(CNN) -- If you're the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:
Your child is following a "mutant" form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.
Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.
Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of "Almost Christian," a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.
She says this "imposter'' faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.
"If this is the God they're seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust," Dean says. "Churches don't give them enough to be passionate about."
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4 comments:
nice ending to the excerpt. made me question whether I'm able to instill excitement, passion and fervor to the teens that are in the VUPC youth group. got any "practical" radical ideas? (even though that statement is an oxymoron)
Yeah, I understand the sentiments of the article, but after being at cod and vupc, and now, working with small churches in the bay area, instilling excitement and passion is easier said than done. i think, just by the fact that the youth in our church get along, that there is a comfortable and playful atmosphere, first already establishes church as a good and even fun thing (which it is, of course. :D).
um, honestly, i'm not sure what advice i can give. for a passion about God and Christian life to occur on more than a superficially emotional level, it needs to be grounded in knowledge. Meaning, they themselves need to take bible study more seriously, do DT, and take God's words and commands more deeply. actually consider what these bible studies mean in their lives. i think the best way to make it exciting, is to challenge them, challenge them to do something at school, do something at home, etc. but they tend to take every "challenge" into an assignment, something like homework.
retreats help, to an extent. but often times what happens is that the things they felt and learned at retreat dont translate into their every day lives because, frankly, there is a lack of discipline and consistency in living out the things they profess. and it's harder to do so when intellectually, they lack the confidence backing of their beliefs.
so again, i think it goes back to knowledge. (hence, why i got them those books.)
maybe one small step is to write out their testimonies, so they are forced to reflect and think about how God has acted in their lives, how they came to know God for themselves and not as something they had always done because their parents made them go to church, and in reflecting on their history with God helps them to expect and/or want something from the future.
work on the testimony for a while, and then maybe challenge them to say a shorter version to one of their friends.
also emphasizing prayer. challenge them to pray for a different person every day. or something.
Do Hard Things A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, by Alex and Brett Harris
is a good book. they have a website called the rebelution (on the side) that might help. its specifically aimed toward the youth.
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