Lately I’ve been exchanging emails with a teen girl who doesn’t know if she believes in God anymore.
Despite her lifetime of churchgoing she’s not sure she’s ever really believed. She can pinpoint a moment when she said the sinner’s prayer, but her current doubts are louder than that distant memory.
Yesterday I threw a comment up on Facebook and Twitter asking people to share about their experiences with doubt and overcoming it. Somebody will surely be able to help me, I thought to myself. Then the comments and messages began rolling in: I have doubts too.
Suddenly George Barna’s statistic that 80% of churchgoing teens leave the Christian faith before their 29th birthdays became real before my eyes. That percentage grew faces and names in an instant. Part of me wanted to jump on a tour bus and travel the United States, pen in hand, observing America’s churches and figuring out where we are going wrong.
Why is the church only able to hang on to two out of every ten girls who walk into youth group? Those numbers literally make me sick.
Information transfer doesn’t produce a relationship, and a relationship is the only thing that will get a person into heaven and keep a person in church. Relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ is the only thing that can change a person’s life. No amount of volunteering at church, Bible knowledge or youth group attendance is going to cut it.
Yet, week in and week out youth pastors around the nation stand before groups of your peers and throw a bunch of information at them from a book. Sounds a lot like what your English teacher, science teacher and even your history teacher do. The difference is America’s high schools have a higher success rate than its churches.
“My church is going through a dry spell but they are praying for revival,” the girl who now questions her belief in God recently wrote to me. “I doubt it will ever come.” It was then that I realized she wasn’t asking me to scientifically prove that God was real. She didn’t want me to debate evolution verses creationism. What she wanted was to feel the breath of God on her face. She wanted to reach out and touch Him.
The church is losing your peers for one reason: you want to experience God and the guys in pulpits want to talk to you about Him. This scene is as old as time. Thomas was a doubter too. You may think you have it bad because you’re a lifetime church attendee and you wonder if God is real. Thomas was one of Jesus’ elite 12—and he didn’t believe in the resurrection until he placed his hands inside of Jesus’ scars.
What was Jesus’ response to a doubter that should have known better? Was it a rebuke for his lack of faith? Was it anger over not being trusted? Was it disappointment in someone He expected more from?
Jesus’ response to Thomas was simple. Come. To the one who needed to see to believe this is what Jesus said: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).
Over the next few days on the blog we’re going to wrestle with this issue of doubt, and we’re going to talk about the why behind the startling statistics. Let’s work this thing out together.
To those who want an experience and not a sermon, Jesus holds out His nail scarred hands and says, “Come.”
What are some of your major questions about God? Why do you think 80% of your peers will eventually leave the church? Does this statistic surprise you? Why or why not?
