So your curriculum includes instructing them on how to figure out which version of Christianity is true?271I’ve been training high school students at Summit Worldview Academy in Manitou Springs, Colorado for several years now. We hold nine 2-week conferences for young people each year (six in Colorado, one in California and two in Tennessee), designed specifically to “teach students how to analyze the various ideas that are currently competing for their hearts and minds.”
Do you think they'd get a more realistic experience of what your informed critics have to say, if you made them attend a few live in-person debates with some of your more informed atheist critics? Or did I forget that as a Christian, you prioritize whether something is "biblical" a bit more than you prioritize whether it is "objective"?The curriculum is incredibly rigorous and students spend long hours in class each day, listening to Christian case makers, professors, teachers and speakers from all over the country. Some students even take written exams at the end to qualify for college credit (offered through Bryan College as part of a “Contemporary Worldviews” course, Philosophy 111). This is not your typical high school “camp”; it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn why Christianity is true and how to develop a Christian worldview rooted in this truth. While there are certainly fun activities scheduled for the students, that’s not why they come. Students come to Summit to be trained.
Nothing's changed.I spent part of my pastoral life as a youth pastor and I witnessed firsthand the challenge young people face in high school (and especially in college). When I first began as a youth pastor, I expressed my creative inclinations robustly (I have a degree in design and a master’s degree in Architecture). My weekend services were a visual and audible extravaganza. I was focused entirely on experience. About a year into my pastorate I realized the incredible deficiencies of this approach. The seniors graduated from my ministry and eventually graduated from Christianity altogether. They were simply not prepared to respond to the challenges they faced from skeptics in the university setting. They needed answers, and I wasn’t providing them; I changed my approach to youth ministry completely.
And it is precisely your debating a real live informed bible critic/atheist in person, that would more "realistically" prepare your students for what they will get when they leave the nest.I began to share the evidence I found so compelling when I was a skeptic, and I started responding to the objections and questions my students already had (but were sometimes afraid to express). Many of my youth pastor colleagues thought I was crazy to make “apologetics” the sole focus of my weekend meetings, but the students we prepared in this way were ready for life in the “real world”.
That's a really great marketing technique: tell your readers how objective they are and how concerned they are to know the truth. It makes it sound like you write the intros used by the news media. They also inform their listeners just how much the listeners want truth as opposed to anything else...then they present that "truth" with slickly produced videos, voice inflections and every other trick that is designed to make a person want to listen. But I think the popularity of television and internet gaming and texting is sufficient to show that the vast majority of people, including "Christians" seek to be entertained. You don't go where a church has only "truth". You go where the church gives you the right "vibe".I discovered something important: Students want the truth. Don’t let the pundits or cultural observers fool you into thinking students are more concerned about experience, entertainment or storytelling. Students want answers. In fact, I think young people want answers more than the Church knows or understands.
You fail to consider that it was spiritual maturity that caused these older Christians who stayed behind, to express little interest in "case-making". But no, you need to promote your book like a car salesman employing the told "create a problem/offer a solution" paradigm: How convenient that the only way today's Christian youth can grow spiritually is by purchasing your case-making materials.When I first planted a church, I formed the core congregation from the young people I was training as a youth pastor. It wasn’t long before their parents began to join us to see what was happening at the church where their sons and daughters were excited to train and serve. After a few years, the younger members of my congregation grew up, moved off to college or got married and moved to new job opportunities. The parents of these young people stayed behind, and my congregation “aged” considerably. I noticed a palpable difference. The urgency and need for answers waned. These older members were much more comfortable in their daily settings and, as Christians, they were not being challenged nearly as vigorously as their students had been. As a result, they were less interested in “case making”.
But the funding for such trips would not come from your book sales if you allowed your devotees to see how sorry you perform in a live debate with an informed bible skeptic like me. I find your confidence about as fearful as the confidence of Benny Hinn that he can do miracles. YAWN.I get the chance now to travel all over the country sharing the case for Christianity.
But one difference you didn't account for was the obvious likelihood that the adult congregations generally care less about case-making, by reason of their generally greater spiritual maturity.I recognize the difference between student and adult congregations.
No, they are human beings, and you can no more deny that church fulfills a psychological need, than you can deny that bingo fulfills a psychological need. Churches are not exempt from the naturalistic rules that motivate people to organize into groups. Churches that cater mostly to the youth, employ all the tricks that godless secular media does to pull them in: cartoons, slickly produced attention-deficit MTV-style videos, etc.While the Church seems to be satisfied with undemanding Sunday experiences, young people want so much more: They want answers.
I'm just wondering when you plan on selling case-making shampoo.
Again, the older Christians aren't so willing to do this, why? Why do you keep discounting the possibility that it is spiritual maturity that dissuades older Christians from your marketing tricks?They are willing and ready to roll up their sleeves and prepare themselves.
And the very fact that you so relentlessly promote your books as the answer to their dreams, testifies with trumpets and bullhorns that you don't think the bible is ALONE sufficient to do this job. God will not speak his truth through the bible unless an imperfect sinner is there to help the Holy Spirit do His job.They want their own doubts answered and they want to respond to the skeptics in their lives.
And one possibility to explain this is that Christianity is a false religion, and that's why many of its converts couldn't care less about the stuff you think is truly important. You also find lazy Mormons and Muslims, also just as easily explained by the fact that those religions are false, nothing but social clubs.Sadly, the Church doesn’t seem to recognize this yet, and it definitely seems ill-equipped to meet the challenge.
I'm willing to have a formal written debate with you in any forum of your choosing on any bible or specific apologetics topic you feel most comfortable defending, but no, you just go on and on about how your materials are the key to taking the handcuffs off of the Holy Spirit. What...did God get a degree in marketing since the bad old days?
Another reason to say you don't think the bible "alone" is sufficient to fix that problem. If the bible "alone" is sufficient to equip Christian youth as you think they need to be equipped, then the Holy Spirit would not need your materials to do it today, anymore than he would have needed your materials to do this back in the year 783 a.d.That’s why I love Summit Ministries. They provide a much needed solution to the apathy I sometimes see in the Church.
Because the bible "alone" (i.e., reading the bible without the help of "Summit") would not be sufficient to fix that problem.If you’re a parent who understands the simple value of answers, I highly recommend Summit. It’s time for the Church to raise up a generation of young people who are equipped with a Biblical worldview and can articulate this worldview with strength and conviction.
Students love answers; it’s time to woo the Church into a similar love affair with the truth.
Students also love socializing and being idealistic....now there's a money making opportunity: They have a problem, their bible is, alone, insufficient to fix their problems, and you have the solution: they should invest money in your for-profit enterprises. Well, at least you finally opened your eyes to the obvious: the bible alone is not sufficient for faith and practice. We all need the bible + J. Warner Wallace's materials, offered at a reasonable discount when purchased in bulk.
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