This week I shall return to how other in the Youth Ministry world have sought to answer the question of why teens are leaving the church in droves upon graduation. Today, I discuss Kendra Creasy Dean from Princeton Theological Seminary, in order to find out why she believes teens are leaving the church we shall look at her book Almost Christian.
In the process of writing her new book, Kendra Creasy Dean takes the research from a study involving teens she participated in entitled the National Study of Youth and Religion, which she did with Christian Smith, and comments on how thing can change. In the book Dean suggests that young people believe that churches offer then a bland view of faith and Christian community formation. In the first chapter, her findings become clear as she states, “…we have studied the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents in order to answer the question ‘How can we keep young people in church?’ Today, our question is more pressing: ‘Does the church matter?’”
By asking this question, Dean takes the focus off the question of“how can we keep teen’s in church after graduation,” to does the church communicate the gospel to teens in a way that it communicates God’s life changing message to teens? This question is driven by the fact that in Dean’s research, she found that teens have a disheveled view of God she and other researches have entitled “Moral Therapeutic Deism.” In this view God is more of a make-me-feel-good-and-solves-my-problems-god then the God of the Bible. The most daunting finding is that a teen’s pick up this faith from their parents. It is this faith that drives teens away from the church. They leave the church because it offers “such a stripped-down version of Christian identity that it no longer poses a viable alternative to imposter spiritualities like Moral Therapeutic Deism.”
Dean encourages the church and families to refocus, and point teens to a metanarrative where identity within Christ transforms one’s understanding of themselves. This type of theological understanding presents the life altering grace of God that redeems the world through his son. At the same time, it introduces teens to a gospel that has the power to change people and power structures.
Dean also challenges adults to stand up and create a community that cares for teens and makes them feel empowered to do God’s work. In order to do so, the church needs to create a community of people who make teens believe they are an essential part of the community. A church needs to give students the opportunity to participate in Kingdom work in the world, and in so, see change and redemption.
The heart of Dean’s work with teens is to see lives transformed so that upon graduation, because they have found their identity with in him, not in something else. With the hope that in their time at church before graduation; students have experienced God’s grace and the work of his Kingdom in such a way that they cannot imagine their lives with out God.
What are your thoughts on Dean's conclusions?
All quotes taken from: Kendra Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, (Oxford University Press: New York, New York, 2010),
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