Almost Christian 3

All this week we’re looking at issues related to the faith of teenagers, as reported in Kenda Creasy Dean’s book, Almost Christian – What the faith of our teenagers is telling the American Church. She writes, The problem does not seem to be that churches are teaching young people badly, but that we are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe: namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people focused primarily on folks like us – which of course, begs the question of whether we are really the church at all.” She goes on to ask if we have, in fact, been excellent at communicating a watered-down Gospel to our kids. She suggests that the church has not modeled a way of life marked by passionate surrender to Jesus Christ and the life of discipleship, but to ho-hum assent.