15 Jan 2007
A Church’s Challenge: Holding On to Its Young

It's rare to read a piece in the MSM that so perfectly captures the contradictions of Christianity:

They can have cellphones and video games, but are told not to watch television. They can date, but preferably only other Pentecostals and then sometimes only with a chaperon. Dancing is taboo, but they can gyrate in religious ecstasy. Horror movies are bad, yet preachers regale them with gruesome visions of the apocalypse.

And the church that is the focus of this piece - how does it attract it's teenagers?

He [Pastor Danilo Florian] gave them instruments. He paid for music lessons. And he lavished gifts that few of them had ever known, growing up in fractured families and on dangerous streets: Attention. Praise. Expectations.

That's pretty much a recipe for attracting teens to anything - but I daresay it smacks of bribery, and sooner or later the kids will figure it out. And leave. And the church will wonder why.

Here's a hint, gleaned from my experience with my kids - you can lure a kid to almost anything with enough glitz and flash, but if you really want to engage them as they grow there'd better be some meat on them bones. If the theology made a bit more sense, if the rules were comprehensible, if there wasn't such an atmosphere of "us versus them" maybe they'd stay. But the church can't budge on those points, because, well, the "Good Book" pretty much lays it down in black and white.

But maybe there's an opportunity here for another religious movement...

Pentecostalism is winning converts across the world, but young people are falling away from the faith.

(link) [New York Times]

23:08 /Asatru | 4 comments | permanent link