I don't know what to think of the article as a whole, but there a few things in it I would like to affirm:
We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
I have said it before, and I say it here: I question the entire office of youth ministry. This doesn't mean that I think that all youth ministries fail, or that I mean to deride the good work that many of my friends do. What I mean to say is that the assumption that teens need a teenage Christianity instead of just plain Christianity is something I no longer assume.
Admittedly, I am very subjective in this judgment. Personally, my faith today has almost nothing to do with my faith before I was 20. This isn't just that outgrew it, but I have actually repudiated most of it. Were it not for my time at Azusa Pacific, I am pretty sure I would not be any kind of Christian now.
In any case, (as the article states) the current generation of Christians is already monumentally ignorant.
Moving on.
[if evangelicalism implodes] Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
I myself pondered a return to the RCC and my best friend converted to Eastern Orthodoxy a few years ago. Neither of us are incredibly rare. These older churches have things that evangelicalism simply doesn't have -history, stability, ability to resist evanescent cultural trends, clarity of doctrine, strong educational tradition etc etc. People are already attracted to these groups, especially the "Christian Hipsters." Numerous books have been written on this subject already.
So there are my two comments worth about two pennies. What do you think? Will Evangelicalism go the way of the dinosaur? What happens if it does?
