Everybody seems to think Millennials and Gen Z are losing their religion. Read just about any Christian magazine or website, and you’ll find articles and editorials mourning the lack of faith among these generations. Go to any Christian conference, and you’ll hear all about how young adults are biblically illiterate, spiritually uncommitted, and once young Christians leave for college, half of them also leave the Church.
The Church’s response to this crisis has often been to try and make our churches cooler. We seem to think that if we just give the kids what they’re looking for, they’ll keep coming back to church. While there may be some truth to that idea, the reality is that most churches have been dead wrong in their assessment of what young adults are looking for.
From catchy sermon topics and worship leaders in trendy clothes to exotic youth “mission” trips and indoor playgrounds that rival Disneyland, churches have gone to extraordinary lengths to capture the attention of young people today. While it’s well-intentioned, it doesn’t seem to be sticking through their college years and early adulthood.
Our first six years at The Story Church have been amazing, but if we’re going to fully realize God’s dream for this church, we need to be strategic about how we plan to raise our children and students together. Obviously, we want them to grow in their faith and to know Jesus personally so they will cling to him once they leave the nest. And we hope that, one day, they will share the love of Jesus with their children as well.
Young Christians today face more choices than any generation before. They are also asking more questions about God. For past generations of Americans, religious identity and practice were largely assumed, but for Millennials and Gen Z, things like believing in God, going to church, and tithing are optional choices in competition with other appealing alternatives. Many (if not most) of their friends in school belong to a different faith tradition or claim no faith at all. This raises questions about pluralism; thoughtful young Christians want to know if being a Christian means believing God will send your non-Christian friends to hell. They’re also asking questions about the Bible, the afterlife, science and supernaturalism, sexuality and gender, marriage and relationships, money and possessions, and about a million other things.
How can a church like The Story effectively deal with these valid questions and doubts? The importance of this question cannot be overstated. For too many young adults, the Church is not a safe place to doubt. Too often, the Church is where sincere doubts are met with pat answers and more pizza, kids! Too many Millennials and Gen Zers ask questions at school and in coffee shops that they would never ask at church, because in their experience, church is where questions go to die.
Encouraging kids to ask their questions and explore their doubts is essential to faith development in the 21st Century. Questions and doubts can function as springboards for deeper conversations and stronger faith. In generations past, our model for Christian education was content-based; we expected young people to readily consume and digest Christian curriculum. To reach this generation, however, our model for Christian education must evolve.
Instead of merely teaching young Christians what to think about God, we should begin teaching them how to think about God.
One way to do this is to teach young people about the importance of their worldview. Your worldview consists of the most general and basic assumptions you have about what is real and what is good. For some people, their religion is their worldview. For others, it’s science, patriotic nationalism, political party or ideology, or financial status.
The preferred worldview these days is one that says, “I’m open-minded and inclusive. While I don’t claim any specific worldview myself, I respect all worldviews equally.” But the person who says this has a problem, because without a defined worldview, you have no way of defining what is real and good. Inevitably, “no worldview” turns into a me-centered worldview, where the only metric by which to define what is real and good is that which is real and good for you.
Young Christians need to know that Christian faith is not a religion. It is a worldview through which we interpret reality and goodness in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian worldview stands in radical tension with the me-centered mentality that is so prevalent today.
In the Christian worldview, it’s not a sin to have doubts and questions about the Bible, or God, or the meaning of life; it’s a sin to have those doubts and do nothing about them. Young Christians need to know that it’s fine to be suspicious, as long as your suspicions lead you on a quest to find some answers. It’s fine to have doubts, so long as doubts aren’t all you have.
Doubts are like calories. You need them to live, but if you consume a million of them, and then you just lay around and watch Netflix, you’ll wind up feeling gassy and you’ll hate yourself.
Doubts are healthy when they inspire you to seek the Truth. One Sunday after a worship service, a man pulled me aside and told me about his 20-year old son who, after being raised in the Church all his life, had decided he’s an atheist now. With pain in his eyes, that father asked me, “What can I do to get my son back in church?”
To his surprise, I said, “First of all, you have to stop insisting that your son go to church. Every time you do that, it feels coercive and manipulative to him, and he takes another step back. Instead, make yourself available for the conversation he really wants to have. Then say, ‘I’ll read one of your favorite books about atheism and you read one of my favorite books about Christianity, and when we’re both finished, let’s go out for coffee and talk about our questions.’”
Questions and doubts should be encouraged, as long as they’re leading someplace. Parents may ask, “Don’t we need to shield young people from anything that’s not Christian? What if my boy reads that atheist book and becomes an atheist?” Two thoughts come to mind: first, this only applies to parents who are engaged in faith-based conversations with their kids. Second, we’ve got to stop underestimating the Holy Spirit’s ability to walk with people through a season of doubt and lead them back to faith.
The Holy Spirit does that all the time. And here’s the best part: the Spirit makes unsuspecting skeptics think coming back to faith was their idea all along! He did that with me through my own season of doubt, and He did the same with all the great Christian thinkers in history, from St. Augustine and Martin Luther to Mother Teresa and CS Lewis. They all experienced seasons of deep doubt and disbelief. Mother Teresa once wrote in a letter, “The place of God in my soul is blank. There is no God in me.” Charles Spurgeon, the evangelical great Baptist preacher, once said, “I think, when a man says, ‘I never doubt,’ it is quite time for us to doubt him, it is quite time for us to begin to say, ‘Ah, poor soul, I am afraid you are not on the road at all…”
When it comes to Christian faith and doubt, there has been a huge misunderstanding. Too many of us have assumed faith to mean blindly believing in something that doesn’t make sense. Mark Twain said, “Faith is believing in what you know ain’t so.” A few years back, a Harvard University professor wrote an article insisting the university remove a paragraph about “Reason and Faith” from its General Education program. He wrote, “Faith – believing in something without good reasons to do so – has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these.”
How quickly he’s forgotten that his prestigious university was founded by intellectual Christians and named after John Harvard, an intellectual clergyman who wrestled with doubts while maintaining his faith, and who donated 400 books from his own collection to start the Harvard library.
As we look ahead to our next six years at The Story Church, I hope and pray that we will continue creating Christian spaces where young believers and skeptics will know that their knowledge and intellect are not the enemies of faith. Learning new things may seem to threaten your faith in the short-term, but over the long haul, your intellect can lead you toward deeper faith in God.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. – Romans 12:2
Love the Lord your God…with all your mind. – Matthew 22:37
Contrary to popular belief, young Christians aren’t looking to be entertained or spoon-fed at church. They’re looking for a place where they can, in the presence of trusted adults, ask some of their most challenging questions about God, the Bible, important social issues, and other religions. Adult believers should be encouraging younger Christians to express their questions and doubts in their homes and in our churches, insofar as those questions and doubts are inspiring a Holy Spirit-led search for Truth. I believe we can trust the Holy Spirit to walk with our children and students so they will emerge from their seasons of doubt with a stronger faith and a more trusting relationship with Jesus.
