The Last Christian Generation | Josh McDowell

Josh McDowell. The Last Christian Generation: The Crisis is Real, the Responsibility is Ours. Green Key, 2006. 200 pp.

Are Our Kids Embracing True Christianity?

If I hear one dominating and recurring theme among the many church leaders and families I come in contact with, it’s fear. Some can express their fear. Others can’t quite put it into words. But most admit to a fear, deep down, that their kids, having been raised in Christian families and having spent their childhood and teenage years in the church, will, nonetheless, walk away unchanged. They fear that they are the last Christian generation and that their children will depart from the true faith.

That fear has become a reality. In past years, between 55 percent and 66 percent of churched young people have said that the church will play a part in their lives when they leave home. Now only 33 percent of churched youth say that! This is consistent with what various denominational leaders have confessed to me. Many have estimated that between 69 percent and 94 percent of their young people are leaving the traditional church after high school… and very few are returning.

Today’s youth seem to be just as interested in God and just as passionate about spiritual things as any generation. For more than a decade, young people have been the most spiritually interested individuals in America. Their interest is not in question at all. But the fundamental question is: “How are they forming their view of God?”

A large proportion of our young people would say, “God is still important to me, I just believe some different things from you.”

What are these differences? For starters:

• 63% don’t believe Jesus is the Son of the one true God;
• 58% believe all faiths teach equally valid truths;
• 51% don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead;
• 65% don’t believe Satan is a real entity;
• 68% don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a real entity.

In other words, our kids are departing from the faith of their fathers … and mothers. Much of what they believe about Christianity, truth, reality, and the church comes from a distorted view they have gleaned from the world around them. It’s not that they haven’t embraced a version of Christianity; it’s simply that the version they believe in is not built on the true foundation of what biblical Christianity is all about.

But it’s more than a matter of the things they believe. Those differences in belief make a world of difference in the kind of lives they lead. You see, when our view of the truth becomes distorted, then how we view God, ourselves, and others is profoundly affected, too. And, sooner or later, what we believe will govern how we think and act.

Research also shows that our young people’s failure to adopt a foundational Christian belief system negatively impacts their behavior:

• 48% more likely to cheat on an exam
• 200% more likely to steal
• 200% more likely to physically hurt someone
• 300% more likely to use illegal drugs
• 600% more likely to attempt suicide.

A ground-breaking study by George Barna divided professed born-again Christians into two categories:

1. Those who believe in Christ, but their lives don’t reflect Christlikeness;
2. Those who believe in Christ and live a Christlike life.

His research showed that 98 percent of professed born-again young people do “believe in Christ,” but they do not reflect Christlike attitudes or actions!

Although it may sound harsh, I’m afraid George Barna is right when he says: Nothing is more numbing to the Church than the fact that it is mired in a rut of seemingly unfathomable depths. The various creative approaches attempted over the course of this decade have drawn much attention but produced little, if any, transformational impact . . . although many people attend a church, few Americans are committed to being the Church.

We haven’t lacked creative resources or high-impact Christian events over the last decade. We are inundated with books, courses, and events. And while these efforts have been worthwhile, because some people’s lives have been transformed by the power of God, for some reason we’re losing more ground with this new generation of young people than we are gaining.

What Do We Need?

The obvious but, nonetheless, shocking truth is that we are not seeing the majority of our churched youth transformed by the power of God.

Our own “Christian” young people are walking away from the church in alarming numbers. And whatever or whoever is the cause, we all want to find a way to keep your generation from being the last Christian generation.

Some time ago, a youth worker shared his struggle this way:

I have ministered to my kids every week for a year now, and I’ve come to this conclusion: we use the same words as our young people, but they mean totally different things. Words like truth, tolerance, respect, acceptance, moral judgments, sin, the Holy Spirit, the devil, and redemption have a completely different meaning to my kids than they do to me. We were working from two different premises, and I didn’t even know it. I’m convinced unless I can get my kids to rethink these most basic Christian concepts, I’ll never make it to square one with them.

This youth worker is confronting what every church and family confronts on a daily basis. Like him, many are unaware of the differing definitions their kids apply to words and the false concepts these definitions lead them to adopt.

These differences in meaning are symptomatic of a deeper problem—that the majority of our young people are neither understanding the claims of Christ nor becoming a true follower of him. And if we expect to make it to square one with this generation, we must correct the false concepts that our young people have about the entire Christian faith. Accomplish that and we have a chance to reintroduce the real and relevant Christ to our young people and witness a spiritual revolution of an entire generation.

Excerpted from The Last Christian Generation by Josh McDowell. Copyright © 2006. Publisher: Green Key Books. Used by permission.

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