Vital information for pastors, leaders, and parents!
There’s been a lot written and polls conducted about why young people are leaving the church in droves. But we felt it important for you to see and hear their reasons firsthand. Most of the time, when people see these percentages in print, they think, “Surely, these don’t apply to my congregation or my children!" However, as CMI can vouch from doing over 1200 presentations per year in churches around the world, this is a phenomenon that is occurring in most of our churches. So, what can we do about it?
From their own mouths
Watching Fallout! is a great place to start. In this short but powerful presentation, CMI conducted interviews with students on university campuses. What you see are the actual results—a representative sampling of their responses. There was no selective editing. And the pattern we found demonstrates the importance of training young people with a defense of biblical creation.
The pattern was no coincidence
Our interviews show unequivocally that the majority of young people who were not exposed to creation teaching in their youth now embrace evolution and no longer attend church. Yet, every student we spoke to who was equipped with answers as a young person still retains their Christian convictions, in spite of the evolutionary teaching they received in higher education. Better still, every single student we spoke to who affirmed biblical creation still attends church regularly.
Fallout! is also a great evangelistic tool as it shows there are answers to students’ questions.
Get 5 or more DVDs for $1 each!
Give them away to your pastors, leaders, or those who think creation is a side issue!
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Treating the problem, not the symptoms
Many have responded to the youth exodus by trying to attract students with entertainment, games, and music. But these ‘solutions’ misdiagnose the problem. While such programs many initially attract, they don’t retain people for the long term. As our 30-minute DVD, Fallout!, shows, it is the intellectual challenges that are not being properly addressed. So, if we want to reach our young people, we need to answer their questions—the very questions they will get during higher education. This will help them to see that the Bible’s history is true, beginning in Genesis, which is the foundational book for the Christian faith itself.
CMI’s ministry directly addresses these questions
CMI can help to equip your church, and help prevent the loss of youth. Students need to learn the answers to the objections the world will bring to their doorstep, but they need the support of the whole church. And, we know from experience that inviting a creation speaker to your church to create awareness is the best way to inform the whole congregation and motivate them to address this problem. Have you ever considered bringing a CMI speaker to your church? Let us help you to transform your youth, and indeed your whole church, and give them a more confident Christianity.
Request a speaker today!It's as easy as 1, 2, 3. And we don’t even charge a set speaking fee.
Mary H. wrote:
“My package (with 100 Fallout! DVDs in it) arrived on Friday! I picked it up at the post office (I had called and asked them to hold it) on my way to the county fair. I wrote the website of our local creation science group on the envelope and handed out about 40 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They were well received.
“Several people agreed that kids leaving the church is a problem. One woman sadly mentioned that she was trying to get her adult son to come back to church. I explained the role evolution and creation teaching played and gave her a copy of the DVD.”
Readers’ comments
One of the areas that is a struggle for ministries like ours is to get pastors to see this as an important issue to address. That's why it is deliberately short, as they often have little time to watch or read the plethora of things handed to them by eager congregants. We don't need to produce the stats anyway. There have been lots of books and surveys on this subject to support what we have 'sound-byted' in video form (Barna Research, for example, and lots of articles on this site that refer to those surveys). But despite there being a preponderance of written material on the subject, backed up by stats and surveys, the message does not seem to be getting through. The purpose of a short DVD was to create awareness in a watchable form and to show that it is real people--somebody's children--that these stats apply to. That's why this DVD is powerful. I would suggest that if someone comes to you after you've handed them the DVD and says that it is selective, you could refer them to lots of books and surveys on the subject, and encourage them to do their own research, rather than basing a comment on ignorance.
FWIW we did these surveys over a 18 month period. Initially, a lot of our questions, and the answers, were clumsily worded and not usable due to length, although they clearly supported the end results. It was only after many attempts, when we finally asked yes or no questions that we got short responses that were suitable for a punchy media format. So, again, if we had used those long-winded responses it would not have really made suitable and watchable media material. This is always the challenge one faces when using this format.
All the best to you as you share them..and thanks!
So while a good sound understanding of Biblical truth is vital, and creation being ONE OF those truths, we must be cognizant of the fact that even Satan knows these truths, and is lost. What Satan lacks, and what so many young people today lack, is a vital personal connection or relationship with the Creator of creation. The act of creation is one thing, knowing the actual Creator personally and understanding Who He is and Who His Father is, is far more important than anything else in establishing anyone in the faith.
"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent". John 17:3
As a science teacher at a Christian high school, I understand how important the origins issue is to forming a Biblical worldview. But I would be very hesitant to cast it as the primary reason young people leave the faith, when it is actually a (closely correlated) symptom of the root issue: secular humanist philosophy.
The fact is that our secular humanist society has abandoned God and His Word on *every* front, not just on the question of origins: every TV show, hit song, movie, journalist, teacher/professor, etc... embraces humanist values, regardless of the topic. Humanism's first tenet is that there is no God, so it is no surprise that teaching about creation is rejected, as evolution is the only game in town.
My primary vocation as a science teacher at a Christian school is not to educate my students about 6-day creation. It is to expose humanism for the life-destroying fraud that it is, and to present its alternative - a counter-cultural obedience to God - as the only source of abundant life. This includes obedience to His Word, so proper teaching about creation falls under this rubric.
But to name the creation/evolution controversy as the source of this problem is unhelpful, as the root cause (secular humanism as the dominant philosophy in our culture today) is not addressed. There are other Christian ministries working very hard to educate young people and families about this, and I would love to see a partnership between them and CMI.
Thanks,
Dan K.
Ottawa
[I have a book coming out soon entitled 'Were the Whole Realm of Nature Mine - A Vet's Devotional Memoirs'. My testimony affirms the above, and I believe will be a comfort many - children and parents alike].
But what about the other (rarer) incidents where trained youth 'fall away' without those extra factors? I know of 2 instances. One involves Davis Young (who used to teach geology at Wheaton), the son of young-earth creationist theologian E.J. Young. The other is a relative of mine. Both relate a shock (of disillusionment, and of apparent betrayal of trust [supposedly done by the bible]) when biblical teaching is rejected in an embarrassing way in a science / engineering college setting.That vulnerability to embarrassment and felt-disillusionment can only occur if the earlier creationist 'convictions' were only skin-deep. Such people want to be 'good' children, compliant with creationist parents and pastors in earlier years. But then the shock of rejection in the wider world. And not being ready psychologically for it. Application: youth must practice ROLE-PLAY of that rejection, and of our push-back against it.
Blanket statements like this can be very hurtful to families who have had a child walk away from their faith in God. I am a strong advocate for Creation Ministries and the great teaching you provide to equip people to defend a Biblical account of origins. My children were steeped in your resources during their childhood and teen years. Three are still walking faithfully and strongly in their convictions of the reliability of the Bible and the correlation between Genesis and the Gospel of Jesus. However, one has turned his back on Jesus despite being well equipped with answers to support Biblical Christianity. Whilst having answers and a solid foundation is important, sin and a desire to live independent of God will still cause some to fall away, despite our prayers, despite our teaching. The problem of falling away is more complex than this one issue.
We are in an uphill battle but remember God gave Israel many a victory in uphill battles when they remained vigilant and true.
Give us the tools and we will fight the good fight. Remember God said "train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Pro 22:6). That's the key. We are not training the youth properly and when they are old they are departing from us.
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