Last week we began to unpack Michael Spencer’s explosive article, “The Coming Evangelical Collapse.” Spencer’s central assertion that “we are on the verge—within 10 years—of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity” drew widespread affirmations (or resignation) from many evangelicals. Whether or not one agrees with Spencer’s conclusions, the general resonance with this article by so many evangelicals and its specific charges against the evangelical church in America warrant serious consideration.

Now, you may think, “How can Christianity suffer collapse? Such a thing isn’t possible. This is just reactionary hyperbole!” However, Christian communities have arisen and vanished across the globe throughout history. The story of the church includes the ebb and flow of Christianity into and out of various cultures and regions; and while Jesus promised that his church would last until the end of the age, he never promised that it would do so in America. Recall that Christianity was dominant in Europe for more than a millennium and yet today barely a trace remains, while in Africa and Asia, the church is spreading like wildfire. Historian Philip Jenkins adds, “Once, the prospect of a non- or post-Christian Syria or Mesopotamia would have seemed inconceivable, as the Christians of these lands knew incontrovertibly that they stood at the heart of the faith” (Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity [HarperCollins: New York, NY], 42). Isn’t this same prospect equally inconceivable to us?—and yet history proves it is possible.

Let me also add any impending collapse of evangelicalism as we know it is not the result of any flaw inherent to Christianity. It would be, without a doubt, the result of God’s providence. We cannot know why, but given the state of the church in America, could it be God’s judgment? I am inclined to think that is possible. Might we be the church in Ephesus to whom John writes, “you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:4)? Perhaps the Laodicean church that has become “lukewarm” (Rev. 3:16)? 

This week let’s examine another of Spencer’s charges (an issue pandemic in our churches)—our abject failure to transmit [coherent] Christian faith to the next generation.  Over the last century the church in America has suffered serious generational drift and decay. In every subsequent generation over the last century, the faith has become more fragmented, watered-down, superficial, and irrelevant. We have drifted from a vibrant faith rooted in the historic confessions, coherent theological convictions, and intelligent cultural engagement to a privatized faith that is indifferent to the past, theologically ignorant, and culturally irrelevant. As Michael Spencer writes:

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.