Series: Keeping Your Teens from Walking Away
Dr. Woodrow Kroll
May 11, 2009

Woodrow Kroll: They're turning their backs, they're walking away, and we have to do something about it now! What am I talking about? I'm talking about our Christian teenagers.

Hi, I'm Woodrow Kroll and this is Back to the Bible.

Tami Weissert: I'm Tami Weissert. Let me add my welcome as well. Now, Dr. Kroll, all this week, we're really taking a candid look at Christian youth and the future of the church. And what the research and the statistics are going to show us is that our future looks a little bit bleak unless something changes.

Woodrow Kroll: Yeah, the numbers are really staggering and I think we're all going to be shocked by these statistics. The devil, of course, would love us to believe there isn't such a problem. But there is a problem and just denying it isn't going to make it go away.

Tami Weissert: So, give us some insight into maybe what's causing this large drop-off.

Woodrow Kroll: Yeah, that's the big question. Why are teenagers abandoning their faith once they graduate from high school? Now we do have some answers and we're going to explore those answers all this week right here on Back to the Bible.

Woodrow Kroll: Well, one of the hot topics around the church these days is what do we do with teenagers who are fully involved in their faith while they're in church and high school and yet seem to be walking away as soon as they leave high school. When they graduate from high school, go off to college or into the workforce, they kind of walk away from their faith. And that's a real issue; it's a real problem for parents and for church leaders today.

I want to start today, rather than starting in God's Word which we're going to get to soon, I want to start with The New York Times. We all know The New York Times. Now, I printed off the article so I didn't have to bring the whole paper in here.

Listen to this: This is an article by Laurie Goodstein. It's entitled "Evangelical Christian Leaders Fear Teen Believers Abandoning their Faith." Listen to this: "Despite their packed mega churches, their political clout, and increasing visibility on the national stage, evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.

"Their alarm has been stoked by a claim that if current trends continue only 4 percent of teenagers will be Bible-believing Christians as adults. A sharp decline compared to 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that 65 percent of the World War II generation. While some critics say that the statistics are grossly exaggerated, there is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers."

Let me just say this as an aside: Notre Dame professor, Christian Smith, thinks that the 4 percent number is blown way out of proportion. The number comes from a study that was done by a Southern Baptist leader, Thom Rainer, and it's found in his book The Bridger Generation.

Whether the statistics are true or not here's the issue. I'll continue. Ron Luce, who founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry says, I'm quoting now, "We've become post-Christian America like post-Christian Europe. We've been working as hard as we know how to work, everyone in youth ministry is working hard, but we are losing."

Well that's a . . . that's a pretty stinging article from, of all people, The New York Times. Now, here's what I want you to know. If there was one set of statistics, if there was one person sounding an alarm, we might dismiss that person. If there were two, we might say, "Well, OK. Maybe there is something to it." All this week I'm going to begin every program this week by reading from a different source--another article, a different author--talking about exactly the same problem, citing different surveys, all of which sound strikingly similar.

Now that doesn't mean good things aren't happening. Greg Stier who is the president and founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries, he goes out and he does these "Survive" meetings and thousands of teenagers come to the meetings. They learn how to share their faith with other teenagers.

In an interview with the Christian Post, Stier says this: "Our goal is not just to keep kids from leaving the church, it's to raise up an army of Christian teenagers who are reaching every teenager in their world with the message and mission of Jesus."

Well, of course that is the goal. That's what we're all looking for. But even Greg Stier has to admit the statistics are a bit stunning. And they're coming from a lot of different quarters.

Let me just show you what some of those statistics are. By the way everything you're going to hear today, all the articles I'm going to read this week, all the facts and figures I'll give you this week, you can find all of them on our Web site, backtothebible.org. So if you don't get something you wanted just come to our Web site; it will be there.

Let me quote several of these groups. First of all the Barna Group; you know them because they've been doing surveys for oh, 20 or something years now. The Barna Group found out that two out of three Christian teens will leave the church after they graduate from high school. Two out of three.

That means then, Mom, if you have three teens at home in church today statistically two of them won't be in church after they leave high school. Two of your kids won't be in church after high school.

Lifeway Research; Lifeway is a division of the Southern Baptist Convention (it's their research division). Lifeway Research shows that more than two-thirds of all kids who are in church regularly during high school are going to opt out of church after they graduate from high school. Two-thirds.

Now let me think now. Barna says two out of three, Lifeway says two-thirds. Two out of three, two-thirds. We're talking about the same number of kids. Two different surveys done by two different groups telling us exactly the same thing.

After a thousand young people left the British church, a thousand every week in Great Britain--one thousand teenagers every week leaving church in Great Britain--Youth for Christ in Great Britain decided they needed to survey their teen population to find out why. This is what they found out.

Only 15 percent of teens in the UK said that they left church because they were bored. You know, we all think that kids want to opt out of church because church is so boring. It wasn't boredom that drove the kids from church. Three out of four said that they left the church because they were simply too busy to participate in church activities.

Their own life and the things that interested them more than church interested them drew them away from church. In fact, 47 percent said that family pressure and peer pressure took them away from church. It wasn't how boring the pastor was or how boring the church was; it was that other things got in the way of church. Boyfriends and girlfriends--40 percent of these kids said a non-Christian boyfriend drew me away from church. Or a non-Christian girlfriend.

In 2002 the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life determined that (are you ready for this?) 88 percent of teenagers who are involved in youth group throughout the four years of their high school, 88 percent of them will walk away from the faith once they graduate from high school.

Now I said the numbers are astounding. The statistics are just . . . they blow you away. We say to ourselves, "Can these numbers possibly be true?" And you notice I've quoted about four or five sources today already. I think once you see a pattern developing through four or five different sources in multiple countries you have to say, "We have to take this seriously."

Now, here at Back to the Bible we do take this very seriously. I want to come back in just a minute and look with you into the Book of Deuteronomy because Deuteronomy helps us address the issue of what we can do in order to help our kids want to stay involved after they leave high school, after they go to college or into the workforce.

I'll be right back. If you want to get your Bible and turn to Deuteronomy 6, join me in just a minute right there.

Tami Weissert: This is Back to the Bible. If you'd like to get a copy of this series on DVD or CD, visit us online at backtothebible.org.

With so many teens walking away from their faith, we're forced to get a grip on the real problem--the problem that we just don't understand the importance of the Bible in our lives. Well, Dr. Kroll has had his fingers on the pulse of this crisis for a long time now. In fact, he wrote a book about it called Taking Back the Good Book: How America Forgot the Bible and Why it Matters to You.

Listen, Dr. Kroll is so passionate about the message of this book that we're offering it free to each and everyone of our new callers! So, if you've never contacted us before, this is your chance to get a free hard-cover copy of Taking Back the Good Book by Woodrow Kroll. Now this offer is only good through Thursday; that's May 25th. So give us a call at 1-800-759-2425. Again, if you're a new caller we'll send you Taking Back the Good Book free of charge; we'll even cover the shipping. We're looking forward to hearing from you--all our new callers!

Ryan: My name is Ryan.

Woodrow Kroll: Hi, Ryan. Thanks for the question.

Ryan: Yeah, in the church today it stresses, OK,  first of all why is church so important? I mean, it stresses so much that we can have a personal relationship with God. If we're able to have that on our own without going to church why would we need to participate in a whole body of Believers?

Woodrow Kroll: Very, very good question. In fact a lot of people are asking that question right now. What we're going to get to later on in the week is one of the issues why church is important, but let me just tell you one of the things and that is we do best in growing in our personal relationship with God in a community of other people.

You know, if we're left as an island to ourselves temptation comes into our lives, all kinds of distractions come into our life, and statistically we can prove that we all grow better together than we grow individually. That's why church is important for people.

Well, now today we've looked at some pretty drastic statistics on teenagers walking away from their faith. The question I want to ask is this: Why is it important that we get kids early into the Word of God, keep them through their teenage years, keep them through the twenty something years, the thirty something years, and even to old age? Why is it important that we get involved in the Word early on in our life?

Let me take you to Deuteronomy 6 to answer that question. This is a passage you're very familiar with. Deuteronomy 6 let me start at the very first verse.

"Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land in which you're going over, to posses it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all the statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up."

Now let me just stop there for a minute because there are some things that jump right off the page when I look at this passage; in fact, seven of them. I want you to note these seven things.

Number one, did you notice that Moses claims that the Lord God commanded him to teach these things to the people of Israel? And I think that's important. You see that right up there in the very first verse. "This is what the Lord commanded of Moses."

The reason that's important is that teaching God's Word not only to the next generation but to each generation is not an option. This is not something we do if we want to do it, if we feel like doing it, if people think it's important that we do it.

This is a command of God. So number one, this strikes me that this is not something we have that's optional. Godly people teach people God's Word.

Secondly, notice teaching the commandments of God has to always lead to doing them. Again, verse one he talks about teaching them and making them a part of your life. Doing them when you enter the land. Teaching is wasted if we just teach and don't actually do. This is the same principle that James gets to in the New Testament and that's living the foot life you know. Getting it from your head to your heart and from your heart all the way down to your feet. Living out exactly what you say you believe.

Now, thirdly notice this. The purpose of teaching the Word of God is to learn to fear or revere God. He says that right there in verse two. We do this - - we teach the Word of God so that we learn to revere the Author.

You know, it's the fear of the Lord that 's the beginning of wisdom and you can find that so many times in the Psalms. Maybe a dozen Psalms talk about that, the Book of Proverbs talks about it, for five times itself.

So what we have here is a principle that says here to me that the reason why I read God's Word is not so I can look for answers. The reason I read God's Word is not so I can figure out what my problem is and how to overcome my problem. The reason I read God's Word is to provide a basis to live my life. And if I miss that basis to live my life I have all kinds of questions about God, why God does what He does, why He doesn't do something I want Him to do that will be ill-founded questions simply because they don't have the right foundation.

So, I don't read God's Word looking answers, I read God's Word looking for God. That's what he says, verse two.

Now, look at verse five. The center core of the Word of God is the great commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your might. By the way, that's exactly what Jesus responded when the Pharisees and the Sadducees asked Him, "What is the greatest commandment of all? How can we sum up all the commandments of the Old Testament? I mean, there were so many. How can we sum them up?"

Jesus said it's a piece of cake. The easiest way to sum up all the commandments of the Old Testament are in these words. Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your might. And the second commandment is like that, Love your neighbor as yourself. See, Jesus had a way of taking what seems to be complicated and synthesizing it in such a way that it's understandable even for a five year old. Or a 15 year old, or a 51 year old, or a 91 year old.

That's why it's important we get into God's Word early because the things that are most important for us to learn out of God's Word are easy to understand even when we're children.

Now I've said that there are several things that pop off the page here. Look down at verse six, here's another one. And that's that the commands of God, the commands of the Lord are first to be in the hearts of the parents.

One of the things I want to talk about later on this week is one of the reasons teenagers walk away from the faith is they see their parents faith is not very vital. It's a charade. Parents are living lives that kids can look right through. And they say, "I don't want to be like that" so they abandon the wrong thing.

Instead of abandoning a charade of faith they abandon the faith. And that's what I think he's talking about here. We as parents have to own our beliefs before we pass them on to our children. We can't pass on adequately to our children or our grandchildren something that we don't own--something not part of our heart, something not part of our makeup.

Now, look down at the next verse, verse seven. The commands of the Lord are then to be taught to the children. Oh that sounds so awful doesn't it? Teach my kids something. Now, our kids are growing in God and I tried to teach them something. And time will tell if any of it took. In fact it already has shown me that some of it has taken.

But here's the interesting thing. The word that is used there for "taught" is the Hebrew word shanan, it means "to hone or to sharpen." We're not talking about hitting a truth one time and walking away from it. It's just almost like a catechism this is like religious instruction in the home by the parents to the children on an ongoing basis.

Sharpening, honing, making sharp their understanding and their ability to think through the things that God has to say in His Word. That's what teaching our children means. But notice there's a second thing here and that's also found in verse seven.

He says that the commands of the Lord are to be the topic of our family conversation. Not only are we to teach our children these things but we're to converse about these things. And the word changes there in Hebrew. This is not the word to hone; this is the word for just normal conversation.

Now, here's one of the toughest things. We parents always have a difficulty finding things to talk to our kids about because we live in two different planets. At least our kids will tell us we live on two different planets. But here's the neat thing. If I spend time in God's word with teenagers, teenagers have good minds. They have honest questions and normal conversation during the course of the day is the best way to communicate truth.

Yes, it is important that we as parents sit down and hone the understanding of our kids. But in addition to honing it we have to just talk about it. I mean when we're sitting down when we're rising up, everything in life is an opportunity to teach. Teachable moments happen to us all the time.

I think this is what he's saying in Proverbs 22:6. This is a biblical principle and here it is: Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Now all this week we're talking about kids departing from the faith. And look, let's face it mom and dad, you and I have a lot of responsibility when it comes to training our children. But even if we do sometimes our kids walk away.

I mean, they have a will just the way we have a will. We cannot force our will over their will. Oh, we can, but once they get out of high school, pt! (sound effect), they're gone. You know, and their will is their own will.

That's why it's important not to enforce the Word of God on them, it's important to converse about the Word of God with them. The more they imbibe God's Word the less apt they are to walk away from the faith because when their faith is challenged they won't be looking to mom and dad's answers or mom and dad's faith. They're going to be looking to what they own by themselves.

So here's my advice to you if you're a parent today. You've got little ones running around the house, start now! Start young. Start early, and stay with it. Parents, not church, is the key place for kids to learn what the faith is all about.

And if you're a parent today God bless you! Because you have perhaps the most difficult job there is in the world. And if you're a parent of teenagers today you have one of the greatest treasures God has ever given you. Stay with it, even during teenage years, stay with it!

Why?

Because the Bible says this: The more we talk about these things, the more we hone these skills, the more we converse about them, the more they become a part of our kids. And you don't want your kids to have your faith, you want them to have their own faith.

I'll be back in just a minute to wrap up today.

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Well, Dr. Kroll, it's pretty clear that parents, grandparents, family members in general, just play a critical role in keeping Christian youth walking with the Lord. And you made a statement earlier that parents have to own their own faith before they can pass it on or teach it to their kids. That's very true and I'm guessing there are some parents listening today, watching today, just saying, "I'm not sure that I've done that."

So how can they maybe do a little bit of a self-assessment and even if they're doing a great job you can always improve. So give us some words of encouragement of what we - - what parents can do just to do a little better.

Woodrow Kroll: Yeah, you know, before I can be worried about my kids I need to be worried about me. And if I don't own what God gives me in His Word I'm going to be pretty ineffective in trying to get my kids to own it.

So I can't blame them if they don't own it, if they don't see me doing that as well.

Now, how do you do that? Well, I think one thing you do is you recognize the two great questions of life. You answer those two questions correctly.

Number one, there is a God and number two, I am not He. You know? And if God reveals Himself in His Word then the more I spend time in His Word and the more I believe what I read here, the more I own what God has to give to me.

And I think one of the reasons parents have a difficulty owning their own faith and trying to pass it on to their kids is they're not sure about their own faith, you know. They haven't spent enough time with God in a relationship with God to build the kind of relationship that is strong and can survive teenagers. You know?

Basically it's a question of, Am I going to say, "This is God's Word and I believe it?" or am I going to say, "I'm not sure." If I'm not sure I should never be critical of my kids who are not sure, because they've seen that in me.

Tami Weissert: OK. Well, we saw some bad news today but uh, there's some hope out there. And tomorrow we'll look at a little bit more of some statistics, uh, and a little bit of hope.

Woodrow Kroll: Yeah. One of the things we've learned from the Center for Bible Engagement, our own research corporation right here in Lincoln, is kids are not reading this Book. They're not reading their Bibles and one of the reasons may be that parents aren't reading their Bibles.

But tomorrow we're going to look at some more statistics. How do you keep kids from walking away from their faith? Well, if they're not building faith in God's Word it will be very easy to walk away from it. So, our subject matter for tomorrow is How do you get kids involved in the Word of God. That's a pretty heavy subject.

If you're a parent or a grandparent I think you're going to want to be here tomorrow.

Well, thanks to all you for being a part of our discussion group today. Nice to have you here. Thanks for you joining us from home as well. Always wonderful to have you as a part of this group too. God bless you.

My name is Woodrow Kroll. I'll see you tomorrow. My prayer is that you would have a good and godly day, for of what lasting value is a good day if it's also a godly day?