Rather Inspired

So I was discussing with people this past weekend how I only blog when I feel rather inspired and unfortunately I am not inspired as often as I would like to be and that is also unfortunate for a person who would eventually like to write a book or something along that line. However, with all that said, I am feeling rather inspired today. There really is no rhyme or reason to my inspiration it just comes to me, but today's blog is about the youth culture that has unfortunately developed in our nation as it is today.

Just two weeks ago here at Liberty we had our annual Youth Emphasis Week, which is rather exciting for a person involved in the Center for Youth Ministry. Throughout the week we had various speakers come in and talk about the state of our youth culture today and the following statistics really caught my attention.

According to Gay Railsback's study 33% to 50% of students who claim to be a Christian when they enter college claim not to be a Christian when they leave college.

According to a Barna Study:

• 20 % of students who were churched as teens were spiritually active at age 29
• 61% of church teens disengaged during their twenties
• 19% never churched youth will still be unconnected.

Accoring to the Institute for Jewish and community research 53% of college faculty have unfavorable feelings toward evangelicals.

Now with all this said we must confront the issue of why this is happening to our students. As more and more students grow up in our postmodern generation, more and more students are beginning to run away from a religion they were brought up in. However, part of this fall is due to the current student ministries that we are running. One major problem with churches is the fact that we belittle students' ability to comprehend doctrine. The way in most people are moving is that of pastors such as Rob Bell who seeks to be relvant while sacrficing doctrine. In Rob Bell's book Sex God he writes this, "Sometimes when a couple is living together, one of their friends tells them they should make things right in God's eyes by making their relationship a legal marriage. But maybe it's already a marriage in God's eyes, and maybe their having sex has already joined them as man and wife from God's perspective. This isn't a low view of sex, it's a higher view of sex. It's a higher view of marriage. It's people living in the reality of the decisions they've already made." These are the trendy Christian authors that our students are reading and if youth workers are not combating these false views then students who are having sex outside of marriage are finding validation in the words of Rob Bell. Why are we no longer confronting the issues but rather skirtting the issue in the name of relevant Christianity?

The issue at hand is that students are following away from the church and that means that something is not working. Maybe we are in a searching generation who is not looking for fun youth games and the best worship band, but rather students who are looking for real answers. These postmodern students are searching everywhere for answers and if we as the church of God are not confronting the issues at hand then we will lose our students. In order to win the battle for the hearts and lives of our students we have to be transparent and honest. We are losing upwards of 60% of our churched students to the world and that is unacceptable. Place no limits on God and he will place no limits on you.