Firsthand Faith: Making the Family Beliefs Your Own

Like authors Ryan and Josh Shook, I grew up in a Christian home. Years ago, I remember giving my testimony to the church high school group and being very clear that it wasn’t enough to simply ‘adopt’ the faith of your father and mother because that’s all you had; you had to take ownership of it in a more objective sense. Just because you were born in McDonald’s doesn’t make you a hamburger.

The Shook brothers — sons of Kerry Shook whose book One Month to Live attracted much attention — have developed this concept into Firsthand: Ditching Secondhand Religion for a Faith of Your Own (Waterbrook Press). Although the book is written expressly to people in this particular faith situation, early sales of the book indicated that Firsthand struck a cord with Christian kids in their late teens and early twenties; the very people that statistically experience a great faith upheaval in what can be pivotal and transitional years. Here’s a sample:

We watched our parents step out in faith and plant a church when we were boys.  They had very little money at the time, just a dream God had placed on their hearts to reach the lost and hurting.  They started with fifteen people and from there it dwindled to eight after the first gathering.  Five were our family!  Now thousands are part of the church.  But we know all the little miracles God did along the way as our parents would step out in faith and watch God come through.

We feel as though we’ve had front-row seats to watch God working in our parents’ lives as they’ve taken risks in faith to obey God’s call.  But in a sense it’s been their experience, not ours.  We need our own experiences of stepping out in faith and watching God act. We don’t want front-row seats anymore.  We want to be in the game! We want to see God at work up close and personal in our lives.   (p. 108)

The structure of the book is notable. Each of the chapters is followed by a section called Making It Real, which is itself divided into Other Voices (quotes from people in similar situations) Think About It (a short study guide) and Might Try This (a variety of action steps and links to short films by Ryan). In addition to the Other Voices section, the book is very much the product of interviews with young adults whose journey contains the type of faith crisis the book addresses.

Firsthand is a resource worth knowing about that allows a specific audience to reconstruct the foundations of their faith. I’m not sure why the religious publishing division of Random House chose to do this in hardcover — especially when its target market is the demographic most likely to download rather than purchase a print copy — but the $17.99US/$20.99CAN price has not dissuaded buyers. It should also be must reading for anyone who works in high school and college-age student ministry.

A copy of Firsthand was provided to Thinking Out Loud by Waterbrook Press’ Canadian distributor, Augsburg Fortress.

Reblogging: Some Core Values

I can’t think of any parent who doesn’t want to pass on to his/her children their “value system” or, in the case of Christian parents, their faith. There is nothing more important that I am trying to transmit both formally (as in during our nightly Bible study time) and informally (though example). Yesterday I got a note from my oldest son who was invited on a weekend trip that was described in such a way as to suggest there would be some drinking. He passed and I am proud of him for doing so.

But it has occurred to me lately that I haven’t done such a good job of passing on my core values to my blog audience. Sure, there are some heated topics where I weigh in decisively, but there are also others where I tend to take a middle ground position. Who is this guy and what does he stand for? Here are some answers…

Theology – I remember learning to type, and one of the sentences was “We must know and know that we know.” Doctrinal certainty can be risky unless we’re certain that some elements of the Christian faith belong to the realm of mystery.

God – A word that means so many different things to so many people. Better, initially anyway, to talk about Jesus. That tends to narrow things down to a single definition.

Ethics – We should attempt to aim for the very highest standard, and never do anything that could cause anyone else to stumble on our account. This includes business ethics, social ethics, sexual ethics, and any other adjective you want to add.

Salvation – Sinners prayer, no; a ‘before and after’ story, yes. There has to be a point where we know we passed from death into life, even if the date isn’t written somewhere in the front cover of a Bible. But as C. S. Lewis noted, it might not all happen in a single heartbeat; there are also ‘process’ conversions.

Family – In any given situation there can be good choices, but many things in life are a matter of good, better and best. To repeat, a good choice may not be a best choice. This kind of filtering is tested in the decisions we make about our families and within our family units.

Ministry – One does not have to choose vocational ministry to be in the ministry. Yes, God does call some to be ‘set apart’ for a career in Christian service, but to understand holiness is to know that everyone who desires to be a Christ-follower is called to be ‘set apart’ from the broader culture.

Church – Yes, I know this refers to people, but what about the Sunday thing and the building? For all its faults and failures, I think we’re better to go than not to go. We need that short retreat from the world which is too much with us the other 167 hours of the week; we need to pray and be prayed for; we need to worship corporately; we need people to do life with.

Denominations – Not necessarily that bad thing that some would potray. We see different schools of thought on things emerging even during the times of the original disciples. Christianity probably functions better in smaller faith families, and God probably knew this going in and built it into the design.

Mission – We’ve got the hottest news on the rack. Of course we’re going to share it. We need to take the Jesus story to everyone, and they will respond to it if we present it in its purity. When we mix it with western culture or denominational bias, it won’t work.

Charismatic Gifts – We should seek the giver and not the gifts. But I believe that God is continuing to give supernatural gifts to some people. Not necessarily the ones on television, though.

Tithing – Do your best, but don’t go into debt over tithing. God owns it all, so to set formulas and percentages seems to miss the point. See next entry.

Generosity – The hallmark of the church as described in the concluding verses of Acts 2 and Acts 4, and noted by early church historians. Very hard to do today in a western environment that practices cocooning, but very much at the heart of I Cor. 13.

Worship – In any demographically mixed group, worship should be blended; a mixture of various styles brought together in a seamless way so that no one style seems out of place. The reasons can be more theological than musical.

Prayer – Necessary to keeping the lines of communication open, and thereby keeping the relationship with God active. God delights even in our long laundry lists of requests because it means we’re talking.

The Bible – Not so much a collection of books as it is one continuous story. The more we read it that way the less of a ‘continuity problem’ we’ll have between the First Covenant and the New Covenant. And read it we should. And commit it to memory. And always be ready to share it.

Prophecy – Great for looking back, but things can get confusing if we try to use it to look ahead. The fulfillment of all things represents a point in what we call the ‘future’ where those of us who exist within the constraints of time are able to look at Him who exists out of time.

Heaven – A place we tell our kids is out there somewhere, and then writers like Randy Alcorn make us realize that New Earth is probably closer to what most of those scripture verses were referring to.

Faith – Not, as the visiting preacher illustrated, the belief a wooden chair can support you, but the belief that an old lawn chair with worn out webbing that’s in my garage can support you. It doesn’t look secure in the least, so will you trust yourself to it? Faith is the concreteness of things that don’t look so solid.

Discipleship – The ultimate commitment to lifelong learning. Just as living things grow, so also should Christ followers grow in both knowledge and the operation of grace.

…I could probably keep going, but that sums up a few important things. I hope now we know each other better!

A Couple’s Moral Responsibility to Frozen Embryos

Yikes! The world of biomedical ethics is complicated, but even more so when overlaid with a Christian worldview.  Take this question submitted to Russell D. Moore’s blog, Moore To The Point:

Dear Dr. Moore,

I know you don’t believe in in vitro fertilization, but my wife and I found it was a good solution to our infertility problem. We created multiple embryos, and carried two to term. We cannot afford any other children, so another round of pregnancies is not an option. Our quiver’s full. My conscience is bothering me a little, though, since we banked a number of other fertilized embryos, just in case the first round didn’t take. Do we have any responsibility for these embryos?

Sincerely,

A Stressed Dad

Okay, so if you haven’t read the column or haven’t peeked below, which way do you think he’s going to go on this?  Or, being perfectly honest, what the answer you would like to see, or the answer you would give if anyone asked you?

…

Time’s up!  Here’s a little bit of his answer, but clicking the link in the first paragraph here is highly recommended:

Dear Stressed,

Your quiver’s fuller than you think…

…In a Christian vision of reality there is no such thing as an “almost person,” which is what we think with the abstraction of “fertilized embryos.” Someone is either a human person, and therefore my neighbor, or not. You do not have “frozen embryos.” You have children, frozen in this cruelly clinical world of suspended animation.

It is one thing to decide you can’t afford to have children, before you conceive children, just as it is one thing to decide you can’t afford to marry, before you marry. You’re married though, and you’ve conceived children. You have an obligation to them. The one who does not care for his own household is, the Apostle Paul says, “worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8).

This doesn’t mean your game-plan is easy. There’s a cross to take up here. The path from frozen storage to birth is difficult, whether through bearing those children or making an adoption plan for them into loving families. But these are not things; these are persons, worthy of love and respect and sacrifice…

Any surprise or shock I had at his answer stemmed not from fundamental disagreement but from entering a world of consideration that was completely foreign to me.  A few days ago, I had no opinion on this issue.  Today, I see a couple in a particular situation who have sought advice that may not necessarily be the advice they want to hear. Despite this, I still find myself torn.

I want to look the couple in the eye and say, “I see your pain and struggle with this.” Then I want to look Dr. Moore in the eye and say, “That was a very wise answer.” In other words, “I agree with you and (turning my head) I agree with you.” It’s a great stance if you’re going into politics, but I’m not sure how it plays out in the world of faith and ethics.

Rather, there is the feeling of being confronted with an issue that is beyond yourself, something you feel you lack capacity to assess. Where is Solomon when you need him? I suppose that’s the role that Dr. Moore is being asked to play here.

He concludes by linking alluding to a familiar scripture passage,

Your conscience might seem to be a nuisance to you… But a nagging conscience can be a sign of grace. It might be that what you are hearing is a happy foretaste of obedience to Christ, as you hear his voice saying, “I was frozen and you remembered me.”

What do you think?

Jamie, The Very Best Parenting

“It took me a lot of years and a lot of conversations with God (and with people who know more about God than me) to understand that everything I believed about my own sexuality was built on two huge lies.” ~ Jamie Wright

What happens when you have three teenager boys in the house, and your expectations for them come crashing against the realities of what you did when you were their age?

Those of you who have been here for a little while know that this is a blog that places a premium price on transparency and honesty. We all clean up pretty good for Sunday morning (or daily blogging) but life is often messy, so when pastors, church leaders, authors or just everyday run-of-the-mill bloggers are straightforward and tell it like it is, they get my vote.

Jamie Wright may call herself “the very worst missionary” but she proves herself, in an article published on Friday, to be trying to be the very best parent.

This is a very explicit article that needs to be read in full, so I’m not going to excerpt from it here beyond the quotation above.  If you have children, have grandchildren, help with a church midweek program, teach Sunday School, or simply want some insight into what perfectly ideal Christianity looks like from the other side, you should click through now and read Jamie’s article simply titled Sex. (Yes, I know some of you are programmed never to click on that word online; however…)

Digital Hoarding in the 21st Century

More than two decades ago I was a somewhat wandering youth speaker. Usually I spoke about music and music-related cultural issues. But once in awhile I hauled out a talk about how materialism is a type of surrogate religion for many people; how we draw strength in what we own, what we possess. I spoke about how most of us are driven by our passions, our positions and our possessions.  (Unrelated information: I am still available for bookings for your youth group.) (Trying too hard: Or speak to your seniors group, I’m no longer picky.)

Then I would quote a statistic that was relevant at the time that one of the biggest growth industries for small business was personal storage lockers. Comedian George Carlin was doing a routine called “A Place for my Stuff.” People whose basements and garages were full of stuff were looking for places to store more stuff, and the places began popping up anywhere an entrepreneur could find available real estate.  (Full disclaimer: We have been paying for storage for the last couple of years for some of my parents’ furnishings, and have essentially paid out more than any of their stuff is worth.) (Further disclaimer: The word couple was used loosely in the preceding sentence.)

I am not a total pack rat — in the sense that I know other people who are worse — but I have avoided watching the TV show Hoarders, just in case any of it resonates too greatly. You know… like people who avoid going to church in case they should fall under conviction. (Possible connection: People who pretend to be sick on the final night of church camp lest they be struck by an overwhelming desire to confess to something.) (Actual fact: Some of us enjoyed campfire night solely because people confessed to things.) (However: No amount of singing the guitar version of ‘Just as I Am’ would get my friend Wayne to confess he kissed Dawn outside the girls’ cabins.) (Significance of previous sentence: I had a huge crush on Dawn. We all did.)

In the digital world, my greatest transgressions on my computer involve email.  Over 11,000 currently in each of two folders.  And six major folders total.  I try to delete in groups by sender. On a good night, I might get rid of a hundred that are completely unnecessary, but it’s such a small drop in the bucket. (Metaphor technicality: It would actually constitute removing a drop in the bucket.)

Fortunately, my kids are not afflicted with my penchant for material acquisition. Everything from birthday cards to articles of clothing are tossed without a thought to sentimental value. I have encouraged them to have a ‘keepsake drawer’ somewhere, but I don’t think the concept is highly subscribed to. (Guilty admission: I sometimes rescue things they have discarded in the hope they will regret their hasty decisions.)

Which brings us to today’s irony.  Kid One, who is in third year of university has an external hard drive for his laptop and now Kid Two, who is in first year wants one for his birthday next week. An external hard drive is the personal storage locker for a new generation. It’s an admission that your massive hard drive is insufficient to store all the bits and bytes you can’t bear to delete. (Geek advisory: You really need to defrag after a major deleting session or you’re no better off.) (Behind the scenes trivia: My spell check doesn’t accept defrag.)

So maybe the apples didn’t fall far from the tree after all. Perhaps hoarding just takes a different form in the digital age. Or perhaps the external unit simply makes good backup sense. (Perhaps I should send them electronic birthday cards.) (Noteworthy: Digital Hoarding would be a great name for a band.) (Additionally: They could perform a song about Dawn and Wayne at church camp.)

Teens With Idle Hands

This weekend I accidentally stumbled on the mother of all teen forums. The discussion boards actually generated a fair bit of traffic both from the UK and the US. Adding it all up, I probably spent more than 90 minutes listening to what the kids were saying.

At this point, you should have all sorts of warning lights going off in your brain, so let me assure you that I wasn’t stalking anyone, didn’t create a login where I pretended to be a teenage girl, didn’t chat or leave any comments, and didn’t set up a time to meet anyone in a public park on Tuesday after school.  Actually, the site seemed to be heavily moderated, and additionally, I got the impression that some teens are selected to act as prefects to find problems the moderators miss.

As I considered what I was reading, I realized there is a root issue about life for the modern teenager in western Europe and North America that we might miss.

Parents, generally speaking, worry about what their sons are watching online, who their daughters are texting at 12:30 in the morning, and generally what activities go on in the school lunchroom, on the school bus or at weekend parties. They worry with good reason. Much of your child’s worldview is being shaped by the internet. Television is no longer a big factor. Magazines are no longer an influence. And radio is… what is radio again?

Some of the online discussions were healthy interaction on concerns teens worry about as they face the uncertainties of growing up. I’m not saying we don’t need this type of website. But peer-to-peer advice is a kind of wild frontier where subject matter is often reduced to the lowest common denominator. No one truly speaks with authority, and everything is opinion; nothing is footnoted or referenced.

Your pre-teens’ and/or teens’ worlds are being shaped by social media platforms arriving so quickly that if I were to name any here, it would immediately render this article dated.  Unless the world experiences considerable alteration, kids growing up today will spend a full 25% of their lives (minimum) sitting in front of a screen. That’s not waking hours. That’s hours, period. Whatever happened to playing road hockey and hoops and yelling “car” every time a vehicle wanted to drive through? Card games and board games? It’s hard to generate interest in a plodding game of Scrabble with kids who grew up playing first person shooters. And most teens would rather debate the merits of keeping suburban lawns trimmed than actually help cut the lawn.

The family agenda and the family core values are set by screens and what the screens transmit. These kids have grown up in a screen culture; have never known a world without screens. So how to pull the kids away? Some people say the kids simply have too much unstructured time. But why do they have this free time?

Simple. In our move from rural to urban life, kids have no chores.

Once upon a time, there were cows to milk, eggs to gather, tomatoes to pick, manure to shovel and firewood to chop.  But now that is not the case.

Once upon a more recent time, there were part time jobs for teenagers. But the reality of the new economy is that those entry level jobs at fast food restaurants and departments stores are now scooped up by desperate people in their thirties, forties and fifties who lost great career opportunities and now fill two or three part time positions that in a previous era would have gone to students.

So… no chores, no jobs.  Social media fills they void and they can stay up until 12:30 texting because they haven’t done anything physically exhausting all day.

…

What is the solution to this? Soccer, swimming and baseball are good, but many families cannot afford to get their kids into sports; though as space permits in local parks and schools, some informal competitive sports  can happen for those who can’t afford the equipment and uniforms.

If you have the luxury of relocating to what is at least a hobby farm, you would be doing your kids a big favor.  Seriously.  Or at least plant as big a garden as you can in whatever space you have.

Youth groups: Can’t say enough good about this option. Get your older teens into one (or two) high school groups and then get them helping out in junior high groups.

Music lessons: You can reduce costs by finding teachers who do group music lessons. You can reduce musical instrument costs by starting the kids off with ukeleles or budget-priced guitars or starter electronic keyboards.

My wife and I are big believers in summer camp ministry. If you can get the kids in for several years as campers, and then let them grow into leadership training and finally staff positions, your initial investment will pay for itself, and in some cases provide the teens with income at a time in economic history when summer jobs otherwise don’t exist.

Urban chores: Get your teens to step up and do things that you or your spouse might normally have done. If their rooms need painting, get them to do it themselves with a trip to the building store for paint and supplies. Do they need some shelving in their rooms? Get them to build it themselves. Set up a pizza garden where they grow some of their favorite toppings. Allow older teens to help with any home renovation you’re doing, or a minor car repair.

Finally, volunteering: At the seniors home, at the local library, at the community center. It’s not only a great place to meet other teens committed to not vegetating in front of screens, but the volunteer hours can be logged and possibly translate to scholarships in their senior year of high school. Furthermore, you can put volunteer positions on a resumé, which means better prospects for part time jobs that do come available.

…

The teens in the discussion groups I saw this weekend — especially in the areas drawing the greatest number of views — were fixated on things that are not going to improve their character, their prospects, or their sense of self-worth. The discussion forum itself is a glaring example of teens with too much time on their hands.  They often feed off encouragement toward negative behaviors that can only be described as self-destructive.

They need something else — anything else — to occupy their waking hours.

The Wonderful World of CT

A couple of interesting goings-on at Christianity Today (CT) this week.

First, there was the piece, Should Churches Discourage Belief in Santa Claus? This is one of those pieces where they simply ask a handful of experts and then arrange their answers on a spectrum, which one expects in this case would run from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’  I had actually seen this when it appeared online and given it the requisite 10-seconds I needed to digest it.

But the I listened Tuesday night to The Phil Vischer Podcast #29, and Phil mentioned that he had been quoted:

“The notion of getting back to a ‘pure Christmas’ is misfounded; the holiday was a hodgepodge from the beginning. We should take those fun Santa traditions and link them back to St. Nicholas rather than getting rid of the fun part of Christmas and stick with the somber part.”
~ Phil Vischer, creator, VeggieTales and What’s in the Bible?

And so had Wheaton College associate professor Mary ‘Scottie’ May who teaches Christian Education and Family Ministry:

“The key word is belief. Emulating Saint Nick is awesome, but I have problems with parents duping their children into believing that Santa exists. A church could acknowledge in a family context the historical person of St. Nicholas. But the figure the culture has created does not belong in church.”
~ Scottie May, professor, Wheaton College

And then he dropped this: Scottie is Phil’s mom.

And the reporter didn’t know.

And neither interviewee knew the other had been interviewed.

And — yes there’s another and — they were quoted at opposite ends of the five-answer continuum even though their answers were very similar if not identical. (Podcast subject begins around 11:30 to about 13:30)

…Meanwhile, over at her.meneutics, the Christianity Today women’s blog, profiles OMG Tees, a product line described as “spiritual and sexy.”

I thought of including the picture that they did, but that would just be gratuitous. We would never do that here.

Okay, too late. But not to worry; some people don’t scroll down this far.  Writer Michelle Van Loon notes:

OMG has created a line of casual tanks and tees designed for Saturday night parties and Sunday morning worship. Founded in 2010, the California company’s website features teen models giving the camera their best PG-13 “come hither” looks, often wearing little more than tees and tanks splashed with slogans like “A Date With J.C.”, “God Knows My Secrets,” and “Worship Crew.” Who knows? Perhaps the “come hither” is intended to be a non-verbal evangelistic tool.

There have been at least two generations of the Christian T-Shirt–the derivative-yet-earnest variety and the darkly ironic–but OMG has created a brand-new category: Sexy ‘n Spiritual. Christians have a long, ignoble history of trading in all manner of religious tchotchkes, but OMG, with its Second Commandment-bending name, takes this bad habit of ours in a new direction, with its products’ odd syncretism between pop religion and hyper-sexualized pop culture.

She then uses this as a springboard to discuss what she calls ‘fan behavior’ recalling the premise of Kyle Idleman’s popular Christian book, Not a Fan which we reviewed here in May.

She concludes:

I doubt that the Christians who are suiting up for this year’s round of court battles on behalf of their local town hall’s manger scene see themselves as kindred spirits with companies like OMG. I think they have one thing in common: They both appeal to the fans of Team Jesus. It might just be time to quit the team, and follow the captain instead.

…Because we’re considered a more progressive blog by some, I thought I’d toss in an extra gratuitous picture; however please keep in mind that (a) this is for educational purposes only, and (b) honestly, this is the only other picture at the site I considered remotely safe; the others being a sequence of pics that begin on a church platform and end with the same three girls lying on a bed together. And no, I am not making that up; the rest of the stuff is mildly pornographic, and the “Princess of Peace” product line is equally blasphemous.

…All of this begs the question as to whether or not we need CT to bring us these articles or if we would be better served by them simply taking an online pass if it’s a slow evangelical news day.

Concordia Decides Enough is Enough with VBS Entertainment

VBS (Vacation Bible School) is a major industry. Let me be clear, VBS is big business. In North America, nearly two dozen publishers compete — in every sense of the word — for your church’s summer Christian Education dollars to be spent on their program. Each year the programs get more and more elaborate and involve an increasing number of ancillary products which help vindicate what each publisher spends on marketing.

And according to one publisher, each year it gets, from a Biblical viewpoint, more and more silly. Concordia Publishing has decided to swim against the current. Good for them.

On another blog that I write, I deal with issues confronting the world of Christian publishing in general and Christian bookstores in particular. Sometimes I link to articles at a Strang Publishing website called Christian Retailing, but usually I don’t need to because bookstore owners and managers already have that information covered and are regular readers there.

So normally, I wouldn’t reblog anything from Christian Retailing there, let alone here, but this is something every Kid Min director, every Children’s pastor, every Christian Education department head needs to be aware of. As always, reading at source is encouraged, click here.

Concordia Takes Stand Against VBS Entertainment Machine

Concordia Publishing House is calling on Vacation Bible School (VBS) publishers to make the gospel—not entertainment—central to their VBS programs.

“Our stand is against Vacation Bible School programs that confuse children with images and characters that are unrealistic and too similar to cartoons on TV and in the movies—where is the Christian focus?” said Emily Barlean, senior public relations specialist.

Acknowledging that VBS themes may use cartoonish figures or themes to “hook” children and get them interested in participating in a church VBS program, a company statement observed that “the steady transformation of VBS programs into full-on entertainment machines has created a rather distressing situation.

“Instead of being used to share the Word of the Lord, VBS is being used to babysit and cure boredom—and many children are leaving VBS more confused than ever as to who and what is real and who and what are just characters and stories.”

Laying the blame at the feet of publishers, parents and churches alike, Concordia, publisher for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), has spent three years refocusing its VBS brand and creating programming that remains faithful to the gospel message and the Scriptures as a whole. The publisher calls this renewed focus “VBS with Purpose.”

“After many years of trying to mold our VBS programs after what was considered fun and popular, we decided that we’d had enough,” said Pam Nummela, Concordia’s VBS editor, who is also a director of Christian education and a 30-year veteran leader of VBS programs.

Concordia’s VBS curricula will be changing significantly as a result. Stores and churches will see the publisher’s VBS programs will no longer be set in locations that cannot be found in the Bible, stories will no longer feature characters outside of the Bible, all artwork will be realistic, and “wise-cracking animals” will not be the spokesmen for Concordia VBS themes.

“Kids love all kinds of art, but that does not mean all art is best for presenting Bible stories,” said Gail Pawlitz, a childhood education expert. “During the early childhood years when children sort out for themselves what is real from what is not real, realistic images for Bible stories trump others because they communicate the idea that if ‘it looks real, it is real.’ “

…[T]o learn more about Concordia’s 2013 program, click Tell It on the Mountain.

Great Christmas Song

Yes, I know it’s Thanksgiving day in the U.S., but we had ours in October; and besides, I don’t have a great Thanksgiving song to post.

And now a word from our sponsor. Sort of. Searchlight Books makes it possible for me to have the time to do this blogging thing, and this song is part of Searchlight’s YouTube channel of classic Christian songs on vinyl that aren’t posted elsewhere on YT. I’m adding this one to the blog because we literally tore the house apart for weeks trying to find this. Somebody needs to do an updated version of this ballad for Christmas 2013.

BTW, 25 years since this was recorded; Sam Rowland is still in ministry with Youth For Christ / Youth Unlimited in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; where today, it’s also not Thanksgiving.

Why They’re Leaving The Church: A Canadian Study

“When it comes to the faith commitment of parents, it is hugely important that children observe their faith as a lifestyle throughout the week if it is to make a statement about its vibrancy and authenticity.  ~John Wilkinson, Canadian youth ministry specialist

“The most effective faith instruction takes place organically.” ~Hemorrhaging Faith

This month’s cover story at Canada’s national evangelical magazine Faith Today is titled Why They’re Leaving, and appears in connection with the release of a study titled Hemorrhaging Faith which was co-sponsored by EFC (publisher of Faith Today), InterVarsity and others and compiled by James Penner Associates. The study is in ‘pre-print’ stage and is available for $15 CDN as a .pdf download.

The website notes:

• Only one in three Canadian young adults who attended church weekly as a child still do so today.
• Of the young adults who no longer attend church, half have also stopped identifying themselves with the Christian tradition in which they were raised.
• There are four primary toxins that keep young people from engaging with the church: Hypocrisy, judgement, exclusivity, failure.

The Faith Today article, in a sidebar, notes four categories of youth:

• Engagers (church is good) 23%
• Fence Sitters (want church on their terms) 36%
• Wanderers (church is not for me) 26%
• Rejecters (church is bad) 15%

For more, I guess you’ll have to buy the report or at least read the article (first link above).