Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Pastoral Care


Who is Knocking on Your Kid's Door?

A story about many young people leaving the church has been widely reported and written on. I am appalled by the results of the research the Barna group did with youth. The kids told Barna that the church was not a safe place to raise serious questions about God, sex, friends, heaven, hell and so on.

If Christian kids cannot ask those questions at church or home, where do they ask them? Why not send them to a nice secular college where they can take a "Sex Education Class" and learn all the important things about sex without guilt or shame.

When I was Associate Dean at the University of Cincinnati, the sex ed classes were notorious for attracting upper class men who attended the first few classes where freshman and sophomore girls were being quickly cleansed of any sexual inhibitions. Those very nice older guys always made themselves available to help the young girls learn all about real sex without love.

World Magazine has an excellent article on the research about why young people are fed up with uncaring and intellectually sloppy Christian leaders. I posted it on my Face Book Page as well.

In our research on how churches are ministering to families with a special needs child we found the same inattention and lack of support. Our moms and dads said no one ever visited them or prayed for their child or them. One Dad told us his church was recruiting members to go overseas but had never visited his daughter to pray and never asked about the family.

Why are the children ignored at the place Jesus established to care for them?

No comments: