The South Carolina Baptist Youth Ministers’ Network got grilled by an atheist at their annual meeting Nov. 14 at First Baptist Church, Columbia.
Not really.
But it appeared that way for a solid half-hour during their morning session when Christian apologist, author and teacher Sean McDowell convincingly role-played an atheist and fielded questions from the gathering of student ministers from around the state. Topics ranged from the reliability of the Bible, to objective morality; irreducible complexity; dark matter, dark energy and the big bang theory; string theory; open and closed systems; and deathbed conversions.
In the process, he enumerated a typical atheist worldview. The discomfort, and even mild tension in the room, was obvious.
This was one of McDowell’s main objectives, he later explained.
“I wanted you to think about where our students are going to be, sitting on a public school campus, challenged by their peers, and especially challenged by their professors, whom they respect; and they won’t be surrounded by fellow believers, and they aren’t trained or prepared,” said the teacher at Capistrano Valley Christian Schools in California. “Their faith is absolutely rocked in that moment. Have we prepared them for that? I want you to sense the urgent need for us to better prepare our kids for that moment.”
He added, “We too easily give them answers, and we don’t demand they think for themselves. The result is between 40 and 50 percent of teenagers walk away from their faith when they get to college.”
Delmar Peet, youth minister at Bethel Baptist Church in Prosperity, said he was especially struck by McDowell’s statement that “ownership [of faith] is found in the struggle.”
“That’s risky,” he concedes. “I don’t want to send my students off to grapple with the tough issues and have them come back having decided to become an atheist. But Sean reminds me I’ve got to help them really have a biblical worldview, but not spoon-feed it to them.”
If the challenge of understanding and responding to skeptics wasn’t enough, McDowell said there were two challenges unique to the current generation of youth.
“First, I don’t think it’s ever been easy to be a teenager,” he says, “but I do think it’s tougher today. What’s unique today is a sense of abandonment by those who are supposed to care for them. As Chap Clark explains in his book, ‘Hurt,’ four out of five teenagers today have no mentor. More than 40 percent were born into non-two-parent homes; in 1960 that was 5 percent. There’s a real relational hurt and need there that wasn’t prevalent in generations before.
“Second – and I think this is the greatest challenge for today’s youth ministers – there are more distractions for students, more voices competing for them than in the past. There’s also more worldview ideas; they’re exposed to much more than in the past, especially through the Internet. It’s harder to help them see the truth of Christianity when there are so many voices challenging it.”
McDowell, therefore, recommends two specific strategies for youth ministers:
? Mentoring. “Get away from a program model; programs don’t transform people. People do. Do whatever you can to find a way to mentor students. Mentor like Jesus did, by example, by living life. If I’m working on my car, I invite someone to help me. I invite them to dinner at my house. I invite them to go with me when I speak somewhere. Truth is really taught in the rhythm of life.”
Teach a biblical worldview: “In a world of competing voices, when a relational need is filled, they will listen to that mentor.” – SCBC