Real Church: Keeping Your Children Involved
The head of a biblical discernment ministry says a new survey illustrates that because many young people have been “brought up on entertainment” in the church of their childhood, they prefer something akin to a video game rather than digging deep into God’s Word.
A new book, Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do to Stop It, co-authored by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, reaffirms past surveys that have shown most children who grow up in the church will leave it as they become young adults. But it also indicates that such disenchantment with the church often begins at an early age.
Ham and researcher Britt Beemer surveyed 1,000 young adults who have left churches and found that Christian churches are “losing many more people by middle school and many more by high school than [they] will ever lose in college.”
T.A. McMahon, executive director of The Berean Call, believes the failure to keep evangelical youth interested in and excited about the Bible is a consequence of abandoning teaching them in favor of trying to entertain them.
“I think it’s the result for the most part of the consumer, seeker-friendly approach to church growth, which I believe has really done more to wean the church off the Bible than any trend in this century and the last one,” he contends.
He agrees with the survey’s conclusion that “on the whole, the Sunday school programs of today are statistical failures.”
“There are few Sunday school classes that exist that really instruct a young person in sound doctrine, to encourage him or her to understand what the Bible teaches and the reasons why its teachings are true,” McMahon adds.
McMahon says Christian youth pastors serve a vital role in teaching young people, but parents should not be neglecting their duties to demonstrate their love for God’s Word and train their children in biblical truth in the home.
(Source: Onenewsnow.com)
