Issues Paper Intro

The youths of our various churches have been deserting the religions they’ve grown up with, their faith deteriorating at an alarming speed. You great leaders hail from a generation renowned for its faithfulness, but now watch the youth of this day from a perceived detached and misunderstanding perspective. You probably have heard and thought that the best way to reach out to these young adults and to keep them from falling away is to make your religious meetings less boring and cooler, you and your preachers seem more laid back and hip, to provide pizza at your newly organized and fun social gatherings. While that may indeed motivate a select few to show up every once in a while, that course of action will do very little indeed to direct the youth back to church. The youth aren’t looking for parties, as they can easily find those. What they want is solace and peace. Growing up, I, a youth of this age, had both religious and non-religious friends. However, both groups were distinctly separate parts of my life. I remember struggling between doing what I was taught to be morally right, to stand for what I believed, to not do anything to disgrace my religion; or doing what my non-religious friends thought would be fun but was wrong, what society said was acceptable and desirable, what science and the secular claimed they had proven to be unarguably correct. My struggles were real and were present nearly every day. There were times that I thought to myself that it would be easier to go on without religion in my life and that when I was old enough, I would stop going to church. Thankfully, my testimony solidified and my faith strengthened and I am still here today. Unfortunately, that is not the same with all the young adults of today. The truth of the matter is that religion is portrayed as the enemy. Science, politics, society are all seemingly at war with religion. And our youth feel like they’re caught up in the crossfire, stuck between what appears easy and what seems right. They feel torn between the two sides, as both are a part of them. But they find it easier to leave religion than it is to leave everything else. Because while society attacks doctrinal practices and science tries to disprove scripture and evolution contradicts creation and peers reject morals, religion doesn’t counterattack but instead defends itself on all sides. It is so much easier to be safely behind the swinging swords than to be holding up the shield against them. While religion is greatly polarized with science, society, peers, and even personal desires, we can help the youth find solace, peace, and compatibility with the rest of the world.