RE: [asa] Youth leaving churches because of old earth

Christianity Today (Aug 09 issue) has an excellent one page interview (p. 58)
with Kevin Deyoung in which he defends the concept of institutional church as
opposed to the attempted religionless Christianities or "emergent" churches that
are all the rage now. His article isn't about creationist or earth-age issues
and doesn't mention those things, but I think still applies to this subject
line. One thing for us to consider in this particular list is how
"front-and-center" this subject seems to us since we immerse ourselves in it out
of personal interest or past bad experience. But among today's youth for whom
cultural relevance, "seekerhood", or Star-Bucks Christianity seem to be catering
to the perceived self-needs of young Christians, I wonder if the academic and
theological tussles over origins might increasingly be "those issues my dad
likes to fuss about"? Do we have to poke it in people's faces and ignite their
concern in an attempt to make it register as a relevant faith issue? To most
youth it isn't, in some cases because their minds are made up and they want to
move on with their theological lives. Maybe in other cases because they don't
even care. Anyway, whether or not we over-inflate these concerns here, I did
appreciate Deyoung's observation that there is a kind of immaturity to the
knee-jerk reaction of so many against all religion institutionalized. The same
might apply to the reticence of many youth to wrestle with foundational or
near-foundational issues that do make an impact for better or worse. There is
hard work involved in sustaining something, and the work of "doing institutional
church" or investigating origins views in multi-faceted Christian perspective
just doesn't seem to be a desire or need of very many Christian youth I
encounter in classrooms today. But if history is any indicator, the issue will
still be around on that future day when their boat gets rocked a bit.

--Merv

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Aug 9 15:29:34 2009