Are We Helping Them Lose Faith?

Introduction

What’s your greatest fear? Somebody’s got to raise their hand and volunteer, or I’ll just point to somebody. I don’t even know if you’re a parent. Alright. My greatest fear is that my sons will be taken away before they have a chance to develop a love of the Lord, wisdom, and a faith in God that uh I have. Okay. Greatest fear is that his sons will be taken away before they can develop love for the Lord and wisdom and faith that he has. Someone else. Anyone else? Yes. Daughter has cancer, I’m worried about losing her. Daughter has cancer, worried about losing her. Someone else. Yes.

I want them to be Christian men. They find a wife where they can raise a Christian home. And what if I don’t feel that? Right. You have two boys who want them to be Christian men, they can find your Christian wife, have a Christian home. And what if you don’t do that? What do you think the greatest challenge to our young people is? What? The world. The world, right? I have a 14-year-old son, a 10-year-old daughter, and a six-year-old daughter. I love my daughters.

You know, my 14-year-old son’s at that weird age. He’s in the eighth grade. He’s going to be a freshman next year. He looked at me the other day and he said, Dad, he said, I just turned 14. Next year I get my permit, I’m going to be driving. I said, No, you’re not. But you know, as a dad of a teenager, I see all the stuff that they’re watching. My kids, at least my two oldest ones, they grew up on Hannah, Montana. And you know, Miley Cyrus isn’t much like Hannah Montana anymore. In fact, she’s kind of trampy. She’s not a really good influence at all. And then there’s this guy named Justin Bieber. And I am ashamed to say we have bought Justin Bieber albums.

In fact, the Justin Bieber Christmas album may be the worst spending money I’ve ever spent. I actually pulled that out of the CD player one time and broke it because I was sick of hearing it. I’m that kind of dad. And my fear sometimes is a parent is that you know what? The Justin Bieber and the Miley Cyruses of the world are gonna lead my kids away from God that the immorality. I mean, you look at what they’ve done recently. And you look at them in the news. I mean, Justin Bieber, 19 years old, egged his neighbor’s house, drag racing a Lamborghini while uh legally high on prescription drugs in marijuana. Not long after that, he mistreated a flight attendant during a flight where he was smoking pot on the plane, and that was so bad that the flight crew had to wear oxygen masks the entire time so they didn’t become intoxicated.

You realize that during the Olympics, there was a petition signed for Parsley to send Bieber back to the to Canada? That’s where he’s from. And when we played Canada and hockey, there was a thing, a billboard said the winner keeps Bieber. We lost.

But do you know that’s not the greatest danger that my kids face? So I told the junior high and high school kids I needed to use them in his example. So y’all come up here, and if you don’t come up here, I will go pull you from your pew. Come on, let’s go. Come up here. Put your Bibles down, walk up here. All of you in junior high and high school, walk up here. And just form a line for me. Form a line right here. You all can do that, right? Y’all know how to form a line. I will tell you, we formed a line yesterday, and they didn’t quite know how to form a line.

No, no, no, not this again. You can face that way, Christopher. All right. So wow, there’s more here than there were yesterday. All right. I want you to know what the survey tells us. So, the survey says, you six. Jenny over y’all walk to that side of the table. Go over there. What the survey tells you basically is that of these young people, these are the only ones that will remain faithful. That all the rest of them are going to walk away from God. Take a good look. Those of you that have kids, notice where your kids are at. That’s what the data says. And you know what? It doesn’t have anything to do with Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. Y’all can go sit down. In fact, what the data tells us is those kids that were over there to our left, that big group, they walk away from God and they become a part of what is called the nuns or the no religion group.

They don’t just leave church, they essentially leave God. They live leave the concept of spirituality. The nuns have grown by 300% since the 80s. 300%. They now make up 16% of our country, and the majority of them are from the ages of 18 to 29. Now, by the way, you look at that number 16% and you think, well, that’s not that big. Do you know that the members of all of the churches of Christ make up one and a half percent? Are you scared yet? That’s the reality of what our young people face. That’s the reality of what you and I face as parents and as fellow Christians. And I wonder sometimes if we as members of the church and as parents and as leaders within the church aren’t just sitting down and idly watching them walk away.

When my wife and I got married and I was preaching, we sat down and we talked about what our goals were. And every congregation we’ve worked with, we have noticed a trend similar to what I showed you. In fact, the first work, when we moved there, the oldest person, or the oldest young person turned 16 within the first couple of months. The next oldest person after the 16 year old was 42. Out of all the young people that grew up there, only three were Christians still. Two of them drove right by the church building and went somewhere else. They wanted nothing to do with that church. And my wife and I looked at each other and we said, you know what? One of the things that we’ve got to do, and when we preach and work with the church is we’ve got to start making sure we pay attention to young people.

We’ve got to try to teach them in a way that they want to serve God. And we’ve got to start treating them in a way, as we talked about already, that they’re not some second rate Christian, but they’re part of God’s work now. We’ve got to figure out a way to encourage them. And I think sometimes we don’t do a good job of that as churches. Sometimes we sit by. Now you’re to be commended because you have done what you’ve done this weekend. But I have to tell you that that’s not the ultimate answer, even. It helps. I want to begin by sharing with you some things that don’t work. Because the religious world has tried just about everything. You can go buy a lot of books about how to save young people.

And you can look up a lot of internet sources, and you can go to conferences where they teach you how to teach young people. And there’s been a lot of strategies. Here’s some of the strategies. We changed music. The religious world in large, you’ve heard about some of the conflict between the contemporary music and the traditional music that other groups might have. Well, in the process of that, that was done largely because all of the slow hymns were cast out because young people don’t like that. They want upbeat music. They want to feel like they’re praising God, and so nothing slow. But you know that didn’t work. And by the way, we’ve kind of done that ourselves. Because, and I’m a big fan of new songs, and we have a supplement, but you know, sometimes all we sing is a supplemental song sometimes.

I mean, every once in a while you need to sing Amazing Grace. We’ve also changed the dress code. That there was a big push among the churches in the community church movement, especially the come as you are movement of the 90s. We didn’t have to dress up to go to church. Just wear your shorts and your flip-flops and come to church as you are. Because after all, if you’ll just come, we don’t care what you dress like. I know even one church in Nashville when I was preaching there, had a whole campaign about being the kind of rebellious church among Christians. And part of the line was we’re not your dad’s buick driving polyester wearing grandfather’s church. Just come as you are. You know what? That didn’t work.

Didn’t have the effect people thought it would have. So then, in addition to that, we changed our preaching. Preaching had to be more entertaining, had to be more upbeat. In fact, preaching was probably more like a motivational speaking. The idea was come as you are and stay as you are. We don’t want to demand too much. We don’t have too many high expectations. Bible readings were removed because they’re dull and boring. You know what? It didn’t work. The pulpit was removed because it put too much emphasis on this kind of preacher mentality. And then the preacher wore, if you’ve seen the popular thing was the pastor shirt, kind of call it. It’s the button up short sleeve shirt, untucked jeans and sandals, because you know, that looks so much cooler to fit in with young people.

Didn’t work. Not only did we do we did that, we put a lot of emphasis on entertainment in the religious world. It needs to be fun and exciting. Assembly times were changed. And by that what I mean is that they removed to other days like Saturday. Because it made it more convenient. Somebody might not be able to get up Sunday morning, but they can come Saturday. As long as we can get them in the door, that’s what we’ll do. And you know what happened? After all those changes, you know what the data shows us, what the surveys, what the polls by the Barna group and others show us? Kids still walked away from religion just like they did before. None of it worked. Now I got to tell you, that confuses us experts a little bit.

Those of us who are supposed to figure out how to approach young people because we sit here, we’ve tried everything we can try, nothing works. And some people just say, well, it’s just these young people, they don’t care about God. I’ve got to tell you, that is not true. It’s not true. But you know what happened? I want to share with you some things that happened because of this. You know what happened because of these changes because we pulled out the traditional preaching and no more Bible readings, and we made things more about feeling comfortable than changing who you are. What happened is the same thing that happened in the days of Amos. That there was a famine in the land. See, Amos says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land.

Not a famine of bread, not a thirst of water, but hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east. They shall run to and fro and seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. And that day, the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst. Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, as your God lives, O Dan, as the way of Beersheba lives, they shall fall and never rise again. You know what happened in the days of Amos? They quit teaching the Word of God. You know what’s happened with all these changes? We put emphasis on all the circumstances and the environment, and we’ve stopped teaching the word of God.

And that creates a generation that does not know God. And you know why they have no religion? It’s because we have raised them to have no religion. That’s why.

Romans 1, that passage you’re probably familiar with, for his invisible attributes, namely his internal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen or perceived since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were dark and claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. You know what that list represents in the religious world today? What it represents is that we changed everything about religion and God to try to connect to young people.

And what we did in essence is we worshiped ourselves rather than God. We put ourselves on the podium rather than God. And any culture and any group of people that takes God off of the focus and off of the throne will fall. And that’s what’s happened.

So here’s what else the data tells us about this world we live in as a result of this. Less than 17% of all churches are growing in this country. And of those 17%, only 2% are growing through conversions. Think about that. Those who claim to be religious show a severe lack of Bible knowledge. 37% will tell you that the Bible’s not accurate. That’s believers, by the way. 37% of people who believe in God will say the Bible’s not accurate. How’s that possible? 45% believe that Jesus wasn’t sinless. 57% believe that there’s another way to eternal life outside of Jesus Christ. 50% believe that you can go through heaven to heaven through other religions. 52% don’t believe that Satan is real. We have failed. That’s what that means.

We failed. Well, why are they walking away? Because before I can meet the problem, I’ve got to be able to know what the problem is. That’s an important question. I do want to tell you that this isn’t a new problem, we see people who walk away from their faith all the time. I mean, one passage like that is 1 Timothy 1, 18 through 20. Hymeneus and Alexander made shipwreck of the faith. They left. So it’s not like this is something that’s just peculiar to us. Plus, we feel that way. But we need to understand why. And in the surveys and the data of the nuns, and making up mainly the what’s called the millennials, by the way. That’s this new term we talk about, these kids in the new millennial.

The millennials make up this group. Here’s why they say they’re leaving organized religion. Because of the hypocrisy they see in others while they’re being judged by others. You see, Paul told Timothy to be an example, as we read earlier, to believers. Not to let anyone despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in speech and conduct and love and faith and purity. And what the nuns will tell you is the problem is that they are being labeled as hypocrites by hypocrites. In other words, us older folks want to look down upon them for not being religious and faithful enough while they look to us and they see a group of people that aren’t religious and faithful enough. You know, it’s the height of hypocrisy when you do things like get on the young people because they don’t have their Bible class lessons done, and we don’t have our Bible lessons done.

I’ve noticed that in my classes, I teach young people sometimes, and about half of them don’t have their lesson book done. Then I go teach their parents. They don’t have them done either. Wonder if there’s a connection there. It’s kind of hypocritical for me to get on to young people for not being more faithful when their parents can’t come to church. When they can’t find a way to make it there or make it there on time. And I gotta tell you, all of those problems they wear on young people. And they’re tired of being looked down upon when they see the same behavior in older people. And I got to tell you something about children. They don’t tolerate phonies. They can see when you’re fake. And parents, especially you, if you tell them to do one thing, but you do another, they see through that.

It’s like when you’re spanking your kid and tell them you don’t hit people. Y’all didn’t get that. It’s like when you spake your kid and tell them you don’t hit people. Okay, it’s dead in here this morning.

And we’ve all done that. They don’t tolerate that. Now, this next one may bother some people. I’m just the messenger. You know, one of the reasons that they walk away is they’re tired of politics in the pulpit. They’re tired of the church being used as a way to elect the president. And being pushed by well-meaning older members to vote in certain ways and to do certain things. By the way, side note, if you didn’t know this, our citizenship is in heaven. It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. We serve a risen Savior, who’s the King of Kings. And it’s something else you need to know that our young people have figured out, and some of us adults haven’t. Washington has never saved a soul. You want to change the world, you do that one soul at a time by teaching the gospel.

And they realize that the church is not a political activist group. And some of us don’t realize that. And they don’t like that. And when you get the two confused, they walk away. Thirdly, they walk away because of the isolationist agenda. We isolate things. Preachers sometimes they don’t think about what they say. They say something like, well, all secular music is sinful. Right? All culture is wrong. Technology is evil. Sometimes we take the non-religious and we make it religious. We’re not careful. We can do that with a lot of things. I’ll give you an example of that. There is a growing trend among our young people. And I’ve seen it while I’m here, and I see it now. That we don’t see young people using these as much as we see them using these.

Right? Cody up here is using his iPad. I’m using my iPad too, by the way, because I’m cool like that. I told Trey and Caleb yesterday I got swag. They don’t understand. I got swag. And you know what happens? We got older members sometimes that they’ll tell me and go, you need to say something to those young people about using their electronic devices here in church. You want to use the Bible, you need to use the real Bible. Mama always told me that sometimes we look like we’re weaned on a sour dill pickle. Got a frown on her face. We don’t hear enough pages turning. They’re all over there playing. You don’t even know if they’re reading the Bible or not. They’re probably just playing on Facebook or something.

By the way, they’re not on Facebook anymore because us old people took it over. My mama’s on Facebook, and when I see she’s posted, I just do one of those things right there. Oh, what did she say this time? You know what? I love that our young people have a Bible on their phone and on their iPad. And that they know how to use it. You know why? Because my son is not allowed to take his Bible to school, but he can’t take his phone. And if he wants to read his Bible at lunch, he could pull his phone out and read his Bible. And on the way home from school, if he wants to read his Bible on the bus, he can read his Bible.

Now I don’t think he does based on his behavior. But he can. And our kids don’t take their Bibles with them everywhere. But they take their phones with them everywhere. Which means they have a Bible with them. And I am all about our young people knowing they’ve got a Bible with them everywhere. Because if they’ll use it here, they might use it somewhere else. But if I push on them that you’re never allowed to use your Bible on your phone, that it has to be a Bible, you know what that’s probably going to do? That’s not only going to push them away, it’s going to push them away from reading their Bible. Please use your Bible on your phone if that’s what it takes. There’s nothing evil or wicked about reading your phone and having the Bible on there.

It’s the same thing. For those of you that doubt, I’ve checked. It’s the same thing. But we isolate things so bad. We tell them what they can wear, what they can do, what they can listen to, and everything that they can’t do that we don’t want them to do, that’s evil. It’s wicked. Be careful about that.

That’s going to have some negative consequences. And they walk away because of immorality. And this is sad. And we can’t change this in our approach. But parents, I want you to not be naive. You see, something else that the data tells us is that young Christian singles are as sexually active as non-Christian singles. That scares me, but it’s the world we live in. And sometimes our young people walk away from religion because it’s not the life they want to live. They want to practice immorality. Now we can’t change our approach on that, can we? But that’s what the surveys show. Now I’ve got to tell you what. I started looking at that and I said, you know what? I want to know really why. Because sometimes I look at a list of that and I say, you know what that is?

That’s just a bunch of lists of excuses. That’s not the real reason why. What’s the real reason why our young people are leaving the church? And so in my research, I found an article entitled Millennial Faith Participation and Retention. I don’t know why they couldn’t come up with an easier title, but that’s what they came up with. This study was done by focus on the family, and the purpose of this work was to dig deeper into the statistics and the surveys and to look beyond the data and look a little deeper to the deeper level and see what they could find out as the reason. And here’s what they found out. The problem with young people who grow up and walk away from religion is that they didn’t have a religious upbringing.

In fact, here’s what the data says. They surveyed those people who admitted to being a nun or non-religious. And only 11%, only 11% of those surveyed said that when they were children, strong faith was exemplified in the home, and vibrant Christianity was practiced and taught. Now get that. One out of ten, roughly, of those surveyed said the reason why they weren’t religious is because their home wasn’t really religious to begin with. In fact, what they found out is their homes are motivated by other factors. Education, career, recreation, the family bond. But their homes weren’t motivated, motivated by faith. And you know what that showed me? Is we don’t have a crisis among young people in the church. We have a crisis among parents.

See, y’all are in here, you thought this was about the young people, but it’s not. This is about y’all. Because the reality is the problem with our young people walking away is us.

1. Teach Them

Walking away from God. How do I stop them from doing that? Well, first, I have to teach them. Back in Deuteronomy chapter 6. As Moses in that great book is preparing to depart as a leader, and he’s reviewing what their responsibilities are. Preparing Israel to take the land, what they should be doing. He says, starting in verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words that I command to you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand. They shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. New Testament version of that’s a little bit more condensed in Ephesians 6 and verse 4. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. In reality, those two passages are saying the same thing. You know what they’re saying? It is not the job of the church, of the elders, the Sunday school teacher, and the preacher to handle your child’s spiritual education. And sometimes that’s our approach. I don’t worry about anything, just take them to church. Make sure they show up to Sunday school. In fact, I gotta tell you, I know of a family, one of the works I was at, that mom and dad got up and took their kids to Sunday school and they went back home.

What does that tell you? And by the way, this is what we do with secular education to a large degree. We send our kids off to school. And I do that, by the way. Every parent makes a choice how to educate their child, and that’s your choice, and one’s not better than the other spiritually. You make that choice what works for your family. But I send my kids to school, partly because if I stayed home with them all day, they’d all be dead. But I outsource their education. And I expect the teacher to teach them. And you know the reality is when they come home, I don’t want to be bothered with that. Because we have somebody that does that for us. And if they’re having real trouble, I’ll hire a tutor.

I don’t want to be bothered by that. And we do the same thing when it comes to spiritual education. We send them to the church. We don’t want to be bothered by it. That’s the teacher’s job. That’s the preacher’s job. Well, make sure you understand this. That’s not God’s plan. God’s plan, fathers, was for you to teach your children. And to teach them in every place in every way possible. You know, when’s the last time if you have a child that’s four years old that you’re driving through and you see a rainbow, and every four-year-old looks up and goes, Oh, look a rainbow. You know what that is? That’s a great opportunity to teach your four-year-old. Do you know why that rainbow’s there? That’s a covenant God made.

He would never destroy us by flood like he did in the days of Noah. And by the way, we think everybody knows the story of Noah. It’s evident from the movie that’s out. Not everybody knows the story of Noah. Things happen with your child, your teenager comes home and they make a poor decision. So you have to discipline them, but we’re to raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. When you discipline your children, do you explain to them that part of why you discipline them is that it’s also displeasing to God and their soul is at stake? That’s what that means, brethren. That’s what it means to teach Christianity in your home. Teach them at home. It’s our job. It’s my job. You can have the best preacher in the world, and he can’t save your children.

2. Convert Them

It’s your job as a parent to teach them. Secondly, convert them. Convert them. I’m afraid sometimes we do a good job of teaching our kids, but we don’t do a good job of converting our kids. Here’s what I mean by that. There’s kids I grew up with that probably were better at the Bible knowledge stuff than I was at times. Oh, they knew the twelve tribes, and they knew the twelve apostles, and they knew all 66 books, and they knew all the memory verses, and they knew the five steps of salvation, the five acts of worship, and three works of the church. They’d memorized all that stuff you’re supposed to memorize, right? They’d done all that memory work. You could sit there and you just go, boom, what’s 1 Corinthians 13 about?

Love? What’s Hebrews 11 about? Faith. They knew all of that. And they’re not Christians anymore. You realize there’s a lot of lost people that know the Bible better than we do. In fact, I know some atheists that know the Bible better than some of you do. Teaching somebody is not the same thing as converting them. It’s not the same thing. Converting them is helping them to become a disciple, a follower. One who obeys the gospel. See, I talked about this earlier, but our problem is at churches we have good kids. We have good kids. And we look at somebody who’s not a Christian, we go, oh, but they’re a good kid. And they go to Bible class, their lessons done most of the time. They have a sense of morality.

They don’t disrespect older people. We watch what they listen and watch. We try to control all of that. We try to make sure they dress in respectable ways. And we compare them to other kids. Like we compare them to kids at school. And we say, Oh, we got good kids. I’m glad my kids don’t like that kid. It’s okay. He’s a good kid. We don’t need good kids. We need Christians. Christians go to heaven, not good kids. In Acts 10, Cornelius was a good person, wasn’t he? But he was lost. He was lost. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Starting in verse 16. Paul wrote, from now on, we therefore we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Verse 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespass against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. You know what I want for my kids? What I want for my kids is for them to be a new creation.

To be reconciled to God. To be in a relationship with God so that they might become the righteousness of God. That’s what I want. And that’s my job as a father to give that to them. It’s my job to raise my children to be Romans 12, 1 and 2, kind of kids and quite of young men. Those who present their bodies as a living sacrifice, and who aren’t conformed to this world, but are transformed by the renewing of their mind so they may reprove that which is good and acceptable. It’s my job to raise that kind of kids. It’s my job. Means I’ve got to convert them.

3. Equip Them

I also have to equip them. Equip them. All of my kids are involved in sports. The six-year old plays soccer. She doesn’t even really know what she wants to do yet, but she plays soccer, and she’s funny doing it, by the way. The 10-year-old plays competitive soccer because she’s decided she’s a soccer player. And so you know what that means when I go out with my 10-year-old? That we make sure she has good cleats and good sin guards. She has about three or four balls. She wants to use the oldest one that’s fallen apart. She’s named it Jamal the Ball. I keep telling her that’s an ugly ball. People think I’m not going to give I’ve given you nice balls. Would you quit doing that? She goes, Dad, it’s Jamal.

I’ve got to take Jamal with me everywhere I go. My son plays lacrosse. Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in America. It’s also, I think, the most expensive sport. I have to equip my son. He has five sticks. His sick he plays with in a game, by the way, he doesn’t deserve. But it’s expensive. The helmet costs 200 bucks for lacrosse. I don’t know why I bought it. His hard heads hard enough it doesn’t gonna hurt itself. I mean, come on. He’s 14 years old. When it comes to sports, I have done everything I can do to equip my children. I have bought them the best equipment. What have I done to equip my children when it comes to serving God? Now, Ephesians chapter 4, 11 and 12 says he gave apostles, prophets, evangels, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ.

And we realize it’s the church’s job. It’s leadership in the church. It’s their job, our job to equip Christians. I realize that. But do you realize that long before the church equips Christians, their parents should. The first leaders your children know are you. And by the way, that’s how Timothy was raised, wasn’t it? You know, 2 Timothy 3, we remember verse 16 and 17. But what about verse 14? As for you, Timothy, continue in what you’ve learned firmly believed, and knowing from who you’ve learned it. How from childhood, how from childhood you’ve been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

4. Show Them

How did Timothy know the truth? How was he equipped? How was he a saved? He was taught. And you know what? Timothy’s father wasn’t a believer. So you know who stepped up? His mother and his grandmother. But he was taught. From childhood. Got to equip them. The scriptures equip us for every good work. And they equip our kids too. And it’s my job as a parent to equip them. And finally, I have to show them. Until now, every term we have used teach, convert, equip, is really about instructional speaking, talking to your children. But you know what? You’re not going to be effective in any of that if you don’t actually show them the right example. I’m going to tell you a secret about kids. One of the reasons why all the gimmicks that we’ve tried failed is because what we did in the religious world to try to attract young people is we lowered expectations.

And that is the exact opposite of what you should do for young people. You want to get young people to step up, challenge them, raise the expectations.

He’s a strong guy. And he said there, he told me I’d say, what, 260? Bench press 260, did we say something? Close to that, 280? What it, 280, 260? But if I go out there and I say, Trey, man, that’s weak. I bet you can’t bench press 325. He will kill himself to try to do that. You know why? Because young people, they rise to the challenge. Now you come to me and I bet you about 25 pounds, and you say, Terry, last week, I bet you can’t bench press 125. I’m going to tell you, nope, I can’t. I’m going to go get a milkshake. I’m going to sit there and watch you try to do it. Remember that proverb? Young people, their glory is a strength.

Old men, it’s a gray hair. It’s wisdom, right?

But I’ve got to tell you something. If I’m going to have high expectations for my kids spiritually, if I’m going to expect my 14-year-old to be an example to believers in speech and conduct and love and faith and purity, you know what that means? I have to be an example to believers in speech and conduct and faith and love and purity. I can’t expect my kid to love the church when on the way home, all he hears me and my wife do is tear down the church. I’m teaching them one thing and I’m showing them something else. And I got to tell you, the ultimate example of this is the Bible class lesson. Because kids come to class and they don’t have their lesson done. They’ve not looked at it, they’ve not read it, they’ve not done it.

And the reason why is their parents don’t do theirs. You can’t get your teenager to do their lesson if you’re not going to do yours. Won’t happen. You know what else I’ve seen? You can’t get a young man to stand up and to be a leader in the public worship if dad won’t do that. If parents turn into, and the kids know what this is about, we talked about this yesterday. If they turn into pew potatoes, we got couch potatoes, right? Church has a lot of pew potatoes. People just show up and watch what’s going on and go home. Let me tell you what, mom and dad, if you’re a pew potato, guess what your kids are going to be? They’re not going to be pupotatoes, they’re going to be gone.

They’re going to be that group over here that walks away. Because if it doesn’t mean any more to you than that, then they’re not going to have religion anymore. It’s my job as his and her father to show them what faith really is. And if my faith doesn’t work in a way that they see it, then they’re sure not going to have that kind of faith either. And not because they’re having my faith. But that’s not the key. The key, I don’t want them to have my faith. I want them to see that I believe in Jesus and I do what he says to do, and that’s what they need to do too. And I have to show that. You see, at the end of the day, what I learned from my research about our young people is we don’t have that crisis among them about what their problem is.

Conclusion

The real problem is us parents. The real problem is you and me.

Walk with the Lord. You want them to live a changed life of a new creature whose identity is lost in Christ, then you live that way. They can still make the choices to do what they want to do. Remember, only 11% said their homes had vibrant Christianity practice and talk. But 11% said that. 11% of those who left the church were raised to walk in the way they should walk. They can still leave. But I like the odds of 11%. I like the odds there more than the 70% when I do nothing. I encourage you to teach your children, convert them, equip them, and show them. Thanks so much for your time this morning.