Oprah Use To Go To Sunday School

“According to a stunning new survey by America's Research Group, 95 percent of 20 to 29 year old evangelicals attended church regularly during their elementary and middle school years. However, only 55 percent of them attended church regularly during high school, and only 11 percent of them were still regularly attending church when in college... 46% of Americans between the ages of 18 to 34 indicated that they had no religion... According to the Barna Group and the United Methodist Church, 62 percent of Americans in that age group consider themselves to be "spiritual", and 43 percent of them have prayed to some higher power in the last 2 months.

But what it does mean is that almost half of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 do not identify themselves with any particular religion.

And when you look at more recent poll numbers for Christianity in particular, the numbers become even more staggering.

Another new survey by the Barna group reveals that less than 1 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a Biblical worldview. This new poll data clearly demonstrates that the youngest adults in America are clearly rejecting traditional evangelical Christian teaching.

The Barna survey defined "a Biblical worldview" as holding all of the following six key beliefs:

1. Believing that absolute moral truth exists.
2. Believing that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
3. Believing that Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic.
4. Believing that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or by doing good works.
5. Believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth.
6. Believing that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.” http://signsofthelastdays.com/archives/the-decline-of-christianity-in-america”

Given the information above, I conclude there is a problem in the church that transcends anything we can imagine, and there can be no sidestepping of the issue or ignoring its relevance to the future of the church as we know it. These facts are a ticking time bomb that will explode sometime in the next generation and result in even more dead churches and lost Kingdom opportunities.

It’s always been true that the college experience literally removes fledglings from the nests that long provided nurture and support and forces young people to try their wings. Given the “progressive” nature of most higher institutional educators, traditional values are challenged, at best, and ridiculed at worst. But, to be fair, isn’t college supposed to expose new world views and encourage eager young minds to consider alternative intellectual and spiritual options to their previously guarded existences?

It’s almost as if higher education says, “Okay. Your parents have had you long enough. Now it’s our turn to mold your mind toward a better, more enlightened view of the world.”

Unfortunately, they may be right. The traditional views and values held by mainstream Christian denominations don’t cut it with young adults. In fact, the continual decline in church identification and involvement outlined above suggests traditional “Church values” don’t cut it with adults either.

One conservative reaction to such volatile rhetoric (not to mention the factual realities) is to assume that the current generation of parents and offspring have simply “wandered away from the truth ... which, by the way, we still possess.” To fall for such logic, however, suggests that what’s needed is a good dose of the old time religion. Or, for people to get saved and find Jesus as their personal savior.

Unfortunately, that school of thought which prevailed for centuries rests on a cracked foundation that’s crumbling under the pressure of the new reality. Getting saved use to be the panacea for all personal and social maladies. Unfortunately, people no longer see their condition as a malady, but instead prefer freedom of spirit to just be acceptably spiritual without being a Christian.

It’s no longer a virtue to be called a Christian. In fact, it’s a liability when dealing with the hoards of people who leave the church because it, or the God it peddles, has failed to live up to its billing.

I suggest there are a number of related primary reasons why people jettison the Christian faith system as they are doing around the world. And, none of my list has to do with their personal immorality or lack of spiritual awareness. Here’s may take on what they may be:

1. The foundational issue, from which all the others flow is this: The rhetoric of Christianity doesn’t jibe with reality. For example, saints say many things about God’s love, yet for most people on this earth, life really sucks. The experience of trying to get through the day, much less the year, suggests that God isn’t all He’s cracked up to be, and He’s certainly not as loving or personal as gushing church ladies claim He is to them. He’s remote, silent and distant – at best – and destructive, hateful and mean-spirited at worst. Read the Bible if you don’t believe that.
2. Most church goers were raised to believe what the pastor or the denomination said it true. Therefore, the initial exposure to church tradition is given to children, usually in sunday school. (Oprah used to go to sunday school in Mississippi.) And, despite all the talk about Christian’s being loving people and the church a safe place, individuals, congregations, and denominations bicker all the way to heaven. And worse, pastors and priests have regular morality break downs as they lead their flocks to the Promised Land. The average, unversed, believer blindly follows their denomination’s intellectual champions, most of who lived in the middle ages, or earlier. To question established church doctrine usually creates looks of fear or anger, and the status of the seeker’s eternal soul is placed in doubt. “You must obey the home office if you want to continue to be part of this loving circle of believers.”
3. The scripture is possibly the primary source of the disenfranchisement of one-time sunday school children. The fundamentalist is adamant that any who don’t believe the Bible comes directly from God’s lips to man’s ears is ostracized, if not worse. The other view of the Bible that it’s man’s attempt to explain, experience and define God, simply blows the “spiritual chaff” out the church’s back door. The studies show that viewing the Bible through the first lens repels people away from the church and ubiquitous dogma defines Christian faith and practice, mostly because the church lady can’t explain away the problems the Bible creates. So people leave. Rigid views no longer represent the truth, nor are they the best way to keep the pews full of eager worshippers.
4. There are serious contradictions in what people intuitively feel is right. Dark, heavy lines divide Christians among themselves, and from society. Confusing social issues such as abortion, homosexuality, the role of women both in the church and in the market place, and the very nature of truth itself (Jesus) are too easily addressed by much of the church. “Why do Christians make everything into black and white issues?” That used to work, but it doesn’t now. Thinking and individual experience trumps the one time virtue of being absolutely sure that your way is the only way.
5. The language of the church is confusing, if not misleading. Therefore people want to go where others speak plainly and honestly, not according to an unseen approved script passed down from headquarters or heaven. When marginal believers – or restless unsettled individuals – encounter words like: “God told me ... What is God saying to you?” or the classic, “Jesus is my personal savior and my best friend”, the back door can’t be close enough.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect it’s found dwelling within the confines of the following divine traits:

Truth

Honesty

Relevance

Tolerance

Charity

When Christians turn their faith into a system, it fails to attract people to the Light. In fact, it drives them away to lesser lights. This is a post- modern age full of people who no longer believe they have to toe the line and believe or behave according someone’s clearly failing principles.

Today, to reach people for Christ, something has to change. Specifically, He must be lifted up and made relevant. It takes personal discipline and dedication to relate to Him, however, and nothing else – not the Bible, the church, its traditions or other Christian dogma can take His place. He said if He was lifted up He would do the heavy lifting of drawing all people to Him.

So, showing up and sitting thorough worship, even participating in it, isn’t enough to lift Him high enough for someone outside the chapel walls to see who He is.

Faith must first be personal, flexible and somehow made valuable enough to pursue it as Jesus suggested His followers ought to. Right now, the demographics of the crumbling church prove it’s currently not any of those qualities for millions of fleeing potential saints.

The Lord said He would build His church and not even the power of Hell can stand against it, but fortunately, this isn’t a pitched battle between believers and Beelzebub just yet. It’s more of a battle between comfortable good and uncomfortable best. Unfortunately, it seems the church has settled for good because the price of best is too high to pay.

Jack C. Getz

October 27, 2010