According to the Barna group, four key factors are reshaping the American church. Two of those factors were highlighted in part one of this article. Let me briefly add some comment.
The first factor is the neglect of three critical dynamics in the life of the church: children, family, and prayer. Regarding children, if 80 percent of our youth fall away when they get to college, part of that tragedy has to do with their marginalization by peers and professors who scoff at and tear down Christianity. Our young people are ill-equipped to defend and even maintain the faith. Children must be given a full-orbed biblical worldview if they are to effectively defend the faith in this pluralistic culture.
At the same time, we recognize that simply being instructed in the Christian worldview will not change the heart. For our young people to truly be saved and not walk away from the faith either philosophically or practically, they must be born again. Yet, as we give them solid biblical instruction throughout their formative years right up until the time they leave, not only have we given them that which God uses to convert, the word of God, but we have given them tools by which to think, evaluate the world, and ward off false philosophies by which they will be confronted in the college setting.
As they see and set forth the fact that the biblical worldview is the only worldview that makes sense of the reality we experience, in human terms, they have a better opportunity to be saved than if they either did not think about the things of God or if they could not defend the things of God. Again, God has to save. But, He uses His truth to save and sanctify.
Regarding the family, it will have to be emphasized in terms of functioning as a unit with the father taking his role as prophet, priest, and king seriously. While instruction at church can be individualized (men's ministry, women's ministry, youth ministry, etc.), in addition, the family unit should be instructed as a family. We do not advocate an either/or dynamic but a both/and ministry. The reality is that while the contemporary church will be hard-pressed to do away with youth ministry models that are largely unbiblical simply because we are myopic by nature and assume what we do has been done for two-thousand years, churches do need to find some way to focus on the family, to borrow a phrase.
