Mission Impossible?

The Hard Sell.

Occasionally, amidst the scores of ads for diet pills, Napster offers and weekend away deals you get an email that actually makes your finger stop tapping the delete button. Such was the email I received from a teacher in a sixth form college who'd taken the time to respond to some discussion questions I'd posted on the LICC website. The issue addressed was one that hounds youthworkers, church leaders, evangelists and parents: why doesn't Christianity appeal to youth? Now we can think of umpteen thousand young people for whom Christianity is not just inherited faith but a passionate belief but we do have to ask the question is it getting harder and harder to make an impact on young people's lives with the gospel? We can provide youth clubs where the majority of attendees are unchurched but how does that translate into people making a decision to follow Christ that has a lasting transformation?

The email outlined three reasons that I believe offer some sound insight and a starting point from which to discuss the dilemma at hand:

So, as the teacher responded, Christianity isn't attractive to young people:

1) Because they are not asking the questions that Christianity answers.The vast majority of the young people that I teach never think or question beyond the small sphere in which they live, and have no desire to do so. They aren't naturally thinking 'what is the meaning of life?'or 'how was the world created?' or 'what will happen when I die?'; Many of them don't seem to have an innate sense of curiosity that extends beyond their own needs and celebrity gossip: in essence, they have no sense of 'wonder'. And, in this respect, it doesn't matter how many times we explain the answers to them, if they're not asking the questions, they're not going to be interested in the solution.

2) Because they live in a retake culture, where nothing is ever final. In a bid to push 'achievement' in schools higher and higher, the government has created a modular examining system where failure is rarely a risk. In this way, my students never sit a 'final' exam - there is always one more chance to sit it. In addition, punishments (whether parent or school related) are frequently threatened but rarely followed through. Given this experience, they cannot comprehend the idea that God's judgment may be final.

3) Because they harbour no sense of responsibility for their own achievement. Teachers are so worried about league tables that they end up completing work for the students; if teachers won't complete the work, parents will. My students often seem incapable of seeing the direct link between their own level of effort and their achievement. In this way, the idea that Christianity could be of vital importance to them is bypassed: if it is important, someone else will ensure that they do whatever they have to do for the correct end to be achieved.

These three responses raise big questions and I'll deal with them in turn. I also lured several local youthworkers into a coffee house in Harrow, no difficult task I assure you, to gauge their reactions to the email and also to find out how we might respond to them.

Point 1: They are not asking the questions that Christianity answers.

Quick straw poll. Have you read 'Ambiguous Evangelism' by Mayo, Savage and Collins yet about research into youth spirituality? If not give yourself a slap and mark it on your every growing 'Things I must read before the end of time' list. It's extremely insightful when it comes to assessing attitudes to faith in Britain today fullstop but one of the recurring themes is that ideas about faith, religion or that tricky word 'spirituality' rarely register in the day to day outlook of most teens.

That is most young people aren't asking the 'big' questions in life because they bear little relevance to the non-stop swirl of getting bored at school, playing playstation, having or thinking about having sex, buying mobile phones texting on mobile phones, upgrading mobile phones, getting drunk, watching Big Brother etc basically having a good time. For most religion would only ever seem to offer an unnecessary interruption to all this.

Enjoyment of life is a main priority and largely due to the cultural baggage Christianity carries in Britain, I.e. It's history as a traditional institution, perceived views of legalistic attitudes - Church is about what you can't do in life, Church isn't readily associated with simply 'having a good' time.

But that's mainly a passed down attitude - the parents of today's generations who suffered through endless assemblies singing monotonous hymns passing down an image of the church as stuffy and detached from reality. The main problem with today's youth is that they're simply blissfully ignorant of the role of church, faith and religion in general.

It's not just that they're not asking the questions it's also that if they were asking the big questions about life and the universe their first thought wouldn't necessarily be to turn to the church. As 'Ambiguous Evangelism' points out Christianity has a rapidly decreasing role in contributing to the 'cultural memory' of British Society. Christianity plays an extremely minor part in public life. And in an 'atomised' society where people don't adhere to some big story of what it means to 'be British' but rather find meaning in the smaller stories generated by their peer context or 'techno' communities, faith and religion have an even smaller role.

So when all everybody had to watch on TV was BBC1 you'd have had some idea that Christianity mattered because of Newsreels of public coronations at Westminster Abbey etc it played an important role in public life. Today if a young persons daily diary is made up of school, texting, watching E4, X-box, etc where does church or religion ever invade or influence their 'world view' - their outlook on life?

As Bob Mayo puts it in Ambiguous Evangelism: 'people feel generally happy and do not miss what they don't know.' In a post faith society that description can easily be applied to Christianity.

Point 2: Because they live in a retake culture where nothing is ever final.

A little diversion before directly answering this response. Because Christianity and religion in general hardly impact young people's lives it means that when we present them with ideas about faith they have no frame of reference with which they can make sense of those ideas. Eg. Sin makes no sense because it can only be understood in terms of obligation to a 'sovereign' God who rules the universe. As beings created by God we are required to live up to the purpose he created us for - to have a relationship with him - 'sin ' is what happens when we refuse that purpose and reject a relationship with God.

In Britain if people have any concept of God it's not of a personal God who's existence has huge implications for our life it's of an impersonal God, a 'spiritual' entity who is an optional lifestyle add on.

And morality today has little to do with 'obligation' and more to do with 'rights' - you have the right to do what you want as long as you're not harming anyone else. We may think the young people in our youth group have a clear concept of right and wrong, but it mainly amounts to a personal understanding of who has wronged them. 'That's not fair' is still a warcry in our youth group when a decision doesn't go in someone's favour.

So it's not even that young people have little concept of God's judgement being final, they don't even have any concept of sin in the first place. LICC's Nick Spencer conducted intensive research in to various agnostics responses to concepts of religion. When the focus group was asked what Jesus mission was one person responded 'To save us from our sins...' full points there you think but he was just repeating a well worn phrase he'd heard but not understood as the end to his response proved 'God only knows what a sin is though 'cos I don't.'

Point 3 Because they harbour no sense of responsibility for their own achievement

Again we all know young people who work hard to achieve goals be they academic, or sport or music oriented. We also know many young people who are sitting around waiting for Simon Cowell to sign them up to a multimillion pound deal after hearing them singing to their mates on the street. We live in a society that has Willy Wonka lifegoals - one day that golden ticket is going to show and everything will be peachy. And our fifteen minutes of fame doesn't happen through serendipity - it's surely our right.

So how do you get young people interested in a man who said that you'll only ever find life by doing the hard work of denying yourself? Tricky, and if we stop to think about it we may know young people who believe being a disciple of Christ demands little self sacrifice. Faith is something that happens to us at the big euphoric worship event it's not something we live out on a day to day hour to hour basis, it's not something we work for.

This point has perhaps more to do with discipleship i.e. we can get people to make a decision to follow Christ but getting them to commit to it is more difficult, but more of that later.

Lots of coffee, more barriers and a whole load of answers.

In discussing the above points with an elite group of handpicked youthworkers, I.e. those who could turn up on the day, we came up with some more 'barriers' to faith of our own and some that linked in to the original email.

We agreed that young people don't often ask the big questions about life and they're more concerned with issues that are more of a personal nature. But this doesn't mean that those concerns aren't related to Christ's teaching. As Si Jones, leader of Ignite Church in Harrow said

'Christianity isn't only about answering questions on a 'grand' level but Christianity also answers 'life before we die' questions about how we engage in relationships, how we engage in society.'

Although young people may state their goal is happiness, we have to distinguish that from deep and lasting satisfaction. They may not be asking questions such as 'who created God?' but scratch below the surface and they are bothered about issues of self worth and identity.

Perhaps this is one of our starting points: showing how Christ's teaching about relationships makes sense when it comes to how we live our lives. For instance Romance Academy, the subject of last Autumn's BBC2 programme 'No Sex Please We're Teenagers', where two Christian Youthworkers took 12 teenagers and challenged them with living a sexually abstinent lifestyle, assumed that Teenagers would want to know an answer to the question 'how can I have more meaningful sex?' The Romance Academy taught that the answer to that question was through having better and more meaningful relationships and a heightened view of yourself which might mean 'saving' yourself for someone you care about.

It makes sense to start where young people are already at. Find out what's a priority in their lives and address that - as we've discussed faith might not be a priority but sex and relationships surely are.

This may mean we have to swap 'Fast Evangelism' for 'Slow disciple making.' - we can start teaching the 'ethics' of Christ before young people make a decision to follow him. As Katy Hall a youthworker from Elmfield Church in North Harrow pointed out, today we often have a 'GCSE' modular approach to introducing faith. In GCSE's If we've done the 12 week module then we've 'done' the subject. When we introduce young people to faith we can't assume that a 10 week introductory course to Christianity is sufficient. It took Jesus 3 years to get the disciples up to scratch and people wanting to join the early church had to go through a period of catechesis, or 'religious instruction' that also took 3 years. If it takes disciples to make disciples, we can't underestimate how important it is to invest in nurturing our young people in faith - even before they've 'made' that decision for Christ.

Maybe this means that we need to make coming to Christ more difficult, not easier. So we either make the 'invite' to faith harder or give people an opportunity after making the decision to follow Christ to turn away!

Dan Burke, youthworker with Ignite church said 'We're really good at exciting people at the big events about following the gospel, we're not so good at giving them a chance to leave it behind afterwards!' Sounds scary but read John 6.66 to see that Jesus wasn't afraid of saying difficult things that he knew would stop some people from following him - he knew he could build the church with just 12 if that's what it took.

Si Jones echoed this sentiment recalling that infamous Oz biker evangelist John Smith once said that Christ did not make one type of invite. We often use the invite 'you must be born again' or 'repent' but Jesus made different invites to different people. To Nicodemus who knew Hebrew religion inside out Jesus says 'You must be born again,' to the woman at the well Jesus offered 'water springing up to eternal life' and to the young ruler for whom money was an idol Jesus said 'go now sell all you have and give it to the poor and come follow me.' Sometimes Jesus invite offered them something they were missing, sometimes Christ required them to give up something that cost them too much.

To boldly go where no missionary has been before

We find ourselves in a mission field the like of which history has never seen: in the 'pre-christian' age of the apostles at least people valued the role of the divine in day to day life. Now at best people believe spirituality & religion to be one of life's add on extras or an unhelpful tradition that breeds intolerance and can happily die out and at worst it doesn't even register on their radar of what does and doesn't matter in life.

We often tout the idea of relational evangelism but it strikes me that it's an important concept for two main reasons. Firstly Jesus frequently tailored his invites to the needs of individuals and secondly if young people haven't the first clue about religions importance then only in the context of lasting relationships can we do the groundwork of showing them what it means to follow Christ and in our conversations carefully unravel the mystery and beauty of God's purpose for each of us.

Thanks to the local youthworkers for local people.

Dave Thomas, Cara, Si Jones, Katy Hall, Dan Burke

Further Reading:

Beyond Belief? Barriers and Bridges to Faith Today LICC www.licc.org.uk

Ambiguous Evangelism Mayo, Savage & Collins SPCK

This article first appeared in 'Youthwork' magazine June 2006 www.youthwork.co.uk

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