| What's at Stake? |
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Did you know that over 2 million teens, youth, and young adults from Christian families are leaving the church each year, never to return? Your children and your friends' eternal destinies are at stake. According to Barna Research and other organizations, the church is permanently losing between 75 and 94 percent of its children by their second year of college. Only 9 percent of all born-again Christians have a biblical worldview; that means that your child and their friends have less than a 10 percent chance of having a biblical worldview in the future. Even more shocking is the recent finding that less than .5% of young adults age 18 to 23 have a biblical worldview. In other words, if you stand in a room with 200 young adults, only one of them will have a biblical worldview! Assuming that only 75 percent of all youth are leaving, this translates into more than 2 million children in America each year who are permanently leaving the church and over 40 million lost in the last two decades. If we do nothing to address this situation, by the year 2050 we will lose another 113 million children! Regarding adult converts, there has been discussion for decades about the "revolving door" in the church. Many churches have reached a plateau of membership, and many are actually declining. What’s the Root Cause? We believe that the root cause is a faulty discipleship process that has been used by most Christian parents for decades. In summary, the process is identical to the training system used in secular society, except for the presence of faith-related activities such as church attendance, prayer, etc. The total time spent on biblical training is less than five hours a week. With less than five hours of biblical training a week and more than eighty hours of nonbiblical training/influence a week, the nonbiblical influence easily wins out shortly after our children leave home. As a result, our children and future generations are lost to the world. This faulty process is based on the emphasis of information transfer (secular education) rather than the development of deep, lifetime relationships with God and man. Consequently, there is no lasting fruit for individuals or for God's kingdom.
The Fruit of Jesus Versus the Fruit of Christian Parents Jesus said that we will know a tree by its fruit: "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit" (Matthew 12:33 nkjv). Upon examining the fruit of our discipleship process (see the statistics above), we can clearly see that the process itself is faulty. Using the analogy that Jesus used, the tree (faulty discipleship process) is bearing bad fruit and leading millions to apostasy. We know that after Jesus ascended back to heaven and entrusted His earthly ministry to His disciples, 11 of the 12 remained faithful to Jesus, His church and their ministry. Judas was the only disciple who left the faith, and we of course know that his departure was according to the will of God. That is a success rate of approximately 92 percent. As discussed earlier, we are permanently losing between 75 and 94 percent of our children from the church; that translates to a success rate of only 6 to 25 percent! |
