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… those we baptise we nurture into spiritual maturity … or do we? You do not need me to tell you that the survey results you have just seen leave us in no doubt that we are falling short of this high calling.
No matter how we look at the statistics, or what angle we choose to analyse them from, they have one message for us - miserable failure! The security blanket of 'we are doing okay with our own young people' has been pulled away. The best statistic suggests we keep 1/3 of those we baptise into their teens. We must ask ourselves some hard questions and do some straight talking. Young people crave love, significance, acceptance, a sense of belonging, being valued, the security to get it wrong without being condemned or judged by one ill spoken word or rebellious action. They need to be allowed to be teenagers … to doubt and question the wisdom of those who went before them, in an environment that allows them to grow and mature into healthy believers, believers who have a faith that they can personally own, not a faith that is imposed upon them by adults who tell them how they should think and behave and what they should believe. What we are now experiencing is the teenage population saying to us "enough is enough, we've had it, we want reality and we want it now and if we don't find it in our church we will find it somewhere else!" It is not that our theology has somehow lost its edge or that our commitment to the truth has waned. It is that we will not take seriously the need to translate the biblical truth we stand on into the language our children and teenagers can understand. The wisdom of God must be communicated in an accessible way and with the same creativity that scripture itself demonstrates. In the 16th century the Reformer John Calvin proposed in his doctrine of accommodation that God's self disclosure is made amenable to fallen humanity's capacity to understand - essentially, that God has reached out to us in ways that take seriously the limitations of our capacity to receive. A radical suggestion - and one that is instructive for us today as we seek to reach out to our own culture generally and to youth culture specifically. But for most teenagers today, the church is culturally alien, to those we baptise into our fellowship and, more particularly, to those who have no background with us whatsoever. And if we consider that statement a harsh, overstating of the current reality, then we do nothing more than bury our heads in the sand. Our young people for over a decade have been crying out to us from inside and outside the church, to make faith accessible. The search for spiritual significance which is a hallmark of the post-modern teenager bears testimony to this quest. But they are not looking for the answers in the traditional church. What a tragedy! Can I ask you, have you ever talked to or looked into the eyes of a young person who having been baptised as a child and grown up through Sunday School and Bible Class have become disillusioned with the church? I have --- and it's heartbreaking. What is their plea to us? You heard it on the video and I quote "a safe place where I can be honest about my doubts and struggles. I need to be accepted no matter how many times I mess up, to be prayed for not judged. I am an individual and I need individual responses, a place where I can build accountability". These comments came from committed church-going Presbyterian young people. "A place where I can be accountable." Young people are not looking for a world that has no boundaries. They have discovered from their culture that such freedom is not utopia. They are crying out for loving, caring, non-judgemental adults to get alongside them and build nurturing relationships. For those who say this is nonsense, the church does not exist to meet their needs but to communicate truth to them, we would have to conclude that truth is not doing a very good job! And in case I am misunderstood, it is not a commitment to truth that I challenge but the view that our responsibility to young people begins and ends once the words have been spoken. The challenge surely is to ensure that truth has been comprehended and understood. In Presbyterian circles, above any other in this island, we should have a community of vibrant, strong, clear thinking, confident Christian young people because of our commitment to the biblical message. And yet many of our young people do not know how to bring the sacred to bear upon the secular. They live in two worlds and increasingly are silent about their faith because they simply do not know how to make it live in their world. They need to know the truth and how to defend it in their market place. And when they ask for help they receive a theological answer that leaves them no better off because the answer is given all to often without any appreciation of the world they experience. The relational youth ministry that we have been advocating over the years and an understanding of their culture is imperative. We will not adequately nurture our young people without this understanding of their culture no matter how much we balk at or dismiss such thinking. Perhaps also we see young people, rather than ourselves, as responsible for the decline in teenage church commitment. It is their unregenerate hearts, rather than our failure to communicate, that is the source of the problem. I fear this lets us off the hook much too easily. Don't misunderstand me. Of course I realise that the spirit alone ultimately draws men and women and young people into faith; but we are called into mission as co-workers with Christ, as agents of the spirit, called to communicate the message of Christ in the power of the spirit. My point is this: there are things we can do to reach out to our young people more effectively, more committedly, more intelligently - and so further advance the cause of Christ in our generation. Is it not incumbent upon us to do all within our power to bring the gospel to those for whom Christ died, and only when we have exhausted every means can we be satisfied our duty is discharged? To quote again from the video "a covenantal, family-based youth ministry means that in all the decisions that are taken at session level or in our committees, we think creatively and positively about what the implications will be for our young people so that young people are not left as an annex to the main life of the church but they are drawn right into the heart and centre of all that happens in the life of our congregation." A welcoming, non-judgemental community of believing, loving adults who out of a love for God, and His truth, will become servants of the generations that follow them, and through a giving up of their rights and preferences will create a church environment that covenant young people will never want to leave. And what is more, a place where those same young people will naturally want to bring their friends. Surely there is nothing more important for us as a church as we enter a new millennium than to take seriously our baptismal vows and do something about it now. - Roz Stirling
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