The following is an excerpt from We Must Reclaim the Church Before We Can Even Begin to Reclaim the Culture by Brannon Howse.
Ken Ham has written an excellent book with Britt Beemer and Todd Hillard entitled, Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it. Ham worked with a professional pollster to survey those who went to church every week or nearly every week and they deliberately polled conservative congregations, not liberal ones. Let me share some highlights from their book that confirm that the church needs to be reclaimed before we even attempt to reclaim the culture.
- A mass exodus is underway. Most youth of today will not be coming to church tomorrow. Nationwide polls and denominational reports are showing that the next generation is calling it quits on the traditional church. And it's not just happening on the nominal fringe; it's happening at the core of the faith.
- Only 11 percent of those who have left the Church did so during the college years. Almost 90 percent of them were lost in middle school and high school. By the time they got to college they were already gone! About 40 percent are leaving the Church during elementary and middle school years!
- If you look around in your church today, two-thirds of those who are sitting among us have already left in their hearts; it will only take a couple years before their bodies are absent as well.
- The numbers indicate that Sunday school actually didn't do anything to help them develop a Christian worldview...The brutal conclusion is that, on the whole, the Sunday school programs of today are statistical failures.
- Part of the concern is that the mere existence of youth ministry and Sunday school allows parents to shrug off their responsibility as the primary teachers, mentors, and pastors to their family.[1]
The answer to this crisis is Biblical worldview and apologetics training. The church in America has had billions of dollars at their disposal in modern times, with which to fulfill the Great Commission-making disciples of Jesus Christ. Training and equipping adults and students in apologetics and a Biblical worldview is how this is accomplished. Yet, with all their billions of dollars, the modern-church has largely failed. Untold billions have been spent on buildings and entertainment. This news report details that one church denomination has over 7 billion in their annuity fund. I mention this just to back up my claim that the modern church has had billions and billions at its disposal by which to aggressively teach a comprehensive Biblical worldview yet surveys reveal that only 1% of adults have a Biblical worldview, only 51% of our pastors have a Biblical worldview and our teens are leaving the church in huge numbers because of lack of Biblical worldview training.
What do you think?
[1] Ken Ham & Britt Beemer with Todd Hillard, Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it (Master Books, Green Forest, AR., 2009) p. 22, 33, 41,
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