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August 5, 2020 2:00 am
What makes some young adults resilient in the faith, while others walk away completely? Pastor Mark Matlock and researcher David Kinnaman talk about the five characteristics and practices of resilient Christians: experiencing Jesus; forging meaningful, intergenerational relationships; developing cultural discernment; training for vocational discipleship; and engaging in counter-cultural mission.
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All of us as parents will do whatever we need to do to help our children grow up walking in the truth, walking in faith, author and researcher David Kinnaman says there is no recipe for success.
What we learn over and over and over that faith is the formula is being led as parents by the Holy Spirit. We did learn some practices but you can't boil the faith down to a simple set of do this twice a week in these conversations and you know everything turn out right.
In fact, every story is unique. Every heart every soul was at the honor that first and foremost is that each young person God speaking into their hearts, and that sometimes our hearts become hardened. For reasons that we can't control in which we should try to control those. This is family life today. Our hosts are Damon and Wilson and Bob Lapine can find us online and family life today.com. While there is no recipe for raising kids who walk faithfully with Christ. There are some best practices that we can consider and learn from and maybe adapt in our own families will explore that today stay with us and welcome to family life today. Thanks for joining us I'm sure this before but I just I feel like it needs to be said over and over again. Third John four says I have no greater joy than to know that my children are walking in the truth that John is talking about his spiritual children when he writes that but if that's the case for spiritual children, how much more for our biological children. No greater joy for a parent than to know that your kids are walking in the truth might he think that brings us so much joy because we know that that's where life is and where hope is I've asked parents if you could imagine that your child is 30 years old and they write a letter home and they said the jobs doing great at making good money.
All of this going on when I go to church anymore but you know, we were able to take the vacation and have this and the kids about all of this stuff and and were happy, and life's good to get that letter from one child, the other child writes all and says in a rough month. We were barely able to make the the bills but you know what God's got us and we are were hanging in which child or you feel happier about this because we know that second kid is where we get God's got him the first kid is dealing with his own success and self-reliance. And that's not to take him anywhere living for temporal versus eternal, and if there is no greater joy than the know your children are walking in the truth and there's probably no greater fear or pain for a parent than to imagine the your child would not be at some point. Walking in in the faith, and we've got a couple guys joining us this week to help us understand the culture in which we live. The pressures on our kids are young adult kids as they enter into what you guys refer to as the digital Babylon David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock are joining us again guys, welcome back. It's a pleasure thanks yeah thanks for having David and Mark have written a book called faith for exiles five ways for a new generation to follow Jesus in digital Babylon, David, who is joining us remotely from Southern California from the offices of the Barna group gives leadership to the Barna group, which is been doing research in the in the Christian world the Christian space for decades. Mark is a pastor or church leader worked with youth for years in his local church is a researcher as well. We've talked about the realities of the culture in which our kids are living about the screens and the influence of being discipled by your screen instead of discipled by your by your father or your youth pastor or the Christian community. We talked about the fact that some kids end up as prodigal's some kids end up as Begley spiritual nomads not going to church but still hanging on to some spiritual vestige. A lot of kids wind up is what you call habitual's who are going to church and going through the motions, but we really wonder how tethered to the faith they are and then there's this 10%. This one in 10 who are resilient and their faith is alive and there on fire and they're excited and they want to tell other people about Jesus and they really believe it and every parent is Sam what's the recipe for that. Okay, what are the ingredients I pour in. What's the temperature I bake it at because I want to make sure all my kids are about one of things to keep in mind is that it's it's it we wish you were that easy right to find the right temperature the right ingredients the right combination of what we learn over and over and over that faith is the formula, it is being led as parents by the Holy Spirit. We did learn some practices and it will tell you about those but the first principle that we we really seen in this is that you can't boil the faith down to a simple set of do this twice a week in these conversations and you know everything turn out right. In fact, as part of the premise of our research over the last decade or more. Rumba: Christian another because you lost me that were really about the problems and obstacles. I spent a bunch of years you have hundreds of thousands of interviews with young people who've walked away from faith growing in faith and so faith is, is not a formal every story is unique. Every heart, every soul is unique and they with honor that first and foremost is that each each young person God speaking into their hearts and and sometimes our hearts become hardened. For reasons that we can't control, and wish we shouldn't try to control those. If you are a church leader or a youth worker want to encourage you that this 38% that are the habitual's. We talk about. We really want to focus these practices on them. There really the opportunity that we have. We spent a lot of energy worrying about those that are already walking away.
We have a real opportunity that are coming into our programs that are welcoming us in right now those of the groups that we need to really be looking at. With these five practices. So let me explain the background behind the research first, and that I have Mark describe these five practices, but as I said we've been studying all the disconnections among young people. The reason that young people walk away from faith for a long time that we really want to understand what helps connect these 10% are most resilient so we put people in different buckets. We analyze the data, we interviewed nearly 1500 individuals across those four groups that we been talking about this week we did was really one isolate one of the practices that make a difference with those resilient disciples, and so these are photos, but they are guidelines and guardrails for us as parents to pursue right so what are they Mark okay and were to give these to you in a very high high-level way. So it's important to understand the context for the rights of these are big ideas as the detail underneath them is really where you start seeing the work okay. Parents get ready okay so the first thing is experiencing Jesus this idea that I'm clearing away the clutter religious clutter that exists in the world today in the church to really meet with Christ meaningful relationships. I'm around people that I enjoy being with and I aspire to become cultural discernment's idea that I can apply the word of God to the world around me and navigated make sense of it. Vocational discipleship is idea that my work is a part of the way I express my faith and live it out.
There's not a disconnect between what I do 9 to 5 and who I am as a Christian correct it's not compartmentalized it's an extension of who God's called me to be and then countercultural mission. This idea that I know that I was a Christian. I'm to be living counter to the ways of this world and that sometimes and calls calls me to take epic moments of trust right trusting God rather than the conventions of this world for the good around that that list the five is powerful and your book faith for exiles is that that's the heart of the book is to talk about these five things go back to the first one the experiencing Jesus are we talking about a phenomenological experience are we talking about their needs to be a spirit in the room that were aware over what what is the experience of Jesus mean they'll talk about that a little bit and you one of the interesting things. I'm glad you felt the power of those five is when I present this to a lot of pastors, though, say oh we do all that, but maybe I don't know that vocational discipleship thing is the rest of it. What were doing and I'm like you are doing some of that but we probably aren't doing it as well as we think we are right just like we can say you know love is important while we probably are doing some loving things we probably could go a lot deeper and fuller in our lives are these in order to his number one number one, there's not really any order, to them, but it makes sense to me theologically will have experiencing Jesus a meaningful relationships is one into because they map on the two great commandments to love the Lord your God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves and and I'll just add here because I think this is this is a part of what you are saying we need to be all enemies, not just a little bit if you give a person a little bit of a disease you inoculate them against the disease right and so we need to be completely infected by all five of these.
There's great power in not just inoculation against but the follow-on guy got the disease.
You also think it's easy to listen to needs by someone else in mind. Like all my kids should be doing this are my husband.
My husband linking this to listen to this for ourselves.
Okay so we have variance in Jesus explained to me what that means yes in one of the interim things we did was when the first things I did when I got the raw data back is is is looking through.
I want to find out what is the age that these different groups are saying that they consciously became a Christian so you know that moment that they knew they were a Christian and was really interesting is that resilience marked that age a little bit later in their childhood than the prodigal's and the nomads by about six years where it's going on because when I read that your book that jumped off the page yesterday that that is not what you hear. It's it's not winter, the better the younger the better and you obviously and I'm I gave my life to Christ. Just before the age of five and it stuck. So there's no reason to doubt younger conversions by think we need to allow God to work in the lives of our children and not try to force something to happen because what we can see here's we can actually socialize our kids to Christianity rather than actually helping them experience Jesus and that's where I think if you notice these five factors working together just as you said above that if a person has an experience of Jesus, but they don't have the mind of cultural discernment or they don't work out their faith or vocational discipleship is not alive in their relationships or it's not sacrificial in terms of countercultural mission.
These five things really work well together they have to work together our life with Christ and in our relationship upwards. Our relationship with others. Our relationship of our heart and our mind and are on the work of our hands and the work in the world. So all five of these areas.
What we find is that people that are deficient in more than all five of them are deficient in their faith and it's it's not a test that we give them but that if our faith in Christ doesn't work itself out in how we relate to others how we think about the world how we think about our work, how we think about our mission that is not itself a kind of Christianity that anyone wants to follow and I think that's what many young people are rejecting is the sort of halfhearted one-dimensional forms of faith that you follow Jesus.
I gave my life to him but but nothing else really change nothing is really asked of me by the church. Our kids prayed printers when they were little and down talking about the advertising and because they said we'd like to get baptized think it was like this disciple then and wait until they get baptized think this is meaningful like we want to do this.
This is our own faith. This is an appearance. This is not the first, as I know this isn't good though she was all for me that they showed some interest in again.
I was like, let's let it be their decision and then it didn't happen for years and years and then they go in Israel or somewhere and come back and to get baptized. Which was great. I think what you just modeled there and described as a very healthy, but the right kind attention for parents to have for you know if you're a single parent home the sense that you're trying to push her kids into the category being Christian and that's something we're learning so much with the generation a lot of research there were now seeing is that then want to be emotionally manipulated. In fact, one of the things it's really heartbreaking for me as a researcher is to hear the stories of young people who say I made this like weird commitment at a camp or in an environment and I just I feel like is a look back now, five years ago or 10 years ago is that they set these conditions in which my heart was due to be in no manipulated towards a certain decision and so we we have to be really careful like this. A lifetime decision so I really applaud you guys for working that out in Europe in your relationship with your kids. And even though it's hard for us as parents because we wanted like to the kids into the Christian camp here. Sometimes it's rising out of fear and how many of us have heard somebody sure their testimony is an adult and they would say why prayed a prayer when I was six, but his friend then they go on to talk about a time later in life when their faith really became alive for them and what was going on spiritually and you know if they had died from one point of the other. What's the truth I won't get into that because I don't know them. The mind of God.
Only God knows the heart of a child, but I do know that we want is we want there to be analyzed faith in a child I remember guest on family life today who said the same five-year-old who says I want asked Jesus in my heart says. And when I grow up I want to be a dinosaur right and as a five-year-old prayer to that's how you're thinking now. It could be as it was for you mark a genuine profession.
One of our kids prayed at the age of four and walked with Jesus.
The rest of her life right so we've seen that happen for sure, but there are a lot of kids who prayed the prayer at four and when they're in junior high. They're not sure that that's what means anything to them anymore, just entries your sharing your baptism story.
I had that same experience my parents.
The church want to be baptize my parents said no, let's not do that and as time went on I and the one who approached them about being baptized and will say this, you know, when you're when you're young like that you give like your tadpole right and a tadpole as a head and a tail and lives in the water and you give her that idea.
I know you as a threat, you give yourself your tadpole self to the Lord is getting better and you get the legs and humility go in and out of the water always in environments and is almost like you then have to say, okay, I give all of this to you as well. Lord write like I I dedicate this to you as well and I think that for me was kind of the progression of giving my four-year-old self to the Lord and then a later time, giving the rest of that to the Lord as a completion but not a unit I don't think it made the book tithing daily.
This he will have a first let me let me give you an example of how differently these resilience individuals are experiencing Jesus just by the number can remember each one of these numbers represent a life that God loves so it's really important that we understand that don't have others resilience case.
We asked them. I believe living in relationship with Jesus is the only way to find fulfillment in life.
90% of resilience said that's true for me. Only 49% of habitual said that was true for them and 21% of nomads cc kind of the difference in terms of their experience of Jesus. My relationship with Jesus brings me deep joy and satisfaction. 90% of resilience 48% of habitual so half this isn't like resilience or 7% more in almost every situations double-digit percentage points differences between resilience experience and the habitual's experience talked about meaningful relationships being key and will probably not be able to dive in all five of these, and this is where people can get your book faith reconciles and look deeply at this but I remember when my kids were growing up. I used to say to them. I want you to identify somebody who is 5 to 10 years older than you, who you would look at and say I would like my life to look like their life when I'm there age and then figure out how they got to where they are.
I was conscious of the fact that they needed some modeling and they needed some people who cared about them beyond mom and me. People who they could point to and say yeah this is this is what I'm grown for when you talk about meaningful relationships.
Role modeling is a part of that isn't it's a huge part of it and I think one of the most practical things that moms and dads can do out of this to you can't make your kids connect to Jesus unique and pride by an environment that the one thing you can do is invite other men and women into your home and surround your kids with these great examples in relationships and one of things that we found by once again wide margins is that resilience had much stronger relationships. They had people that were adults in their life that they felt were investing in them. They had people that they felt they could be honest with about their spiritual journey. They had people that they admired in their church that they want to be like just like what you suggested and by almost 40 to 50 percentage points difference between the habitual's and the situation so huge difference relationally.
So I a pastor say hey our church is all about relationships. Unlike show me how you're really connecting those younger people of those older people that something that moms and dads do and you know we don't invite people over door homes anymore. We don't have those things and that's where I really got to know the men and women in our church and they invested in me and help me think about my life spiritually, even when some of them went off the rails.
I saw the grace of God in their lives and I think that's a really important thing we can discount invite somebody over your house this week. A mature believer in your house this week W first step in helping your children and you'll notice in this generation. A lot of skepticism about people that are paid to do something or even about the motivations of their parents, we actually see some really interesting social data now where young people are more likely to show trust and affinity with others with their peers or with people online.
In fact, I trust a YouTube channel more than they would trust their youth pastor and so part of what I think tormentors meaningful relationships and and Bob think of such a great decision. We try to do that now in the lives of our kids. Based on this data is how important it is for us to put others in the lives of our kids who don't have the same mixed motives about how Christian my kids turn out right. So the young people now are like yeah?
Parent of course you expect me to be Christian because you're Christian but that's because you know it makes you look good or because you know you be a bit like they sometimes push us in the right ways about our own idols. Don't they that we as parents may want our kids to be Christian, not just because it's the best thing for the because it reflects on us and we don't be shy and ashamed by that. And so having other people around us and around our kids who can help them understand what it means to follow Christ to love them who love Jesus is much as we do, don't have the same sort of you know, weird motivations, perhaps about getting them to be a Christian action helps cut through the clutter. You know, as I think about my three sons now married and grandkids their faith that I think I'd put them in the resilience. It's as much because of Dave and in as it is Rob Frank Ryan John Craig and Dave. Those men portended them in high school and now even now as they're in their 30s, there still porn into them and they found that that is clear you I said it is so critical that somebody else and some of these guys were my age so it isn't just that they're cool and hip and there age.
It said no there live in it in front of them there porn into them and mentoring them it you can't devalue that is that is critical. It's interesting when we look at like younger stories like on Nickelodeon or the dizzy or whatever.
Almost always, the parent or one parent is absent, and the right of Hannah Montana and the interview was talking about the fact that the reason they do this is because it creates more tension for character develop in the story not having those parents present or in the storyline, and I thought about that because almost all of our hero stories their orphans right Superman parents died on krypton. He was adopted. Harry Potter adopted everybody right so W you start looking at India, Peter Parker and Spider-Man Batman parents killers get these are going well this is weird.
Why is this is a part of the storytelling narrative and when our kids are going through that formational years. We are symbolically dead as parents right and this is pressing, you know, we may be speaking truth into their life of me I was the eyes, called the teen whispered church and WBO.
You can have an easy time with your kids I might but I'm the parent of Mike and the whisper your to do so there's kind of a different role displayed there and so I realize as we went through that phase, I needed the men and women of the church to be there to see those people speaking into their life. When the truth that I was speaking to. They weren't hearing, I was symbolically dead to them. I think there's something about how lucky are we that our kids have us as parents because we have all the answers we have the PowerPoint slides and research to prove how deadening the and that this good this goes back to where we started.
Which is, there is no formula. There is no forming the salvation of of a child is a work of God in the child's life and hairs on your knees and pray that there is nothing you can do to make your child a Christian then there is no timeline for nothing. That's the important thing is we need to be patient and allow God to work in their lives.
And just cultivate that soil for them, but not expect and we don't kids go through pain we really don't because we've gone through it and yet sometimes pain is the thing that has drawn us to Jesus and were telling a lot of parents of prodigal's and nomads, their stories, not over yet is not an icon prodigal's and you keep praying and you keep seeking the Lord about what your interaction with them. Looks like and you pray for God to bring somebody into their life was gonna be revolutionary to help point them to the truth.
I just hope moms and dads will will catch a vision for what you've outlined in this book because again while it's not a recipe.
It is a roadmap for the things we can do to help stack the deck and that's the point our kids to an authentic relationship with Jesus to meaningful relationships with others to understand.
You can face cultural headwinds, and here's what it looks like to live counter culturally in the midst of a culture that's going in a different direction. Here's what it looks like for your work to be meaningful as you live it out and here's what it looks like to be on mission and to have God's purposes at the center of of your life in an eye, at the book where where it's going to change were excited about the work you guys have done and I want to share this book with our listers. Thank you guys for being on family life today and and David, thanks for joining us remotely here.
Yeah, my pleasure, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for having us. David and Mark's book is called faith for exiles and you can order your copy online@familylifetoday.com or call one 800 FL today to get a copy of the book again. The title is faith for exiles five ways for a new generation to follow Jesus in digital Babylon by David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock order from us@familylifetoday.com or call to order 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today. You know, looking at the decline of spiritual interest in our culture can be discouraging.
David Robbins, who's the person family life is here with us today. Do you see reason for hope. Absolutely. My primary reason for hope is that I know our faithful God who will continue to reveal himself to the rising generation.
But then I also have a profound hope that, though young people are not living as a culture majority as Christians that I got to enjoy growing up those who are resilient disciples of Jesus can be a prophetic minority in this day I have lived in some secular places like New York City and Western Europe and those who follow Jesus in those places shine like the stars you don't do it because you are supposed to do it you do it because you are emblazoned with passion for Jesus and the word to you as parents and grandparents would be to believe in your kids and believe in the next generation keep interceding for them and keep investing in them learn from them as they learn from you beauty is is that Christ is in them the hope of glory and our kids know it's a complex world that they face and that they're navigating and they understand the need for a holistic, integrated deep faith that speaks to all of life God's kingdom will continue to expand generation after generation through them and so please join us at family life of being a part of pouring into the next generation and platforming the next generation of Christ followers with us well and thank you to those regular listeners who partner with us in this ministry help us reach hundreds of thousands people every day with practical biblical help and hope for their marriage for their family. Your investment in this ministry is really an investment in the lives of so many couples so only parents. We are working hard to effectively develop godly marriages and families and you help make that happen. In fact, we would love this month to say thank you for any financial support you can provide for the ministry. We've got copies of my new book which is called love like you mean it is all about understanding a biblical definition of love in marriage rather than focusing on the cultural definition or superficial definition of love that book is our thank you gift when you make a donation today. We can do that online@familylifetoa.com or you can call to donate one 800, FL, today is the number we are so grateful for those of you who have stood with us in the past and again if you can help with the donation today would love to hear from you. Thanks in advance for whatever you're able to do, not tomorrow. We want to talk about how moms and dads can raise daughters who are strong and confident and courageous. What is that look like Tara Manson's can join us that can tune in and be a part of that conversation. I want to thank our engineer today.
Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson about the pain we will see you back next time for another edition of family life today.
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