There has been a lot of attention given to the phenomenon of people growing up in church, but then stepping away from the Christian faith when they grew older. It is a serious problem in society, and much of the blame for it can be placed squarely on the churches that don’t equip their people to understand, and stand strong against, the false teachings that now dominate society.
Most of the attention in this arena has focused on our youth, and many churches are working hard to inoculate their young people against this spiritual disease. Obviously that is very critical, and even more churches should be focusing on this.
But that is not the only place where this problem exists. In the big picture, the reason young people are not getting it right is not the fault of the church, but of Christian parents. Sadly, most parents don’t know how to teach their children this level of truth, and feel they need to pass the job on to the church. In the long run, that will not work. What is needed is for churches to be strategically equipping all of their members in this critical area.
Sarah McCammon is a national political correspondent for National Public Radio. She grew up in Kansas City, Mo. in a Christian family that actively attended an evangelical Christian church. Additionally, she was educated in private Christian schools from preschool through college. She was even taught in school about Christian worldview and was active sharing her faith with non-Christians.
By her own testimony, though, after leaving home and getting outside of her Christian bubble, she became immersed in the secular culture that currently dominates American society. And with that, she began buying into it to the extent that she finally actually stepped away from her Christian faith altogether. She has now even written a book, not only sharing her new faith, but detailing what she believes is wrong about Christianity.
So where did she go wrong? Or more importantly, where did the church go wrong in what it taught her?
Of course, it is vitally important for churches to immerse their members in a biblical worldview. But in our current pluralistic society, that simply is not enough. They also need a larger context for understanding how and where our Christian faith fits into the larger picture that encompasses the many beliefs that comprise the environment of society.
Now this observation may come as a shock to some Christians. “What do you mean knowing our biblical worldview is not enough?”
First of all, it is enough to enable us to understand what the Bible teaches about the essentials of our Christian faith: Who is God? What is man? What is salvation and how do we achieve it?
But here’s the deal: Ms. McCammon, and many thousands of young people like her who have this knowledge, have left, and are leaving, the faith. They have been taught it – many of them quite thoroughly. If that is the case, then why are they leaving? They are leaving not because they don’t have enough knowledge about the essentials of the Christian faith, but because the faith itself has, for them, come to be not credible.
This leads us to ask the question: What, then, needs to be added to insert the credibility factor?
What is needed is for Christians to not only know what a biblical worldview consists of, but also why it is true, and why other beliefs are not. And we get this added understanding with a grasp of worldview concepts.
You see, we have our Christian beliefs, but modern society is dominated by a different faith. And those who are espousing those different beliefs don’t so much overtly attack our beliefs (though some do), rather, they simply assume their beliefs are true, and express them in the education system, arts and entertainment, the news media, politics, business, and even in many churches, as if they are true. Since these false beliefs now dominate society and Christian beliefs are a minority, it makes our Christian beliefs seem out of step with reality. And Christians who are not equipped to make that distinction, will not even realize what is happening. And most who do realize there is a problem, have no idea how to deal with it.
The way it is too often dealt with is just to say, “Christian beliefs are true and you just have to believe them by faith.” Well, in a sense that is true, but why? We must know why! We have to grasp not only the fundamental tenets of the truth of biblical Christianity, we need to know competing truth claims and why they are not true.
We get this by understanding worldview concepts – how to distinguish true beliefs from false ones. While this my seem to some to some too complicated, it is not. Christians just have to grab hold of a new mindset and be willing to tackle it.
The stakes are too high not to. If we don’t, we will continue to see our young people moving away from the Christian faith, and embrace a secular faith that will yank them away from following God.
[MarketFaith Ministries provides some of the very best resources and training on how to approach the topic of worldview. Contact us at info@marketfaith.org to explore how to bring this cutting edge training to your church or Christian organization.]