CMI is a youth-oriented ministry!

 

by Paul Price

When you look at creation.com at the vast array of articles and resources, many written at a highly technical level, it can be easy to assume that CMI is primarily a ministry for scientists, or for high level academics. While we certainly do want to provide the Internet’s greatest compendium of creation apologetics literature, we don’t do it for the sake of knowledge alone, or because we exclusively aim to reach a technical audience. We do it because every day, Christian children are being swayed away from the churches they attend as a result of the secular indoctrination of our culture. Our goal of linking and feeding is an aim to reach every family member, both young and old, with the all-important message that the gospel is rooted in Genesis. One recent testimony we have received from Meagan in the US serves to highlight this very effectively:

“I am a high school senior graduating with the class of 2020. I have been reading Creation Ministry publications for years, and I wanted to let you know how much your writings have impacted my life and my faith.

I grew up in the church, but for years, I was unable to reconcile what I was taught in school with what I read in the Bible. I remember being shocked when my father told me at eight years old that teachers would tell me that people came from monkeys, but I blindly accepted that the world was billions of years old. It wasn’t until I was about twelve when I heard a speaker at my church give a lecture on creation science that I began to question what I was learning in school. Most of what the speaker was saying went over my head at the time, but he gave a simple piece of information that immediately caught my attention: Dead fish float [e.g. see Exploding Whales]. Of course, I remembered this little detail after witnessing the passing of the family goldfish, but it had never occurred to me that this was the opposite of what was taught in my science textbook regarding the formation of fossils. Afterwards, my grandfather got me a subscription to Creation magazine and a few books published by Creation Ministries. Today, Jonathan Sarfati’s By Design remains one of my favorite books explaining the many shortcomings of an evolutionary belief system and has given me plenty of avenues to discuss creationism with my peers. The Creation magazine also sparked an interest in the field of biomimicry which would later inspire my research topic for an independent study class that I took my junior year of high school. I performed a comparative analysis of wind turbine models that I built using shapes and configurations taken from marine life. My twenty-page final thesis was submitted to the College Board where it received a perfect score. I owe a great deal of this research experience to Creation Ministries.

 

I am now preparing to leave for college where I will study biomedical engineering on a full tuition scholarship … After interviewing with [some of the professors] I am convinced that my research into biomimicry played a significant role in my being awarded this scholarship. While I am extremely grateful to Creation Ministries for making this possible, I am forever thankful for your organization showing me that Christians are not irrationally hostile to the basic principles of science and reasoning as society would lead us to believe. My faith in God has been strengthened, and I know that I have a firm foundation to defend my beliefs in college. Thank you for your strong proclamation of the Gospel in an increasingly secular society, and it is my prayer that many more teens will be impacted by your message.”

CMI serves local churches just like Meagan’s at the main worship time, not just in youth groups or Sunday school classes—specifically because we feel it is so important for the whole family to be equipped with this faith-building message. If we reach the youth but not their parents, the whole family will not be on the same page. I recently co-authored CMI’s latest booklet, the Creation Survival Guide, to advance the goal of protecting the Christian youth from secular academic indoctrination. The booklet gives a series of practical tips (dos and don’ts) to help guide students through the ideological minefield they will experience going through public school, secular (or sometimes even Christian) universities. Danie, another person helped by CMI’s ministry to the youth, wrote in:

“I love this ministry - it genuinely is so underrated and not enough Christians (let alone pre-believers) know about it. God led me to CMI through my mum during an angsty time in my high school life, where I was seriously drifting from my faith due to personal strife. Refuting Compromise by Dr Jonathan Sarfati is the name of the first book I bought from a CMI church stall, and it has really set the tone for my personal growth. I’m so glad that at a time when I believed Christianity should conform to ‘science’, that I was proven so wrong.

It has helped me better love God with all my mind these last few years at [university], enabling me with reasonable answers to common skepticism while also showing me how they should be graciously voiced. While I did not complete a science-based background, the message of Creation and Salvation has shaped the way I see God’s sovereignty in my majors in [economics] and political science: disciplines which are often shaped by humanistic or ‘rational’ leanings. Universities always speak about ‘critical thinking’, and this ministry has really helped apply that to my faith - even if it’s in the way professors don’t imagine! Praise the Lord for you guys; will keep you in my prayers as you keep it up for Him!”

Testimonies like these are a perfect example of what we aim to do, and why CMI’s efforts are so important for the youth of the church today. A few years ago, Gary Bates took to the streets of local college campuses to interview students directly. CMI’s mini-documentary FALLOUT!, documents the results. The majority, who had not been exposed to creation apologetics in church, said they now embrace evolution and no longer attend church. We as Christians must band together at this pivotal time, to make sure the message of the Gospel is not undermined for our own children growing up in our churches. As always, we thank you for your continued prayers and support!