So how can we keep our Christian young people committed to Christ? How can we keep them from growing up in the Church and yet still being intellectually doubtful? First, the local Church needs to train believers and grow them to maturity in the faith. That is the summation of the matter. These young people are not being brought into maturity in Christ. Paul pins this job on the Church, saying that every member of the Church has a spiritual gift given specifically to mature ourselves and others in the faith:
“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:11-13, NIV)
Instead of this vibrant community that Paul pictures,
mutually building up one another and encouraging and strengthening one another
in their faith and helping fulfill one another’s spiritual and physical needs,
the church has become a building that one goes to in order to worship God by
singing songs and sitting through a message. Church is an hour a week, maybe
all of four hours if one has Sunday school, and Sunday evening and Wednesday
services. Instead of something the body participates in, it has become
something we go to.
Because of this, we miss out on Paul’s direct
command to be the Church. God gave us gifts, and whether we’re the preacher or the
pew-sitter, we have a responsibility to build up the body of Christ and make
believers mature in the faith! Why? So that we won’t doubt so easily or be
ensnared by false doctrine:
“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Eph. 4:14-16, NIV)
With a law-based description of what spiritual
maturity is, it is no wonder that those in the Church are depressed and
disappointed and doubtful. They can’t be saved by the law! Paul makes this
emphatically clear, going as far to say that “You who are trying to be
justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from
grace.” (Gal. 5:4, NIV) This serves only to foster spiritual immaturity rather
than bring about true spiritual maturity, which is about “attaining to the
whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, NIV), or put more simply,
acting like Jesus.
So it’s the job of the Church to get people to act like Jesus. Notice that it’s not just an intellectual learning of things, it’s a practical doing of things. Orthodoxy is only a part of spiritual maturity; it must be followed up with orthopraxy. Instead of the church service being something that is observed by the pew-sitter, Church needs to be something that is participated in by the pew-sitter. And with that foundation from the Church, the individual has to go away from the community of believers to apply that teaching in the home.
So it’s the job of the Church to get people to act like Jesus. Notice that it’s not just an intellectual learning of things, it’s a practical doing of things. Orthodoxy is only a part of spiritual maturity; it must be followed up with orthopraxy. Instead of the church service being something that is observed by the pew-sitter, Church needs to be something that is participated in by the pew-sitter. And with that foundation from the Church, the individual has to go away from the community of believers to apply that teaching in the home.
The home was instituted by God before the Church.
And as such, it must function as the primary institute of spiritual training.
It provides the opportunities for the orthopraxy integral to building up a
mature Christian. Children can grow up, watching their parents acting like
Jesus and following in their footsteps. They can get the imagery of what God is
like when He’s called Father, and they can picture how much God loves us when
the Church is called His bride. They can be involved in the process of
sanctifying themselves and becoming more like Jesus in their attitudes and
thoughts.
But if the Church does not disciple its people into
the maturity necessary to teach and build those up who are immature in the
faith, then the entire structure of the Church falls apart, and doubt will
envelop us. In a national study on youth and religion, thousands of formerly
religious teenagers were asked why they fell away from their faith. Given the
choice to answer however they wished, 32% said it was due to intellectual
skepticism. (SS) If the Church and the Christian home does their jobs in
training those that are immature in the faith, especially our Christian young
people who grow up in the Church, this number would drop dramatically.
Removing doubt is all a matter of discipleship.
Doubters are wanting answers to their questions. “God said it, I believe it,
and that settles it for me” is just way too naïve. We as the Church must be
prepared to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to
give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Pet. 3:15, NIV) And that
includes church kids. But we better give them good reasons, and not “cuz yer
momma and me says so,” or else we could find ourselves facing the last
Christian generation.
B – “Many Churchgoers and Faith Leaders Struggle to
Define Spiritual Maturity” http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/264-many-churchgoers-and-faith-leaders-struggle-to-define-spiritual-maturity
SS – Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 89.
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