When I look at the following statistics, it becomes clear that many children and teens are learning about God without truly knowing Him. I can’t help but to wonder how we got here and how we can reset the course, so today’s young people have a clearer understanding of Jesus and the gospel. This places a holy responsibility on those of us who lead kids and teens in faith formation.
According to American Worldview Inventory 2021 (AWVI 2021), a national survey from Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University conducted by Dr. George Barna, America’s most popular worldview is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). MTD was first introduced in 2005 by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in their book Soul Searching, based on their research from the National Study of Youth and Religion. It describes what they identified as a common belief system among young people in the United States.
MTD’s core beliefs include:
- A God exists who created the world.
- God wants people to be nice and fair.
- The goal of life is happiness and feeling good.
- God isn’t heavily involved in one’s life except when He is needed to solve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven.
The AWVI 2021 includes adults, but have found that younger people are more likely to find MTD appealing. Among those that embraced MTD, 74% consider themselves Christians, yet only 16% identify as born-again based on their theology. In addition, 91% do not believe people are sinful and are in need of salvation through Jesus Christ, 76% believe good people get to Heaven through good behavior, and 71% do not believe that the Bible is true and reliable way of communication from God.
We need to journey with kids through the mysteries and unanswerable questions of life. Our willingness to sit with kids in their questions often matters more than having the right answers.
Knowing God More
I will never forget the time I was asked to lead elementary kids at a family camp. I was teaching on how God listens to us and posed the question, “if you could ask God any question, knowing that He answers our prayers, what would you ask him?” Many hands went up, and one by one the answers came: “I would ask God be pleased with our worship,” “I would ask God to accept our worship,” and “I would ask God to be glorified with our lives.”
I was taken aback. I asked the kids to explain what they meant by their answers. There was about 2 minutes of silence. Finally, a fifth grader raised his hand and said, “Ms. Gloria… uhm… we gave you the church answers. Can we move on now because that’s what we do at our church.”
I gently told the kids know that I wasn’t interested in “church answers.” I’m interested in what they were really thinking in their heads and feeling in their hearts. I asked the question again. After about a minute of silence, many hands went up.
This time, the answers sounded different:
- “Why does God allow wars?”
- “Why do we have to feel sad?”
- “Why are there bad people in the world?”
Questions similar to these kept pouring in. We were getting down to kids’ natural curiosity. What struck me wasn’t just what they asked, but realizing how rarely the kids were invited to explore these questions. Everyday moments are often where these questions first surface, and when we make space for them, faith becomes personal.
To be honest, no one in the room had great answers to a lot of these questions. The discussion that followed was about the reality of living in a broken world as a result of sin entering the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). We talked about how there are many things we don’t fully understand.
What Scripture Says
However, the Bible makes clear:
- God made us in His image, and He loves us so much. (Genesis 1:27, Jeremiah 31:3)
- Because of that love, He sent His Son, Jesus, to live, die, and overcome death for our sins so we could become part of God’s family. (John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 3:1)
- When we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are called to follow Him even when it’s hard. (Luke 9:23, John 12:26)
- Even when life is hard, we can trust that God loves us and is always good. (Romans 8:38-39, Psalm 34:8)
As leaders, it’s difficult not to have all the answers. As I often tell the kids, “If I knew all the answers, I would be God!” God has given us what we need to know, and what He desires most from us is a relationship. He wants us to trust Him, knowing He is good. He wants obedience that flows out of love and trust.
God’s gift of salvation is exactly that—a gift! Obedience is not a requirement for salvation. We are saved by believing that God sent Jesus to forgive our sins through His death and resurrection. We cannot earn salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:5, Romans 3:23-24). As we come to know God’s heart, our natural response is obedience.
In our ministries, we often emphasize obedience, and that is not a bad thing. However, we can unintentionally elevated obedience over knowing, loving, and trusting God. In Woven, Meredith Miller writes “When it comes to our kids, we have to be clear: It’s backward to ask a child to obey a God they do not know. Childhood is for getting to know God, so kids can discover if God can be trusted.”
Practices to Help
In our ministry, we have incorporated a few practices to help kids know and experience God. It’s not perfect, but we’re praying it moves the needle:
- We normalize “I don’t know” as a faith answer and often add, “let’s ask one of the pastors to help us understand better.”
- We regularly ask kids to share their “God Sightings,” where kids notice God at work. We learned about “God Sightings” during VBS, and we continue to incorporate it into our weekly rhythm.
- We encourage kids to “talk to God” honestly rather than reciting rehearsed prayers.
- When we need to correct behavior, we ask heart-questions such as “how did you feel” or “what were you hoping for?”
- We connect Jesus’ actions to our real struggles such as fear, forgiveness, and fairness.
Miller also writes, “If, as a kid, faith is about curiosity and wonder, if questions are asked, if God is trustworthy and it’s okay to be working out what that means and looks like in a hard world, then, as a teen and adult, a person will tend to still think that faith can handle hard questions and that God will be with them as they work that out.”
We need to journey with kids through the mysteries and unanswerable questions of life. Our willingness to sit with kids in their questions often matters more than having the right answers. When we invite curiosity, model trust, and point kids again and again to who Jesus is and what He has done, we are forming faith that can last a lifetime.
Wonder Ink’s 3-year, 52-week children’s ministry curriculum offers kids space to fully find their place in God’s Big Story. Children discover they are Known by God, Loved by Jesus, and Led by the Holy Spirit.
