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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 6/23/2011 12:30 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back
by Drew Dyck
Product Description
Young people aren’t walking away from the church—they’re sprinting. According to a recent study by Ranier Research, 70 percent of youth leave church by the time they are 22 years old. Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be “disengaged” by the time they are 29 years old. Unlike earlier generations of church dropouts, these “leavers” are unlikely to seek out alternative forms of Christian community such as home churches and small groups. When they leave church, many leave the faith as well.
Drawing on recent research and in-depth interviews with young leavers, Generation Ex-Christian will shine a light on this crisis and propose effective responses that go beyond slick services or edgy outreach.
But it won’t be easy. Christianity is regarded with suspicion by the younger generation. Those who leave the faith are often downright cynical. To make matters worse, parents generally react poorly when their children go astray. Many sink into a defensive crouch or go on the attack, delivering homespun fire-and-brimstone sermons that further distance their grown children. Others give up completely or take up the spiritual-sounding “all we can do is pray” mantra without truly exploring creative ways to engage their children on matters of faith. Some turn to their churches for help, only to find that they frequently lack adequate resources to guide them.
This is where Generation Ex-Christian will lend a hand. It will equip and inspire parents, church leaders, and everyday Christians to reawaken the prodigal's desire for God and set him or her back on the road to a dynamic faith. The heart of the book will be the raw profiles of real-world, young ex-Christians. No two leavers are identical, but upon close observation some categories emerge. The book will identify seven different kinds of leavers (the postmodern skeptic, the drifter, the neopagan, etc.) and offer practical advice for how to connect with each type. Shrewd tips will also intersperse the chapters alerting readers to opportunities for engagement, and to hidden landmines they must sidestep to effectively reach leavers.
about the Author
DREW DYCK is the editorial manager of the ministry team at Christianity Today International. His responsibilities include editing four online publications, including BuildingChurchLeaders.com, a ministry site that attracts 100,000 monthly visitors. Drew holds an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Before coming to Christianity Today he was the editor of New Man magazine. He and his wife, Grace, live in Carol Stream, Illinois and attend Jericho Road Church.
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ChristianityToday.com
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 6/23/2011 12:42 PM (GMT -6) | | From the chapter...
The first indicators are church attendance and involvement. Here the statistics are grim. According to Rainer Research 70 percent of youth leave church by the time they are twenty-two years old.1Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be “disengaged” by the time they are twenty-nine years old.2 Unlike older church dropouts, these young “leavers” are unlikely to seek out alternative forms of Christian community, such as home churches and small groups.When they leave church, many leave the faith as well. One commentator put the reality in stark terms:
Imagine a group photo of all the students who come to your church (or live within your community of believers) in a typical year. Take a big fatmarker and cross out three out of every four faces. That’s the probable toll of spiritual disengagement as students navigate through their faith during the next two decades.
I don’t need a “big fatmarker” to performthis experiment. I’ve watched it play out among my friends over the past decade. The social networking website Facebook has emerged as the younger generation’s preferred way to communicate with large numbers of friends. It’s a great way to keep tabs on people from the past. As I scan the online accounts of former youth group friends, the drift from God is unmistakable.Many no longer even wear the Christian label. Others have not explicitly renounced the faith, but their online pictures, comments, and profiles reveal lifestyles and attitudes few would describe as Christian. Some were particularly surprising tome. Under the “religious views” category in her profile, one previously devout Christian had simply written: “God has left the building.” Another shock came from a sweet, softspoken girl who used to sing on my church’s worship team. Now her albumof pictures looked like an advertisement for Girls Gone Wild. She had sentme amessage wanting to catch up. I wrote back and asked if she was “still into Jesus.” Her response said it all—I didn’t get one.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 6/23/2011 2:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Interesting...
From "The Leavers" article...
In my interviews, I was struck by the diversity of the stories—one can hardly lump them together and chalk up all departures to "youthful rebellion." Yet there were commonalities. Many de-conversions were precipitated by what happened inside rather than outside the church. Even those who adopted materialist worldviews or voguish spiritualities traced their departures back to what happened in church.
What pushed them out? Again, the reasons for departing in each case were unique, but I realized that most leavers had been exposed to a superficial form of Christianity that effectively inoculated them against authentic faith. When sociologist Christian Smith and his fellow researchers examined the spiritual lives of American teenagers, they found most teens practicing a religion best called "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," which casts God as a distant Creator who blesses people who are "good, nice, and fair." Its central goal is to help believers "be happy and feel good about oneself."
Where did teenagers learn this faith? Unfortunately, it's one taught, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, at every age level in many churches. It's in the air that many churchgoers breathe, from seeker-friendly worship services to low-commitment small groups. When this naive and coldly utilitarian view of God crashes on the hard rocks of reality, we shouldn't be surprised to see people of any age walk away.
I decided to look some more into this "Moral Therapeutic Deism". Here's what I found...
According to Christian Smith, a sociologist at Notre Dame, the primary expression of faith in our day–at least for young adults–is what he calls “Moral Therapeutic Deism.”
This religion is characterized by five beliefs:
–There is a God who created earth and watches over it
–God wants people to be nice, fair and good (as it taught in the Bible and most other religions)
–The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself
–God doesn’t need to be involved in your life except when there’s a problem that needs Celestial Performance Enhancement
–Good people go to heaven when they die.
This is a religion that is far more about comfort, individualism and conformity that it is about meaning, calling, and sacrifice. What makes it particularly challenging is that it is not offered through a new MTD movement or denomination. It is actually catching on and being practiced in churches where we leaders think of ourselves as historically Christian.
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My thoughts: A lot of the problem is simply the TWO-STOREY MODEL of the Creator/Creation relationship! It's the inherent two-storey separation of God and Creation within Western evangelical Christianity that's a big part of this!
Just think about it.
Just think about how genuinely believing in Jesus AS INCARNATE LOGOS/WORD OF GOD utterly demolishes some of those ideas in the MTD system.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 6/23/2011 2:38:05 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 6/23/2011 2:30 PM (GMT -6) | | | And this fits what what Evangelicals are currently worried about.
June 22, 2011
Hmmm...Influences of secularism and consumerism, huh? Both of which are DIRECTLY TIED to two-storey beliefs about God and Creation.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, I guess...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 6/23/2011 2:35:37 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 6/23/2011 2:46 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I can only describe the abandonement of faith in Christ as I've observed it. The fundamental reason for leaving the faith that I've observed is that the experience of Christ is not renewed and maintained. Christ is no longer experienced. They had something real but then for whatever reason failed to renew it, fail to connect existentially to Jesus each day in conversation with each and every challenge the world presents. Faith gets reduced to church attendance and dogmatics and eventually real "experienced community" (which we all are driven to seek out, i.e., experiencing the affirmation of one's identity by others in a particular group) shifts from the faith-community to some other community. That's what I've observed. Basically they make a new set of friends outside the faith, and because of the absence of an ongoing experience of Christ they slowly come to see themselves (i.e., view their identity) in terms of this new community.
Would this not tie in with one's view of the Baptism and the Eucharist...as well as with a one-storey view of God? In other words, if there is a person who is absolutely convinced of in the omni-presence of the Risen Jesus' Personal Presence (with whom they can personally experience and communicate with any time via the Holy Spirit), the identification with Jesus in Baptism, and the regularly participated communal experience of the Eucharist..wouldn't this go a LONG WAY against the trend you mention?
I mean, I look at myself. I plain didn't grow up REALLY knowing this stuff...and it lead to my lapse into agnosticism. I truly believe that had i been TAUGHT this stuff right, I'd have never even went there. The way my mind is wired, I can't get away from something that I really believe to be true. I can't tell you how many things in my life would have changed if I had REALLY UNDERSTOOD the Incarnation and God's activity in Creation well.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 6/23/2011 2:50:10 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 6/23/2011 2:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Maybe. But I know too many Catholic and Orthodox folks who sprinted out of their traditional churches (in spite of their theology) to charismatic and pentecostal churches because "experiencing" Christ was a bit more tangible.
Yep. But then again, a number of Catholic and Orthodox preists talk about the real ignorance of their parishes in this regard. I definitely got that impression from Fr. Proctor of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church a while back.
Imagine if the Jesus Prayer were ACTUALLY TAUGHT in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (Which it actually could be because the Catholic Church has given a stamp of approval to Gregory Palamas now). That would be huge. Talk about "experiencing" God!
Heck, it would be huge for evangelicals. 
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 6/23/2011 3:04:04 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 6/23/2011 3:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Having a thought...
"I'm really happy with my life. Isn't that the point?"
Hmmm...I'm thinking of something. I'd ask two questions:
1) What do you mean by "happy with your life"? In other words, what does this "happiness" experience entail?
2) What are the realities upon which your "happiness" and/or satisfaction with your life is based?
I would, for the sake of argument, concede the idea that the central pursuit of human life is enduring happiness including experiencing personal integrity and value (feeling good about oneself). But I would ask the honest question: where is the locus of this happiness and personal integrity/value to be found? Is it well grounded? Is it simply assumed? Even drug addicts can feel happy and content with their lives, right? Would this person say that a meth addict was "happy" just because the addict in question SAID or even genuinely THOUGHT they were? If not, then...
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
J.S. Mill
"Humanity's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."
Westminster Catechism
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 6/23/2011 3:37:35 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 6/23/2011 3:43 PM (GMT -6) | | about that consumerism mentioned earlier...
Asceticism and the Consumer Society
by Metropolitan Jonah
June 20, 2011
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Some of it...
As an Orthodox Christian, I believe (and I suspect many of you here this evening would agree with me on this) that both “worship in general and the Christian leitourgia in particular” presuppose “the sacramental character of the world and of man’s place in the world.” Again, the particulars of that are a source of some debate and even disagreement among Christians much less across religious traditions. We ought not to deny this. Nevertheless when we look at “the world, … it in its totality as cosmos, or in its life and becoming as time and history” the created order is “a means of [God’s] revelation, presence, and power.” To put the matter somewhat differently, the physical creation (and so humanity) “not only ‘posits’ the idea of God as a rationally acceptable cause of its existence” it also “truly ‘speaks’ of Him and is in itself an essential means of knowledge of God and communion with Him, and to be so is its true nature and its ultimate destiny.”
As St Paul says, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image… Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts…” Rom 1:20-24.
Man was created with an intuitive awareness of God and thankfulness to Him for the creation. In return, the creation itself was made to be a means of communion and revelation of God to man. Man was thus created as a Eucharistic being, the priest of creation, to offer it in thanksgiving to God, and to use it as a means of living in communion, the knowledge and love of God. Man was created to worship. In our fallenness, turning from God to created things as ends in themselves, we lost the intuitive knowledge of God and our essential attitude of thankfulness to Him. Secularism is rooted in this loss of divine awareness, the darkening of our intuitive perception of the creation as the sacrament of God’s Presence. It is a denial of our essential reality as human beings, and our reduction to purely material animals. Thus the refusal to worship and give thanks, to offer the creation in thanksgiving back to God, is a denial of our very nature as humans.
What Schmemann is testifying to is that “worship is truly an essential act, and man an essentially worshipping being.” It is “only in worship” that I can find “knowledge of God and therefore knowledge of the world.” As the etymology of the word orthodoxy suggests, the true worship of God and the true knowledge of God converge and are together become the foundation of obedience to Him.
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This, my brother Tom, is why seeing Creation itself as "sacrament" and asceticism--particularly in the Jesus Prayer as a tool leading to the "Secret Place of the Heart" and practicing the "Sacrament of the Present Moment"--is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to stop the hemmoraging of the young people in our churches. The Jesus Prayer DIRECTLY WORKS AGAINST the loss of divine awareness.
And you DON'T have to be an E.O. in order to do the stuff, either.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 6/23/2011 3:50:40 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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BBBCanada
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Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 6/24/2011 1:40 PM (GMT -6) | | I frequent a page on facebook called, "Stuff Christian Culture Likes." They critique, often negatively, (very cynical) all that is Christian Culture. Here's a post.
Comment # 87: Getting Rid of Secular Music
"Wow, most of these comments leave me heartbroken!
People it is time you listened to Paul Washer's sermon on American Christianity...
The more my eyes are focused in Jesus the less and less I like any music that does not glorify Him. I started listening to only Worship Music 2 years ago and my life has never been the same. I get to praise & worship the King if Kings everyday in my car.
I am excited about Him and want to live my life to glorify Him in everything I do. I don't have much time here on earth, I want to focus on living for my eternal life. Getting ready to face my Maker and give an account for what I did in my time and what I did with the Seed He entrusted to me.
There are so many lots people out there, I pray that I am able to constantly filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, so that I can be an effective witness for my King.
Listening to worship music and singing praises to my King fills my spirit with love and joy."
I exhort people who read this to be careful with what they allow into their spirits & to be careful with what they invest their time into...we will be called to account for whether we truly know our Lord & what we did with our seed.
Time is short, live with an eternal perspective. Get right with the Lord.
In Him and only through Him, I am saved & am on my knees before a holy and magnificent God."
This is a very two storey view of reality. At a very fundametal level I agree with D. And then it is played out in some really, weird, corny, goofy ways especially in evangelicalism, ie., moralistic therapeutic deism. And this really isn't that different from what Fee said,--"The prayerless life is a life of practical atheism." There's no real connecting of the branches with the vine for life sustenance. So it really isn't about, "does this make me happy?" (for as D said, a drug addict is "happy" when they get their fix) but rather, "does this truly satisfy?" "Is this what I NEED?" It is very odd that a shipwrecked sailor (broken humanity) had a need for water and yet water not exist. The fact that humanity in general has a need for water is a strong indicator that water exists. And so its odd to have a fundamental need for something that doesn't exist. Yet substitutes are what people are given. Instead of water they are given coke with aspartame. Which is or becomes idolatrous.
Brandon
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.--Saint Augustine
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