Friday, April 5, 2013
Church failure according to church leaders
Chuches' failure is an awesome post detailing why our children don't go to church as young adults. I have a liberal friend of mine to thank for the link.
This friend of mine is a decent man looking for truth in his life and slowly realizing the Truth. We went to college together, we played college football together, we spent holidays at my family's home together, he stood up in SD and my wedding, he is a black man from a single mom, I am a white man from a nuclear family, and we have had very different political opinions in the past. However, we both see the desperate need of return to the church for our society. It is very difficult for someone with my views on life to be accepted by liberals. The liberals I know are from my past and put up with my presence because they know me and my sincerity. They still get mad at me and occasionally threaten to no longer talk to me. But, when they see me attack the neo-con message with as much, if not more, vengeance; they like to keep me around.
Back to the link. The church is too normal and mainstream to mean anything to young people. Such a great insight. The church just continues to adopt cultural norms and expects to have an effect on society. Today's church reacts to pop culture by...wait for it...becoming more pop culture. The Bible doesn't do that. It is the Truth. God's Word doesn't care about Sodom and Gomorrah's practices. The Truth is not democratic. A church cannot possibly hope to reach young adults by appearing no different than the rave they went to Saturday night.
The most significant part of the article was how parents and the church have failed to show young people how biblical Truth applies to their lives. The church isn't living the Truths of scripture. The church and Christians aren't standing on principle. They aren't tackling the new problems of today's society with a moral compass of the Bible. Attention Christian parents: QUIT SUCKING! Quit being afraid of dealing with today's issues on biblical terms. That is what will win our children over to the Christian morality of living life. Use your knowledge to defeat these lies and enemies in your own life and guide your children on how to do it as well.
Do not stand in fear of the Goliath of our time. Proudly proclaim your faith and know that biblical Truth will always win the day.
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So fundamentalist Christianity is losing people because it's becoming too modern?
ReplyDeleteNot at all...
If anything, it's because fundamentalist Christianity is trying different ways to appear modern on the surface (changing worship styles, etc), applying a false veneer of modernity, all the while, clinging to beliefs out of the 1950's
Here's a study by Barna group, an evangelical organization:
http://www.barna.org/teens-next-gen-articles/528-six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church.
Some of the top reasons listed for young people leaving churches behind?
One-quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds said “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” (23% indicated this “completely” or “mostly” describes their experience). Other perceptions in this category include “church ignoring the problems of the real world” (22%) and “my church is too concerned that movies, music, and video games are harmful” (18%).
One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science.
Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%).
Fundamentalism is scared to death of the modern world, and does everything it can to shut it out. It's the entire motivation for evangelicals creating their own culture, complete with their own movies, etc and homeschooling their kids. They want to escape into their own parallel reality.
Your interpretation of the data is unsound. I'd use a stronger word, but it's not my blog.
DeleteWell Sheldon, I actually am a physicist. I returned to Christianity because of the logical. I have no problem defeating the chin-scratching liberals with their pseudo-science. I have brought up a son that makes science teachers (admittedly, women) cry when confronted by the Truth a sixteen year old man presents to them. I love to take on these supposed intellectuals. They cower and flee. It is great entertainment to me and my family.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, if you aren't a bible believing Christian, you really don't belong here. I have no idea how to educate you about your moral relativism. To deny 1 + 1 is 2, makes no sense to me.
Spoken like a true fundamentalist...you don't belong here.
DeleteIt's actually our blog, so...I'm just saying. Let me know where your house is and I'll come over and take a dump in your yard.
DeleteOTOH, if you had something logical relating to the Bible to say, by all means stick around and challenge the ideas.
I was on a church worship team about 12 years ago. We had a woman worship leader and later she was replaced by another lady. The first one left her husband 7 years ago and now the other one is divorcing her husband and now the two women are in a "relationship." It was a conservative church. I am flabbergasted. How can you be in a church for years and even in leadership, and somehow that is acceptable behavior? I have no answers but I know something is terribly wrong.
ReplyDeleteHow can you be in a church for years and even in leadership, and somehow that is acceptable behavior? I have no answers but I know something is terribly wrong.
ReplyDeleteThey don't call it a rationalization hamster for nothing.
Bottom line, people are fallen and these things will happen. Put your faith in Jesus, not in the Church.
I just finished an interesting book, Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow, that notes a lot of the reasons that are probably causing at least part of what you see here RLB.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thing is that this decline of men going has been around for centuries, though congregations now that are largely female are almost guaranteed to be headed to extinction by his argument, based on the trend data.
I do agree that a lack of standing for principle is a principle is a part of the problem, but it is not just a "we need to return to the 1950s argument" that some claim.
I completely agree that modern science is quite corrupt. I believe because it is the most logical explanation for things. Believing it all just happened with time and chance goes against the principles I have seen in my life. I am more engineering trained (Computer Science), but I can constantly see that nothing spontaneously organizes itself, contrary to all the claims otherwise.
I enjoy being a genius sometimes. It's frustrating in many ways. I see comments by morons like Bruce and Sheldon and wonder what flavor their window is on the way to school. It's not my fault that I understand science and logic. More importantly, it pisses me off that those type of idiots intimidate decent Christians with a little more intelligence than the typical Christian has.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to be a genius to be a Christian, but if you are; it is your responsibility to beat up moral relativist bullies. The small percentage of atheist physicists I know are trying to make an argument for an infinite number of universes to explain observable reality. Not that they can prove it. They can't. It's just the only way to mathematically/logically explain our universe existing the way it does without intelligent design of some sort. As a Christian physicist, it is hilarious to watch as these rebellious people soooo want the Truth not to be there.
I am going to have to blog about this also. Red, I like the fact you often point out that you are a physicist, and came to faith in a different way than the full on experiential way so many seem to. That, in and of itself, is deftly addressed in that article. I am a chemical engineer. I was convinced that because I was so technically, math, chemistry, physics, bright, that I was way above the Christian fray. I read books on astronomy and astrophysics before Stephen Hawking was even well known, and took on board what i could glean from them...admittedly I could not fully follow the math and physics in these very technical books but I could follow the concepts well enough. I proudly displayed them in my apartments as a young man. Then came a faith , yes, experience but a very tangible one I will not bore with. Exactly what I needed to be sure.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, that article is extremely insightful. Ive been on a tear about how i dislike the "its relationship not religion" claim for years, even though as a new Christian I was sold out to it. I cringe now when that's a featured point in preaching/teaching not because it has no kernel of truth, but because Ive come to know how people understand it, and its badly misunderstood and applied. the result is The Personal Jesus (TM)That Jesus has a massive growing church that gets moral courage in the face of a handful of easy targets, abortion, gay marriage, and porn, and they sell a form of social justice that feeds the emoto-hamsters, but they stay away from anything that will make a quorum in the crowd FEEL bad.
My 20 year old son has this figured out, and I am thankful to have a fantastic connection with him so that he shares his thoughts. For this reason we have been church fickle for 6 years as I refuse to sit my kids under that nonsense. Its been a conflict with my wife at times, but over time she has settled about it to the point of harmony.
If you see my blog I am chronicling my attendance to a men's group at a new church we have tried (and so far so good on the preaching) and its headed sideways fast. How discouraging it is that the preponderance of churches are guilty of the points in that article, plus all the problems Christian manosphere points out.
The small percentage of atheist physicists I know are trying to make an argument for an infinite number of universes to explain observable reality. Not that they can prove it. They can't. It's just the only way to mathematically/logically explain our universe existing the way it does without intelligent design
ReplyDeleteThe physicist will, at derivations end, find
2=4 and say, no, that cannot be the result, it disproves my theory. Solution? Create a universal constant that doubles 2 or halves 4.
Bam, a proof and a constant bearing his name. Or a new particle, or some dark matter, to infer some changes to the math that renders a proof. Amazing
I will say most physicists I know are at minimum deists. It's the soft sciences where I have found the atheists to be much more prevalent. I'm not alone in any way to say I find God in the study of the universe.
DeleteUnfortunately 'churchianity' is all the rage now - it has very little to do with Biblical belief....
ReplyDeleteA good article on the Christian 'Red Pill'
http://quitplayingchurch.wordpress.com
Until we get back to 'doing' what they did in the 1st century, there is little to do with 'church'.... I'm talking honoring the BIBLICAL Feasts of the Lord, home churches, understanding the 5 fold ministry, employing the spiritual gifts etc....
You had me until you said "employing the spiritual gifts". I have to ask specifically what you mean by that, because that term is used very loosely. Its an innocent question, be sure
ReplyDeleteEmpath, are you referencing dark matter/dark energy and the Open/Closed/Static view of the Universe's expansion? Personally I find that to be the most egregious example of science trying to "disprove" God. Although to be honest many physicists who support it merely like the cleanliness of it all. But even that is a bias.
ReplyDeleteSo does this mean I am not a wierdo for going to a small country church with thirty people attending who know each others' name, and the pastor knows your name and we don't have rock band, just our voices?
ReplyDeleteDonal. Yes. But as evidence to the general tendency to, as you aptly word it, fix the "cleanliness" the math. Of course it has bias, manifest in the gods of the made up constants, matter, particles, whatever.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of handwaving modern science does is astounding. Lots of faith required for ones who supposedly base things on reason.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. I've been sorting thru this stuff for some time. Most of the churches I've gone to in the past few years have been "seeker sensitive," with the requisite goofy youth pastor.
ReplyDeleteWe finally left a church in Maryland that went way downhill after hiring such a guy. He turned the Sun morning worship service into a comedy routine of bad jokes. I wouldn't allow my teenage son to go to his teaching, or the Christian music festivals.
One thing that disturbed me about the referenced blog was how vague it was in referencing the traditional Christian teaching. What exactly is missing? I'll be so bold as to throw up one answer: justice.
Churches don't talk about justice these days. It's exclusively "mercy" and "forgiveness". Is justice important? Well, Micah 6:8 is a popular verse (and praise song) and it starts w/ justice. So does Jesus when he rebukes pharisees in Mat 23:23.
I'm going to suggest that this ties to the feminism that this blog is dedicated to discussing.
Churches are not about doing the right thing, it's about not accepting responsibility for doing the right thing. Combined w/ a quirky list of rules to address "scary" things we find in this world.
Men are often about justice. They're willing to fight for it. But churches tell them not to. They condemn them for caring about it. So teenage boys, who see so much injustice in schools, are ready to move on. What's church have for them?
Finally, I'm a physical chemist, so maybe the tone of this blog matches those w/ a scientific bent.
There is this book called "why men hate going to church" which I found to be rather applicable.
ReplyDelete