A recent article in the New York Times by Laurie Goodstein calls attention to growing concern that evangelical Christianity is losing appeal among teens and frets that only 4% of today's teenagers will be conservative Christians as adults. Here are some excerpts from Goodstein's article:
At an unusual series of leadership meetings in 44 cities this fall, more than 6,000 pastors are hearing dire forecasts from some of the biggest names in the conservative evangelical movement.
Their alarm has been stoked by a highly suspect claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be "Bible-believing Christians" as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation.
While some critics say the statistics are greatly exaggerated (one evangelical magazine for youth ministers dubbed it "the 4 percent panic attack"), there is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers.
Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual "hooking up" approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.
Over and over in interviews, evangelical teenagers said they felt like a tiny, beleaguered minority in their schools and neighborhoods. They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their "Biblical values" by avoiding casual sex, risqu� music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs.
That the Church is competing with enormously seductive rivals for the affections of its young people cannot be denied. That the pressures on teenagers to abandon their faith are high is obvious, but even so, to the extent that the statistics quoted in this article are accurate, and I'm not convinced they are, much of the responsibility for the decline in Christian commitment will lie at the door of the local church.
Too many local congregations, especially in "main-line" denominations, are unwilling to invest in their young people. They cannot see their way clear to make Christian education and Youth Ministry their top priorities. Any church today that allows finances to deter them from seeking out and hiring a full-time youth pastor savvy in contemporary culture, knowledgeable about the Bible, good at apologetics, talented on the guitar or keyboard, and who possesses a charismatic personality is essentially ceding their youth to the modern Zeitgeist.
It may be true that there aren't very many candidates such as I have described out there to be hired, but that's largely because churches haven't created the demand for such individuals. If the jobs were available, so, too, would be the talented young pastors to fill them. Moreover, the mainline congregations will find slim pickings if they search for candidates among their denominational seminary graduates. Mainline seminaries aren't churning out the kind of people, unfortunately, who are either adept at or inclined to nurture teens in their faith. Churches need to be willing to look outside their denominational plantations and seek candidates who grew up in independent or semi-independent churches and were themselves educated at schools which take the Bible and Christian faith seriously.
Nevertheless, despite the gloomy portents in the Times' article Christianity Today isn't too concerned. They think the statistics are overblown. I hope they're right.
