The results are in, and they are conclusive: young Americans are losing their religion. Read just about any Christian magazine, and you’ll find articles and editorials mourning this generation’s lack of faith. Go to any Christian conference, and you’ll hear all about how Millennials and Gen Z are biblically illiterate, spiritually uncommitted, and generally uninterested in going to church.
Many Christian leaders have responded to this apparent crisis with various attempts to make our churches seem cooler. The logic is simple: if we just give the kids what they want – which we assume is more trips, more lock-ins, and more fun – they’ll keep coming back to church.
The Babylon Bee is a Christian-owned satirical media company that specializes in poking fun at, well, just about everyone and everything. A few years ago, the Bee published a satirical piece that caricatured the efforts that some churches are making to Disney-fy their guest experience. The title of the piece said it all: Elevation Church Debuts Water Slide Baptistery.
No, Elevation Church didn’t actually install a baptism water slide; it’s just a joke! But the reason it’s funny is because there is a shred of truth in it. Some churches have gone to extraordinary lengths to try and capture the attention of young people, and while it’s well-intentioned, it doesn’t seem to be sticking through their college years and early adulthood.
The secret to raising kids to be Christians isn’t coming up with new, flashy ways of getting them in the door. At best, that will only serve to make kids churchier, but Jesus never said, “Go and make them churchy.” He said, “Go…and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19). The goal of every Christian parent and congregation shouldn’t be to raise kids who go to church because it’s cool and there’s pizza and girls/boys, etc. Our mission should be to raise a generation of disciples who love Jesus so much that they will still follow him after leaving the nest.
If that’s our mission, what should our method be?
‘What to Think’ vs. ‘How to Think’
Young Christians in America face more choices than any generation before. They also have more questions and doubts about God and religion. For past generations of Americans, religious identity and practice were largely assumed, but for Gen Z, believing in God, going to church, and serving in Christian missions and outreach are choices they must make in competition with other appealing options.
It’s pretty standard these days for most of a young Christian’s friends and classmates to be non-Christians, which raises serious questions in a young believer’s mind. Naturally, they want to know if being a Christian means believing that our God will condemn their friends to hell for being raised in the wrong religion, or with no religion at all.
Gen Z and Millennial Christians also have more questions about the Bible, the afterlife, sexuality and gender, marriage and relationships, money and possessions, the origins of life, evolution, and the compatibility of science and Christian faith.
How should churches handle such profound questions and doubts? The importance of this question can’t be overstated. Too often, churches and Christian leaders have responded to the challenging questions posed by young believers with pious, pat answers and more pizza! This invariably leads young Christians to take their questions to their school teachers, social media, and – God forbid – Google, because, in their experience, the Church is where questions go to die.
Encouraging Christian kids to ask questions and explore their doubts in the Church is essential to faith development in the 21st Century. Sincere questions and doubts can function as springboards for deeper conversations and, eventually, greater 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, parents and other church leaders should teach them how to think about God.
How we think about God depends entirely on our worldview. Whether you’re a Christian or an atheist, you have a specific worldview that consists of the most fundamental assumptions you have about what is real and what is good. For some people, their religion is their worldview. Others may espouse worldviews that prioritize their family, their sexuality or gender identity, their politics, or their socioeconomic status.
But the person who says this has a problem because, without a defined worldview, you have no way of defining what is real and what is good. Imagine, for example, a 40-year old man wandered off the street and into my child’s middle school classroom. Would the teacher still insist that “all ages” are welcome? I hope not.
Or what if one of the students in the class holds a belief that girls should not be allowed at school because boys are superior to girls? Would “all beliefs” still be welcome? No way.
The idea that a person has no worldview is really just a me-centered worldview in altruistic guise.
Jesus’ brother James referred to people like this when he said the one who constantly doubts “is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind… double-minded and unstable in every way…” (James 1:6, 8). He’s describing what happens when someone is so fickle and non-committal to any particular worldview that he spends all his time condescending and criticizing everyone else’s principled beliefs.
If we’re going to raise Christian kids who follow Jesus through adolescence and into adulthood, we need to help them identify, understand, and develop a thoroughly biblical worldview.
For example, young Christians need to be taught that Christian faith is not a religion. It is a worldview through which we interpret all of reality in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
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.
Parents may ask, “Don’t we need to shield young people from their deepest, darkest questions? What if our children explore their doubts and decide they don’t want to go to church anymore?”
Two thoughts come to mind: first, the Church has got to stop treating young people like they can’t think for themselves. 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 has a way of making skeptics believe that coming back to faith was their idea all along! He did that with me in my own atheist season, and He did the same with many of the great Christian influencers throughout history, from “doubting” Thomas and St. Augustine to Martin Luther and C.S. 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…”
Young Christians should be encouraged to ask questions, insofar as their doubts inspire a Holy Spirit-led search for Truth. 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.
