Rational, relational and relevant

Last weekend I decided to do a straw poll. I asked a selection of my friends a simple question: why did you leave church as a teenager?

There was a range of answers. Boring services, lack of peers, pressure of studies all reared their head. But there were 3 others factors that loomed much larger:

Faith wasn't shown to be rational

"I had questions. Lots of questions. I was being bombarded with science and secular philosophy at college and it didn't fit with what the Bible was saying. I wanted to understand why. I asked my youth leaders to explain how I could be sure that the Bible was right and the teaching I was getting Monday to Friday was wrong (or of less importance). They simply told me to believe. I guess it wasn't a heretical answer by the church's standards but it wasn't a helpful one. It left me with the impression that Christianity was a blind faith rather than a faith based on reason and facts. And so I walked."

The church community wasn't relational

"I simply didn't feel as though I belonged. There was a real dynamic of "them and us" going on between the adults and the young people of the congregation. They didn't talk to us. We didn't talk to them. In retrospect, I doubt they were deliberately avoiding us, it just seemed natural to chat in friendship groups after church and so we divided. But it meant that by the time I was of the age to sit in a service, I was confronted with the reality that I didn't know the rest of the congregation. No-one wants to sit in a room full of strangers week by week. Soon after, I started to spend my Sunday mornings playing pool - not out of any philosophical conviction but as a way of building community."

Christianity didn't seem relevant

"We got taught Bible stories. We got taught a LOT of Bible stories. And to this day I can remember many of them. We learned verses. We acted out dialogues between Jesus and his disciples. We helped do prayers in family services and had loads of fun. But no-one ever told me why. I mean, I was told I could be forgiven all my sins and go to heaven - which seemed like a good deal - but there wasn't anything practical to help me get through school, relationships, friendships, decisions about the future, work pressures and the like. It all seemed so far removed from my day to day life."

Of course, there are always spiritual issues underlying practical ones ... but it's worth a ponder. As well as praying that the youth leaders in your congregation will teach unswervingly faithfully, let's be praying the young people there know just how rational, relational and relevant a life following Jesus truly is.