...My wife is reading the excellent biography of Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. I don’t know what Bonhoeffer would have made of all this accommodation to culture, biblical illiteracy and weak leadership.
...There are several things you mention [in your letter] that resonate but none more so than your comments about the local church. To unfriendliness and a lack of engagement in the culture I would add a lack of intentional discipleship preparing young people for life. Yesterday I attended the annual conference of the Christian Medical Fellowship. There was a seminar given by two retirees from Glasgow on intelligent design which was very good. One of them showed a slide from the Discovery Institute that stated that in one recent survey only 1% of youth pastors ever addressed science-faith issues. Yet this is one area that youth struggle with and according to the book You Lost Me, bad teaching in this area makes a young person more likely to drop out of church in their 20’s.
After the talk I went up to one of these guys and asked him if he had ever been invited to talk to the youth group in his local church on this subject (about which he is quite knowledgeable and a good teacher).
He hadn’t.
Alas, the age of capitulation continues.
