Yesterday I read iMonk’s non-prophetic prophecy regarding the future of evangelicalism with full knowledge that whether it comes true or not isn’t my primary concern. In the blog post, iMonk essentially predicts the downfall of evangelicalism, including a bleak future for the Southern Baptist Convention. Four and a half years ago Dr. Chuck Kelley stood before my incoming class at NOBTS and told us that 80% of SBC churches are plateaued and declining. Add that to the famous Billy Graham statistic* that 90% of the church aren’t actually believers, and suddenly the future seems all the more depressing.
The second point iMonk made was especially outstanding:
Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. In what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, an evangelical culture that has spent billions of youth ministers, Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures that they will endure.
Reality shows this to be true. I’ve watched as countless youth have fallen away from their faith (if it was ever faith in Christ to begin with) when given the simple freedom of college… or any alternative. When they finally gained the choice to attend church, more often they chose against it. Perhaps the problem is that they view it as attending, rather than being, living, and serving the church. I have no doubt that’s part of the issue. iMonk is completely right- these kids don’t have the foundation in Christ. Some youth ministers are more stuck on finding the new gimmick to bring youth into the group than actually solidifying the faith of those who are already there. They’re so busy trying to be cute that they forget the reason they were hired. (Or maybe that’s why the youth ministers were hired: to babysit and entertain rather than lay the foundation of the Gospel that might endure and spread throughout the lives of the youth.)
When people are more enthralled by Joel Osteen’s “Jesus wants you to be rich” philosophy than they are the words of the Jesus himself, we are surely doomed. When we’re spending more time trying to rig ropes in a gym so we can preach while hanging from the ceiling in an effort to make a five second illustration, rather than focusing wholly on the message of Christ, we are doing the church and God a disservice. What it comes down to is this: the Gospel we preach produces the churches we get. And that statement works from the individual family unit to the youth group to the senior adult Sunday School class to the entire church. It’s reflected in the local associations. It’s obvious in the state and national conventions. It’s clear in the whole of evangelicalism.
This isn’t a condemnation of pastors, churches, or evangelicalism. It’s a condemnation of our nature. It’s a condemnation of our lack of focus on Christ. It’s a condemnation of our silliness and our cuteness. OURS. Mine. Yours. Ours. I’m not sure if I care whether evangelicalism lasts ten or twenty more years. God worked pretty well in the world before they existed, and will do just fine without us. There’s plenty of evidence that shows the church becomes much more unified and stronger when it’s persecuted. There’s evidence that smaller churches are more prone to plant churches than megachurches are. There’s a growing voice that says the days of Sunday-go-to-meeting church are soon coming to an end, and that the organic homegrown church is the future. Could be. But the only way any of it lasts is if the Gospel becomes the foundation of our lives and is at the forefront of our tongues. At least, that’s what I think.
*I wanted to find a source for this statistic, and couldn’t find it. Thus it’s simply something I heard once, and likewise not particularly famous at that. Still, I’m not sure it’s that far off.
by Joe Kennedy
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