The Age of the Dumb Church

[Hansc]

"I have a friend who’s an experienced pastor, teacher, and Christian apologist. He’s very well educated, articulate, teaches in a way that hits the mark, and has a passion particularly for grounding young people in the faith during their high school and early college years.

Currently, he’s employed with Youth for Christ and a while back he felt a burden to try and help churches in our area do what he does best, which is equip youth to defend the Christian faith in the world and know what/why they believe.

Because he’s developed a number of curriculums to use for such situations, he sent a letter to all the churches in our metropolitan area (which is quite a lot) explaining what he does, and offered to come to their church free of charge and conduct Christian apologetic training for their youth.

How many churches took him up on his offer?

Zero. None. Zilch.

Now, any Christian leader who doesn’t have their head in the sand knows how depressing the statistics are for young people who walk away from the faith in the late high school/early college years. At times, I’ve had atheists toss such data in my face in an attempt to argue that people ‘smarten up’ when they get older, but that isn’t it at all.

The fact is some in this particular demographic leave the Church because they get talked out of a faith that they were never sure of in the first place. The storyline is sadly familiar.

Maybe a young person was brought up in a church. Or, maybe they weren’t and began to investigate Christianity on their own. Either way, sooner or later they begin to ask hard questions, good questions, questions that deserve solid answers. But they don’t get them. So, because they rightly need what they believe in their heart to connect with their mind, they disconnect from Christianity.

Why does this keep happening?

In short, it happens because much of the Church today is dumb. Don’t misunderstand me, I mean no disrespect when I use the term ‘dumb’. What I mean is that the Church is dumb in that they aren’t well educated in what they believe, fail miserably in. . ."

Christian Post

[Unclaimed Treasure]

Twenty years ago, I taught Sunday School for fifth graders in a mainline church. I was appalled at the lack of knowledge the kids had. For four years, I followed the curriculum but in the fifth year, I decided that along with the curriculum, I would require the kids to learn by heart just one thing...the Lord's Prayer. We recited the prayer at the beginning of class for each week. After six weeks I informed the class that they would be getting a test on the Lord's Prayer the following week. They complained bitterly and said I had no right to do that because, after all, SS was not "school."

Nevertheless, I gave them the test. I printed out the prayer and put in blanks for just ten words. Only 20% of the students were able to achieve a passing grade of 70%. The rest were only able to fill in 50% or less of the blanks.

After that, I was told by the church administration that the purpose of SS was to entertain, not teach.

I quit.