Entries tagged with “devotion”.


Ever wonder what youth in the Lutheran church are thinking? Wonder no more. Back in June, Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod released the results of a survey they took at their 2007 National Youth Gathering. I’ve gathered a bit of the more interesting results below to consider. Some of it is encouraging. Some is simply concerning.

Personal Faith Life
When asked how much time they spent per week in personal Bible study and devotion, the largest response by far was “very little/almost never.” In fact, 47.6% of 18 year olds, 48.2% of 15 year olds, 51.4% of 16 year olds, 55.5% of 17 year olds and a disheartening 55.5% of 19 year olds checked that category. Another 29.7% to 40.5% chose the next lowest option: 30-60 minutes per week. 6.1% to 10% chose 61-120 minutes while only 1.7% to 4.4% checked more than 2 hours.

25.6% to 33.3% of teens responded they speak to parents/family about God and spiritual matters ‘often’. 41% to 46.8% said ‘sometimes’. 13.3 to 22.7% said ‘rarely’ while 5% to 7% said ‘never’.

Morality
Only 52.1% to 58.3% of teens agreed pre-marital sex was always wrong. An encouraging 77% of 15 year olds said they never engaged in sexual intercourse, but that number progressively drops to a dismal 48.3% among 19 year olds.

Only 58.7% to 67.2% were certain that homosexuality was a sin according to God’s Word and therefore wrong.

An encouraging 86.5% to 91.4% responded that they never do drugs. 64.2% to 79.3% insisted they had not once been drunk in the past 12 months.

69.1% to 70.3% believed abortion was definitely wrong and identified themselves as ‘pro-life’. 16.9 to 21.4% believed a woman should have the right to choose and identified themselves as ‘pro-choice’. 

Worship
17.3% to 24.9% preferred “traditional, liturgical worship, using hymns pretty much out of a hymnal.” 24.9% to 31.9% preferred “contemporary music with praise band usually singing praise choruses. Never out of a hymnal.” The largest category at 39.9% to 43.4% preferred “a mixture of old and new” while 8.3% to 11% were unsure what they preferred.

On the subject of church fellowship, a disappointing 18.3% to 23.3% believed “all religions are pretty much alike.” 15.3% to 22.3% believed Lutherans should associate only with other Lutherans. 47.8% to 58.3% affirmed belief in a larger catholic understanding of Christian unity.

Church Workers
On the issue of female ordination, 39.8% to 50% believed it was contrary to God’s Word. 21.1% to 30.6% believed the issue should continue to be studied and held up to God’s Word. 8.3% to 14.9% suggested the official LCMS position was definitely wrong, while 15% to 24.2% admitted they just didn’t know.

41.5% to 47.9% were “really not interested” in considering a career in professional church work. Another 18.3% to 23.4% had “never really thought about it.”

Home Congregation
Most teens considered their home congregation generally unwilling to consider any change even if “a good, new idea comes along.” 15.7% to 23.1% felt their home church “wouldn’t change a light bulb if they didn’t have to” while an additional 35.3% to 42.2% felt their home congregation was unsympathetic towards change but that “sometimes they can be convinced.”

Only 17.1% to 23.3% and 5% to 12.1% thought their home congregation was either “good or “excellent, respectively, involving youth in congregational decision making.
 

That’s just some of the numbers that caught my eye. It’s time to consider results like this to discern where we’re succeeding and where we’re failing, to re-evaluate methods which my be flawed and support methods which may be working.

Plenty to think about and plenty to pray about in any event. Read the full results of the survey at LCMS’ website.

In a comment on Ken Maher’s article Chew on this…, I began discussing the concern of lessening teen involvement in the Lutheran Church – Canada. There I suggested that while “we’ve got a strong, unshakable foundation in Jesus Christ,” it may well “be time to do some repairs on the ground floor.” In other words, while theologically our faith is strong, the practical application thereof has faced significant difficulties for many years. Ken then asked me what kind of repairs I thought might be in order. This is my response.

Before launching directly into the discussion, it is, I think, important to recognize that the problem of teen dropout is not merely a “teen” problem. This is in actuality merely symptomatic of a much graver issue in our denomination (and many others for that matter). In particular, I am thinking of the lack of spiritual fervour and discipline far too common among our congregants. When teens are raised by parents for whom faith is a Sunday-only concept rather than a life-encompassing reality, it is exceptionally hard for the teens to see the importance of Christianity itself to their daily lives, let alone the usefulness of church attendance. And these Sunday-Christian parents are taking significantly less of a role than previous generations in the spiritual upbringing of their children. They assume, no doubt, that this void will be filled with Sunday School and Confirmation.

No surprise, therefore, that teens are failing to connect with the Church.

In the Lutheran church, we pride ourselves on our strong theological heritage, and rightly so. And so we stress in our Confirmation classes the necessity of knowing the Bible, and texts like Luther’s Small Catechism (because they are faithful expositions of Holy Scripture). But we forget, and inexcusably so, the necessity of teaching devotional practice. We make our confirmants read the Bible in order to complete Confirmation homework, but we do not teach them how to read for daily devotional purposes. We make them memorize the Lord’s Prayer, and Luther’s explanation thereof in the Small Catechism, but we do not have small prayer groups with them, nor make it clear what it is to talk daily with God. We make sure they know all the right answers to all the right theological questions, but we do not give them the tools to face life-problems outside the Catechism. Nor do we stress the necessity of Christian service in the congregation or mission outreach to the world at large.

The problem is clear: our youth have no spiritual grounding. They do not know how to read the Bible devotionally. They do not know how to pray individually or corporately. They are ill-equipped to recognize their own spiritual gifts, and as a result do not know where they should serve. More striking, they do not personally and fully understand the good news of Jesus Christ for themselves and, as such, feel no concern for evangelism.

Should we be surprised then that Lutheran youth are leaving the Church? We focus so strongly on the their intellectual assent to theological statements, but provide no practical guidance as to how this theology should impact their daily lives. As such, Confirmation becomes nothing more than a graduation exercise: “If I know the right answers, I’ll pass.” But where is the testing of their devotional lives? How many youth have we set before the Church and confirmed, all the while knowing that in their personal lives no evidence of faith is visible? “Faith without works is dead,” as James reminds us. And yet, for fear of being misunderstood as preaching works-righteousness, we do not stress the necessity of the evidence of faith in the lives of believers.

Forgive me if I sound blunt or go to far in my rhetoric. As I have said, the issue is close to my heart, as a young person myself, and it grieves my very soul to see such things in the Church.

My practical advice is as follows. Please note that it is by no means intended to be considered a “complete” response.

  1. Confirmation (and pre-Confirmation) should be expanded to include a continual focus on devotional maturing throughout the classes. Teachers and pastors should not be content to merely have students give the right answers; there should be evidence of spiritual growth in the lives of the confirmands.
  2. Confirmation should be delayed until youth are older. I know many would suggest that we have to “confirm them while they’re young and while their parents can still make them come to church” (I’ve had pastors tell me as much), but I believe this to be an error, however well-meant. Confirming young people merely because they’re still young enough to be forced to attend classes at the behest of their parents makes a mockery of the rite of Confirmation. After all, they stand before the congregation and make a profession of faith. If it is made merely to placate parents, then the pastor and congregation are, to put it frankly, guilty of bearing false witness before God. I suggest, therefore, that confirmation be delayed until about Grade 10 or 11. Youth at that age who desire to put in the work required for confirmation are far less likely to be doing it merely because their parents want them to.
  3. Finally, new emphasis should be placed on getting adults to attend Bible Studies and other small-groups. As I have said, the setting of teens’ religious foundations are intrinsically connected with the faith-lives of their parents and elders (see the article “The Truth about Men and the Church”). Older congregants are just as in need of devotional training as are the young.

How then should all this be implemented? To be honest, I really don’t know. And to be honest, I’m sure you’ll all agree that I’ve already ranted enough for today.

What do you think? How should we be approaching the issue of teen-dropout (or, for that matter, spiritual stuntedness in the Church at large)? Leave your comments.

As of late, my mind is an awful lot like a bowl of pudding. Seriously. As the end of this semester bears down upon me, I realize how much there is to do and how little time I have left in which to complete it all. A fifteen page paper on John Donne, a 20 minute presentation on 20th Century uses of Donne, a fifteen page paper on Henry James, and a ten page report for my “Language Awareness” class (that one I’m far less concerned about). And did I mention that tomorrow I’ve a 20 minute presentation to give on the morphology of Classical Sumerian, as well as a midterm to write? Pudding – there’s no other word to describe the state of my mind these days.

So don’t be expecting any truly insightful post for a bit (assuming that you’ve found any of the previous at least slightly intelligent in nature). I’ve no time to record such thoughts. Instead, as I’ve been reading the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, I thought I’d share a favourite of mine – albeit with no exegesis or interpretation. I find the poems richly rewarding, both as literary pieces and as devotional material. As to why I have chosen this particular one, I suppose it reminds me to keep my priorities straight. After all, if Christ were to return this very night, what good would my worrying about future papers be? It’s a reminder to make time for God – no matter how busy I am.

So here it is (according to the Westmoreland MS). Oh, and ignore the “…..” It’s just there to provide the proper indentation.

Holy Sonnet 15

What yf this present were the worlds last night?
…..Looke in my Hart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell
…..The picture of Christ crucifyde and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright?
Teares in his eyes quench the amazing Light,
…..Blood fills his frowns which from his pierc’d head fell.
…..And can that toung adiudge thee vnto hell
Which prayed forgiuenes for his foes ranck spight?
No, No; but as in myne idolatree
…..I sayd to all my prophane Mistressis
…..Bewty of pity, foulness only is
A Signe of rigor; So I say to thee
…..To wicked Sprights are horrid Shapes assignd,
…..This bewteous forme assures a piteous mind.

Yesterday evening I began reading a book entitled Beyond the Quiet Time: Practical Evangelical Spirituality. For those who know me, it should come as no surprise that on the subject of faith, I tend to prefer matters of an intellectual nature – sometimes, unfortunately, to the degradation of my personal devotional life. In my mind, I know that devotion is a necessary part of faith; but my heart is too often hard when it comes to expressing that devotion itself. I so despise that practice common among too many modern Evangelicals – that is, “zeal without knowledge” (Prov. 19:2) – that I have taken great pains to prevent this error in my own life. But in my good intentions, I have found myself devaluing devotional practices and pushing them to the side.

While I recognize the shortcomings of my own position, I find that I am not impressed by the frequently shallow “devotional” modes of life advocated by large portions of the Church. And so I have sought in my own life to find a balance between mind and heart faith, often unsuccessfully. Enter the book I have above mentioned. In this work, the theologian Alister McGrath attempts to reintroduce a joint heart/head approach to devotion. But rather than explaining what he says, I find it simpler (and more accurate) to let him speak for himself:

“We can read the Bible as a guidebook to Jesus Christ, appreciating the way in which the many strands of the Old Testament find their fulfilment in him. Yet there is another way of reading the Bible, which supplements this. It is to read Scripture in order to deepen our relationship with Jesus Christ; and that means learning more about him (the objective side of things), and deepening our commitment and love for him (the subjective side of things). These two both need to be there. The head and the heart are both caught up in Christian faith” (17).

And again:

“Faith is related to both our minds and our experience; it concerns both Word and Spirit. Christians do not just believe; they believe certain things. Yet Christian faith is about far more than understanding ideas: it is about the transformation of our experience and the renewal of our lives. A fully developed Christian spirituality will thus deal with both these aspects” (21).

Building on this premise, McGrath rightly criticizes Evangelicalism for failing to provide the tools necessary for Christians to engage with Scripture in this deeply important way. The book in question seeks to reverse this problem by providing a structured format for devotion, recognizing the importance of both intellectual aspects [as we seek to gain maturity as we use “the mind to uncover the way in which Christian doctrines relate to and reinforce one another” (21)] while pursuing experiential aspects [as we seek to use “the imagination as to identify and appreciate the emotional aspects of the gospel, and their implications for Christian living” (22)]. The Scripture studies in the book provide (to name but a few of the elements therein) moments where the reader is invited to visualize themselves in various situations, moments for reflection upon the commentary of great Christian writers, and moments to express and exercise their responses to the devotions.

This book is an excellent devotional tool, and I commend it to any who may be seeking to reinvigorate their quiet times with God. The introductory essay is itself an excellent resource, to say nothing of the studies themselves.

______________________________

For more information on Alister McGrath, check out his official website here or read the Wikipedia entry. Alister McGrath, formerly Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, is currently Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education, and Head of Theology, Religion and Culture at King’s College London. He is the author of numerous books (both popular and academic) including The Dawkins Delusion, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, and A Passion for Truth.