4. Take Jesus’ Message Seriously
4. Take Jesus’ Message Seriously
What’s Young about the Good News
Yeah, I think the goal for our church is not really effectiveness with young people but serving and following Jesus. And young people like me are attracted to churches that want to do that.
—Adam, age 26
Darren wasn’t sure why the Jacobsen family wanted to meet with him. But when both parents, their daughter Janeen, and her boyfriend, Edgar, filed silently and grimly into his office, the pastor had a pretty good guess.
Janeen was pregnant.
Janeen’s parents had been pillars of the church for ages, so she was well known in the congregation. Her parents pressed marriage. At 18 and 19 years old, neither Janeen nor Edgar wanted to marry right away, but they also didn’t consider abortion an option. They talked about placing the child for adoption.
After an intense hour, Darren scheduled a follow-up meeting with just Janeen and Edgar, suggesting they continue their dialogue. The three met regularly to explore Scripture and discuss its teachings about both marriage and parenting, “just in case.”
During one conversation, Janeen asked, “What do we do when I start showing?” Their pastor responded, “Why don’t you tell the church?” At first both young people shut down this idea. Darren wisely let them sit with the question on their own.
A few weeks later, the couple sat facing him again. Edgar spoke first. “We want to tell you two things. First, we’re getting married. Second, we want to tell the church everything.” The whole congregation. Darren was surprised but grateful. He was already on board with their plan.
After an initial meeting with the church elders—who were incredibly gracious and encouraging—Janeen and Edgar found themselves standing before the congregation. That Sunday morning they were nervous, but they were not alone. Darren stood between them, his arms around their shoulders as the couple shared the news of the baby, as well as their upcoming marriage. The congregation surrounded them with support not only in that moment but also in the weeks and months to come.
A surprise baby shower from their small group.
A surprise wedding reception from her parents’ small group.
Reflecting back on that season, the pastor commented, “No one wondered if supporting the couple would encourage other girls to get pregnant. People were just filled with gratitude to be part of such a community of grace.”
That gracious support extended to the baby boy who arrived a few months later. It also extended to others who felt safe enough to share their own secret pain and brokenness because of the way ministry leaders had loved Janeen and Edgar.
Two years later, Janeen, Edgar, and their son are a vibrant part of this congregation growing young. When we visited, people shared the family’s story as a marker of how the church embodies Jesus’ message—not a story of shame but of redemption. Not a narrative of being cast out based on sin but one of being embraced and restored. One parent of teenagers in the congregation reflected, “Here it is not all about being perfect. That is what we loved when we were looking for a church. We said, ‘Our kids are going to screw up. How are we going to be treated when they do?’ We want our kids to be in a place where God’s people say, ‘Okay, you messed up. What now?’ Not a place that says, ‘You messed up and we don’t know what to do with you. You might be better off someplace else.’”
This is a congregation following Jesus earnestly today.
The Jesus who did not condemn but set free.
The Jesus who took what seemed broken and restored wholeness.
The Jesus who invited followers into a life of discipleship that required sacrifice.
CORE COMMITMENT: TAKE JESUS’ MESSAGE SERIOUSLY
The Jesus who embodied the fullness of God’s unconditional love and unending faithfulness.
The teenagers and emerging adults you know face a long list of obstacles that threaten to hinder their pursuit of Jesus, including not only our pluralistic culture and their own extended adolescent journey but also churches drained by a thin gospel.
But in churches growing young, Jesus reigns over poor theology, and his words ring true for young sojourners hungry for life-giving direction. Proclaiming Jesus as the centerpiece of the story of God and seeking to live out his message in everyday relationships, these churches are reclaiming the very heart of the Good News. One church growing young captures this proclamation through a mantra. Nearly everyone we interviewed—young and old—repeated, “People are our heart; Jesus is our message.” This is the foundation of their ministry.
Our team was struck by how the commitment to take Jesus’ message seriously is both a demonstrated action and an overall spirit or ethos in churches growing young. Of course, Jesus’ message is not contained in just one core commitment; rather, the Good News of Jesus permeates and indeed animates all other commitments. Just as Jesus is “before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17), pursuing Jesus—not just pursuing young people—is the heart of churches growing young. As we mentioned in chapter 1, we could imagine the entire set of core commitments orbiting around the basic commitment to a Jesus-centered community.
Research Findings
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism Still Threatens to Distract Young People from Jesus
You might have heard less-than-inspiring news about the faith of today’s young people.
“American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith—but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.”1
These stinging words from practical theologian (and project advisor) Kenda Creasy Dean sum up one of the central findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). Sifting through hundreds of discussions with American teenagers, researchers identified the dominant, de facto religious belief system of teenagers today as moralistic therapeutic deism.
It is moralistic, meaning that religious young people equate faith with being a good, moral person (generally, being nice).
It is therapeutic, so faith becomes a means of feeling better about themselves.
And it is deistic, meaning God exists, but this God is not involved in human affairs with any regularity.2
Thanks to moralistic therapeutic deism, or MTD for short, God has essentially become a heavenly butler for teenagers, inspiring them at best to become cordial to others. While a more passionate faith would provide young people with the anchor they need to ground their identity in Christ, this halfhearted religious worldview leaves teenagers and emerging adults adrift in a ho-hum sea of bland religious niceness.
Research suggests it’s likely both. Developmentally, adolescents are perfect candidates for MTD. Their concrete (though becoming increasingly abstract) thinking leads them to focus on behaviors, and their self-focus causes them to think both that others exist to make their lives more pleasant and that God doesn’t need to be actively involved in their world. But on the other hand, parents and significant adults are the greatest influence on young people’s faith, including the language they use to talk about faith. Teenagers are much more likely to mirror back flawed teaching than to mutate sound theology into something with an altogether different meaning.
When we asked all 535 interview participants from churches growing young to describe their faith, we found a much more robust gospel. Among 19- to 23-year-olds in particular (as we will see shortly), the message of Jesus trumps the MTD gospel. However, it is true that high schoolers in our study are more likely to talk about the gospel in terms akin to MTD than other groups. High school–aged respondents refer more to the general idea of “doing good,” and they describe God in deistic terms more often than other age groups. Further, only 1 out of 5 of the teenagers we surveyed used relational language when describing the message of Jesus. The following cringe-worthy interview excerpt illustrates this mixture of behavior-based faith well:
The central message of the gospel is that someone is always there for you and that there are many different paths you can take but ultimately they lead to the same thing, which is heaven. I feel like there are many good things you can do and many bad things you can do, but no matter what, you are always going to be forgiven. Even if you think something is unforgivable, God is like this magic person that can always cure it and can make it okay. And there is always going to be a happy place even when you are in your darkest of darks. There is always going to be a light that is there for you. (Alyssa, age 18)
Notice a few features of Alyssa’s description of the gospel: it is fairly universalist, focused on an abstract notion of “heaven” (or “a happy place,” or “light”) off in the distance; it describes grace like some kind of vague magic performed by a mystic fairy godmother figure (another high schooler similarly described God as someone “like the ice cream man”); and it fails to mention Jesus and his life, suffering, death, and resurrection.
We studied a breadth of Christian traditions, from Roman Catholics to Southern Baptists, in our search to find churches growing young. We would be naïve to think everyone will read or interpret the findings in this chapter the same. By writing to a broad audience, we hope you can locate your tradition within the frameworks and stories shared here while realizing that we tried to represent accurately the particular nuances of faith represented in particular congregations.
But before we blame teenagers like Alyssa for this weak gospel, let’s look in the mirror. The NSYR and our own research suggest that Alyssa didn’t make this gospel up out of thin air. She has likely been breathing the tainted fumes of an ambiguous behavior-based gospel all her life. Dean refuses to let us off the hook by reminding leaders, parents, grandparents, and congregation members, “And one more thing: We’re responsible.”3
Teenagers and emerging adults in America are not devising this tepid faith on their own. They are not substituting moralistic therapeutic deism for the messages they hear and the modeling they see in churches today. Instead, they are mimicking a tame version of faith that permeates both their churches and their homes. In a fascinating twist, missiologist George Hunter used the exact same phrase, moralistic therapeutic deism (with an added prefix: consumerist), to describe the general milieu of adult Christianity in America half a decade before the first NSYR results emerged.4 So rather than shake our heads in disapproval at faith like Alyssa’s, we need to let these repeated descriptions invite us to place our own understanding of the Good News under a magnifying glass.
The Golden Rule Gospel Is Also Toxic to Faith
A corollary to MTD is the Golden Rule gospel, generally relayed as some version of “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). In looking at young people’s tendencies to reflect Golden Rule language or themes, we found that those who profess this gospel show less faith maturity in general. More specifically, they tend to read the Bible less, attend worship less, talk less with others about their faith questions and struggles, and respond less to social issues in light of faith. The passion generated by Golden Rule faith is lukewarm at best.
Both moralistic therapeutic deism and Golden Rule Christianity are flawed because of their overemphasis on behaviors. But by suggesting these two belief systems are inadequate versions of Christian faith, we are not promoting the divorce of morality or faithful obedience from spirituality. Following Jesus certainly affects our behavior. What separates biblically rooted obedience from behaviorally rooted obedience is our motivation and the work of the Spirit. We can be driven by the defective notion that it’s possible to work to please God or earn salvation, or we can act morally as a response to grace and the transformation of God. We will explore alternatives for inviting young people toward obedience later in the “Ideas for Action” section, and chapter 7 profiles how churches like yours can energize teenagers and emerging adults through the related roles of service, social justice, and vocation.
Congregational studies expert Nancy Ammerman helps give more context to these findings by describing Golden Rule Christianity as emphasizing “right living” rather than “right believing.” Ammerman has found this focus on good deeds most prevalent in mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations, as well as in predominantly middle-class, suburban, and White communities. Ammerman sums up the practice of Golden Rule religion in this way:
Most important to Golden Rule Christians is care for relationships, doing good deeds, and looking for opportunities to provide care and comfort for people in need. Their goal is neither changing another’s beliefs nor changing the whole political system. They would like the world to be a bit better for their having inhabited it, but they harbor no dreams of grand revolutions.5
At a surface level, this faith doesn’t seem too alarming. These believers want to help others, and in many cases they practice hospitality and care for those around them in ways that put some more spiritually vibrant congregations to shame. After all, right believing without right living is no good news either. But the root of this version of Golden Rule faith isn’t really faith at all: it’s behavioralism. God is found through good behaviors, and along the way we learn to tolerate and embrace those who are different, at least in theory. It takes “nice” a step closer toward kindness and even solidarity but stops short of the transformative neighbor love that is undergirded by grace.
Most disturbingly, Jesus is largely absent from the picture.
A More Robust Gospel Is Emerging in Churches That Grow Young
Encouragingly, while there are traces of a behavior-based gospel even in churches growing young, they are fainter than we feared. Only about 11 percent of high school–age students, and less than 5 percent of either college-age or 24- to 29-year-olds gave a Golden Rule–themed response. Further, behavior-based descriptions of the gospel overall account for just over 10 percent of total interview responses among leaders, parents, and young people combined.
As a research team, we were especially impressed with the responses of emerging adults, who proved as articulate as older adults in their descriptions of faith. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say about Jesus’ message:
The surprise ending is that the gospel ends with Jesus losing, but in reality losing is winning. I think that is the most fundamental—the most basic—telling of the gospel, that our hero essentially lost. But in losing, he won. (Tamara, age 25)
There is nothing that you have done that makes you unlovable or unforgivable in God’s eyes. This man Jesus—he came to tell us that it is not about being the cleanest, shiniest-looking person on the outside. He cares about the hurt in your heart and is able to hold that and walk with you through it. Ultimately, he died for everyone’s sin, so the weight of this world is not so heavy on our shoulders. (Armen, age 21)
Across all age groups, one corollary of both vibrancy and faith maturity in our study was the characteristic “Understanding that faith is about more than behaviors or following rules.” As congregation members rated their church higher on this characteristic, faith maturity and vibrancy rose too. The more entire congregations move past the superficial teaching of the Golden Rule gospel and MTD, the more everybody flourishes.
Churches growing young are eschewing behavior-based gospels like MTD and the Golden Rule by making three key shifts in how they describe the message of Jesus:
Shift 1: Less talk about abstract beliefs and more talk about Jesus. Instead of simply agreeing with abstract theological truths, young people are drawn to the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Shift 2: Less tied to formulas and more focused on a redemptive narrative. Rather than insist the Good News is about specific words or linear steps to obtain salvation, young people use story language to describe God’s work in the world.
Shift 3: Less about heaven later and more about life here and now. Salvation means more to young people than the assurance of heaven later; it also invites us into a new way of life in the present.
This emphasis on Jesus, a bigger story, and life today means that the central message in churches growing young isn’t your grandmother’s gospel.
We love grandmas. We have loved our own grandmas, and if we met yours, we’d probably love her too. When we say “grandmother’s gospel,” we’re not suggesting that Grandma had it all wrong. She just might not completely resonate with the faith we discovered among young people in our study.
Let’s now flesh out these three important shifts in how young people are talking about Jesus and how taking his message seriously improves how we engage teenagers and emerging adults.
SHIFT 1: LESS TALK ABOUT ABSTRACT BELIEFS AND MORE TALK ABOUT JESUS
Interviewer: On a scale of 1 to 5, how true is it that your church helps people know and understand the gospel, or Good News, of Christianity?
Participant: Of Christianity or Jesus?
Interviewer: Of Christianity.
Participant: Well, Christianity is the name that we gave to the gospel of Jesus. So I don’t like the question. Sorry! I get what you mean by the “Good News of the gospel.” But it is not of Christianity. It is of Jesus Christ who is the Son of God. And it is not Christianity that brings the Good News. It is Jesus. So as followers of Jesus, we bring the Good News. But “Christianity” itself is a convoluted term, and it can be really harmful in the world. So I don’t want to say that our church is trying to preach a gospel of Christianity.
Is this twenty-something parsing terms more critically than necessary? Perhaps. But clarity of language is important to many young people. They want to know the meaning of tradition-laden religious terms and to dig up the soil around them to rediscover the roots of what Jesus said and did. The Good News of Jesus Christ, nothing less, is what young people want to take seriously.
When young people and adults in churches growing young talk about the gospel, nearly 7 out of 10 specifically mention Jesus.6 Most of those who talk about Jesus mention Jesus’ role in salvation or Jesus as God’s Son. We also heard descriptions of Jesus’ work as restoring, liberating, freeing, and making new.
Also quite telling, when we coded responses that did not mention Jesus, the three most common themes were moralistic, therapeutic, and deistic. So it seems that the Jesus-focused gospel not only is more prevalent than MTD in churches growing young but also clearly stands in contrast to it. This is news we can cheer.
But that doesn’t mean talking about Jesus is easy. Or universal. If 7 out of 10 mentioned Jesus, it also means 3 out of 10 didn’t. Further, simply mentioning Jesus does not equate with understanding Scripture’s portrayal of who Jesus was and what he did.7 Nor is it the same as following him today.
So whether you’re encouraged or discouraged by our findings, we propose that the centrality of Jesus in nearly 70 percent of respondents’ descriptions of the gospel offers congregational leaders both clarity and hope.8 Jesus is compelling, and the vast majority of young people in churches growing young want to talk about him. While the language and accessories of Christian religion in America might be waning, Jesus is no less of a beckoning figure on the horizon.
SHIFT 2: LESS TIED TO FORMULAS AND MORE FOCUSED ON A REDEMPTIVE NARRATIVE
With all this talk about the importance of Jesus, you might wonder about the role of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. By suggesting we focus more on Jesus, we’re not suggesting omitting the other two members of the Trinity. Every distinctively Christian denomination holds the doctrine of the Trinity as an orthodox essential, though our language may skew toward God the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit based on our tradition.
Nor should we ignore the entirety of the Old Testament. By placing Jesus at the center of the story of God, we open an entryway through which young people can discover an enormous house of faith. Within its walls they find a massive and complex floor plan, its corridors and chambers containing storied histories that, when combined, tell a surprisingly coherent family account of an unlikely clan and the God who refuses to abandon them to their own ruin.
That clan is our clan. But for many young people like Janeen and Edgar, this story is disjointed. The Bible and its numerous books feel more like a random puzzle fit for Ancient Lit 401 than a family scrapbook that both unveils our roots and foreshadows our future hope.
One 16-year-old Asian American boy grasped this family story deeply. Speaking vulnerably while sitting among a circle of peers, he choked up as he shared, “God is the Creator of the universe; he made everything. And he not only wants to be your friend . . . he wants to be your Father.”
Because Jesus’ message best makes sense when it’s understood as part of a larger story, the role of narrative theology and narrative teaching has been reemerging of late, and this trend is a hopeful one for churches like yours. By narrative theology, we mean interpreting each part of the Bible within the whole unfolding story of God and God’s people. Narrative teaching is closely related in that leaders locate particular texts in the context of the whole story.9 Everywhere from the pulpit to children’s ministry, leaders we studied are tapping into the power of narrative to shape congregational imaginations. When a people can see their story located within God’s story, the work of the church gains greater meaning.10
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” —Hebrews 1:1–3
According to our research, churches that communicate the gospel of Jesus as the centerpiece of God’s story are more likely to have young people with greater faith vibrancy and maturity. What’s more, those who talk about the gospel in narrative terms also tend to rate their churches higher on teaching people how to interact with culture, and they rate themselves personally higher on responding to current social issues in light of faith. It may be that interacting with the story of Scripture increases a young person’s ability and commitment to interact with the story of their culture.
Linked with this shift toward narrative is a step away from myopic spirituality. When interview participants were asked about the practices that most help build their faith, their responses split evenly between practices that take place in a group (47 percent) and those done individually (53 percent). A closer look reveals that when young people talk about their faith, they focus less on “me and my Bible” or “me and Jesus” in a manner that ignores the world around them.
Instead, young people focus more on worship with others, communal small groups and Bible studies, and service in the neighborhood or around the world. Churches that take Jesus’ message seriously emphasize an integrated, holistic spirituality.
SHIFT 3: LESS ABOUT HEAVEN LATER AND MORE ABOUT LIFE HERE AND NOW
A majority of people in churches growing young talked about here-and-now faith. There was very little focus on going to heaven and hardly any talk of hell. Salvation was a major theme, but a kind of salvation that is more focused on life in the present than something way off in the future. In other words, young people, leaders, and parents seem compelled by a faith that promises not only reward at the end but also transformation now, in everyday life.11 One pastor of a multisite congregation summed this up well:
The gospel reorients the way we look at all of life. That’s our preaching paradigm, our language, and how we explain the heart issues behind why we do what we do. The gospel works itself into every nook and cranny of our lives; it is constantly messing with how we think about things. The gospel reorients how we view ourselves as neighbors, parents, and children.
These findings are refreshing. They remind us of Dallas Willard’s insistence that taking Jesus seriously means that rather than succumbing to the gospel of “sin management” that mostly deals with reward when we die, we pay attention to real life, in this moment, in this place, with these people.12 This gospel is not simply something from two thousand years ago or for two thousand years from now. It’s for today. A church leader from the West Coast shared, “The gospel is not a moment or transaction; it is not even simply a message; it is actually a new way of living, a new reality that is intended to pervade everything in this life, and it has both present and eternal implications.”
It’s Not Just about Being Saved from, It’s about Being Saved For
As parents, we are often tempted to give only nos and miss the opportunity for yes.
For example, rather than simply correct behavior like racing through the crowded church sanctuary with a “No running!” command, we might pair it with, “No running in the sanctuary right now, but you can run out on the playground.” Or taking out the no altogether to redirect positively: “Let’s walk inside and run outside.”
Kids need to hear boundaried nos, of course, but too many restrictions without hopeful yeses create more than boundaries; they create identity, belonging, and purpose dead ends.
Similarly, some young people wonder whether Christianity is offering them anything to do or simply a list of things not to do. Don’t do drugs. Don’t have sex. Don’t curse. Don’t watch R-rated movies. Don’t become a social liberal. Don’t become a hyperconservative. The nos declare a boundary, but they don’t provide a hopeful way toward a new vision for living.
Young people’s resistance to a gospel presented as a list of nos is both fair and logical. Young people don’t just want to be saved from something later; they want to be saved for something now. They want to get to work. They want to be significant. They want lives filled with action, not just restriction. Or as one volunteer of a 15-year-old church plant summed up their message to young people, “It’s less, ‘You’re a sinner, change now,’ and more, ‘This is awesome, come be part of this!’”
The good news is that this is not only the kind of life young people want, it’s what Jesus wants too. Following Jesus is costly, requires sacrifice, and invites us to actively participate in God’s kingdom. In fact, the church by its very nature is participatory, which means everyone shares the work. It’s a body (Rom. 12:5–8; 1 Cor. 12:1–31; Eph. 4:1–16), and every part needs to play its role in order to build up the whole. As indicated by Jesus’ command to both “follow me” and “take up your cross daily” (Luke 9:23), pursuing Jesus requires no less than everything, every day (Rom. 12:1). There’s nothing therapeutic about that call.13
“I think many churches have fallen into a consumer mindset as a default mode. Churches have tried to appeal to people’s desire to feel good. But the problem is, if you’re just trying to make people feel good, church isn’t going to measure up to that.” —Terry, age 29
Challenge Is Not Something to Avoid
During interviews, 40 percent of young people specifically mentioned “challenge” when they talked about why their church is so effective with their age group. They appreciate challenging teaching in their church, even when it makes them feel uncomfortable and invites them to make changes based on Scripture’s teachings. Contrary to popular thinking that young people today want it easy, many told us they love their church because their church inspires them to act. As chapter 2 revealed, keychain leaders who model authenticity and humility extend the challenge of following Jesus not from a place of superiority or power but out of an invitation to pursue the way of Jesus together.
In short, teenagers and emerging adults in churches growing young aren’t running from a gospel that requires hard things of them. They are running toward it.14
Evangelism Isn’t Dead among Young People—It’s Just Different than We Might Think
This new and pervasive gospel-centered living motivated 16-year-old Ian to take his Bible to school. He intended to use it at a Christian club meeting. Another student spotted the book, however, and sensed an opportunity for fun. “I’ll burn it!” he yelled, grabbing the Scriptures out of Ian’s open backpack. He was kidding. Sort of.
“Since my sophomore year of high school I’ve been texting my friend a Bible verse every night. I started at a time when her life was going downhill. I had no clue how to help her, so I just texted her a Bible verse every night. It has been 967 days, I think.” —Keely, age 19
Ian took a chance and pressed his classmate a bit by asking, “What do you believe in?” The student responded with anger, and the conversation ended abruptly.
Recalling the moment, Ian reflected, “It’s hard. I know the gospel, but it’s hard to know how to bring someone to faith.” Others in the focus group chimed in. They shared that while sometimes it’s discouraging to try to share their faith with others, their youth ministry talks about planting seeds and watering them, then letting God cause faith to grow. That process often takes a long time. Like other young people in our research, they were less concerned about convincing a friend (much less a stranger) to recite a formulaic prayer and more concerned about generating authentic dialogue about faith.
The word evangelism and its derivatives were hardly mentioned by young people in our study. Talking about faith with non-Christians was the least common practice among a list of variables related to faith maturity.15 But that doesn’t mean evangelism is dead. While fewer young people in our study are talking about faith with nonbelievers than we might hope, one of the characteristics most significantly related to gospel sharing is increased honesty about questions and struggles.
Perhaps it’s not certainty that makes young people better evangelists but honesty.
Let that finding sink in for just a moment. It’s not that teenagers and emerging adults simply want to avoid certainty but that questions—when articulated—open up deep exploration of both doubt and faith. What’s critical is that the young people you know not walk alone through those canyons.
Not only is honesty correlated with sharing faith in our research, but those who are honest about struggles also tend to read the Bible more. Perhaps they are turning to Scripture to find answers to their tough questions. Or maybe the more they read the rich—and complex—teachings and stories of the Bible, the more questions emerge.
Evangelism among young people today is typically more about seeking understanding than about direct “conversion.” In the past, evangelism often was taught to young people almost like a game they were trying to win by scoring salvation goals. Sometimes even in what’s called “relational” evangelism, the relationship becomes reduced to the means through which salvation is won, diminishing friends to notches in a young person’s evangelism belt. Rejecting this approach, the young people in our study share faith in a posture that communicates, “I get you, and I can walk with you as a witness of Christ without being intrusive or arrogant.” This approach to evangelism is more multidimensional and less linear than many of us—young or old—have been taught.
Recently, I (Brad) had the opportunity to meet with a group of high school seniors from a local Christian school. Our conversation centered on processing doubts and struggles as part of Christian formation, and the students shared about an assignment their Bible teacher had given them to listen to the questions of people outside the faith. The students were instructed to have at least three conversations with someone who self-identified as either a non-Christian or a non-churchgoer. Each student had to ask their dialogue partner if they would be open to sharing which Bible passages or Christian beliefs were most troubling to them.
But there was a catch. The students were not allowed to share their faith overtly, to dispute the questions, or even to give answers. They were simply to listen well and then say, “Thanks for sharing.” Afterward, each student picked one of the questions or objections, did some research, and wrote a response to help them better understand more of Scripture’s teaching in those particular areas.
Overwhelmingly, the students said that their most important discovery was how powerful it was to actually listen. Not only did they learn more than if they had tried to give an immediate response, but once people realized that they truly were just going to listen, they were much less defensive and more eager to talk.
Many of yesterday’s evangelism tactics sit like awkward lawn decorations in the front yard of American Christianity. While plastic pink flamingoes seemed attractive to our neighbors a few decades back, today we would only put them out on a dare (or to prank a friend). In the same way, suggesting to young people that they confront their friends with propositions about sin and separation from God often feels about as winsome as gaudy yard art.
And yet the Good News of Jesus and his in-breaking kingdom deserves a hearing with today’s young people, as with every generation. While effective evangelistic approaches with this generation deserve more research and innovative experimentation, the early indicators seem to point to forming authentic relationships, being honest about our own questions, and listening well before we speak.
Ideas for Action
As you review the following ideas, perhaps make notes in the margin. Mark if the idea is a fit for your church, who should implement the idea (you or another leader), and whether it can happen now or later. Please don’t try to do everything—instead, aim for two or three ideas that you can act on now. Then at the end of the chapter, use the strategic questions to guide your church toward a specific plan to take Jesus’ message seriously.
Elevate Faith Education beyond an “Elementary School for Morals”
Often our youth and emerging adult ministries inherit the good, bad, and ugly theology ingrained in kids during their preschool and elementary years. Well-meaning children’s ministry leaders and volunteers want to make the gospel “practical” for kids. So they end up teaching every Bible story with a moral punch line, resulting in a behavior-based gospel that feels a lot more like a list of dos and don’ts we must follow to please God than an invitation to participate in a beautiful story of God’s transformative grace.16
Lest we think this is only a children’s ministry problem, the moral-behavior gospel lives on in youth and adult teaching as well. As the NSYR research discovered, formation across the congregation ends up being a lot like an elementary school for morals.17 To help your church take Jesus’ message seriously, evaluate the curriculum and teaching messages throughout your congregation—from children’s through adult education, as well as the weekly sermon. Ask questions like:
• Do we let Bible narratives speak for themselves, or do we impose moral obligations or rules for people to follow?
• In what ways do we create space for wonder, questioning, and reflection on Scripture to aid self-discovery or group-discovery processes rather than teaching predetermined points?
• Like Paul, how do we couch specific moral teaching in reminders of God’s grace and our identity in Christ? (Reread Paul’s epistles for ample evidence of this pattern.)
• How does our teaching emphasize that it is the Holy Spirit’s work to produce fruit of transformation in us rather than our own effort (Gal. 5:22–25)?
• How are our invitations to life change centered in a call to follow Jesus instead of a call to follow our own moral or political agendas?
Teach Creeds over Formulas
Moving beyond the formulaic gospel presentations of the past century does not mean we abandon the ancient creeds and prayers of the church. Quite the opposite. While young people want to talk about Jesus, they often have malformed images of who Jesus is and what his life, death, and resurrection mean. The early church faced the same problem and responded by forming creeds.
These creeds are not hip, they don’t follow a catchy tune, and yes, they can sound like prescriptive dogma. But their ancient words remind us of the historical church that faithfully held the tension of Jesus as both fully God and fully human. Jesus’ bodily life and resurrection testify to the one who “shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end,” as the Nicene Creed declares.
Young people are often interested in exploring the earliest traditions of our faith, those chronologically closest to Jesus and the first-century church. A few examples of creeds to use in worship, discipleship, and other formation environments include:
• the Apostles’ Creed
• the Nicene Creed
• the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13; Luke 11:1–4)
• Pauline creeds and sayings from the early church, such as Ephesians 5:14; Philippians 2:5–11; 1 Timothy 3:16; and 2 Timothy 2:11–13
• creeds and prayers unique to your tradition
Try including creeds regularly in worship, investigating creeds one phrase at a time, comparing creeds to one another, or inviting young people to rewrite creeds in today’s language.
Tie Each Part of Scripture into the Grand Narrative of God
Even as we teach the Bible regularly to teenagers and emerging adults like Edgar and Janeen, they may struggle with identifying how particular stories, teachings, or relationships fit within the whole. After all, the Bible looks like one book but is really a collection of dozens of books by a host of authors written over several centuries. The more we connect the dots for young people when we teach, the more a holistic story emerges.
This drama can be described in just a few movements or many.18 While some traditions emphasize particular acts more than others, consider this basic narrative arc:
THE NARRATIVE ARC OF SCRIPTURE
One midwestern church in our study intentionally connects the dots from week to week in its youth ministry. Whenever students open the Bible together, the leaders display a simple slide that lists all of the books of the Bible, locates the passage within it, and shows how that book and passage fit within the larger story of Scripture. Here are some other ideas you might try:
• Teach straight through the Bible, through books of the Bible, or through the life of Jesus.
• Utilize the seasons of the church year (called the liturgical calendar in some traditions) to ground congregations in an annual cycle of the life, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.19
• Develop a scope and sequence for how various ministries or the entire congregation move through the story of Scripture, or alternate among different theological emphases and scriptural stories. For example, we know youth ministries that have formed a one-, three-, or even seven-year teaching sequence to ensure they don’t bounce around the Bible and inadvertently omit important parts of God’s story.
Ground Moral Obedience in the Invitation of Grace
What’s the role of obedience in the Christian life? How can we guide young people toward that obedience without reducing that message to mere moralistic obligation?
My (Kara’s) favorite approach to explaining the role of obedience is related to the movements of Scripture, focused specifically on our relationship with God. Taking the basic “guilt—grace—gratitude” model of the Heidelberg Catechism from Reformed theology,20 we have added a few movements to help articulate how grace and our action work together. We teach this model with adults and young people alike.
• Good (Gen. 1:26–27): God created us good, in God’s image.
• Guilt (Rom. 3:10–12): We then chose to disobey God, leaving us with the guilt of sin. All of us carry this mark and it impacts us every day.
• Grace (Rom. 3:23–24; Eph. 2:6–10): Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has extended grace to us to make things right and restore us to relationship with God and one another.
• God’s People (Eph. 2:19–22): As we experience grace, we are adopted into the body of Christ, enacting God’s reign in the world. We join the mission of God, participating in the work of God happening in and through God’s people today.
• Gratitude (Col. 2:6–7): Out of this gift of grace, we respond in gratitude toward God. This is the well out of which our obedience—which includes moral behaviors—flows. In other words, the gospel doesn’t begin with behaviors nor is it dependent on behaviors. The behaviors are an act of thanksgiving to God in response to grace. As we grow in trust, we naturally grow in obedience.
• God’s Vision (Rev. 21:1–5): We are living in between Christ’s first coming and his second coming, when he will make everything new. Service work and the ways we seek justice on behalf of the poor and oppressed are part of the in-between story of God’s kingdom emerging right in front of us. We get to participate in something Jesus started and that ultimately Jesus will finish.
Locating obedience as a response to grace—not a prerequisite or alternative to grace—helps young people stand on more solid theological ground for their actions and decisions.
Ask Young People What They Believe
Think the young people in your church clearly understand the Good News of Jesus? You might be right. But if you haven’t asked, it’s hard to know.
Meet individually or in small groups with a few high school students, college-age emerging adults, and young adults in their late twenties. Invite them to describe the gospel to you as they understand it. You might use a question similar to one we asked: “What do you believe is the central message of the gospel (or Good News) of Christianity?” Or something like, “How would you describe your faith to others?”
Their responses can help you identify gaps in understanding and may inform how you teach, preach, or select curriculum in your congregation.
Model Sharing the Gospel without Judgment
“If you want a friend to know Jesus, our youth pastor won’t take that friend out to pizza to talk to them about Jesus. He’ll take you out to pizza to talk through how to talk to your friend about Jesus. He wants us to share naturally in our relationships, but he’s not leaving us to figure that out on our own.”
This high school junior in an urban church growing young articulated an approach to evangelism that has moved away from the attractional “bring friends to church and we’ll take care of the rest” model and toward an organic relationship-based approach that trusts young people to share their own experiences and testimonies with their friends. Yet most young people aren’t sure how to bear witness to their faith without seeming judgmental. Let’s give them handholds by modeling how to engage nonbelievers through winsome and gentle means.
• In our teaching: Explore passages of Scripture that invite young people to follow Jesus’ way without needing to know all of the “right” answers or do all of the “right” things.
• In one-on-one conversations: Listen well to young people’s questions, invite deeper reflection, and share glimpses into our own faith journeys.
• In group discussions: Preserve the dignity of young people whose responses reveal a gap in their understanding of Scripture or the gospel.
• In our local service work: Invite young people who are not currently part of our church to participate in service and justice work, later explaining how the gospel and Scripture’s teachings fuel our relationships with “the least of these” and help us encounter Jesus himself (Matt. 25:31–46).
As the apostle Peter urges, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15). We can practice this with the young people in our churches as much as with those who have never entered the doors.
Allow Salvation to Look More like a Journey
During much of the past few centuries, a great deal of evangelism has emphasized conversions like Paul’s: dramatic, instantaneous, and featuring repentance from some “major” sin or sinful lifestyle. Yet in one study of teenagers, over two-thirds described a conversion experience that sounded a lot more like Peter’s: slow, incremental, more getting it wrong than getting it right, and in need of ongoing grace.21 One scholar suggests that throughout Mark, all 12 of Jesus’ closest disciples are presented as in-process converts.22
“There is never a time, even in just catching a meal with someone from our church, that the gospel doesn’t come into the conversation. The quality of the conversation with people from my church is consistently Christ-centered. The gospel comes up everywhere.” —Stacy, age 24
The young people in your church or community may respond less positively to the direct evangelistic approach of, “Will you receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior today?” or “Have you asked Jesus into your heart?” yet be very open to talking about questions like, “Where are you in your spiritual pilgrimage?” and “With what issues are you wrestling when it comes to God?”
Ask a handful of young people in your congregation whether they relate more to Peter’s conversion or Paul’s. Consider that for many emerging adults, salvation is more like a long, winding road than instant belief or “conversion.”
Share Testimonies Frequently
As Immanuel Church of the Nazarene grew over the years, the leaders realized that the regular practice of sharing testimony to God’s faithfulness was getting lost. God was no less active in this Philadelphia suburb or in the lives of the people in the congregation, but they needed a way to tell these stories. So nearly 20 years ago, a member built a lighthouse in the sanctuary that was lit whenever someone gave their life to Jesus. Over time the lighthouse was replaced with a lantern, and today the lantern is lit during worship whenever someone has made a decision to follow Christ.
When the current senior pastor began serving nearly a decade ago, a new ritual joined the lantern. A pile of stones sits at the front of the sanctuary on the altar. These stones serve as symbols of answered prayers and signs of God’s faithfulness. On any given Sunday, members can take a stone and add it to the pile on the altar. Some even bring their own rocks from home, carrying a physical reminder that God is on the move outside of the church walls. One member explained, “These traditions have helped all generations grasp our church’s belief that we are a lighthouse and that God is faithful!”
Across traditions and denominations, churches growing young frequently integrate testimony as part of their regular worship and spiritual formation. These testimonies include conversion experiences, breakthroughs, the provision of new jobs, and stories of God’s ongoing work in and around the people of the church.
Don’t stop with congregation members’ testimonies. We were struck on one of our parish visits that several of the young people we interviewed knew pieces of their priest’s testimony of faith. It was clear that he shares elements of his journey—past and present—during his regular preaching. For those of us who are pastoral leaders, integrating our own stories into our teaching can powerfully connect with young people who look at us across decades and vastly different life experiences and wonder if we can relate to their everyday struggles.
Lean into the Potential of Rituals
We believe words matter. We wouldn’t be writing this book otherwise. But we also share a conviction that rituals help us embody something more powerful than words. When it comes to counteracting moralistic therapeutic deism and Golden Rule Christianity, we not only need better teaching. We also need concrete actions that draw young people into a better story.
Rituals have served throughout Christian tradition as channels through which to answer deep questions of identity, belonging, and purpose with God’s response of grace, love, and mission. Rituals embody meaning through actions that are often deeper than words alone can convey.
One church growing young determined from its founding that it would center weekly worship in the sharing of the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper. Hailing back to the tradition of the earliest churches (and the ongoing tradition of the Roman Catholic Church and numerous others), the church suspected that sharing bread and wine together week after week would form them in profound ways that teaching alone could not accomplish.
Upon their 10-year anniversary, this congregation of under 200 asked for written reflections on the church and its impact on people’s lives. Nearly 100 stories poured in. A through-line across those reflections was that the Eucharist had become not only a central act of worship but also the organizing narrative for life together. The congregation’s stories unveiled the impact of this ritual on how young people viewed relationships, brokenness, their own stories and pain, and Jesus’ work of healing and restoration.
Other meaningful rituals to embody faith in action include:
• baptism and subsequent rituals to help remember our baptism
• confirmation or membership rituals
• confession of sin—privately, in small groups, or publicly when appropriate
• seasonal rituals such as hanging greens during Advent or enacting the stations of the cross during Lent
• rituals marking particular developmental milestones or significant life experiences (for example, baby dedication, graduation from high school, engagement, marriage, or pregnancy)
• annual congregation-wide “birthday parties” to celebrate the new birth we collectively share in Christ
What are the rituals that have been especially important in your church or broader tradition? How could you tap into the significance of ritual even more? What new rituals (or old rituals that are new to your community) might add deeper layers to the formation of young people beyond word-based discipleship alone?
Embrace Young People’s Doubts about Faith
In her investigation of what it takes to support emerging adult spirituality, Sharon Daloz Parks once asked a pastor, “Why do you think that so many young adults are present in your church?” His thoughtful response is one we might do well to emulate: “I think it is because we are willing to welcome a lot of questions.”23
According to our Sticky Faith research, 7 out of 10 high school students harbor significant doubts about God and faith. Yet less than half of those students talk with either ministry leaders or peers about their struggles.24 One of the factors that determines whether young people’s doubts positively or negatively impact their faith development is if they have opportunities to express and explore doubts. When they do have those opportunities, doubt is actually correlated with greater faith maturity. As we at the Fuller Youth Institute have come to say, it’s not doubt that’s toxic to faith. It’s silence.25
In your teaching, small group environments, or one-on-one mentoring relationships with young people, equip leaders to be sensitive to questions and doubts and to see them as faith-forming opportunities rather than freak-out moments of failure. Sometimes simply knowing that questions are part of the faith identity journey can be enough to quell young people’s fears that their faith is falling apart. One pastor shared that their ministry team encourages young people, “‘You need to make this your own. Express your doubts, ask questions, have a thinking faith.’ That disarms young people’s presuppositions about Christians and church leaders. We’re pretty patient.”
Ministry leaders and parents are occasionally caught off guard by a tough question from a teenager or young adult. When that happens, here are four words we recommend every parent, leader, and mentor keep handy in their back pocket for moments like these: “I don’t know, but . . .”
We can complete that sentence with any number of helpful phrases to communicate that questions are not only allowed but even welcomed. I don’t know, but . . .
that’s an important question.
let’s find out together.
I wonder that too.
I bet you’re not the first person to ask that.
who do you think we could ask about that?
I wonder what stirred up that question just now?
God is big enough to take that question.
here’s what I have experienced about God . . .
thanks for sharing this with me.
You might, of course, have an answer to their question. Even if you do, though, it might be wise to step back and probe a bit before unleashing your “right” answer. Being heard can at times be as—or even more—important than the answer itself.
See Faithing and Churching as Work We All Do
Despite all the language about “passing faith down” or “transmitting faith to the next generation,” faith isn’t really an object we can possess or hand off to anyone. Nor is it a commodity that one generation “owns” more than any other.
Our Fuller colleague Steve Argue asserts that we can’t simply hand faith to adolescents or emerging adults—they have to birth it through the work of the Holy Spirit. Leaders and trusted adults, then, are more like midwives in this process. If faith is a noun, then we might say faithing is an appropriate verb to describe this process of formation and meaning-making.26 It is how we ask, reach, and doubt our way toward a mature faith identity.27
“The people in our church just let you be normal, and let you rage, and let you question, and let you intellectually interact with the space. That is so huge. No one had ever let me do that before! Or at least let me do it in grace, you know?” —Gina, age 26
If we commit to bear with young people on a journey of faithing, perhaps churching is how we can talk about doing this together, following Jesus as a community discovering faith in our particular context day by day. So rather than assuming a young person is “losing” their faith when they doubt, struggle, or push back against our understanding of God and faith community, we welcome their angst as an opportunity for us to “church”—as a verb—together toward even deeper shared experiences of the living Spirit of God.
When we “faith” and “church” together, we teach young people like Janeen and Edgar not just what to believe but how to believe—and live out—the Good News. And we refuse to leave them alone in the process. Which sounds a lot like taking Jesus’ message seriously.
Chapter Highlights
• Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) has been identified as a pervasive religious framework of adolescents and much of the US church. However, while high school–aged participants in our study exhibited signs of MTD coupled with Golden Rule Christianity, by and large churches growing young sidestep this pothole in their quest for a more robust faith.
• Taking Jesus’ message seriously means churches pay attention to the life and words of Christ. Young people can then articulate a gospel that is less talk about beliefs and more talk about Jesus, less tied to formulas and more focused on redemptive narrative, and less about heaven later and more about life here and now.
• Young people want to know not only what they are saved from but also what they are saved for. They want to take action, not just hear about what they can’t do. Participation and challenge are two central features of churches growing young.
• Evangelism isn’t dead among young people, but it looks different than in the past century. Vital factors to help young people share faith today include building authentic relationships, listening well, and being honest about questions and doubts.
Strategic Questions to Help You Take Jesus’ Message Seriously
Research Findings
On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being “we’re struggling here” and 5 being “we’re nailing this”), rate your congregation on the research findings presented in this chapter:
1. Our congregation moves beyond the behavior-based gospel of moralistic therapeutic deism and the Golden Rule toward a more robust gospel.
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. We talk about Jesus more prominently than abstract truths about God, and we frequently tell stories of his life, death, and resurrection.
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Our church allows young people to safely express doubts and struggles about faith.
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Young people in our church hear invitations to put their faith into action rather than simply focus on what behaviors to avoid.
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. We frame evangelism in the context of authentic relationships and listening well to others.
1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Ideas for Action
1. What are you already doing to help your congregation take Jesus seriously?
2. What words and phrases does your congregation use to talk about Jesus, the gospel, and evangelism? How do young people respond to that language?
3. Given your ranking of the findings in the previous section, as well as the ideas you’ve read in this chapter, what one or two shifts might you or your church want to make?
4. Who else needs to be part of this conversation?
5. What can you do in the next few weeks or months to move toward these changes?