More Than Fun and Games

By Ben Walker

Christian college was extremely enriching, but after three years in the holy huddle, I was champing at the bit at the prospect of reengaging the world. I was excited to step into my first evening class at the secular university I had transferred to, a class from the world religions department that promised an engrossing ideological tour of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. 

The professor opened that first class by asking, “Why are you here? Let”s go around the room and share our interest in this topic.”

The first student responded by saying he”d been raised Catholic but found Christianity too intellectually meager and wanted to see what other religions had to offer. The second student said he too was raised as a Christian but he doubted God could really exist and wished to see what wisdom the East had to offer in regard to life. A third person said basically the same thing.

The professor affirmed these students by saying she too was a Christian in her teens and that it was “a very emotional experience,” but she needed more and had found Buddhism to be most fulfilling.

Among the other responses, one student just needed to fulfill a requirement, and then another string of former Christians said they were just searching for more.

As my turn to answer came closer, it occurred to me that probably 8 out of 10 people in the room were former Christians who now rejected the faith. I couldn”t suppress the panic welling within me:

We”ve failed! The church has failed everyone here! Every one of these people thinks Christianity was an intellectual joke inflicted on them in their youth. We”d be wrong to blame the universities; the problem is in the church.

 

DAILY ATTACKS

I”d like to tell you this class and its student population was an anomaly, but it wasn”t. The majority of my classes at that university were filled with daily attacks on the faith from professors and students.

I found myself taking a stand for Christ, usually alone in these classes, and had to wonder what happened to all the fine students our churches sent off to the universities. Where are the believers who are ready to destroy speculations and every lofty thought raised up against the knowledge of our God? Where are our disciples?

Well the answer to that is easy. They”re primed and ready to put into practice that which we”ve discipled them in: opening bananas with their toes and playing hockey with paper plates. Or perhaps our young world-changers are exploring how many Vienna sausages they can fit in their respective mouths.

We can also say our students are apt at achieving emotional highs and have a distinct capacity to get fired up in a worship setting””or at least can fake that passion.

Yes, these are our disciples. Armed to the teeth with””what? The experience of inane pep-rallies and a rudimentary knowledge of the Scriptures? (Scriptures, I should add, that are viewed as devoid of authority outside of Christian circles.) Look out, world!

TAKE A RISK

Years later I sat before a group of elders in an interview and asked them to take a risk and engage in an experiment with me: the development of a youth ministry that would look nothing like the successful ministry model presently practiced. They graciously extended me a six-month trial.

From my vantage point after eight years of having conducted student ministries in that church, I tell you unabashedly that my first assessment was correct. We, as a church, have failed our teens. But we need not fail anymore.

We set the fire of passion in our teens at conferences, retreats, camps, and worship services. But is that enough? Can you imagine a boot camp where soldiers are trained to go into combat and the primary training method is building troop morale? Imagine what happens to those soldiers when they are sent into real combat without weapons, or even any idea how to use weapons. I suspect the efforts of many brave soldiers would end ineffectually, but most would engage in a very rational desertion.

So it is with our students after high school. They need more than passion. They need solid instruction: discipleship in the truths of God, the cosmos, culture, worldviews, theology, history, Christian apologetics, and on intelligently interacting with objections to the faith. They need to be taught how to love God with the mind and how to conduct warfare in the battle of ideas. If we fail to train our teens in the deeper matters of the faith, we should expect the majority to fall away from the faith either late in high school or soon after (as has been the case for a long while now).

 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED

Some say students leave their faith in college not so much because of contrary ideas, but because they want to be liberated from Christian morality (primarily in regard to sexual autonomy). While there is truth in this, the lack of knowledge among these students makes it easy for them to frame an intellectually and emotionally gratifying reason to dismiss their former faith.

I”d rather our students who walk away from the faith have no comfortable delusions about what they”re doing (abandoning the infinite God for some temporal fleshly gratification). Such students seem far more likely to return when the flesh has let them down and the knowledge of God remains.

Second, some view apologetic curriculum as a pipe dream that would prevent our student ministries from gaining and retaining students. Would teens stomach such rigorous education? Would such a youth group grow?

I asked those same questions of God and myself as I was entering ministry, but allow me to anecdotally answer this challenge. We”ve built and sustained a successful ministry numerically and spiritually at my congregation for eight years running, on these very principles. The retention rate of our students has also been extraordinarily high, with our college group now standing at about 12-13 percent of our total congregation (approximately the same as our high school group).

Depth captures student interest. Every time our teachers have spoken on apologetic matters, our class attendance is full (sometimes overflowing into hallways), and students remain often for hours after sessions to perpetuate the discussion. My experience with teaching apologetics is that it not only is tolerated, but eagerly sought and received by the vast majority of students.

Third, some ask whether teens really can be expected to learn and retain heavy teachings. But our students must learn algebra, physics, chemistry, history, and literature, among other challenging subjects in their high schools. Why then should we think apologetic instruction is over their heads?

In fact, the majority of our typical “lessons” look patronizingly simplistic. Any perceived inability of our teens to understand deeper subject matter is a farce, perhaps engendered and perpetuated by youth ministers who would rather not spend their own time learning the material (Proverbs 18:9).

 

WHAT DOES IT TAKE?

So what does it take to integrate depth into curriculum? Surprisingly, not much.

A generous focus on apologetics would require about 60 sessions over the course of four years. If that seems like a lot, bear in mind that if a high school ministry meets once per week, then it will meet more than 200 times with each student before he or she graduates. (And most of us meet more than once per week.)

Leaders in the church must make it clear to ministers that depth takes precedence over breadth, or more explicitly, the head count doesn”t count as much as what”s in those heads.

Curriculum itself should be a point of discussion at least quarterly in elders meetings, and ministers must prioritize their own study time with respect to the curriculum (perhaps taking a full day to devote to reading).

The church needs to work to prepare its student population, or else we shouldn”t be surprised by the perpetual failure of the church to retain these students.

 

Ben Walker is youth minister with the Northern Hills Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.