Almost Christian: Generative Faith

My daughter and I are reading Kenda Creasy Dean’s book Almost Christian together and blogging about it. This is my fourth post in the series.

Chapter 4: Generative Faith

In chapter 4 of Dean’s book, she tries to direct parents, pastors, and other adults to pay attention to our misguided models of youth ministry. She wants us to stop looking for the magic box that will transform youth into “good Christians” if we just plug it into a little God juice.

This notion is all wrong. In part, because it misunderstands God.

In her post on this chapter, JillAnn homes in on the god our churches too often proclaim:

The church has shown us a God who thinks a family should have three cars. The church has shown us a God who thinks being nice to classmates is the same as mission. The church shows us nothing we can’t find elsewhere. Why pay $50 for a pair of jeans I can get at Wal-Mart for $12.99?

Dean says the church’s biggest failure is the absence of self-sacrifice. We’ve exchanged true, perfect, self-giving love for the warm fuzzies.

Dean writes that it is this missional, self-giving love that JillAnn writes about that animates a church and transforms people – adult and youth. But we, too often, don’t want or ask for this God. We ask for a god that will “make us happy” and we do a pretty good job of arranging that.

Two lists in the chapter caught my attention. The first was a list of characteristics of “authoratative commnities” – places where connections shape lives.

• It is a social institutions that includes children and youth.
• It treats children as ends in themselves.
• It is warm and nurturing.
• It establishes clear limits and expectations.
• The core of its work is performed largely by non-specialists.
• It is multigenerational.
• It has a long-term focus.
• It reflects and transmits a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.
• It encourages spiritual and religious development.
• It is philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all persons and to the principle of love of neighbor.

Such authoratative communities can be non-religious, of course. Indeed, many of our churches would probably consider it a great success to embody these qualities.

But Dean also shares with us attributes of congregations where young people exhibit highly devoted faith. Such congregations are more likely than others to:

• portray God as living, present, and active
• place a high value on scripture
• explain their church’s mission, practices, and relationships as inspired by “the life and mission of Jesus Christ”
• emphasize spiritual growth, discipleship, and vocation
• promote outreach and mission
• help teens develop “a positive, hopeful spirit,” “live out a life of service,” and “live a Christian more life.”

Dean sums this all up by writing that such churches do not see youth as “moralistic do-gooders but as Christ’s representatives in the world.”

In the end, the impression I get from reading this chapter is that highly devoted Christians of all ages are formed in response to community that takes with utter seriousness the biblical God. It is curious in a way that we need to be reminded of that.