Worldview Wednesday--Why Young People in Church First Need Worldview Training
Western churches are losing young people to secularism by the truckloads every single day. While this alarms most Christians, many parents and grandparents stubbornly refuse to believe their beloved family members will fall prey to the seductive derision of the faith by their friends and professors once they ship off to college. This is a naive view that must die a quick death.
On my previous blog, I argued that believers should do whatever it takes to send their kids off to a good Christian school or they will be paying a lot of money to have their child indoctrinated. Note that not just any so-called Christian school will do for many so-called "Bible professors" are all too eager to embrace many tenants of secularism in the hopes of a reciprocal snuggle by academia.
Only two things can save our young people from being swept up by our increasingly pagan culture--the Holy Spirit and worldview training. The former we can't control, the latter we can.
Matt Slick, over at his excellent web site, CARM penned the following:
"There are some basic philosophical questions that most everyone in the world wonders about. Generally speaking, it is the answers to the following set of questions that guide how the next set of questions are answered...let's look at the philosophical worldview questions.
- Where did we come from?
- Why are we here?
- Is there a God?
- If there is a God, what does he want?
- What happens to us after we die?
- Did we evolve or were we created?
- Is morality absolute or subjective?"
The reason we need to train young people on what is a Christian worldview before anything else (and I include Bible studies in that equation) is, as the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen stated, a person's presuppositions will determine what they believe is probable. Thus, teaching Scripture (and, yes, I'm all for that!) in a pagan culture will not resonate if the students don't first understand why they are studying it, what's it all about, why can we trust what it teaches, etc.
Church leaders and guardians of tweens onward are not unlike Phillip talking to the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading Isaiah and when asked if he understood what he was perusing confessed, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" (Acts 8:30-31). Teach young people a distinctly Christian worldview, which always includes a clear presentation of the Gospel (2 Cor. 5:21) then guide them through the Scriptures, first from a 30,000 foot level then through the tougher passages.
This will require that our youth ministers not just be entertaining but well versed in the Christian worldview, apologetics AND Scripture!
For resources, I would recommend the following: Life's Ultimate Questions by Ronald Nash, What is a Christian Worldview by Phillip Ryken, 7 Ideas Polluting Your Mind by Anthony Selvaggio and Forensic Faith y Det. J. Warner Wallace.
No pressure but the fate of the entire western world depends on it!