The postmodern mind-set of our young people presents
an incredible challenge for their leaders. These youth
look beyond truth alone to the outworking of the
truth in the lives of the people around them. As a result,
not only do we find a challenge for the way we live out our
lives, but we also find an even greater challenge for the role
we play as leaders. We cannot ignore the underlying culture
within our sphere of influence. We find that this culture
makes an impact on the faith of our young people.
This generation is ready to make a difference, and yet
never has the loss of our youth been greater. In 2007, Life-
Way Research released the findings of the first highly credible
numbers related to the loss of youth from the church.
This study concluded that 70 percent of 23- to 30-year-olds
stopped going to church regularly for a minimum of a year
between ages 18 and 22. It is apparent to many in Christian
education that we have not solved the problem.
Over the past two years, I have had the privilege of interacting
with more than 800 high school students about their
faith and the reasons so many leave the church. To understand
the opportunity buried within the challenge, we must
first understand and value the perspective of our youth. I
found this very difficult at first because it was so easy to
dismiss their reasons for leaving the church as excuses. Yet
as I listened, I was confronted with the pervasiveness of the
issues our youth cited. This pervasiveness presented me with
a new set of challenges that I believe we must face as educators,
parents, and pastors if we are going to develop lifelong
disciples.
God used the group exercises and individual interviews
to break my heart for our youth. I was forced to confront the
genuineness of our youth and admit that they have valid
reasons for leaving the church. A vast majority of the reasons
that students cited for leaving were not tied to individual
faith issues but stemmed from the dysfunction within the
culture of their Christian community. The dysfunction creates
a contradiction between the truth they are being taught
and the reality of what they are experiencing, discouraging
their hearts.
Our teaching has affected their minds, but the disconnect
between their minds and their hearts is abundantly
clear. What we are seeing is the logical outcome of hearts
burdened by communities that load students with many
spiritual expectations, resulting in a sense of failure on the
part of youth. Our youth have cited 30 community issues
for leaving. Of those issues, 3 concern me greatly: (1) sin
avoidance—“all we hear about is avoiding sin, yet I am sinning
and no one is helping me deal with the guilt”;
(2) being controlled—“my existence is managed by others’
rules and expectations”; and (3) hypocrisy—“most of the
students around me are living a dual life.”
Sin avoidance. Clearly we want our youth to avoid the
scars of sin. The challenge for us comes in understanding
that when they hear our messages to avoid sin, they often
perceive them as “sin intolerance.” The more we tell them
that they can avoid sin while they find themselves struggling
with it, the more they feel like failures and conclude that
they must hide their sin from parents and leaders.
Expectations. Often, people think of expectations as positive
motivators. We asked 200 students to list the expectations—
coming from their church, parents, or school—that
they needed to meet in order to consider themselves “good
Christians.” They listed 55 expectations, illustrating that
they do not believe that the yoke of Jesus is easy, nor His
burden light. Instead, they see direct contradictions between
some spoken expectations, such as “avoid sinful people” and
“share your faith with your non-Christian friends.” And they
see contradictions between what they are told is expected
of them and what they see in the Bible, such as “no parties”
versus times when Jesus and His disciples went to parties.
by jeff schadt
living as a christian in a
Postmodern World
Living as a Christian in a Postmodern World | CSE Volume 12 Number 1 | 2008–2009 15
Dual life. As we followed up on hypocrisy, asking youth
if it existed among them, they said, “Oh yeah!” The students
defined the hypocrisy they witnessed as “leading an intentionally
deceptive dual life”—in other words, “knowing what
to say and how to act in front of their parents and leaders in
order to look good and keep the peace, but when away from
these influences, living a totally different life.” They indicated
that they work together to get around our rules and
restrictions effectively. In these sessions, students repeatedly
reported that they believed that 55 percent to 95 percent of
the students in their youth group or Christian school were
leading an intentionally deceptive dual life.
Together these factors dull their hearts. Sending underclassmen
into this culture is a recipe for failure because the
majority of students around them are leading a dual life
and are often reveling in the victory of besting the unjust,
unbiblical, or unrealistic rules and expectations. This victory
prevents our students from learning from the negatives
attached to these experiences, causing them to return again
and again, amassing guilt that they do not understand how
to handle and which they will not reveal for fear of consequences.
Thus, their hearts grow numb.
The absence of an effective Christian culture—one
that encourages and allows our youth to fail and to address
guilt—forces our youth to walk in the darkness, a situation
that Scripture indicates leads to blindness and confusion.
We often hear that we learn more from our failures than our
successes. I have found this to be true in my spiritual life
as well. Yet often our fear of potential harm and a desire to
protect students alter our culture. Our ministries teach grace,
but our leadership culture often finds failure and sin unacceptable.
We design church and school cultures to protect
our youth, but far too often those cultures take on the role
of the Holy Spirit in the lives of students as we become the
ones who convict them of sin with our teaching, guide them
by our watchful eyes, and attempt to motivate them through
consequences. Yet as I look at how Christ transformed the
disciples, I see that He did so by replacing the Law’s focus on
external motivation through required sacrifice for failure,
with targeting the heart and internal motivation through
love and grace for His disciples.
The greatest growth and changes I have seen in the lives
of youth have come when they felt convicted by God and
understood the love, acceptance, and genuine encouragement
they would receive from me if they voluntarily walked
into the light. They did so because there was no fear of consequences;
they had been taught that the consequence was
the weight on their chest of guilt placed on their hearts by
God. They had been taught and had witnessed that through
the love, acceptance, and grace of God they would receive
freedom from the burden of the guilt and have the power
for change. In that mind-set, they walked into the light and
sought encouragement and help.
It is vital to remember that soon our students will be
on their own, no longer motivated by our potential consequences.
Instead, they will need to be internally motivated
to live their lives in the light. Our failure to teach in a way
that results in internal motivation and to offer such an environment
where spiritual growth can occur sets our students
up to walk away from the church and handicaps them in
their walk with the Lord for years to come. Yes, sin carries
its own consequences, but I find no example of a time when
Jesus inflicted earthly consequences as a source of motivation
for His disciples. Rather, He talked of heavenly rewards
and eternal consequences.
Having seen so many numb hearts and broken spirits,
and having heard too many tragic stories, I am convinced
that we as leaders must reexamine the statement by Jesus
about His yoke being easy and His burden light. We must
understand that the disciples did not jump up and say they
were ready to go heal the sick, feed the poor, and speak of
Him, but rather likely responded that they did not know
enough, were not good enough, and could not do it. Jesus
must have met that response with a tremendous amount of
reassurance and encouragement, saying that they could do it
and that He was with them—rather than focusing them on
their sin, which He would erase on the cross. When the disciples
scattered in fear upon the arrest of Jesus and when Peter
denied Him three times, did Jesus return with consequences
and scorn for the disciples? Did He remove Peter as the rock
of the church? Or rather, did Jesus quietly encourage them,
meet with them, and then issue these “failed disciples” the
Great Commission? This is the type of leader who motivates
me. How about you?
Jeff Schadt, MABL, is the founder of Youth Transition
Network, a coalition of our nation’s largest youth and college
ministries working together to prepare, motivate, and
transition our youth. He served with Campus Crusade, and
he was the business development manager for TimeSystems
as well as the president of AppointmentZone Inc.
16 2008–2009 | CSE Volume 12 Number 1 | Living as a Christian in a Postmodern World
our ministries teach grace, but our leadership culture often finds failure and sin unacceptable.
