Recovering The Gospel For Our Youth
It’s reported that only eight percent of youth that professes Christianity are considered devoted. How do we recover the gospel for our youth? Is the church practicing catechesis as was taught in the Bible?
A Muddied Understanding of Faith
While catechesis is a strange, esoteric, churchy word, it just means the process of how we disciple our children and new converts. It is vital to the life and health of the church. Catechesis is an ancient practice of the historic church and vertebrae in the backbone of the church since the first centuries A.D.
The word "catechesis" comes from Greek, meaning "echo back." J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett, in their book Grounded in the Gospel, define it as "The church's ministry of grounding and growing God's people in the Gospel and its implications for doctrine, devotion, duty, and delight" (29).
A good place to begin our discussion is looking at Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler.
"As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life.'" Mark 10:17
Immediately, we see something right about the young man, something spiritually alive. He knows what he wants, and he knows where to find it. He has been properly trained. In other words, he has been catechized. He has been prepared, grounded, and deeply rooted in the Jewish Faith and the scriptures. He's even asking the right questions. What must I do to inherit eternal life?
However, as we read, we also have the subtle sense that something is awry, and we see this in Jesus' critique of the definition of goodness. The young man calls Jesus "Good Teacher," but Jesus responds, "Why do you call me good? No one is Good but God alone." Why the rebuke? Isn't Jesus good?
While pointing to God's goodness as inherent in Jesus' triune nature, He also reminds us of the standard Jewish conception of God's goodness: Others could be good, but no one was like God. You see, Jesus is echoing back to this man's catechesis because somewhere along his journey, his conception of God was off. This has a striking parallel to the modern church. Even though our students are in church, many hold a wrong view of God's essential nature.
Research by the National Study of Youth and Religion found that about 75 percent of American youth say that they're Christian. Still, only about "eight percent" are actually "devoted,"—meaning that they have a proper view of who God is, an ability to articulate the doctrines of their faith, and a lifestyle of obedience. The study found that most teens are "inarticulate about their faith, religious beliefs and practices, and its meaning and place in their lives." This was even true for teens who regularly attended church, with mainline protestants being "among the least religiously articulate of all teens."
So the question is, what do they believe? They may say good teacher, but what do they mean by good?
A Gospel of Self
Most teens would subscribe to a belief system called Moral Therapeutic Deism (MTD), a Westernized gospel of self-actualization, self-autonomy, and self-fulfillment. Here are its five pillars:
A god who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth exists.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.
God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
Good people go to heaven when they die.
How different are the tenets of that creed from the Apostles' Creed, which never mentions requiring us to be good because the creed is not about us—it's about God. But MTD is all about us.
Kenda Dean, a pastor and professor who worked on the study, wrote a book called Almost Christian. She comments, "Religion stays in the background of their lives, where God watches over them without demanding them. God, above all else, is 'nice.'" Most American teens are lukewarm, and they believe in a lukewarm God. In the book of Revelation, Jesus says to the church at Laodicea, "Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth (Revelation 3:16)." While this is alarming, we shouldn't despair. Remember, Jesus tells His disciples that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against" His Church.
C. S. Lewis was confronted with the same issue in the 1930s and 40s, and he grapples with it in his work The Problem of Pain. Lewis says most people believe in a God of Love, but "By Love…most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy. We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in Heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves.'"
However, Lewis supplies a corrective, "If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness." God's dynamic and holy Love desires your sanctification, but He won't be content to leave you as you are because He loves you.
A god of kindness doesn't care about you so long as you aren't suffering. But a God of Love suffers to transform you. The God of Holy Love portrayed in the Bible asks not just for commitment but for our very lives. Our God deals in life and death, not niceness, and calls for sacrificial Love, not, as MTD would have it, benign whatever-ism.
The Latin word for Lord is dominus. Jesus wants to dominate our lives. Ultimately, we, as people, are dominated by the things we worship. For the rich young ruler, his worship was his riches, and it's not so much that he had riches, but they had him. It's not that he was a ruler over riches; they ruled him. Where your treasure is, there is your heart. But out of dynamic, reckless Love that pierces the heart, Jesus says follow me. "Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and then said, 'You lack one thing. Go and sell your possessions, and then "follow me." Out of Love, Jesus says, love me more than anything else, and let me be your master.
Where Did The Church Miss the Mark?
Kenda Dean says, "It's not because they have misunderstood what we have taught them in church. They practice it because this is what we have taught them in church." She explains that the most likely explanation is that we are reaping what we have sown. From teenagers, we have received exactly what we have asked them for assent, not conviction, compliance, faith, or heart service to transformation. We've treated them as consumers, not co-heirs in the Gospel.
All of that is bad news—the same kind of bad news we see in this encounter with Jesus in verses 24-25: "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God." That's bad news, and the disciples knew it. They were shocked and exclaimed, if this man can't be saved, then who? Jesus responds, "With man, this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."
Here is the good news: God has more invested in the lives of our students than we do. With man, it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. So, out of this encounter with Jesus, I want to draw out a few catechetical practices that we can use to recover the gospel for our youth.
How to Recover Our Youth For the Gospel
1) Be a Church That Remembers
When this young man approaches Jesus, what does Jesus do? He calls him to remember the Scriptures. "You know the commandments" (v. 19)
Being a church that remembers means grounding our students in scripture. Catechisms were traditionally learned in a question-and-answer format, where students repeated them so much that they carried the words of scripture with them in their hearts. Why? so that when they are tempted like Jesus was in the desert, they can have the Word of God as a shield and a sword.
We live in an information age where knowledge can be grasped instantly. However, knowledge differs from wisdom, and it's hard to find wisdom from a Google search. Instead, godly wisdom is attained by being deeply rooted in God's word through memorization and meditation.
The Scriptures must be at the heart of our ministry and homes. A great way to do this is with liturgy and books like Every Moment Holy or Living Room Liturgy by Asbury professor Winfield Bevins, which has scripture for nearly every occasion you can think of—from gathering friends to getting a new pet. Make it a tradition in your household to read liturgies and scripture together, specifically at important periods of your students' lives.
Another part of being a church that remembers is making room for testimonies. Testimony names and remembers what God has done and is doing in one's life.
After the rich young ruler turns away and Jesus turns toward the disciples, Peter gives his testimony in verse 28: "Look, we have left everything and followed you." He is naming and remembering. And it's in this struggle to put words to his journey with Jesus that Jesus can shape his identity.
So, we as a church need to provide every opportunity for our students to share what God is doing in their lives. Encourage you to ask your teenagers to put words to what Jesus is doing in their lives.
2) Imitate Christ and Be in Proximity to Students While We Do It
The study I mentioned earlier found that the most critical influence on adolescents' religious and spiritual lives is their parents or adopted guardians. While grandparents, relatives, and youth ministers can be influential, parents are most important in forming their children's spirituality.
But if you are a grandparent, single, or married with no children, you may have a real heart and desire for our youth. THAT IS GREAT! What you can do is pray for them. While opening your hearts to the Father, open your homes up to youth events or even your schedule—but more on that later!
In this passage, you see the importance of proximity. The young ruler and the disciples hear the same call. They are confronted with the same hard and holy truths of God. What's the difference? The young ruler moves away from Jesus, whereas the disciples move towards Him. That puts them in a position to receive God's truths in a redemptive and transformative light.
Be close to Jesus, and let the students in your life see it.
3) Do Mission Incarnationally (Like Jesus)
He was with God in heaven but took on flesh and dwelt with us—in our broken and hurting world. He was a living translation of God's will and heart. So, if the church is to catechize faithfully, it needs living translations. This means willing adults who remember who they are and translate their faith in a way that students can imitate.
If you're nervous about volunteering or discipling, know that the most important thing isn't your knowledge; it's your presence. I hardly remember any sermons from the youth group, but I remember the leaders who came to my birthday parties, sat with me when I was sad, played flag football, and washed my feet. I am where I am today because they were there for me. I don't remember what they taught, but I remember who they were, and I encountered Jesus in them. You'll be surprised by the way you encounter Jesus in them.
4) Encourage Students to Detach
Jesus saw in the rich youth ruler that his heart longed for God, and Jesus invited him to detach from idols and attach to Him. James K. A. Smith says in You Are What You Love, "The human heart is a compass, orienting us to some vision of the 'kingdom.'"
The important question is which kingdom. Humans live in a world of competing visions of the good life, and the kingdoms of this world vie for the heart compasses of students. Detachment creates an experience that disorients your heart away from the wrong vision and reorients it to the truth of the Kingdom of God.
This was true for my formation as a teenager when I went to the youth group or on mission trips. These disorienting experiences took me out of my comfort zone, made me reassess my convictions, and gave me eyes to see a God who was bigger than me and my small world. It forced me to wrestle with who He is and how much He loves me and the world.
Give Your Life Away: Putting It In Action
The spiritual life is about giving your life away. Though he had been catechized and trained in faith, the rich young ruler chose to hang onto what he thought would bring him life rather than following Jesus. Many kingdoms of this world will ask you to follow. Seek Jesus' kingdom first, for when we seek His kingdom first, all the rest will be given.
If you're a parent or a church member, you may wonder how we can do this. Do you want to know where you can get the strength, power, and ability to raise your children like Jesus?
It's made possible by the grace of Jesus Christ, who left heaven to become a baby. Jesus had to learn to speak from his mother, and he had to learn the word of God from his father. He went through all the rituals and the catechisms.
He was so deeply rooted in God's Word that when he was cut, He bled scripture. Finally, when he was on the cross, tormented by the ultimate pain and sacrifice, His dying words were that of the psalmist: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
On the cross, where God's Holiness and His Love are conjoined, we see the fulfillment of Jesus' catechesis. It is finished. He was laid in the tomb and resurrected on the third day, and after He was resurrected, he breathed his Holy Spirit of truth into his church.
Jesus has more invested in your students than you do. By His grace and His Spirit, you can do all things through Him, who gives you strength.
TL;DR
Catechesis is the process of how we disciple our children.
About 75 percent of American youth say that they're Christian. But only about "eight percent" are actually "devoted."
The majority of our teens subscribe to a belief system called Moral Therapeutic Deism (MTD), a westernized gospel of self-fulfillment.
The church missed the mark, because students practice MTD because this is what we have taught them.
How to Recover the Gospel for our Youth:
Be a church that remembers.
Imitate Christ and be in proximity to students when you do.
Do missions incarnationally.
Encourage students to detach.
Related Reading
Children Are Not An Interruption by Brad Bogue
How To Help Your Child Read the Bible by Brad Bogue
The Submissive Family by Brad Bogue
About Christ Church Memphis
Christ Church Memphis is church in East Memphis, Tennessee. For more than 65 years, Christ Church has served the Memphis community. Every weekend, there are multiple worship opportunities including traditional, contemporary and blended services