As I mentioned last month, Basic members are now able to submit questions and access one post a month in which I will answer those questions. I call it the “Your Questions Answered” post.
All Advanced members and beyond get even more blog posts that go further into different questions submitted or other relevant issues that we are dealing with in life today.
This month, I had three different questions or topics submitted. The first two questions are related, in a way, so I’m going to respond to them both at once. I’ll share the readers question followed by my response.
Reader #1
How should we handle evangelizing youth in the church who are not yet Christians but should certainly be capable of understanding the Gospel and implications of being a disciple of Jesus? To through a little nuance into it: what if their parents aren’t that involved in encouraging them to take that step?
Reader #2
What does a healthy youth group look like in a church? There is a huge generational gap, and I think that sometimes the way we run our youth groups contributes to that. I like to think that in an ideal church there wouldn’t be the need for a youth group, and everyone on the church would have a way to meaningfully contribute and interact with everyone else in the church without needing to separate into age groups. In the real world though, I know that it doesn’t seem to work that way. There is a local church that tried to have a church without a youth group. The church was encouraged to do everything as families, and while things seemed to go well at first, as the church grew the young people often felt disenfranchised as hanging out as a group became a much more difficult proposition when the whole family needed to be included. What ended up happening is that cliques of youth would hang out unofficially instead of doing things through the church. The church also had other leadership issues and a bunch of people left the church and I’m not really sure where that church is at today. The point is that not having a youth group didn’t seem to work out very well for them. I have concluded that our churches will probably always have youth groups in some form and while I don’t think that there is anything inherently wrong with that, I would like to see you address what a healthy youth group looks like, what things that they can do to have meaningful fellowship and build each other up spiritually, and how they can function as an organism within the church that helps to break down the generational gap instead of widening it.
My Response
One of my biggest burdens is how many young people seem to get inducted into the church without actually having a true encounter with Christ.
Think about it: there’s kind of an expected age when a person should become a Christian. And all it takes, really, to become a Christian is to live a life that looks Christian and confess Jesus as your lord—which anyone growing up in church knows how to do. So, when a young person reaches twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years of age, he or she often goes through the “rites of Christendom,” we could say, and we assume they are now true disciples of Christ and bring them in as members of the church.
But this touches on more than just evangelism—it has to do with discipleship and community.
I know of very few churches that are intentional with discipleship or have strong, open, and vulnerable communities. How many of us could be “train wrecks” spiritually and people in our church not really know? As long as we’re behaving right and showing up, people assume everything is fine.
My guess is that this happens more by default than anything. We’re all busy, and when we show up at church, we haven’t always slowed down enough to consider and process what we ourselves are going through, much less have the mental space to or energy to consider what someone else may be going through. Regardless, it is a tragedy this can happen in church, and it is something we need to correct.
Many in our pews, I’m afraid, are not true disciples of Christ but no one knows because we haven’t taken to the time to disciple them. I’m not criticizing the youth. Neither am I criticizing the parents or pastors. Rather, I’m criticizing our model as well as our values.
I think as any brother or sister in Christ, regardless of age, we ought to see ourselves as assistants to the parents of our youth.
Whether parents seem to be involved or not, if they are coming to church they probably desire that their kids come to Christ. So even if it feels like we may be the only people who cares about their eternal destination, nudging them to make a decision for Christ, we should see ourselves as assisting the parents and not as doing work for the parents.
But I am also slightly averse to pushing people to “make a decision” for Christ.
In my own journey, it was not the time that I “made a decision” that I experienced Jesus. My expression of making a decision was a part of my faith journey, but it wasn’t what saved me. It wasn’t my faith.
Sure, we could look to passages such as Matthew 18:3 and Acts 3:19 for evidence that people need to “be converted.” But “being converted” is not simply “making a decision for Christ.” Conversion insinuates a change deep in one’s heart that has caused them to “turn,” as some translation put it.
One cross reference for Matthew 18:3 is Luke 22:32, where Jesus says that he has prayed for Simon that his “faith may not fail.” More than nudging people to make a decision, I believe it is our role to lead people to Christ–to facilitate an encounter with Yahweh that can deepen their faith. As their faith grows, they will turn or change or “make a decision” or however we want to word it.
Making a decision is relatively easy. Growing in faith is not.
Faith is messy, and it’s sometimes hard to gauge. But faith is what saves a person—not a decision that is made.
There is certainly nothing wrong with “making a decision” to follow Christ. As one’s faith grows, I think it naturally follows that they will commit their whole life to Christ. I’m simply concerned that we focus on the right part of the process as we disciple people in the Lord.
Are we taking their hand, as it were, and showing them Jesus? Are we being straightforward about the costs involved (as well as the rewards) with walking in God’s ways instead of our own?
My concern is that typically we tend to focus more on the “making a decision” part and not really on being in tune to where they’re at in life. Becoming a disciple of Christ should never be a cultural move; it should be a faith move. I’m not meaning to say this is what you (Reader) are doing, but rather responding to your question in light of some things I’ve observed in the church in the last five to ten years.
This brings us back to the community aspect of it all.
Are we walking with each other in our churches in such a way that we can discern when someone’s faith is strengthening or weakening? Are we available enough to them that they can share when their faith is weak, or when (in the case of this question) they are ready to commit their whole lives to Christ?
And what about youth groups? Are they the best place to do discipleship with young people in the church?
The youth group discussion has split many a church, so there are obviously strong beliefs on both sides. I always think it’s really sad when whether or not to have a youth group splits a church because the church split will do more to damage to young people’s faith than having or not having a youth group ever will do to help it. There are plenty of people disillusioned with God because of a church split. I have never met someone who was disillusioned with God because they missed out on youth group activities (or because they had too many of them).
Again, whether we have a youth group and we happen to be heavily involved in it, or whether we don’t have a youth group but care enough about our young people to desire their faith to grow, we ought to see ourselves as assistants to the parents, not ministers in place of their parents.
Especially if their parents are believers as well.
A healthy church community, whether or not they have age specific programs in place to serve the people of the community, will function with a keen awareness that when someone else is struggling everyone is struggling—regardless of their age. What I mean is that in a healthy church environment, everyone cares about everyone. And not only in a surface, temporal, how’s-your-life-going sort of way. People will care about each other in light of standing together in front of the throne of God for all of eternity.
They’ll ask questions such as, “How’s my little brother or sister in the youth group doing?” “What’s my big brother pastor going through, and how can I help carry his load with him?” “What about his wife? Or any of the wives that have kids and husbands busy with work—how are they doing? Do they feel the presence of God throughout their day?”
These questions will motivate thoughtful disciples to bring them into their life whether it’s through having them home for dinner, becoming their Sunday School teacher, taking them out for coffee, asking them if there is anything they can help them with or pray for them about, and so much more.
These are the types of questions things begin doing as we care for each other in our communities. As we ask meaningful questions about our brothers and sisters—especially about our youth—I think we’ll discover ways in which we could come alongside them, put our arms around their shoulders and help lead them to a deeper encounter with Christ.
Reader
Bible translations. A part of the generational shift that I have seen is that while the “older generation” was mostly fine with reading the KJV, the younger generation is quickly moving away from that. While I am definitely not a “KJV only” person, what I see happening in my church is that when we have a youth Bible study or Sunday school, we often read the verses in the KJV, then often someone will read a particular verse in any one of a number of versions with an accompanying “I like how this version brings it out.” While I am all for switching to a version that is writing in contemporary language, I am bothered by the lack of intentionality in selecting another solid translation and general indiscretion in using translations that are known to be of poor quality.
My Response
This never really bothered me, personally, until a couple of years ago. I could never figure out what the big deal was about having a “quality” translation. But in the last couple of years, I have noticed how our theology easily gets shaped by the translations we use to learn about God.
It makes sense that it would.
I guess my response is that more than finding the best version for the younger generation, I long to see a better understanding of the techniques each versions use in their translating process as well as a better understanding of the nature of each different Bible version.
I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible if I’m reading a section of scripture and am at a loss for what it might look like or mean in today’s language.
There’s nothing wrong with reading and enjoying paraphrases, as long as we understand they are paraphrases and not a robust passing-on-what-the-text-in-the-original-languages says in our modern language.
If we’re going to teach on what happens in a believer as she grows in faith or if we’re going to expound on the purpose and calling of the church, we better have a translation that has worked hard to communicate what the original texts say in modern language.
I am not a translation expert. But I am learning more about translations and the process of translation in Bible college (and from friends of mine that are translation experts). The more I learn, the more I enjoy using multiple translations. The issue isn’t so much that there is one fool-proof translation we need to find, but that there really are multiple ways some passages can be translated. So the more versions I look at, the better idea I get of what the text actually says.
Even more than translation, though, a growing burden of mine is for a robust hermeneutic (way of interpreting scripture).
I’m not sure whose fault it is, or that we need find fault with anyone, but I see some incredibly sloppy interpretations today. There often seems to be little value for things like genre, context, historical understandings, or (in light of the question) translation process when looking at a passage of scripture and I think we have developed and are developing some flawed understandings of God and of the world as a result.
Let’s discuss this further: how can we better disciple/evangelize youth in church, what does a healthy youth group look like, and does it matter what translations we use in our churches? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
