Why Young People Abandon the Faith

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:00
This is, uh, Theology Matters, Why Young People Abandon the Faith, and I want to again greet you and thank you for coming and giving me your time.
00:09
I know you had many to choose from this morning and I'm very encouraged that you care about your children, you care about their faith, and you care about the issues that face them and what they are going to be dealing with as they grow.
00:22
My name is Keith.
00:23
I'm the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church.
00:26
I've been the pastor for ten years.
00:28
Before that I was the associate pastor, and before that I was the youth pastor, and before that I was a church member.
00:33
I've been in the same church since I was eight years old.
00:35
I've never moved.
00:37
The church recognized my call to ministry at 21 and was very gracious in allowing me to go to seminary and them paying for it.
00:45
And when seminary was over, our former pastor was ready to retire, and by God's grace, everybody voted for me.
00:51
So I was able to continue on.
00:54
I do have, like I said, experience as a youth pastor, as an associate pastor, and as now ten years as a senior pastor.
01:04
And over the past 15 years, through both study and experience, I've become increasingly convinced of a problem with the way that we educate our children regarding the things of God.
01:14
And I believe that its impact can be seen in the mass exodus which is occurring all around our nation in regards to the church.
01:22
The Pew Research Center recently did a survey in which they found that the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion at all is continuing to grow at a rapid pace.
01:35
One-fifth of the US public and one-third of those under 30 are religiously unaffiliated today.
01:44
It's one in five people.
01:45
If you ask them, it's called the rise of the nuns.
01:48
Have you heard that? Nuns is not like the habit, the nuns.
01:53
But the N-O-N-E-S, this is on the rise.
01:57
That if someone asks, what is your religious affiliation? We don't have any.
02:00
We have none.
02:01
And that is on the rise now.
02:03
One in five people will answer on any given survey, none as their religious affiliation.
02:10
And under 30, it moves up to 30%.
02:13
Thirty percent of people will say, no religious affiliation.
02:17
In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all US adults.
02:24
Their ranks include more than 13 million self-identified atheists and agnostics.
02:30
That's 6% of the American population identifies themselves as atheist or agnostic, as well as 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation.
02:40
When someone asks someone, well, do you go to church or anything? The answer is no, we don't have any affiliation.
02:48
And what I find interesting is in the 20%, the one in five, that it's a really low part of that that's atheist.
02:56
Because if you, people still exercise some type of spirituality.
03:02
It's just they don't want to be associated with religion.
03:05
They don't want to be associated with church.
03:07
They don't want to be associated particularly with Christianity.
03:11
The Pew Research Center went on to say that many of the country's unaffiliated adults are religious.
03:16
Two-thirds of them say they believe in God.
03:17
More than half say that they feel a deep connection with nature or the earth.
03:21
More than a third classify themselves as spiritual, but not religious.
03:26
And one in five say that they pray every day.
03:30
So it's not that people are unreligious.
03:32
It's just that they're not Christian.
03:34
They're not participating in the church.
03:36
And of course, they are in a lot of ways being opposed to what the church is doing.
03:43
Historically, man has been identified in several ways.
03:45
Many of you are familiar with the phrase homo sapien.
03:48
Homo sapien means the thinking being.
03:50
Man is separated from nature in that we have thoughts that are above, you know, people think it's amazing when a monkey picks up a stick and uses it.
03:58
Oh, he's using a tool.
03:59
Well, we went to the moon.
04:00
We win, you know.
04:01
Homo sapien.
04:02
We're the thinking being.
04:03
Man is also identified as homo religiosus.
04:06
In Latin, it means the religious being.
04:08
We are the ones who worship, and man does worship.
04:13
Even atheists worship.
04:15
They don't like to think that they do, and they argue that they don't, but atheists are incurably religious.
04:20
There's now a Church of Atheism.
04:22
How many of you have seen that? The First Church of Atheism.
04:24
Look it up.
04:25
Be careful, but look it up, and you'll see that you can actually become ordained in the First Church of Atheism.
04:31
Online, go in, put your information.
04:33
They'll send you an ordination certificate, and you will be just as ordained as I am in regard to the world's, because ordaining really doesn't have a, there's no national standard for ordination, so you can become ordained in the Church of Atheism just by saying you don't believe in God, and so there's a Church of Atheism.
04:49
How many of you heard of the Reason Rally? Happened just last week.
04:53
It's a group of unbelievers, atheists, whatever.
04:55
They gather in New York, around a million or so people gather in New York, and they get together to celebrate their lack of belief.
05:02
Actually, they say they're celebrating their desire to promote reason, but again, my point is simply this.
05:10
We live in a world where everyone worships something.
05:13
Man worships.
05:15
Homo religiosus, he's the only one that worships.
05:17
You don't see monkeys building altars.
05:19
You don't see cows out in the field going moo.
05:21
You know, they don't worship.
05:22
We do, and we're incurably religious, and we have to ask the question, if man is incurably religious, and yet people are abandoning Christianity, why? Why are people abandoning it, and why is it often happening in late adolescence, early adulthood? This is where we're seeing the most people make their exodus from the church is in late teen years and in their early 20s.
05:49
Well, again, the title of lecture is Theology Matters, Why Young People Abandon the Faith, and I want to go ahead and say this.
05:57
There is no single answer, and I am not a social, well, I guess I am a social scientist.
06:03
My degree is in social science, and I also have a degree in scripture, but I'm not a psychologist.
06:08
I'm not a social scientist, and I didn't go out and do a...
06:10
Hi, how are you? No, no, no, no worries, no worries.
06:17
I didn't go out and do a survey for this.
06:20
What I'm giving you today is based on my experience as a minister, and also my study of the culture, looking at what's happening all around us, and my understanding of what's happening in the church, and a significant reason why we have seen such a mass exodus from the church in America, particularly in the young adult range, is because we have given up, in my opinion, the teaching of theology in the church, and we have replaced it with emotionalism, pragmatism, minimalism, and moralism.
06:47
Those four things are going to be really the focus of the first part of the lecture today, because these are the four things that I think have replaced the teaching of theology, and have done so to the detriment of the church.
06:58
So, again, looking at these things, the first one is emotionalism.
07:03
We'll kind of go down the line.
07:07
Emotionalism.
07:08
How do we define emotionalism? Well, emotionalism is appealing to the emotions of an individual, rather than the intellect of an individual to produce a desired result.
07:19
To appeal to someone's emotions, rather than their intellect to produce a desired result.
07:24
This is very popular in the world.
07:26
Oftentimes, the world does that.
07:28
They try to appeal to the basis instinct of man.
07:30
They try to appeal to the emotions of the individual.
07:34
Think about how politicians do their political rallies.
07:37
It's not often intellectually.
07:39
It's emotionally.
07:41
They push on people's emotions.
07:43
They push on people's feelings, and it has become a problem, because this has made its way into the church.
07:49
This issue is something that has permeated our society to the point that people don't even talk about thinking anymore.
07:56
They only talk about feeling.
07:58
Think about the last time you had a conversation with someone over a difficult subject.
08:02
How do they relate it to you? How do they talk to you? They'll say, how do you feel about this? Who cares what you feel? What do you think? That's what matters, and that's what you're asking, but it's not what you're saying, because we have accepted the cultural idea that our feelings go before our intellect, that we should feel something.
08:22
Recently, I had this conversation with my wife.
08:25
My wife is the CEO of H.U.R.R.Y., Jennifer.
08:28
That's my wife, and she was writing an email to the other H.U.R.R.Y.
08:32
leaders, and oftentimes, she'll read me her emails.
08:36
I'll read her my emails.
08:37
We'll go back and forth.
08:39
Anybody married knows how to do that.
08:41
Well, she started the email by saying, I feel that we should do this and so, and I said, stop.
08:47
I said, you don't feel that.
08:48
You think that.
08:49
You believe that.
08:50
You don't feel it.
08:52
It's not about your feelings, and then, of course, we joked about it.
08:56
You know, I wasn't condemning her.
08:58
I was just saying, this is how we've allowed existentialism to make its way into our common vernacular, because the whole idea that feelings precede our intellect, and man is basically passion more than he is purpose, and his purpose comes from his passion.
09:15
So this is existentialism, and it's made its way into our common vernacular, and so what we need to think about is what Thomas Sowell said.
09:24
Thomas Sowell said, the problem isn't that little Johnny can't read, and the problem isn't even that Johnny can't think.
09:29
The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is, and he confuses it with feeling.
09:34
He doesn't know how to think.
09:35
He confuses it with feeling, so now everything's based on emotion, and as a result, a lot of times, the conversions that we're seeing in churches are emotionally driven, and as a result, what happens? Well, the conversion lasts as long as the emotion, and when the emotion stops, guess what else stops? Well, the conversion, because it wasn't true.
09:57
Heart change, true.
09:59
What is, by the way, this is not in my notes, but I'm going to ask you a question.
10:03
The word repent, in the Greek, does anyone know what the word repent in the Greek is? It's close, but not exactly.
10:15
The word in the Greek is metanoia.
10:22
Metanoia, meta means to change.
10:24
Think of it like a metamorphosis, to change form, right? Noia is from the word gnosis, means the mind.
10:31
To repent means to change the mind.
10:37
To repent means you look at your sin, and you change your mind about it.
10:41
You stop looking at it as something that you love, and start looking at it the way God does, as something that's, something that you hate.
10:47
You hate your sin rather than love it.
10:49
That's what repentance is, and yet we don't think of it that way.
10:52
What does the Bible say about our mind? It says we are to be transformed by the what? By the renewal of our mind, not by the spurring along of our feelings.
11:04
You see, that's what emotionalism has done, is it's made our conversions in the church all about the feelings, rather than about what somebody knows to be true.
11:13
A few years ago, I wrote an article.
11:15
The title of the article was, The Church is Not an Amusement Park, and the reason why I did that, I enjoy learning about words, and one of the words that a lot of people don't understand is the word amuse.
11:31
The root of amuse is muse, and what does it mean to muse? It means to think.
11:38
It means to, you know, if I say I'm musing over something, it means I'm actually thinking about it.
11:43
I'm actually putting it in my mind and mulling it over.
11:45
I'm musing over something.
11:47
Well, what happens when you put an alpha-negative on something? What happens when you put the a before atheist, or before theist? It becomes atheist, right? The alpha-negative negates the next statement, so the alpha-negative becomes a muse, and what does amuse mean? It means to turn your mind off.
12:03
It means not thinking.
12:04
That's why we call it amusement park.
12:06
Nobody goes to Disneyland to do a book report, right? Everybody goes to Disneyland to turn their mind off and have fun.
12:10
Well, we've started to treat the church like an amusement park.
12:14
It's become six flags over Jesus.
12:16
We turn off our minds, and we come in, and we want to be entertained the whole time we're there, and it's all about emotion, and it drives us to an emotional response, and the problem is when we leave, the emotion leaves too.
12:27
So part of the problem is that we have conversions based on emotionalism.
12:34
The second thing is pragmatism.
12:42
Pragmatism in simple terms is resorting to a method that works, whether or not the method is biblical or not.
12:55
How many times have you heard this, and you don't have to, if you've said it before, I'm not here to condemn you, but I do, I'm gonna make you think hopefully.
13:02
How many of you ever said, you know what, doesn't matter how we get somebody to church as long as they come? Maybe you haven't heard it, maybe you haven't said it, but you know what I'm talking about.
13:12
You've heard somebody say it.
13:14
In 15 years of ministry, I can't tell you how many times I've heard it in board meetings.
13:18
It doesn't matter how we get them here, pastor, we just got to get them here, all right? The problem is this, what you win someone with is what you win them to.
13:29
What you win somebody with is what you win them to.
13:31
If you win someone with entertainment, when the entertainment ends, so will their interest.
13:36
As a result, churches have become more and more focused on entertainment.
13:39
Rather than teaching the Word, we have skits, musical acts, dramatic readings, poetry, anything in the world to make it entertaining.
13:46
Churches seek to be Hollywood until they find out we don't have the budget to be Hollywood, but we're gonna do it anyway.
13:51
Instead of giving to the missions, we're gonna have the best Christmas play ever.
13:56
Now I'm being kind of ugly, but the reality is, as Frank Turk said, what we win them with, we win them to.
14:03
If we win them with entertainment and low commitment, we win them to entertainment and low commitment.
14:08
And as Charles Spurgeon said, and he was way ahead of his time, he said, we have got to stop, sorry I'm gonna say it again, we've got to start feeding the sheep and stop amusing the goats.
14:21
And this was in 1800, the 1850s.
14:23
He said, we got to stop amusing the goats and we got to start feeding the sheep.
14:29
Again, this is a problem that has obviously been going on for more than just our generation.
14:35
So pragmatism is using unbiblical methods because they quote-unquote work.
14:41
Well, they do work, and they're really good at creating numbers, but those numbers are the same people that are leaving the church and wondering why.
14:48
When you have a lot of numbers and those people are leaving, and you're saying, but what, but I saw little Johnny go forward, he prayed a prayer, but then you never saw him again.
14:58
Don't you think maybe the problem is some in our methodology, and you might say, well I'm not a church, I'm not a pastor.
15:04
No, but you choose which church you go to.
15:08
You choose who you're going to associate your children with in the teaching of the gospel.
15:13
You play a part in this.
15:16
So this is part of it, and you, we're going to talk about later, you do have a part in this because you are the major theologian that your child will deal with between now and the time they leave your house.
15:25
You are the primary theologian in your home.
15:27
Mom and Dad are going to be the ones who are more likely to hear the tough questions than any youth pastor, any church member, any senior pastor, because you're the one that are going to, you're going to be in the home with them when they're dealing with the really tough issues.
15:42
So let's move on to the third thing.
16:00
Minimalism.
16:00
Minimalism.
16:02
Minimalism is simplifying the teaching of the Bible to the point of irrelevance.
16:07
One of the most common questions that I get asked, and this is, again, most of this is based on my experience.
16:13
One of the most common questions I'm asked is, what's the least amount somebody needs to know to be saved? Oh yeah, people ask that all the time.
16:22
What's the absolute least amount that I should tell somebody to get them saved? And you think that that might be unique to me, but recently there was a very popular Christian apologist, and well, he's actually a philosopher, and there is a difference.
16:40
He, a Christian philosopher, made the rounds on social media because he basically said what we need to do is we need to stop trying to encourage unbelievers to trust the Bible, because you don't have to trust the Bible to be saved.
16:54
He said, we just, he said, he said, we need, and this is a direct quote, we need to set the bar as low as possible to get someone in the kingdom.
17:04
My first question is, is that what Jesus did? No, he said, take up your cross and follow me.
17:08
He didn't set the bar low at all, but I want to share with you where minimalism leads.
17:16
I know of a man, personally, he and I've had several conversations.
17:21
He was a member of my mother's extended family.
17:24
He grew up in a church which downplayed theology, focused very much on emotionalism.
17:30
I visited this church.
17:31
It is an emotional powder keg.
17:33
Every Sunday, somebody's screaming and running to the front.
17:35
Pastor walks on the back of the pews.
17:37
It's very, very, very emotionally driven.
17:41
Come in, please.
17:44
No, you're fine.
17:46
So this guy grew up in a church that was focused and driven on emotionalism.
17:51
As he got older, he began to have issues with the doctrine of hell.
17:56
If you're a parent or if you're a Christian, you've probably had questions about the the doctrine of eternal perdition.
18:03
So he began to seek out his minister first.
18:07
Wanted to have questions about biblical doctrines.
18:11
Minister didn't really want to talk about it.
18:12
Other church folks, no, they don't really want to talk about it.
18:14
No one was willing to get down into the trenches with him and examine the theology of eternal perdition, and instead, they put him off with platitudes, calls to, hey, just believe, don't ask questions, and you think people wouldn't say that.
18:27
No, they really do.
18:29
Just believe, don't ask questions.
18:30
As a result, that young man searched outside the church.
18:33
He found a cult movement which was very happy to tell him there was no hell, there was no eternal perdition, and he became very satisfied with it.
18:42
He's in that cult to this day.
18:44
Like I said, I've had several conversations with him, tried to help him understand what they teach is incorrect, but it's just a good, it's a good example of here's a guy who had legitimate issues and questions that we can address theologically, we can address intellectually, we can actually go to the scriptures and talk about these things, but nobody wanted him to do it.
19:07
They wanted him to get caught up in the emotions, and he wasn't willing, and as a result, he looked elsewhere.
19:13
The reason why so many young people get taken in when they go to college and university is because the professors are often more willing to engage them on difficult subjects than the church.
19:25
See those professors with the nice little ties and the, you know, the little, you know, that little hat that slopes in the front, they look real, you know, they come in, those guys are willing to sit down with your kids and answer their questions.
19:36
They're willing to tell them, you know, about all the manuscripts of the Bible and how none of, no one handwritten manuscript agrees with another and all those things, and see, if you don't know anything about textual history or how we got the Bible in the way that it is now and why we trust that it is still inerrant even after 2,000 years of handwritten manuscripts, if you don't know that, you don't talk to your children about that, somebody's going to.
20:01
See, that's part of it.
20:04
If we're not willing to engage our children on the tough subjects, and our churches are not engaging our children on the tough subjects, they will find someone who will, and more often than not, that person will be willing to lead them somewhere you don't want them to go.
20:23
So we've seen emotionalism, again, appealing to the emotion rather than the intellect and seeking conversions, and the conversion only lasts as long as the emotion.
20:34
Pragmatism, using unbiblical methods to bring people to Christ because they quote-unquote work.
20:42
Minimalism, least amount that you need to know, and then you don't increase at all.
20:46
I know one guy who said, you know what, our church is not for believers, our church is only for unbelievers to get saved, and once you get saved, our church isn't for you anymore.
20:54
He's one of the most popular pastors in America.
20:56
If I said his name, half of you would know him, and it makes me want to gag.
21:01
What do you mean you're not, don't say his name.
21:05
I'm just kidding.
21:05
Don is a member of my church and he's going to be my peanut gallery eventually.
21:11
Don has heard that before, but it's a serious issue.
21:15
We have, we have, we've given up the teaching of the Bible for these pragmatic entertainment methods that we think get people saved, and all we do is increase our flock of goats.
21:28
So last of these four, and this is all still introduction by the way, we haven't even got to the lesson, is my sermon.
21:34
My sermons are 25 minutes of introduction and then maybe 10 minutes or so.
21:38
I have a really long introduction.
21:39
The fourth thing is moralism.
21:43
Moralism, and this really, this wasn't even part of my original lecture because I've actually given this lecture at other places.
21:51
I added this one in particularly for homeschoolers because often what happens, and I'm not saying this to the condemnation of homeschoolers, I'm actually, I'm encouraged by the fact that most homeschoolers have a fairly rigorous moral guideline by which they run their homes.
22:06
That's a positive thing.
22:08
Our children need to have strict moral standards by which we run our lives, and they see us running our lives that way, and they understand that because of our commitment to Christ, that means that we don't live like the world.
22:18
Okay, so I'm not in any way condemning moral standards, but what happens though, more often than not, is our moralism replaces the gospel because we boil down our faith to a list of do's and don'ts, and this is how we know we're a Christian is because we do this and we don't do this.
22:35
We know we're a Christian because we're not over there doing what they're doing, and so our children grow up, rather than understanding what the gospel is, they grow up understanding, well if I do this, I'm a good boy and God will love me, and if I do that, I'm a bad boy and God will be mad at me, and that's not the gospel, but that's often the way that we sort of unintentionally allow them to understand who God is.
23:04
In 2005, a book came out called Soul Searching, The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.
23:09
Anyone read it? Okay, it was based on the work of two sociologists, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, and in the research, they found a common thread in the theological beliefs of American teenagers.
23:20
This was done across section of church members, non-church members all across the board, they did a cross-section, and as a result, they found out that the average person doesn't believe in the God of the Bible, or Christian God, or have a biblical worldview.
23:35
The average teenager believes in something, and I'm going to take this with me, it's moralistic, therapeutic, deism.
23:56
This is the religion of the average teenager in America.
24:00
Moralistic, therapeutic, deism, I'll move that if you'd like to see it.
24:09
Moralistic, therapeutic, deism is based on basically five beliefs.
24:13
These are the five beliefs of the average American teenager.
24:15
Number one, a God exists who created and ordered the world, watches over human life on earth.
24:22
Yeah, doesn't sound so bad so far, except for the a God part.
24:25
Sort of, we don't know who he is, but we know he's out there kind of thing.
24:28
Number two, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible in most world religions.
24:35
Yeah, all religions are pretty much saying they all want us to be good.
24:38
Number three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
24:46
That's that's what God wants.
24:48
He wants me to be happy.
24:49
He wants me to feel good.
24:51
Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
24:58
And number five, good people go to heaven when they die.
25:02
Of all the theological principles, this is where my PowerPoint would've been helpful because you could look at them, but if you look at it, I've just looked at moralistic therapeutic deism, and it will outline these for you, and the thing is, the problem with it is it's bad theology.
25:16
Not one of those statements by itself really describes the God of the Bible or biblical theology in any way.
25:24
It's an attempt to understand, or it's not an attempt rather, to understand God's nature, his character, his attributes, or his commands.
25:30
It's simply a salve that people use to put over their consciences, which help them deal with things like personal tragedy and death.
25:35
This is the moralistic therapeutic deism, is what I deal with most of all when I chaplain, or I'm not the official chaplain, but I serve as a chaplain at a funeral home, a local funeral home, and over the last four or five years I've done well over a hundred funerals for people who are normally are unbelievers because they don't have a minister.
25:58
I mean, the reason they're calling me is because they didn't have somebody already, and so I go in, and you know, everybody, well, we know Daddy's in heaven.
26:07
Okay, did Daddy believe in Jesus Christ? No, but we know Daddy's in heaven.
26:12
Why? Because this is the religion of America.
26:16
Daddy was a good man, so Daddy's in heaven.
26:21
So again, the four isms, emotionalism, pragmatism, minimalism, and moralism, are the things that I believe are responsible for the mass exodus from the faith in our nation's young people because these four things have converged, and this is the part that may, hopefully, won't be too offensive, and you know, the door's there if you get too mad.
26:44
Just don't hit me on the way out, because I believe that the major problem that has resulted in this is that many children who make a statement of faith are not truly converted, and as a result, the reason why people are departing the faith at young adult and their adult, young, or their late teenagers and young adult years is because they were never converted to begin with, and that's the dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about.
27:07
I saw him go forward when he was five.
27:10
I saw him go forward when he was seven, and now what's happening? He hates Jesus.
27:17
He hates the church.
27:19
Nobody wants to look at 1 John 2.19 that says they went out from us because they were not of us, for had they been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out to demonstrate that they were never of us.
27:30
1 John 2.19.
27:33
It's the hard truth.
27:34
It's the part that we don't want to talk about.
27:38
Too often, a child's confession is based on an emotional experience, engineered by a pragmatic activity, informed by a minimal understanding of truth, and focused on fulfilling a moral requirement in the home.
27:52
Well, daddy wanted me to get baptized.
27:54
Mama wants me to get baptized.
27:56
Daddy told me I should go forward.
27:58
The pastor told me to go forward.
28:01
So again, emotional response to a pragmatically engineered event.
28:07
Think about how the events are engineered to push toward, and I sometimes I feel bad about bringing this up, but it's true.
28:17
There was a church up north.
28:18
They built a baptistry in the shape of a firetruck, and it was for VBS, and so at the end of VBS, we want you to get baptized, so you come forward.
28:34
We're gonna put you in the water, and when you got baptized and came up out of the water, the sirens went off.
28:42
Had real sirens and lights.
28:44
Now you tell me what five-year-old is not gonna get in line for the firetruck, and you wonder why in the Southern Baptist Convention, the only consistently high number of baptisms is five-year-olds and younger.
29:06
It's the only one that's consistently always going up is five-year-olds and younger.
29:10
I tell them, if we keep baptizing that young, we're gonna have to apologize to the Presbyterians.
29:17
Hopefully you get that joke, but yeah, Presbyterians baptize babies.
29:20
If we keep going, we're not part, my church isn't part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but I did graduate from the Southern Baptist Seminary.
29:28
Actually, it's the one in town, Jacksonville Baptist Theological Seminary.
29:30
It's part of the Southern Baptist Movement, and so I consider myself part of the family, even though our church is non-denominational.
29:39
Well, it's part of the, we're part of the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, which the big part for us is the independent part.
29:45
We're not a part of a denomination, but anyway, the point being, often children, you know, little Johnny got saved, but it was this manufactured event that was meant to push his emotions into this powder keg.
30:02
You know, my wife and I had this conversation recently because our church this year, we're not sure if we're gonna do a VBS.
30:06
We don't do it every single year.
30:08
We have a family integrated model, so our VBS is different than some churches because we don't have a youth group.
30:13
We do everything through the family, which is, I don't wanna get into all that, but when we do VBS, we do a family VBS.
30:19
It's a little bit more involved, so we don't do it every year, but when we do do it, it's fun, but if we, this year we're thinking of not doing it, and so my wife said, well, you know, I really thought about taking Hope, we have a three-year-old, I really thought about taking her to another VBS, another church.
30:34
I said, hey, if you wanna do that, that's great, you know, I know a few churches, guys, I really trust, you know, you can go do that, it's fun.
30:39
She goes, but I'm afraid they're gonna do an invitation, and she's, you know, Hope loves Jesus, but she also loves Barney, you know, so we're good, you know, we got, we're, and isn't that weird that we have to think, worry about a manipulated experience? And you might say, well, you're just, you know, you're being too protective.
30:58
Hey, you guys are home schoolers, this is what we're about.
31:00
Yeah, I want to protect my daughter theologically from false conversion.
31:08
Let me just share another quick statistic with you.
31:13
This is from Ray Comfort.
31:14
How many of you guys know Ray Comfort? Ray Comfort, evangelist, great teacher.
31:17
If you've never heard him, look up his name.
31:19
Be careful because atheists hate him, so there's a lot of stuff out there about him that's really hateful.
31:24
Normally it comes from atheists, so be careful what you look at.
31:28
But he wrote in The Way of the Master, which is his book, in November 1970, a number of churches combined for a convention in Fort Worth, Texas, and secured 30,000 decisions.
31:42
Six months later, the follow-up committee could find only 30 people still continuing in their faith.
31:50
30 out of 30,000 were still continuing in their faith.
31:56
This is the dirty little secret of modern evangelicalism.
32:01
We've got the programs that can produce the responses.
32:06
The problem is the responses aren't real.
32:12
Charles Hackett, the Division of Home Missions National Director for the Assemblies of God in the U.S.
32:18
said, a soul at the altar, this is a direct quote, a soul at the altar does not generate much excitement in some circles because we realize approximately 95 out of every hundred will not become integrated into the church.
32:32
In fact, most will not return for a second visit.
32:36
This is after baptism.
32:39
The old joke among pastors is this, if you have trouble with cockroaches in your church, just go around and baptize them all, you'll never see them again.
32:46
It's a terrible joke.
32:51
Often when someone claims their children are leaving the faith, it's not a departure from the faith.
32:56
It's an indication that the faith was never present to begin with.
33:00
So what can we do? Well, now we move to the lesson.
33:03
All that was just to bring you to speed, and I don't know what we have as far as time.
33:09
I'm supposed to go 45 minutes, I'm at 33, so I'm recording.
33:16
Oh, well, the timing on the sheet was wrong.
33:19
It gave me more time than I'm supposed to have, so if I do go over, you guys are okay with that? Well, we'll try it.
33:26
So yesterday I did it, and I was right at 45 minutes.
33:29
Perfect.
33:29
So we'll see if that happens again.
33:32
If I go a little bit over, we'll see if that happens again.
33:32
But I remember if you guys have questions, we can sure do that as well.
33:37
So let's look at the question now.
33:40
What can we do? What can we do? We've seen the problem.
33:44
The problem is emotionalism, pragmatism, minimalism, moralism.
33:47
We know what the problem is.
33:48
What can we do to discourage false conversion in our children, which in turn, I believe, would decrease the potential that they would fall away and depart from the faith? Well, I've got three things that I want you to consider as parents, and this is where we get really to the homeschooling aspect of all this, because as parents, you have three responsibilities, I believe.
34:09
The first, and I'm not going to write it out because it's a long sentence, but you need to seek to understand as best as possible the gospel of Jesus Christ.
34:19
The first responsibility that you have as a parent is to seek to understand as best as possible the gospel of Jesus Christ.
34:30
As I said earlier, as a parent, you all wear many hats, but one of the hats that we don't like to think about is you wear the hat called theologian.
34:39
You are the primary theological advisor to your children as they mature.
34:43
Pastors, you know, I have my place in a child's life as their pastor.
34:48
We don't have a youth pastor in our church.
34:50
I tend to be the pastor, well, one of the elders.
34:52
We have elders in our church, so there's several of us.
34:54
All of us have different duties.
34:58
What's funny is with our church, somebody said, you don't have a youth pastor? I said, no, we have 50 of them, because every father is a youth pastor, because every father with kids is the responsibility of the theologian in his home.
35:09
He's the pastor, protector, provider, and priest in his home.
35:13
That's his three duties.
35:15
We have 50 of them.
35:16
I train men to teach their children, so I don't have to have one guy who teaches all their children.
35:22
That's our goal.
35:24
So, yes, fathers, you're a theologian, mothers, you're a theologian in the home.
35:28
As such, you need to be intimately familiar with the gospel.
35:32
Theology begins with understanding the gospel.
35:36
I don't want you to raise your hand.
35:38
You don't have to shake, and I won't ask you to close your eyes and bow your head either.
35:41
But how many of you, and just answer in your own heart, how many of you, if you were asked, could provide a proper explanation of the gospel? Somebody said, hey, what is the gospel? You don't have to answer again, but if you're a Christian, it is the gospel that's changed your life.
36:03
And I would say you should be able to properly explain it.
36:08
Yet, in my experience, Christians, people who call themselves Christians, can't.
36:11
And I'll give you the example.
36:13
We have something called the fishing hole at our church, and what it is, it's a booth.
36:17
We go to rallies and to fairs, anywhere they'll let us set up.
36:21
We pay the money to have a spot.
36:24
Last year, we did it at hurry.
36:25
We did it this year because I was busy doing this.
36:28
But last year, we had a booth at hurry, and all it is, is gospel tracks.
36:34
We have books for people who we have conversations with and have questions.
36:38
We give them books, and we just stand there and talk to people as they walk by, and we try to encourage them to have a gospel conversation with us.
36:45
Well, the sign that's above the fishing hole, it says, do you understand the gospel? People come up, I'm a believer.
36:53
I believe in Jesus Christ.
36:55
Really? Do you understand the gospel? I don't know.
37:01
What do you mean? Well, Jesus died.
37:04
He died for my sins.
37:05
What does that mean? Why did he die? What happened when he died? What do you mean died for your sins? What does that mean? You should know the gospel thoroughly and exhaustively so that you can properly teach the gospel to your children, and that job does not belong to your pastor.
37:22
That job belongs to you.
37:24
The pastor comes in as a resource for you and a resource for your children as they grow.
37:32
But your job is to know the gospel so that you can teach it to your children, and it's your job first.
37:38
So that's the first thing.
37:40
The second thing, and by the way, that will help in major ways in your understanding of the conversion of your child.
37:48
If you don't understand the gospel, then how do you understand if they're converted or not? But we'll get to that in a little while.
37:52
Number two.
37:55
Seek, and all these start with the same thing.
37:57
Seek to understand as best as possible.
37:58
So if you want to write that out, this is the sort of, seek to understand as best as possible the gospel.
38:03
Seek to understand as best as possible the theology of the Bible.
38:08
I did call this Theology Matters, so you know I was going to get here eventually.
38:17
I can't talk and write.
38:19
That's not fair.
38:46
Theology involves understanding a lot of things.
38:48
This is my area of teaching.
38:51
My major area of study is systematic theology, which means I dive into things like theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology, anthropology, ecclesiology, eschatology.
38:58
All theologies are what I teach.
39:01
In fact, we have two Sunday schools for adults.
39:04
We have Bible study, which one of my other elders teaches, and systematic theology, which is what I teach.
39:08
So it's two different, depending on where you want to go.
39:10
Do you want to go verse by verse through the Bible? You go to Mr.
39:13
Jack's class.
39:13
Do you want to go systematically through the Bible? Come to my class.
39:15
It's just two different ways to teach.
39:17
And I'm not saying that you have to be a scholar of systematic theology.
39:22
In fact, biblical theology and systematic theology are a little different because systematic theology looks at major topics of theology, where biblical theology simply means you understand what the Bible says about those things.
39:32
And so you should, as a Christian, and particularly as a homeschool parent, you should be versed in the major doctrines of the faith, such as this.
39:45
How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? What is holiness? Why is God called holy three times, but nothing else three times? Why is there a universal problem with sin among mankind? Why does Adam and Eve matter? And in that case, do they matter? Does Jesus' sacrifice matter? And how does it relate to the story of Adam and Eve? What is the hypostatic union? How does that relate to the Trinity? Why does that matter and does it matter? If you think I'm asking too much of you, consider the subject that we're discussing.
40:12
This is eternal matters.
40:14
These are eternal things.
40:15
If I were to ask you to explain your favorite hobby, the stats of your favorite sports team, or the details of your favorite recipe, or maybe how to crochet your favorite afghan, you wouldn't need notes.
40:25
You could tell me all about it.
40:27
But we've convinced ourselves that theology is too heavy, too weighty, and we've given over to the idea of minimalism.
40:34
I just don't need all that.
40:35
My kids don't need all that.
40:37
And the thing is, the reality is, our children need us to be capable of engaging them in deep thought about the things of God, because as they mature, their thoughts and questions become more than you can explain with simple religious platitudes.
40:50
They need more than the bumper sticker.
40:53
They need more than your sound bite theology.
41:01
They need a parent who's willing to sit down and give them a meal from the word of God.
41:05
And if you're not eating from the word of God, feasting from the word of God, you're not going to be able to feed them from the word of God.
41:11
We need to be equipped for those conversations, and if we aren't willing, as I've said, and I'm going to continue to say this, if we're not willing to have those conversations, somebody will.
41:21
Somebody else will.
41:24
Thirdly, and this is the hardest one, because seeking to understand the gospel, okay, we can go to some books for that.
41:35
We can study the scriptures.
41:36
We can learn.
41:38
Seeking to understand the theology of the Bible, okay, we can learn.
41:40
We can study.
41:41
We can do that.
41:43
This third one's the hard one.
41:45
Seek to understand, as best as possible, and I have added that caveat on all of these, the spiritual condition, the spiritual condition of your child.
42:07
If you're like me, and I rarely find anyone who is.
42:15
No, no, no, no.
42:16
No, if you're like me as a Christian parent, then you long for your children to walk with the Lord.
42:23
And you pray for that, and you ache over that when they're not.
42:28
I have four children.
42:31
I didn't introduce myself earlier completely.
42:33
I do have, I'm a dad.
42:34
I have two children that we adopted through foster care, and two children that we had naturally.
42:39
And our older two are 18 years old and 15.
42:43
Our younger two are 3 and 10 months, so we have this wide divergence of children.
42:48
Our oldest daughter received Christ last year, I think, and I baptized her.
42:55
My son has yet to confess Christ.
42:57
He's 15, and again, I'm very, you know, I could have got him baptized a long time ago if I wanted to contort his emotions.
43:07
That would have been very easy, but I'm looking for him to want to follow Christ on his own.
43:12
I don't, I'm, his daddy's the pastor.
43:14
It's easy for me to simply have him fulfill a moral requirement in the home.
43:19
I don't want that.
43:21
And that's the thing.
43:23
Sometimes in our zeal for the conversion of our children, we become a hindrance to their conversion because we encourage them to do this moral requirement before it's actually something that God has done in their heart.
43:37
Listen, and take this as truth, salvation is not about you giving your heart to God.
43:42
Salvation is about God giving you a new heart.
43:46
And that's the difference.
43:48
We tell the kids, it's about you giving your heart to God.
43:50
Does it become something they do versus God working on their heart and changing them? That's what we're looking for.
43:56
That's what I'm looking for in my son.
43:57
I pray for the day that he would repent of his sins and he would trust in Christ because God did a work in his heart.
44:05
That's what I pray for, that's what I look for, and that's what I encourage in him.
44:09
Seek after God.
44:09
Seek God.
44:12
Depending on your particular tradition, baptism can become a real issue here.
44:17
And I don't even pretend to assume everyone is the same in the room because we're not all in the same church.
44:23
If you're a Presbyterian or a Methodist, someone who comes from an infant baptizing tradition, then this isn't as big of an issue for you because you have baptism as part of their early life and thus their conversion becomes something that isn't marked by an ordinance or sacrament.
44:42
But in the Baptist tradition, which I'm not going to argue with you, but I believe in the biblical model that you baptize a believer, that does create somewhat of an issue because children want to be baptized and thus you have to be very discerning of their spiritual condition because you don't want your child to be baptized and then later have to be baptized again like I was.
45:05
I was baptized at eight years old, but I didn't know what baptism was.
45:09
The pastor came out, I remember this story and it's to my own shame.
45:14
The pastor came to my house because I said I wanted to be baptized.
45:17
He came to my house to talk to me and he went through all this stuff.
45:20
I have no idea what he said.
45:20
I wasn't even really knowing anything about anything.
45:23
At the end of the conversation he says, do you have any questions? I said yes, can you teach me to tie a tie? My father was a factory worker.
45:32
My dad worked for Anheuser-Busch and so he wore work boots and buttoned down shirts with his name on it every day to work.
45:40
My dad didn't know how to tie a tie and I wanted to look nice for my baptism.
45:45
You'd think that would have made a red flag for the pastor because the only question I had was hey, can you teach me to tie a tie? But it just shows you where my mindset was at eight years old.
45:55
I wasn't genuinely saved until I was 19 and even then I didn't get baptized immediately because I didn't understand the theology of baptism and why it was important.
46:03
But you see though how baptism can become a hindrance because once a person is baptized you tend to assume they're saved.
46:09
And so as a Baptist this becomes part of the problem.
46:13
Little Johnny said a prayer, he needs to go get in the water and Little Johnny goes and gets in the water or the VBS produces the fire truck water and so we've got this way of sort of manipulating this effect which doesn't have a cause.
46:28
We should be careful in affirming the salvation of our children based simply upon the recitation of a prayer, the participation in baptism or any other ordinance or their adherence to certain moral guidelines.
46:39
Following Christ is not about following a moral checklist.
46:42
It's about a heart change and we as parents, and this is why I say it's the hardest thing because I can't give you a book to go to.
46:48
I mean other than the scripture which kind of tells us what a believer should look like but other than that I can't say okay these are the five distinct qualities that every teenage believer is going to have.
46:58
I don't have that for you.
47:00
But I can say this, if you're working to manipulate or force the conversion of your child because you're concerned about their eternal destiny, then often in that forcing and coercion all you're doing is making them more confused.
47:21
Remember that salvation is of the Lord.
47:24
You preach the gospel, you give them the scriptures, you seek to answer their questions as best as God has given you the ability to and trust Him for the result.
47:35
That's all you can do.
47:36
God changes the heart, not you.
47:40
You are the resource, you're the tool, you're the means by which they hear the gospel, but you are not the Holy Spirit.
47:47
And if you ever need to be reminded, take your wallet out and look at your driver's license and you'll see that it does not say Holy Spirit, it says your name.
47:55
You are not the one that's going to convert your child.
47:58
God is.
47:59
So at the end of the day, it's trusting in Him.
48:04
It's trusting in His work to save them.
48:09
Now, I'm a little bit over time, but I want to ask for one more minute.
48:14
Because earlier in the presentation, I asked you how many of you understand the gospel, and I hope that you all do.
48:24
But as the end of the presentation, I want to share the gospel with you because this is how I would share it with my children.
48:31
And if you don't know the gospel, it might help you, and if you do know the gospel, as a preacher I know this, I love to hear the gospel.
48:38
Even though I know it and I preach it, I love it when I hear it from somebody else.
48:43
The gospel of Jesus Christ means the good news of Jesus Christ.
48:48
But the good news is only understood in light of some very serious bad news.
48:53
And the bad news is that God is good.
48:56
Now, you wouldn't think that God being good would be bad news, but the reason why God is good is bad news is because man is bad.
49:06
God is perfectly good, that's why we call him holy, that's what holy means, perfectly good.
49:12
And man is incredibly bad.
49:16
God is the judge of the universe, and because he is good, he will punish that which is bad, and because man is bad, he will be punished by God.
49:24
And that punishment is an eternal, conscious suffering in a place called hell.
49:30
The punishment is eternal because God is infinite, and an infinite being has an infinite consequence.
49:38
God, because he is good, chose to provide a way for men to be saved from their sin.
49:42
See, that goodness is also a good thing, because in his goodness, he demonstrates mercy and grace.
49:48
And in his mercy and grace, he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to take the punishment that sinners deserve.
49:54
When Jesus was on the cross, God punished Christ in the place of sinners.
49:59
And now anyone who trusts in the completed work of Christ, repents of their sin, and looks to him for salvation, will find in him a perfect savior.
50:08
But that's not all.
50:10
Jesus Christ was not only sinless, he himself was absolutely perfect, he was righteous.
50:14
And when Jesus died on the cross, a double transaction took place.
50:19
All the sin of believers was placed upon him, and he took their punishment.
50:25
But all the righteousness he had was given to the believer.
50:31
And thus now, when a believer stands before God, he stands not in his own righteousness, because all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
50:39
We stand in the righteousness of Christ.
50:42
What does the song say? Clothed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
50:49
You see, when a believer stands before God, we stand before God, our sins having been separated as far as the east is from the west.
50:59
And we stand in the righteousness of Christ, him who only has the righteousness that can merit God's favor.
51:06
This truth is encapsulated in one Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21.
51:13
God made him who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
51:26
God commands all men everywhere to repent, to turn away from their sins, to change their mind about their sin and believe the gospel.
51:34
And so I'll end today with a quote from Wodibaka.
51:37
Nowhere in the New Testament will you find that salvation is about accepting Jesus.
51:42
Nowhere are you called to accept Jesus.
51:44
Nowhere in the New Testament will you find that salvation is about asking Jesus into your heart.
51:50
Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere.
51:52
It's not there.
51:55
What you are told again and again is to repent and believe the gospel.
52:02
So my prayer for all of you is that you do believe the gospel and that you will teach it to your children.
52:08
Let's pray.
52:09
Father, I thank you for the opportunity to study today.
52:13
I pray that this has been beneficial for these people.
52:15
That they would use it as an encouragement to go home, to teach the gospel to their children and to teach the Bible to their children.
52:24
That their children too might come to know you as Lord and Savior.
52:28
In Christ's name.