Will Our Children Have Faith?

Youth Sunday

March 25, 2007

Scriptures:

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. ⁵ You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷ Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹ and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4--9 (NRSVA)

Sermon:

          (Youth who spoke and shared their testimony were Shelly Gayle, Gerald Gayle, and Alex Craze.)

          Knowing these three young people and having heard their testimony, I will not be tempted to surrender my hope for the future to the cynics of our day.

We frequently hear people say that the future of the church—not the future of Christianity—are the children or youth of today. I would say that the future of Christianity—not the Church—is, as the writer of Deuteronomy understood—in the hands of committed parents and  Church leadership who will insure that children are brought up in the right ways, with right teachings, right examples, and right visions for their lives.

It is the Church’s responsibility to provide meaningful, age appropriate worship experiences, Christian educational experiences, and spiritual growth opportunities. However, none of these things makes any difference if parents and guardians are not actively and authoritatively involved in their children’s moral and spiritual development.

During my days at seminary, there was much discussion about the phenomenon of second career or change of career student enrollment in seminaries across the nation.  At the time, I believe the average age of entering seminary students were in their mid to late thirites.  This average meant there were many people in their fifties, sixties, and even seventies entering seminary.  One of the most common things among my peer group of older students was, “Our parents didn’t give us a choice about going to church.”  For most of us, our parents said something to the effect that as long as we kids put our foot under our parent’s tables us would do as they said.  The consensus of my seminary peer group was that in spite of our racial, cultural, educational, and socio-economic differences the one thing we held in common was that our parents were actively and authoritatively involved in our education and religious and spiritual development.  In addition, our parents did not want to be our “friends” or “buddies”.  They felt a higher calling—to be our parents.

The Barna Group recently released the findings of a survey on the “Un-churched Population” in America.  Nearly 100 million in the U.S. are un-churched.  That is one out of every three Americans has not attended a religious service of any type during the past six months. [1]

I cannot tell you the number of times parents have told me that the reason they and their kids are not attending church or participating in a Christian youth group is that they have sport’s practices or games on Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, or when the youth group is scheduled to meet. Another reason given is that the kids are so busy with school, sports, and extra curricular activities the parents just hate to get them up on Sunday morning—they need their rest.  Besides, church isn’t as much fun as cheerleader camp, basketball camp, or hanging out with their friends at the Mall unsupervised.

It is not our primary responsibilities as parents to insure that our kids are having fun or are being entertained. Furthermore, allowing children to make decisions about their moral, spiritual, and ethical futures while still a child is not good parenting.  Our primary job as parents is to protect and provide for our children while insuring our kids acquire a good education and life skills along with the moral, ethical, and spiritual values that will facilitate a good, healthy life and stand them in good stead at life’s end.

⁶ Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)

Friends and peer groups don’t generally teach good morals; they teach conformity.  Sports do not build character; sports reveal character. TV as a rule doesn’t teach good morality and values; it distorts reality. Violent video games do not encourage young people to respect themselves and others. Glamorizing dope dealers, gangsters, the denigration of women, and racism in movies and rap videos doesn’t ask a person to be their best; it gives a pseudo-social justification to be one’s worst.

It is not the Church’s responsibility any more than it is the school’s responsibility to insure our youth are having fun or being entertained.  The Church’s mission is to proclaim, teach, witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to nurture people in the Gospel.  This can be done in fun and entertaining ways in a community of adults and youth, but at the back of the minds of the Church’s leadership, pastors, parents, and educators should be the question: will our children have a viable, life-sustaining faith in God and God’s revealed will in Jesus Christ?  Furthermore, are we providing the ways and means to this end?

What are we to do?  We are to be Christian adults and parents, who demonstrate a love of God in our lives; people who know God’s words and teach them to our children; adults who integrate God’s will and ways into our conversations and all of our decisions. We are to be Christian people whose words and deeds reflect the will of God. Yes, I know we all come up short in this, but that doesn’t mean we stop struggling and trying to live out our Christian ideals.

Only in the struggle, in the trying will we insure our children have faith.  Only in the struggle and trying will we insure the future of the Church within the will of God.

A few years ago, there was a true story about a man in New York City who was kidnapped. His kidnappers called his wife and asked for $100,000 ransom. She talked them down to $30,000.

The story had a happy conclusion: the man returned home unharmed, the money was recovered, and the kidnappers were caught and sent to jail. However, don't you wonder what happened when the man got home and found that his wife got him back for a discount? The person who reported the story, Calvin Trillin, imagined aloud what the negotiations must have been like: "$100,000 for that old guy? You have to be crazy. Just look at him! Look at that gut! [He’s bald, he has false teeth, high blood pressure, he snores, and falls asleep at the drop of a hat.] You want $100,000 for that? You've got to be kidding. Give me a break here [work with me]. $30,000 is my top offer."

I suppose there are some here this morning that can identify with the wife in that story, but for some reason I find myself identifying with the husband. I'd like to think that if I were in a similar situation, my wife, kids, and friends would spare no expense to get me back. They wouldn't haggle over the price. They wouldn't say, 'Well, let me think about it.” I’d like to think that they would say, 'We'll do anything for you.”

The question I pose this morning is will we do anything for the future of Christianity and our children’s moral and spiritual lives.  On the other hand, will we haggle, bargain, and try to cut a deal and compromise with the inducements of the secular world and shallow big-production religion to reclaim some semblance of the kidnapped moral and spiritual lives of our children. 

There is no way the average church can compete with the media hype and glamour of big sports or Hollywood productions aimed at the youth market. Furthermore, those big productions, glitzy, Christian rock music approaches must by the nature of the sound bite and production costs present a shallow, feel-good, youth oriented message about Christ.  Big production religion lacks the substantive, educational, and pastoral dimensions that will stand people in good stead during times of serious moral and spiritual struggles.  The only thing the average church has going for it in competition with big secular seductions of the youth of the world and shallow, feel-good, religion is: (1) parental responsibility and commitment to our children, the Church, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (2) Committed and devote Church leadership who claim the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives and in their Christian leadership.

Will our children have a life-directing faith in God?  Will our children be exposed to and taught the best in moral, spiritual, and ethical values?  Well, that depends on how serious we as adults take our parenting responsibilities and how far we are willing to go to accommodate our modern culture.  The future of Christianity, the Church, and our youth will depend on how serious the Church takes its responsibility to proclaim, teach, and witness to God’s will as revealed in Jesus Christ.

We—you and I—as parents and Christian leadership hold the future of the Church, the future of Christianity in our hands today—it is not in the hands of the youth or children. Furthermore, the caliber and quality of our youth’s leadership when they take the reigns in the future is dependent upon what we do, say, and teach today.

Sombra Del Monte has a long and positive history in supporting the youth of this church.  A history grounded in the moral and spiritual commitment of its parents and its leadership.  However, we must not rest on our laurels because too much is at stake.  The secular attractions and temptations that dissuade or pull parents and youth out of the church are growing exponentially.  We must be committed to finding better ways to reach out to young people and their families with a truth as old as the universe itself—God’s love for all humankind and God’s desire to bless and save humankind from its worst self now and forevermore.

Friends the human condition with all its anxieties, fears, and hopes has not changes for thousands upon thousands of years. We may ride in automobiles, trains, planes, and even spacecraft instead of ox carts but what it means essentially to be human hasn’t changed since the dawn of human existence.  We still need a sense of contact and personal relationship with the ground of our being—God.  In addition, it is our responsibility as parents, adult Christian leaders to insure that our children are exposed the most wholesome, and realistic understandings of the divine-human relationship as found and understood in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.