is then our responsibility to seperate salvation from the church and place it back on Christ so that they can be introduced to who He really is. Giving them an opportunity to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which the church(me and you) can nurter and encourge.