Reaching the Next Generation - Webinar with Clare Williams

well good evening everybody thank you so much for joining us on this solas webinar this evening we've got a very important subject to talk about tonight and that is passing on our faith to the next generation uh something which some people say is currently a crisis in the church in the uk it was youthscape's chris curtis who recently wrote these words he said the church is emptying of young people and getting grayer by the day you can brush away that fact and ignore it or let the sting of the statistics propel you into action which is it to be well is he right and if he is right what's going on and is there anything that we can do because in the world today all over the world huge numbers of people young and old are becoming christians we live in an era of church growth in china and iran and sub-saharan africa and south america where millions of people think that faith in jesus christ is worth even suffering or even dying for and personally we find forgiveness and life and meaning love hope and salvation joy and purpose in christ but it does seem that 21st century young people in the uk today are harder to persuade now joining me to discuss this most important significant topic tonight is claire williams and the reason we invited claire particularly is because she's both an academic an analyst and a practitioner she's involved in thinking and studying and writing about these things at a very deep level but is also engaged in frontline youth work so she knows both sides of those things let me tell you a little about claire before i invite her on she did her first degree in english at oxford followed by studying theology at wycliffe iv and then studying apologetics then she's been doing a master's degree in culture diaspora and ethnicity at birkbeck university of london which is now upgrading to phd level as well but if as if that wasn't enough she also runs a youth ministry called get real which is supporting churches and christian organizations in evangelistic events student events parish missions schools all sorts of things equipping and training churches and para church organizations in everyday apologetics with a special focus upon the black majority churches in the uk addressing the gap there is in classical apologetics where issues of race and justice where there are problems for showing the gospel are not being addressed and she's working right in the middle of that most important area she's also producing resources to support all of that work and working as i said in person online in churches schools universities and on the radio too welcome clary are you there are you with us hello hi hello how are you this evening i'm good i'm good i'm i'm i'm prepared now i was a bit nervous before but i'm i'm okay now thank you so much for joining us so has today been a youth work day or an academia day for you oh today has been um a work work day because i do have a part-time job as well so i've been doing a bit of that and obviously preparing for this as well and um yes a bit of both really yeah very good well claire i'm going to hand over to you to kind of open up this whole subject for us in just a moment and kind of give you the floor for a few moments to kind of explore some of the things that you've been thinking about in this whole area but before i do that can i just invite people at home to join in we as ever have the pigeonhole q a board open so that as the evening develops you can fire questions in and i will read your questions out to clear in the second half of our hour together and you can kind of shape where the discussion goes now to access the q a panel if you go to pigeonhole.at on your web browser pigeonhole.at should be coming up at the bottom of your screen and then type in the code that's there it's the last 14 july and that'll open up the q a panel for this session now i see there are quite a few questions that some young people as well have posted in there already if you see a really good question vote for it it will come to the top of the pile and much more likely to get asked we never get through all the questions but we'll start with the most popular ones now david our producer will put that link up a couple more times during the evening so if you didn't get it then don't worry it will come up again and then you can join in the discussion but really it's over to you now claire could you sort of open up this discussion for us about how the church in the uk is doing and passing our faith on to the next generation what the situation is and how perhaps we need to be responding thanks claire great thank you so much gavin thank you um so i just want to begin by giving a little shout out really to um all of the youth workers who have tuned in church leaders and to all of the teens and young people who tuned in as well to all the youth workers i realize youth work is is is really enjoyable it's very rewarding but it can also be quite stressful and you when you have a heart and a passion for young people and you start to see some of the statistics in real life in your churches it can be quite discouraging so i want to say i'm praying for you i'm with you um working with young people as well and um you know what we discussed and i really hope is encouraging to you and all the young people who've tuned in thank you for your questions looking forward to getting to them and um we are for you and we want to see you and grow in your faith with god um so just before we begin uh this the powerpoint i'm going to share with you i was just reflecting this morning on second kings chapter 12 and came across this young king called king johash if i'm saying his name correctly um and just was quite surprised if do you have a read of it in your own time second kings chapter 12 king johash if i'm saying that right and just looking at how he was able to innovate and put the house of god in order to a certain degree as a young man um because he was under the mentoring of good leadership and good coaching and i just thought that was really quite um striking for us to think about if you're a youth leader your role in how you can shape um young people who can make such a difference and bring about um lots of change and and good through the christian faith so do have a read of that scripture he does go a little bit um awry later on but there's something about the the um the link between the young man and the mentoring that went on there which i think is really quite powerful so do have a read of that so we're going to go into this powerpoint um i think someone is going to be operating that for us fantastic great so um reaching the next generation and i love actually the subtitle of this event because it says engaging young people with the gospel because it's suggesting that the gospel is engaging and that we can actually um show our young people that christianity is worth their time relationship with god is is is all that they they need so we're going to go to the first slide okay and just to add to some of the statistics that um gavin shared with us at the start um script union uk i'm sure many of you come across this before the 95 campaign a staggering 95 of under 18s don't go to church but many of them are open to faith together we can reach the 95 and so do check out um scripture union and all their resources that are there but i think um this is a real reality check for us um the fact that loads of our young people do not go to church but what scripture union also says that they they are open to the idea of jesus and there is um room to make that um to discuss jesus the person of jesus and to discuss faith with them so they might not actively be in church all the time but there is room for those discussions as well and there's some research from the barna group there from 2018 and they did a survey and the main findings from the study is that the problem of evil um is a major barrier to faith for non-christian teens so we're thinking about questions of suffering very pertinent as we come out of a pandemic other reasons non-believers provide us common barriers to faith include christians are hypocrites now this idea of hypocrisy um kind of linked to the whole idea of cancer culture is really really important so we're going to come back to that so here's just a few statistics there and things for us to think about in the backdrop of what where what we can do to reach the next generation so we're going to go to the next slide um [Music] shameless plug okay so what i'm going to share with you today is actually um part of a four-part series uh video series that i've done on get real uh real questions.uk so you can look at that that will be fleshed out a little bit more for you so do check that out and we're going to go through these four things that i think we can focus upon looking at the problems and then from those problems how can we work through them so next slide please so the problem of disillusionment now um disillusionment is just i think on the rise and i think with social media we're getting more and more young people sharing their stories of being disillusioned with the church and and and faith altogether and for some reason this comes about is to do with moral failures of um from of a prominent christian leader and i'm sure we can all think of a few um just off the top of our head i won't name any but um this is a massive thing particularly if such a young person has come to faith through the teaching or the ministry of of um this christian leader um what do we do about those things and are we just gonna run to scripture to to um justify or or or and make reasonable their actions what do we do with that and also the fact that we're emerging from a pandemic and i have spoken to um youth leaders um across different churches and one thing that's really come out is um the young people have almost young people who were really loud and um extrovert and really talkative i've just there's been a bit of a quelling of of their energy and excitement it's come about um because of lockdown having to look through screens all the time and what do we do when young people are disillusioned by even the notion of going to church in a corporate setting when they're emerging from a pandemic that's really quite um something that we need to consider and i've noticed in in the young people that i work with there is this this this sort of quietness that wasn't there before so we need to acknowledge the effects of the coronavirus and the lockdown situation we're gonna go back to the slides and then disappoint with god and maybe collectively moral failure the pandemic contributes to this idea of overall disappointment with god um and sometimes this is compounded by the fact that we may give our young people um quite a thin theology if our theology is very much a motivational speech kind of gospel self-help um you know pray for this and god will do that that is not going to take someone through a pandemic it's not going to give them robust um theology to deal with these tough questions that might emerge and tough situations and so sometimes young people can become very disappointed with god so this sense of overall disillusionment so then what can we do about that well as you would have seen on the slide there we can first of all make open and honest spaces or i didn't want to really use the phrase safe spaces something to become so politicized now but we can have open and honest discussion about the moral failings of prominent christian leaders about the effects of the pandemic making the space for our young people to talk about these things we can also um ask them what their questions are not just assuming that we know so just because young people may be quiet there's a lot going on underneath and we can get them to to tell us what their questions are not even just through um you know just open discussion but through uh post-it notes through pigeonhole slido um and other means just to see what the situation is what what are we actually dealing with here so disillusionment is a huge problem that prevents us from reaching our young people with the gospel but actually having open and honest discussions about what it is that's bothering them and how no matter how confronting that might be for me to hear as a youth leader or you as a youth leader a church leader um making that space because if we believe that the gospel is true if we believe that our needs can be made in the person of jesus then whatever we're hearing um we should be able to direct our young people to the truth of who jesus is so we're gonna go to the next slide so that is disillusionment this is a big word deconstruction that's definitely um everywhere on social media there was a great video um discussion with justin briley and um john steingard i think it was back in 2019 but there's been more since then on the process of deconstruction where a young person will begin to unravel their faith and this begins with questions and objections and i think this is where apologetics really helps because if young a young person has a question or objection and our response is a well-intentioned have more faith read your bible god moves in mysterious ways that is potentially more harmful than um actually trying to deal with the question so being open to whatever question an objection a young person has and then deconstruction leads to often doubt and and journeys of a person losing their faith there are stories all if you just put into instagram search and instagram hashtag deconstruction you will find account after account of of largely young people uh gen z and millennials who are dealing with this journey of doubt and deconstruction and landing in a place which is often not what we might say would be you know um your orthodox kind of christianity and so being aware that this process is happening i think deconstruction is quite an american term um but i do think doubts and and journeying through faith or having a question in faith is very um is a little bit bigger over here that's how a young person in the uk might term those things and then just the notion of faith becoming a lot more complex you know as i said the pandemic has thrown up loads of questions for young people um or just you know dealing with um family grieving those kind of things your exams success being compromised because of lockdown all of these things begin to make faith become more complicated and actually what we can do is as i've said that is table the questions because if you do not table the questions that young people have they will go to the profits that are tick tock youtube instagram snapchat google they'll just they'll go somewhere else for for answers because they're not able to come to you and and i think you know some a lot of the things out there on youtube and i'm talking on youtube right now um is actually quite um unhealthy okay and may not encourage and strengthen our young people if we were having these discussions ourselves and the next thing that we can do is encourage our people to sit with their objections and work through them sometimes we present a very polished version of our faith that to be a true christian is not to have doubts or not to have questions when actually when we look at the disciples jesus disciples and the way that he discipled them they they had questions and jesus is very much open to questions when we look in um matthew 22 and the lawyer asks a question you know this lawyer he's clearly um a teacher of the law he's clearly smart he's inquisitive he's curious he asked jesus a question and jesus didn't shut down the question jesus um gave an answer and allowed him to engage more and so this idea of welcoming questions because our faith entails intellectual as well as emotional or experiential ascent as well showing our young people that actually we can engage our minds as well next slide please aha so i put these um three figures on the screen for you and um uh i just wanted to put them there because i'm sure you know who they are greta tamberg she's 18 years old so she's gen z you've got marcus rashford i think he's gen z as well and also stormzy now whatever you think of the causes that they represent i want you to think about the causes that they represent no matter your sort of maybe political or theological assessment of what these young people promote the fact is they are promoting something and that's really really important for this next point that i'm going to be sharing with you so we know that greta tamberg is all about environmental justice um she you know through her coordination leadership um you know schools across europe at one point in time were were paralyzed because she led them to she led young people to stand up for environmental justice marcus rashford whatever you think of um his performance during the euros um he pioneered the um in child food poverty campaign which changed the mind of a government as i said whatever you think of his politics here whatever your politics may be he is a pioneer and he changed the mind of the government that is striking then you have stormzy stormzy is a millennial i believe just fits into the millennial category and he has created a scholarship for underrepresented students to go to cambridge university he's using his platform he's using his wealth to create opportunities for others and these three young people they are looking for change looking for moral progress they are all about activism and as i said no matter what you think of the politics okay they are trying to do something to change our societies for the better so what then do we as christian leaders do with that information well let's have a look at the next slide please this is about disengagement is the church engaged with questions of culture as i've just shown you some there so to do um food poverty um environmental justice education for um stormzy uh i think um john boyega he's a millennial as well he was um out on the front lines talking about racial justice last year young these young people they are engaged with the questions of culture they want to see moral progress and they are sharp at calling out hypocrisy this is partly why we have cancer culture rather than sort of um demonizing cancer culture and and just um dismissing it council culture actually has some thing where we can begin to interrogate and and draw parallels to the gospel which um in that council culture recognizes the hypocritical behavior of people or recognizes harm that people can cause to others where council culture becomes um deficit isn't able to do the complete job is where the gospel comes in with redemption and grace and so yes god says to us that we are sinful okay that you need a savior the gospel message is quite offensive you can't save yourself okay and you have done wrong you have done harm you deserve to be punished for what you have done however i am i'm bringing grace to you says god and so actually jumping off from um cancer culture to bring about conversation about the gospel can actually be quite a powerful thing and so the our young people are activists they want to see the world become a better place how do we engage them through that if we go back to the slides please and as i said the activism is a is a great thing so please i'm i implore you do not let your political leaning um prevent you from being able to engage with the questions that young people have because if we don't engage with those questions they will turn to other movements they will turn to other things that seem to be fulfilling that desire um to see the world become a better place we can engage them with the gospel this is not about um turning away from from the gospel but actually engaging our young people with them we don't want them to have an anti-church posture and a huge apologetic argument the moral argument and looking at um the idea of where does our sense of justice even come from you know rather than just looking at the activism from the surface level interrogate why do you care about your fellow man why do you care about the environment talk about stewardship and adoption of creation we can start we can start to raise the pitch and challenge of our sermons of our bible studies by asking these harder questions and i just got a quote here from the commission on religious education from 2018 and it says and this is coming to our education system okay and there's some some great chaplains doing fantastic work on this pupils must be taught how world views offer responses to fundamental questions of meaning and purpose raised by human experience and the different roles that world views play in providing people with ways of making sense of their lives and i just love this phrase here that you know this commission has recognized that world views whether that is a religious worldview christian muslim hindu okay or whether it's um a non-religious worldview like secular humanism atheism um agnosticism whatever the worldview they all must respond to fundamental questions of meaning and purpose and that is a massive win for the christian because what it's doing is showing that everybody has a worldview there are no neutral positions and so it's not just upon me the theist to explain um the burden of proof is not just on me to answer tough questions everybody has a position and i think this is a really key moment for the church to as i said raise the pitch of our sermons begin to interrogate why and what other world views have to say about some of some of the most difficult questions we may hear and face from our young people because if young people are experts at calling out hypocrisy they can see a hypocrite from a mile away then we can also bring that challenge to them and say this is your philosophy of life this is your world view what is the foundation for that and does the world view you currently hold is it consistent with your heart and desire for justice and i think you we may well see um some some loopholes there some some some inconsistencies they may be able to be aware of that and then have some of these deeper discussions next slide please we're nearly done um the next one is the next d i love alliteration it makes everything sound far more profound uh decolonization now maybe some of you hear this word and you bristle at it but it's very important to me in the work that i'm doing particularly with apologetics in the black majority church so just to explain what this kind of means it's about thinking uh in different ways that kind of seem to prioritize white western epistemology so ways of thinking and knowledge that might sound a bit scary to you or a bit suspect but let me give you let me paint the picture for you so we know that there has been a massive shift in our society this massive polarization due to present day racial injustice everything that happened last year i i'm still quite traumatized by it myself to be honest still processing it with the lord praying through the psalms okay so present-day racial injustice has brought up huge questions about ethnicity race equality again a moral progress questions that are on the minds of young people everywhere and then it forces us to look back at historical racism eg slavery and colonialism and then what's happening okay now i want to make this very clear particularly if you don't go to a multi-ethnic or it's a black majority church or you're not in a a multi-cultural setting when we as churches wherever whatever church you go to even if there's a black majority church as well do not address the question of racial injustice what is happening i'm telling you this is happening in real time today young people are leaving particularly from black congregations are leaving christianity to go into black consciousness religions such as nation of islam hebrew israelites and kineticism so the idea of sort of egyptian mythology being the true religion of um young black people before it was stripped away from the hot by the horrors of slavery and colonialism this is happening okay now if we say that we care about the questions that young people have this also needs to be on the table as well okay so this is the kind of thing that's happening decolonizing one's faith and it doesn't have to be um this it doesn't have to be as maybe negative it might sound to your ears i can explain a little bit more later on but let's go back to the slides please what can we do about this we can add some diversity in our theological library for instance if we're preaching messages and we're quoting spurgeon and we're quoting uh bart or i don't know who we're quoting okay do you have any theologians of color any black theologians in there okay do you have anyone from a different experience that is offering robust gospel uh teaching that you can use there as well we can also ground our desire for racial justice or any type of justice in the imago dei this is just a beautiful unique message of the christian faith the imago day let's ground it in that let's have a conversation about this and why is that other world views possibly do not anchor our human value and dignity in the imago day and what the consequences are for that and then finally to understand the belief systems as i said i listed a couple of these black consciousness religions that are people young people are going to particularly young black people are going into before you dismiss it and say oh they're just going away actually take the time to understand what those belief systems are about and why what what is compelling about it so when you understand what those belief systems are about then you can engage in meaningful conversation and evangelism i have a friend of mine um she's now doctor elisa lewis and she's just on her phd on this very question why is it that we're having young black people moving into black conscious religions what is it about them why are they compelling so doing the necessary research if we care about um people who don't know the lord then we need to be engaging with all the questions however uncomfortable it may make us feel um and i think i think that's it i can't remember there's another slide sorry no okay so those are the four areas that we can be thinking about why young people might leave the church what is on the minds of young people in the culture and how we can start to engage with them i'd love to take some questions now with gavin thank you so much for that claire i knew you would uh stir things up and make us think which is why we invited you on so thank you so much for that you did cover a huge amount there it's probably worth mentioning that you know this will be on our youtube channel and if you want to recap some of those points youtube's great you can slide it back and you can watch from where you you know if you missed anything because there was just so much in that the the questions board has been moving while you've been speaking there's been votes there's been new questions which is great so you'll come to those in just a moment there's a last sort of opportunity now i think to post some more questions and if you'd like to do that we'll just get the q a board ready and i'll pitch some of those questions to claire in a second while we do that just a very quick word to say that tonight's webinar has been brought to you by solas and we're involved in evangelism evangelism training and making resources available to help with all that please come and visit us at the end of the webinar at solas hyphen cpc.org and there's short answers videos apologetics articles stories of people sharing their faith podcasts and all kinds of stuff on there you can find out how you can pray for our ministry and support us there's a pray and a donate button bottom right on our website please come and have a look and our guest tonight claire williams is from get real the ministry that she founded and they can be found at real questions dot co dot uk and there are loads of resources to explore on there if you press the media tab on that website you'll find the four videos that claire referred to in her talk and claire you have a new resource published just about an hour ago is that right yes i do tell us what's the brand new resources hot off the press today yes so basically i was a teacher for 10 years and i've always worked with youth in church and out of it and this resource is basically bringing together my experience of teaching and working with young people in churches to produce an apologetics resource that is fit together from start to finish i don't know if any of you have been looking for apologetics resources and you might have noticed that there's a video here there's a worksheet here there's a good quiz there and you've got to kind of cobble it together this will do it for you and so um in the following weeks there will be more topics going so the first one up there is called introduction to apologetics and there'll be more can we trust the bible science and faith those kind of things brilliant and where should people go to find that so just go to real questions at code at uk and on the home page there is a a find out more or sign up button to get to the first course and it's going to be free the first two are going to be free so per course there'll be two there'll be four sessions per course i'm going to give you the first two for free and the second one will be appearing in the next few days and then a discount price for the first course but do stay tuned i know what it's like to try and cobble resources together this will hopefully do it for you would love to hear some of your feedback as well wonderful thank you so much for that so please consider supporting the ministries that are doing the kind of work i've mentioned solas cpc.org sorry solas hyphen cpc.org and real questions dot co dot uk now our q a board is ready are you ready for some uh tricky questions let's see okay the one that's been voted to the top let's start here this one is anonymous and it says how do we engage woke topics in quotes which are trending yes but equally meaningful such as sexuality gender racism human rights in a way that is biblical compelling and relatable for young people sure thank you for that question uh just before i get into the kind of meat of my answer what i'll say is just to be a little bit careful with just kind of branding things as woke um because i have been schooled on this and the word woke if we look at some of i don't know the etymology of it the way it's used was actually part of black american culture to discuss um among sort of community groups to discuss being aware of life situations so it wasn't coming from this really politicized view that it now has okay that is a it has been imposed from the polarization of society as you see it now so just be aware of using that phrase as a blanket term to to discuss to to name the things that you've just suggested there and because it's coming from a culturally rich place as i said largely black american culture and i think we need to be aware of that so yes these topics racism racial injustice sexuality human rights all topics of the moment and i think we shouldn't be afraid of them i think that um i can't say where your your kind of your church tradition is coming from but if you're taking a more traditional church view on these kind of things it's about um engaging the questions as i try to demonstrate that young people have about these things in the robust teaching of the gospel you don't need to compromise what the gospel is saying because the gospel is the most fruitful response to these things and so let's take human rights for instance fantastic work by you know non-christian historian tom holland in his book dominion chapter five there gives us a massive um piece of evidence to to to guide our young people to the very foundations of what we now call human rights today the christian foundations so using sources like resources like tom holland's work there and to to have the conversation okay human rights is is is a good thing our society would say where what are the roots of it and if we cut off the root which is christianity in the west the emergence of christianity in the west what happens can we still survive how do we ground our sense of sense of justice so i think it's these hot topics that are very much seen and i think people have a well-intentioned desire for these things to to be addressed but actually the church we can take our young people deeper to say okay why does it matter where is it coming from who is it pointing to and that's going to take research that's going to take preparation that's going to take using some of the real questions resources that will be coming but actually moving from this very surface level um understanding maybe popular level but actually getting to the deeper questions the philosophical foundations of why these things actually matter okay thank you for that now the next question that's near the top was one that was emailed to me by a young person before we went on air so this is coming from a 16 year old girl who i know and she writes this the church is a too old and b too weird to offer me or my friends much oh and by the way when they try to be young and cool it's just really cringy yeah okay so she's nailed that what are we saying to that how do we respond to that yeah i mean i first will say thank you for your frank and candice question there and um yeah i think that we've all seen our fair share of cheese cheesy church um where adults try to to be cool um but i think that again it's that deep level okay so the young person said the church is a bit too old and weird to offer me and my friend something so from that question we can see that community friendship matters to this young person what community is the church offering um so for instance i'll just give an example the church i attend our young people are in the process of um planning their their their youth club and you should have seen them light up they are collaboratively working together leading this thing okay because community matters to them and so i would say to the young person tuning in um i think the church offers quite a unique community i know there's lots online about church hurt and things like that people leaving the church and those stories are relevant and they do matter we should listen to them but church offers a sense of community and then my question would be to you what engages you what matters to you i've already um gleaned that friendship and community matters to you what else do you care about and bring that to the church and say to the church you know what have you got to say and actually when i look at the gospel i can see that the church has a lot to say about a lot of these hot topics that young people are interested in that's great thank you for that okay another one this one there's another one that was it's been voted to the top but it was one that came in on email and this one comes from a young lad who's a student agent now so he's he's been through the youth program and this is what he says he says i'm young and i want a church that makes deep things interesting some want to entertain me others are traditional and boring and to be honest painful to sit through why do i have to choose between boring and pointless that is a good question i think yeah and i i have to say i i did have a time in my life growing up i'm 34 okay where i felt like i was using my brain as you saw from i liked to study i was using my brain in the workplace and then when i came to church i was having this emotional spiritual experience which was no bad thing but where was the the use of my in my intellect as well and then i'm growing into apologetics and loving what i'm learning um just the reality and to this questioner that um since mark chapter 12 jesus says that we're called to to love the lord of our heart soul strength and our mind you can engage your mind in your faith okay i would strongly suggest you get involved in apologetics you bring that to your youth leaders say we want to do something regarding apologetics here and also to the youth is listening encouraging our young people to to to be scientists to be um politicians to be um not just to be the next pastor of the church and pastors i love you i'm a preacher's kid i know what you go through and um i i i salute you but pushing our young people into areas where you which according to some of the the myths in our society there are no christian scientists well there are many actually but pushing our young people into those things so um i would suggest that you start to engage in apologetics young person who sent this and bring that to your youth group and and see if you can pioneer something in your church which will will stimulate your congregation to look at these harder questions and look at these more challenging topics as well a great danger i think sometimes of dumbing down i think sometimes my kids have come away from youth stuff you know i address this as a parent really you know of um just feeling that the kids sometimes not my church in particular um i i kind of been slightly patronizing not really addressing the the level at which they're thinking i think that's a problem is that something that's common yeah i do and that where i get my experience with that is from teaching and i remember in the videos you'll see i i explained how i used to teach my classes and then some of the kids would just be bored particularly um the yeah just particularly the older years would be a little bit bored and just the pitch was too low when there is great debt in the gospel jesus he's a smart guy you know and when you see how he deals with questions it's just amazing so there's lots of depth in our faith that we unfortunately aren't tapping into and i think that's says something about possibly an anti-intellectualism across christendom okay um when we've got a legacy and a heritage of early church fathers you know you know um profound thinkers who shaped our theology today um so yeah dumbing down and you know is not gonna cut it and just to say um i think william lane craig writes about this early on in his book reasonable faith and he just says look we can't continue the way we are okay our young people are fast they're quick they're bright and the gospel is also fast quick and bright and leading the way it is it is so unique and i think we need to be upping the pitch we need to be engaging them on a more um on a deeper level that's great so the next question then asks you to um maybe kind of give an example let me um i think the the comment is really about um how you've worked out some of these principles that you've been talking about in your talk in in real life let me read the question to you it says can you give an example of how you've engaged young people in your church with the christian faith yes yes it's really tough and i i by no means solved this this this issue but i'm trying different things and so a couple of things i've done is when we come together as a youth group particularly after covid given the young people surveys and asking them what questions or what topics they would like to cover um and then using the scriptures using the bible everything's grounded in the bible engaging those topics um for instance um and also staying relevant so in surveys asking them their questions but also staying relevant so for instance on sunday we did a little session on um what happens what do we do as christians when we see our politicians involved in scandal very topical right now and we we looked at a little video of a recent happening and then we looked at um you know paul's letter i believe to i think timothy about how a a leader should carry themselves in the church and so we were comparing the the the kind of failings that we've seen in the political setting and then what the standard is according to scripture of a church leader engaging having some you know references to some of these moral failings we've seen of christian leaders but actually jumping off from my current issue into scripture and asking my young people why is this important but then also challenging them that hypocrisy is not something that any of us in society take lightly anymore and so what are you gonna do you know um your human heart what are you gonna do about that how are you gonna stand before the lord so that's an example using a current um um topic as well and um again back to this idea of community building leadership positions for young people in the church um and allowing them to take ownership of what they're doing i'm not saying i'm not saying to you know let them take the pulpit and yeah i'm saying on certain projects give them some range give them a budget let them work something out because gen z are very collaborative um generation they kind of balk at this idea of authority this one super leader they want to work in collaboration so those are a couple of things that that's very very helpful thank you for that so next question then which actually picks up directly on something that you were talking about about a third of the way into your presentation and it says this this one's anonymous there's no name on this one it says how do we balance being gospel centered in our approach to young people's questions and creating a safe environment to ask those questions so i guess that's about who controls the discussion where it goes and how can you be gospel centered and allowing the kind of the question-led approach yeah absolutely so setting your ground rules um in the first instance for respectful discussion and and conversation and questions but i think that um in the bid to be cool and cringy sometimes churches can compromise the gospel okay you don't need to do that and the reason for this and this is what set me free in terms of um having conversations with people just in general about my faith is back to what i was saying about world view that um as a christian i believe certain things that is my world view i am not the only one with a worldview so the young person who may be um searching maybe not a committed christian in your church um and may critique or have some strong objections to what it is that you believe in that you teach you also are um you have is also part of your job or your remit to show them their world view and and and show our young people that yes this is the church and we believe these things as our worldview and these are the reasons why and i think another key thing is that i'm definitely going to be exploring is let's just say um your church group believes this here and other denominations or might believe that actually showing your young people what other positions there are and explaining why you land where you do because there's nothing worse than a young person growing up in church for instance and then going to theology college or going to some conference or whatever and then hearing the other side and it sounds great it sounds there's lots that we could possibly learn from it and then feeling why wasn't i told about this why was this hidden from me even though that wasn't maybe not the intention but being aware this is where our church stands we're happy to hear your questions but actually this is what other people believe and that's why they believe it but this is why we land here and so showing young people that yeah there are a spectrum of beliefs but these are the reasons that we wholeheartedly believe this position and yeah i think that's that could be powerful obviously take your time with that and and do you know some thorough research you mean we christians don't agree all the time thank you for your question it's kind of a bit off topic if you um want to ask questions about the reality and the nature of hell and judgment there is some stuff on the solas website so if you to go across to solas hyphen cpc.org and type hell or judgment into the search bar there's several videos and articles on there but it's kind of a little off topic of what we're talking about tonight really really important subject which we do address elsewhere which is why i'm going to go down to the next question which is this what can be said and done for the hypocrisy that young people growing up in church and also those looking into the church see today what can we do about you mention that as a real problem in people you know as part of the construction process the observing hypocrisy how do we process that yeah and so hypocrisy is something that i think has become a lot more transparent because of social media because of the just the speed at which news travels and that kind of thing and actually saying yes this has happened this person has done that and then taking seriously the moral outrage our young people and anyone should have a certain um hypocritical act or whatever taking seriously that mold outrage and then saying in what world view is that moral outrage um the kind of best grounded or which world view sorry in which does it make the most sense okay because often what we see and i'm sure everyone listening knows as well you've seen it when people critique the church or critique the bible the god of the bible the morality of god or whatever they're having to borrow christianity's ethics to do so and so yes take seriously the epoxy don't just paste over with well david i saw this going on a lot last year david was you know a man after god's own heart and he did this yeah we're not talking about david all right we're talking about x person or x situation yes we should be outraged but why and in what world view does that outrage uh seem to be best explained yep can i add that there's a new video on the solas website about exactly that question today one of andy bannister's short answers published this morning on processing the moral failures of christian leaders you'll see that over there on our website okay the next question this one comes from yaz who says do you consider that christians do not integrate their faith in culture because there's been a widespread belief that serving god only happens through direct ministry and serving in church oh wow wow so kind of like a um sacred secular divide there yeah absolutely yeah okay yeah possibly and this is something that i've um i think i've referred to before about encouraging our young people to go into different industries and and to to push against these myths that christians can't think or they're not capable of critical thinking and they're just you know in in church all the time opening the door you know working with charities and institutions to to um get our young people into places that they may never have considered before so um if a young person is growing up in church my only my only um life as a christian is to become the next pastor and youth leader worship leader then they're going to think well the world seems quite small well actually we see um i think i was going to say paulie was a tent maker and he was the apostle you know doing loads of things people can you know you can multitask here you can have it your faith and actually being a christian let's just say in the sciences can be a powerful uh um testimony to people who aren't christians um you don't necessarily have to go around you know taking bible tracks in your workplace but holding your position in a field such as the sciences where people think there are no christians can be actually quite a powerful thing so thank you for that question is a really good one okay that's great thank you for that now back to our student friend who posted a question in earlier on and his other question has been voted up the list and he's asking are there any examples from history that inspire you such as revivals when a current bad situation like today has been turned around or are there any lessons from the past that are pertinent we can bring to bear on youth work today oh wow wow wow okay oh yeah i think um i've been really challenged by reading um the slave narratives of people like alado aquiano mary prince and frederick douglass because these people were former slaves okay they became christians and they are so and i'm going to use andy bannister's favorite word here profound which has now become mine they were so profound love you andy in um their their ability to critique um the system of slavery and how it went against you know god's design and the imago dei and they they held onto their faith and i'm just totally inspired that they lived through those conditions they became influential emancipators and yet held this this um really strong faith in god so yeah those those three i would say reading those slave narratives have been really powerful and seeing this this really strong tradition of faith emerging from from really really early on and what is frederick douglass's autobiography it's the um what's it called is it a narrative of the life of it it's just exclusively breathtaking it is phenomenal phenomenal reading thank you for pointing us in that kind of direction okay next question how do we raise up new young evangelistic voices there don't seem to be many obvious pathways for mentoring and training how do we create some that's a brilliant question it is it really is um first of all i would say train and equip yourselves with apologetics i'm not sure you know how much we see that in the in the general church and i think it's really going to be a key to the future of our churches so training ourselves then training our young people and i know that i think amplified youth are doing a really great course i've spoken at a few of their events they're taking through young people on an evangelistic journey to see where their giftings lie they're going to hearing from different people different evangelists so amplify youth is a good program and you know you can replicate those kind of things in your churches as well um and yeah just allowing for creativity in terms of what we do as evangelism it does not just mean standing on a street corner handing out flyers it could be doing a barbecue and having a guerrilla christian event it could be having a family fun day and having a chance where families can have a conversation with the pastor or care team it could be re rethinking what evangelism looks like with your young people as well i mean tick tock videos i i probably will never go she has famous last words because i i don't know what to do but maybe some creative and i'll give you this i was speaking to um the young people that i work with and someone there just jumped at the channel i want to be the media but like they and i was like okay so allowing for their voices and obviously you mentor and you coach them into that like was referring to the case of um jehovah's in second kings chapter 12 but giving them that free reign in us in in smaller capacities so that we can see them emerge as evangelists it may not look like our form of evangelism you know it could be very different i've seen some profound stuff on tick tock that is quite evangelical in nature i mean justin brown is on tick-tock um so yeah it can work can work yeah i told my 16 year old daughter about putting some christian content on facebook and she she's very tick tock and she said facebook is for people who've given up on life you see i'm too old i love you i'm just too old for tick tock okay next question this is another one that came in on email from a young person this is for a 19 year old lad called louis who says where do we draw the line between making our outreach cool and accessible and doing full-on bible studies brackets i'm asking as a teenager not as a youth leader by the way okay well i think that for me um evangelism outreach apologetics needs to come back to the bible i think sometimes we can get a bit lost in philosophical arguments and winning the case and those things are all part and parcel of the apologetics i'd say discipline but are we bringing it back to the bible so um yeah i think it's about having your kind of engaging questions to to kind of gauge where people are and then bringing it back to the bible and you know i see some great um pieces online uh where people don't just refer yeah looking at things like christianese the the phrases that we use the gospels they are the gospels you know the four gospels but call them the biographies you know use language that is going to connect with an entirely unchurched generation as we approach the text and also using um all the results that we have you know from textual criticism to to to show the credibility of the bible as historical text and then looking at the theological claims as well [Music] okay thank you for that now time is kind of against us now so we'll kind of go quickly and see if we get another couple of questions in and this next one comes from someone's student age another one that came in on email which i cut and pasted into the the board does the church need major structural change or do we all need to just value individuals more be more christ-like and get on with it i think it's both out by the time not either yeah i think in terms of structural changes i think um having proper what do you call it succession planning going on okay which would involve these the these training routes should we say for emerging evangelists emerging pastors emerging leaders those kind of things so proper succession planning and also in terms of structures we've all seen that everyone is basically now doing hybrid church if you can't go into church one sunday you might watch it on the live stream and vice versa so looking at ways in which we can still do church but actually in line with what's happening in technology and where where the culture is not compromising the gospel i'm not saying to change what the gospel is because i think you throw a lot out of the window when you start to do that i mean what you can talk about in terms of justice and things like that but um being open to seeing things differently which leads directly into the next question uh which is how can the church raise up young leaders brackets even if they do stuff that older people don't like well um so yeah i would just try to qualify what we mean by even if they do stuff that old people don't like is it stuff that is contrary to what the church is is talking about in terms of doctrine in terms of theological like landing that's i think a different discussion to someone saying oh let's have a an unplugged strip back night of of worship or something that's quite a different conversation so then that's where the mentoring comes in and that's why it's really important that we show our young people why we think that christianity makes the best sense of reality on a number of philosophical levels so um raising yeah given giving room so rather than saying i think i'm a person i like to try pilots first try a little thing and then if it doesn't work you can back out and once no one really notices and then if it works you can scale it up so having smaller projects where you're releasing young people into leadership okay and then and then i'm scaling things up as they grow and gather momentum as well okay and i know you're involved in mentoring as well could you maybe talk a little just very quickly about some of the mentoring you know how that's growing young people into responsibility yeah i mean i think in my previous church i had a bit more mentoring role there and it involved things like you know taking them out for dinner sometimes having a one-to-one conversation having the coffees uh being a bit more transparent with your life as well i'm not saying to go onto social media and declare your life story but in your small groups being a bit more transparent with the things that you struggled with with the questions that you have you have or had um and um just seeing if you notice a gifting and a skill don't be threatened by it try to bring that out through prayer i mean you you cannot back away from prayer and fasting to yeah old school pentecostal as well praying for our young people because it is much as emotional intellectual as it is a spiritual thing as well yeah yeah absolutely i think that's actually a really good note to end on you know bringing together kind of the spiritual the praying for young people investing in them as well as bringing our minds and apologetics to bear on the thing because it's you know as you said in previous answer it's not either or it's absolutely both and because it all comes together love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and strength and it's not either or it's kind of bringing together all those things david what if you could put up the recommended resources slide for us claire's very kindly provided some recommendations of things that you can do if you want to explore this topic further and the first is well you can see on the slide there three websites that's claire's own website real questions dot co dot uk you can see the on the screen there loads of resources in there the next one she's recommending is the jude3project.org i think that's an american based resource there's tons of stuff in there really really good and then bethinking.org which has got loads of stuff on the the kind of the screenshot i grabbed for that was of their resources for school age people it's good to see our friend dave hutchings has written a lot of stuff in there so three great websites for young people there and then the next one uh david is of three books that claire has recommended the first is by rebecca mclaughlin ten questions every teen should ask an answer about christianity that's a great book which actually my daughter's just started to read i'll find out what she thinks of that in a few weeks time the second one urban apologetics by eric mason haven't read that one yet it's on my wish list and i will hopefully be getting that soon and then the third one where is god in all the suffering amy or ewing now amy came onto the solas website recently to discuss that book with andy bannister so again if you put her name into the solos website you'll find a discussion there about that book three terrific books to take you further into some of the things that claire has been talking about this evening just finally then to remind you our website is solas hyphen cpc.org and claire's real questions dot co dot uk plenty to explore in both those places and that just really leaves me to say thank you so much to claire from get real thank you for coming on and facing all those questions and dealing with them head-on and for making us think we invited you because we knew you'd make us think and you haven't disappointed so thank you so much for being with us the last hour i hope that what you've shared drives us to both action and prayer thank you to david hartnett our excellent producer as ever thank you to rio in the background handling all the social media and thank you to you of course at home for watching and for those of you who chipped in and joined in the q a panel and kept that moving it's people that watch these things that make it all worthwhile so again thank you so much for joining us i hope you found the last hour inspiring and helpful and good night for me and good night claire as well cheers good night

Channel: SolasCPC

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Id: w8trOy1dUq4

Length: 60min 20sec (3620 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021