Generations

“1. When Partisan Politics Reshape Faith In the past few years, we have grown increasingly weary of the meshing of politics and the evangelical faith we often see among older believers.” - TGC

“It’s not that our students ‘got smarter’ when they left home; rather, someone actually treated them as intelligent. Rather than dumbing down the message, the agnostics and atheists treat our youth as intelligent and challenge their intellect with “deep thoughts” of question and doubt.” - C.Leaders

“I had been prepped to be wary of family-dominated churches, of people whose people had been in the church for multiple generations. It was an unwritten rule that many generations in a church was probably not healthy, that those people would reflexively side against their ‘outsider’ pastor. Bah, humbug. Bad advice.” - SBCVoices

“Cameron Hilditch, a writer at National Review, reports on a study that gives an interesting take on the cause behind the declines, ‘Secularization Caused by Government Control of Education.’ The article is behind the NR paywall, so I will offer a few highlights.” - Don Johnson

“Disaffected young evangelicals and those who left the church describe an out-of-touch institution not in line with their political beliefs, a scholar found” - RNS

“The fact that there is a ‘generation gap’ within biblical fundamentalism should not be a surprise to anyone. This is what generations do: gap. The main issue is to determine the best way to bridge the gap. Humility must be exhibited by both the ‘younger’ as well as the ‘older’ ” - P&D

“After their sweet sixteenth birthday 73% of eventual church dropouts attend regularly, compared to 79% of those who stayed in church. By 17, the divide grows (64% of dropouts are attending versus 78% on non-dropouts). At 18, less than half of those who drop out are regularly attending (48%)” - Lifeway

“I started to wonder whether religion itself—or at least the kind of Christianity that showed up in the slogans all around me—might really be about something else: southern culture or politics. If so, I thought, that would mean that Jesus is not the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but a means to an end.

“Establishing a foundation in apologetics early may also help guard against the church drift experienced by many young adults who grow up in church. In a 2017 study, LifeWay Research found that young adults who drop out of church are less likely to say, ‘The student ministry taught me how to defend my Christian faith’ ” - BPNews

“In a report released Thursday, Pew found that 80% of evangelicals surveyed had a teenage child who shared their religious identification; 81% of Catholic respondents reported the same. However, mainline Protestant respondents … 55%.” - C.Post