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the resolution
committee
by ron jackson
You have to love the Southern Baptist
Convention! Just when you think they're getting it, they
pull a stunt confirming their resurgent resources for
remaining clueless. Just when their gills are awash in
freshly brewed java until you think they'd have no choice
but to wake up and smell the coffee, they manage a
comatose slumber which would make Rip Van Winkle look
like an insomniac.
Seems that someone on the Resolutions
Committee noticed an alarming statistic: eighty-eight
percent of children raised in evangelical homes leave
church by age eighteen and never come back. Finally
jerked to attention by this bugle-blast, our leadership
has decided that we should...blame the public school
system! That's right. In a proposed resolution which
rivals any mad mullahs call for jihad, delegates to this
summers Southern Baptist Convention may be asked to
affirm that our overworked and under paid educators are
"the enemies of God." If our kids are leaving
church, its the schools fault, society's fault, somebody's
fault. Well, it certainly cant be ours. Can it?
The figures on the defection of our
youth are, of course, sobering, but perhaps we should
look elsewhere for the reason. Milton Friedman writes in
Generation to Generation,
Today there is much important
discussion among concerned people about schools,
neighborhoods, etc., and their effect on families.
But the focus on how society affects the family,
rather than on how the family affects the family,
can be self-defeating....When parents focus on
societal influence it actually serves to increase
their anxiety even though it helps them avoid
personal responsibility.
In other words, if our kids are bailing
on church, perhaps we should ask, not what is luring
them away, but what is driving them out? Dan Kimball's book The Emerging Church calls for a recognition
among Christian congregations that young people live on
the other side of a cultural continental divide. Citing
statistics which under gird those of the Resolutions
Committee, Kimball argues:
For others, if you bristle and brush
off postmodernism as a fad or buzzword that has no
impact on the church, then the question I need to
ask you is, Where are all the younger people in your
church? You may have Christian young people who have
been raised in your church, but what about the
population of emerging generations in your
community?
The loss of our children is frightening,
and when we are afraid it is always comforting to
transfer responsibility to a demonized other.
Comforting, but not particularly helpful. Perhaps we
need to look at the way we worship, and the way we live
what we claim to believe, and ask if the answer lies
closer to home than home schooling. Our youth yearn for
a spirituality which seeks troubled honesty over easy
answers, and submission to mystery instead of a triumph
over theology. As long as we communicate that "Be
like Jesus" means "Be like us," I don't think it will matter much where they learn the ABCs.
But then, I was educated in
"officially godless" public schools where I
received an "anti-Christian" education
(quoting the proposed resolution both times), so you
cant go by me.
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