As I continue to reflect on the urgent task of discipleship formation, I am taking some time to revisit the work of Kenda Creasy Dean, one of my professors from Princeton Seminary. I appreciate her research, writing, and teaching because it focuses on youth ministry as a vital indicator of the wider church's faith practice. She rightly understands the too-often mediocre faith of our youth not as a symptom of teenage apathy and indifference, but as the reflection of our own faith communities. Basically, she says that a hip youth pastor is not the most important factor in the development of faith obedience in our youth; rather, the faith of the particular church community as a whole is a reflection of the adults' and parents' faith, and this often low-commitment faith is reflected in the low-commitment faith of the youth. But the tragedy is not just that this faith is apathetic; what is happening instead is that a new form of spirituality is replacing traditional and orthodox Christianity in our youth ministries and churches. The Christian Faith is rapidly disintegrating into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
In her book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, Dean summarizes the five guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Diesm: (Note that this entire book is based on the ground-breaking National Study of Youth and Religion)
1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. (See page 14).
Does any of this sound familiar? More and more youth in more and more churches are defining their "Christian" faith in these terms. And, with Dean, I believe that this trend must be stopped with a clear and deep theology and practice of discipleship. At the center of this change will be the distinct affirmation of the mission of God. To participate in God's ways means to love others as God loves; it means a turning away from self and a turning towards the world. This is an easy thing to say and write, but it will take an immense paradigm shift in the culture of our churches.
I am full of hope - because of the promise and power of God's Spirit to move among us. My prayer is that as God's Spirit moves, we will learn to listen, and we will learn to believe and obey - not only understanding but also living in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we take seriously the call of following-after Jesus Christ, the life and witness of our churches will shine the bright light of hope and redemption. God will continue to pour out his Spirit, and "Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17).
