How could we have let this happen? Is it really that bad? What can I do to begin to turn things around? These are all questions I asked myself as I listened to a sermon by Voddie Baucham yesterday. The sermon was titled, "The Centrality of the Home in the Evangelization and Discipleship of the Next Generation." He preached from Ephesians 6:1-4. Just a few facts: 1) The church is losing 75-88% of teenagers by the end of their freshman year of college. 2) In the last 30 years: there have been more youth ministry degrees issued than in all of history prior; there are more professional youth ministers than ever; a multitude of parachurch ministries have been created solely to reach teenagers. Yet, we are baptizing less teenagers than ever in history and we are losing more teenagers than ever in history. There is only one conclusion at which we can honestly arrive. Our method of evangelizing and discipling children and youth is not working.
As I listened to Dr. Baucham expound the Scripture I could not help but wonder how we could have missed what seems so obvious in God's Word. The responsibility of evangelizing and discipling children belongs to the parents, particularly the fathers. So the question we have to ask is, Why have we created ministries to try and do it for them? When what we should be doing is equipping and asisting them to do it themselves. I know this presents lots of questions. And I'll be honest enogh to say I don't have all the answers yet. But this much I do know, we are losing the culture war and if parents don't start raising up godly, Christian children in the home, Christianity in America is going to continue to disappear one generation at a time.
