My daughter and I are reading Kenda Creasy Dean’s book Almost Christian together and blogging about it. This is my first post in what will be a series.
Chapter 1: Becoming Christian-ish
In the first chapter, Dean presents her summary argument. Teens have a thin and shallow faith because that is what adults have modeled to them and taught them. Many parts of this chapter catch my eye, but here is the one I’m going to focus on in this post.
we “teach” young people baseball, but we “expose” them to faith. We provide coaching and opportunities for youth to develop and improve their pitches and their SAT scores, but we blithely assume that religious identity will happen by osmosis, emerging “when youth are ready” (a confidence we generally lack when it comes to, say, algebra).
Did you ever argue with your parents that trigonometry was a waste of time? Did you ever ask a teacher, “When am I going to ever use this stuff?” For the most part, parents and teachers don’t accept these arguments. Often, they don’t even humor them. “Shut up and do your homework!”
Oh sure, kids dropping over in a stupor during math class might lead us to revise teaching methods, but only a few crackpots suggest teaching people math should be left to chance or the natural interest and inclination of young people.
The simple contrast between the things in life we take seriously enough to “teach” to children and youth and those that we merely desire to “expose” our children tells us a great deal about how important faith is to us.
Dean’s point is not that we need to beat teens to death with the catechism. It is that adults who are not well formed in faith will not form their own children in faith. They will fail to justify – even to themselves – why anyone should take Christian formation seriously.
So, the solution is not to hire new youth ministers and come up with zippy new programs. It is to have all Christians take faith seriously. It is to have us all act as if there is something at stake – something that matters – in this thing we call Christianity.
The downside of this prescription is that it takes massive change within the entire church. We can’t buy a packaged, off-the-shelf teen ministry program. We can’t follow the latest youth ministry guru. We have to start living as Christians and learning our own faith.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
Thanks for this series. We are looking forward to learning from your posts.
Psalm 78:4-7. I’m going to be following these posts.
Good post. Thanks. One can only ‘follow’ Christ by being ‘led’ by the Holy Comforter. …the person of Christ who returned to us after Christ returned to the Father. He is Spirit. He is unseen. He is as real as Christ was while here in the flesh. He calls…we yield…righteousness is born in us. But the established church as a whole has adopted an Ephesus-type form of godliness which does not include the ‘First Love.’ Subsequently, we are fruitless and powerless before the world. We apply His ‘blood’ to our sin…but we never turn from that sin….we never change our wicked ways. He says, ‘Sin not.’ We insist ‘ we are human and cannot keep from sin.’ We take His Grace and rub it on our sin as ointment. We give Him nothing in return. We live defeated lives and we teach our children to do the same. We don’t believe in Godliness….nor do we accept that we are ungodly. The apostate church is sick, fruitless, and powerless. The world …both the churched and the unchurched…are turning in masses to drugs and vile relationships. And we never admit that we have yielded our own bodies and the apostate Body of Christ to the rule and service of the flesh. We are judgemental and hateful….blaming abortion, homosexuality, and vileness on flesh and blood political parties. …when God said the war is against ‘spiritual wickedness in high places’….and not against ‘flesh and blood.’ Satan laughs! God is not the author of confusion. Even our ‘politics’ is worldly and apostate. There will be no righteous government until Christ returns and sets up His government. There will be no ‘peace’ until the Prince of Peace returns and sets up His kingdom. The hope for our young people and ourselvs is found in Romans chapter 1 where Christ reminds ‘Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it to them. 20 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: That ‘Gospel’ which He has planted in the heart of every man…at some point ‘draws’ each man to a decision point….at which time the man either accepts of rejects…and is therefore ‘without excuse.’
[...] John Meunier and his daughter are blogging through the book Almost Christian. It looks like it will be worth reading. [...]
Thanks for the link, Henry. I hope the series is interesting.
John, I’ve felt this for several years. What adults don’t have they cannot give to the youth. This sort of goes along with my comment on your post about lay people wanting to become serious disciples. We need to be forming the people in our congregations into committed disciples and working with children and youth at the same time. It MUST be an intentional effort.
[...] the book Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean. According to our plan, I was supposed to respond to his post about chapter 1 today. But if I did that, the response would be “yes.” So I’m [...]
Love this! My kids will be 14 and 16 in the next couple weeks and have neither thin nor shallow faith! Early on I felt God calling me to teach them and raise them in the faith, so I did. I wasn’t to leave this task to their Sunday school teachers, and I’m so glad I didn’t. My kids now stand out among their friends at church, and I consider this sad. I stand out among MY friends at church, and I consider this sad. I don’t mean it to sound like my kids or I are perfect; but these two have a very deep faith in their God – they revere and respect and love and fear Him. They walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and aren’t afraid of this part of God. But they’re lovable, normal kids – my daughter’s a junior varsity cheerleader, and my son was just in here burping his ABC’s for me. Gotta love them! For they are the generation that is bringing revival to the church!!
Thank you for writing, Alycia. I love the stories about your children. God bless.
Father-daughter blogging..gotta love it!
[...] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine [...]