Volume 31, Issue 1
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Pine Street Life
January 1, 2011
Teens’ Faith By Rev. Alexander L. Lang
Inside This Issue Session Notes . . . . . . . . . . 3 Financial Picture. . . . . . . 3 DDB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Church Family. . . . . . . . . 6 January Calendar . . . . . . 7 January Scripture. . . . . . . 8
January Dates at a Glance Jan 2 ������������ Bagels & Belief
(p.2)
Jan 8 ������������Men’s Breakfast
(p. 3)
Jan 16 ������������ Tickets on sale
for Valentine Cabaret (p.4)
Jan 16 ����� Pine StreetWalkers
(p. 4)
Jan 17 ���� Office/Boyd Closed
for MLK Holiday
PSL deadline
Articles, photos and items of interest for the February issue of Pine Street Life are due by January 15, 2011. Please e-mail to Sue Black at BL3COL@aol.com
Kendra Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, just released a new book entitled Almost Christian that documents the faith of the most recent generation of young Christians. Dean interviewed more than 3300 American youth ages 13-17 and asked them one simple question: “Can you describe your faith?” What Dean found both shocked and depressed her. Although three out of every four American teenagers claim to be Christian, the majority are indifferent and inarticulate about their faith. This includes teens from all walks of life — Catholic to Protestant, liberal and conservative, poor and wealthy. The most common answer given by teens when asked to articulate their faith is that God wants them “to feel good and do good.” Kendra calls this “moralistic therapeutic deism.” In other words, God is not very involved in
the world, but desires that people act morally and enjoy the fruits of a comfortable life. Critics of Dean’s study retort that teenagers are not very articulate about any subject, so faith should not be highlighted as something out of the ordinary. However, Dean found that the same teens who could barely utter a coherent sentence about their faith were able to speak very intelligently concerning politics, money, sex and family issues. Thus, Dean concluded that faith was something of anomaly in the lives of American teens — they know faith should be important, but they don’t know why faith is important. What Dean has observed in teens is something that I have known for many years now. The majority of teenagers and most adults lack a coherent understanding of their faith. I would argue, however, that this is nothing new. In the late 1600’s, when the Protestant Reformation had fully taken root in the majority of eastern (See Teens on page 2)
KOALA
K
by Cheryl A. Goode
IDS — kids were special to Jesus. We read in Matthew 19:13-15 that children were being brought to him so that he might pray for them. The disciples scolded the parents bringing them and, in essence, wanted them to take the children away from Jesus. Jesus knew that children were the future, and could pass on the faith to others as well as adults could. He gathered the children around him and prayed for them. As adults we tend to think of children as little people who can’t contribute to the adult world. Children are open, honest and have many talents to offer. Therefore, as Christians and members of the faith community we need to help children grow into their faith. (See Koala on page 4)