I remember the 4-mile drive to our small Baptist church when I was a child. We passed many other churches: Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic and another Baptist church. Decades later, my drive to church (near New York City) is still 4 miles. However, times have changed. I pass a Mosque, a closed Baptist church, a closed Reformed church, a Jewish synagogue, a closed Presbyterian church, a New Age center and a closed Methodist church, whose building was purchased recently by a Hispanic charismatic group.
In many places in the United States, the presence of other religions is becoming very visible. How do we gain perspective on the fact that we are in a religious marketplace that is increasingly diverse? How do we help youth and their parents navigate this reality?
For example, a teenage daughter in a Christian family in your church may come home and exclaim, “Mom, we’ve got a new assistant volley ball coach. Her name is Rashida, and she’s really nice…” Roughly 20 percent of America’s nearly 2,000 mosques have their own youth programs, and Rashida is a Muslim youth worker, doing relational youth work by volunteering at school. She is doing this just as would Christian youth pastors, similar to Youth for Christ and Young Life youth workers.
I’ve studied the 3,500 mosques in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and interviewed the top Muslim youth work trainers in all three countries. One thing I’ve learned in speaking with youth workers from other religions is they love their youth. Another thing I’ve learned is that it seems they’ve all read Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. I haven’t been bold enough to ask them directly about PDYM, but looking at the nationally and regionally based Muslim youth work leader/training sites…most have a vision, mission, list of core values, and state clearly how their program components fit into their purposes.
Multi-Faith? Been There, Done That.
It is important for us to realize the people of faith in the Old and New Testaments lived in cultures awash with religious choices. Furthermore, they knew the details and appeal of these other religions. Today, many feel it is best to shelter ourselves from other beliefs, and I believe this sheltering impulse sets up our youth for spiritual failure. Sheltering and protecting is not the approach of believers in Scripture. They clearly knew what others believed and how their faith was different. I recently hosted a seminar that included details about the Canaanite religions (the context of much of the OT). When we broke into groups, each group was assigned a god (Baal, Asherah, Molech, Da’gon) and given the task of coming up with a marketing piece or tweet espousing the benefits of the god’s worship. The results were hilarious, but participants got the point: Old Testament believers in God understood at a deep level there was competition for worship. They had to believe the God who was the one true God, knowing full well others would think they were odd and intolerant. Social science tells us belief or faith is not personal until it is tested. Mission trips, cross-cultural experiences, anything that gets us out of our comfort zones and makes us rely on God to show up has taken a step in the right direction.
I have a good friend who thought it would be good to do a joint Christian-Muslim event in which, after a meal, the teens would be divided in small groups. Each student in the circle would have five minutes to share with the others what he or she loved about his or her respective faith. To my friend’s horror, while the Muslim youth were well able to fill their five minutes, most Christian youth were lost after 30 to 60 seconds. His takeaway—and mine as a leader in my own church—is to help Christians experience a vital faith in which the living Christ shows up and is real in daily life.
Jesus as the Only Way? Nonsense! (to Many Christian Youth)
The sad truth, according to more than one social science research study, is the majority of Christian youth do not believe Jesus Christ is the one and only way to salvation. Yes, of course Jesus is a good and right way for them, but to think their Hindu or Muslim friends at school are going to hell seems intolerant and repugnant. The notion of, “I’m right, and that means you’re wrong,” makes no sense to them. The same studies also show their parents hold this view, as well. Our youth may protest, “Hey, my friend Tafazel is a good person…he doesn’t get drunk or high; he’s a good student, an amazing soccer player; he’s a lot of fun; and he goes every Friday night to the Pizza and Prophets Program at his mosque.”
One positive thing that can come from the rise of other religious youth ministry among us is this should force us to be clearer about Christology. That is, what do we really believe (and teach) about Jesus? In the past, religious others were across oceans, and one had to be a missionary to reach them. When there is a megamosque across the street from your high school or down the block from your church, it forces you to think. I did a study on one denomination’s approach to teaching about Jesus as the only way. Of their youth pastors, 100 percent believed
While Christology is not necessarily an apt topic for middle school boys’ Sunday School, it is important to help youth understand why it makes sense to believe Jesus is the one and only way.
Trying to get this issue on the table for high schoolers every few years means inviting a non-Christian philosophy professor from a local university to come to Sunday School or youth group to give a testimony about why he or she has chosen not to be a Christian. This experience is not intended as a debate. The youth may ask questions if they have any. However, my plan is to have students take notes, and the following Sunday we put the outline of the professor’s talk on the whiteboard and critique it point by point. Ultimately, this comes down to what we believe about Jesus.
Of course, there’s the possibility that in our efforts to put all this on the table with our youth, a few may begin to doubt their faith. I think that’s good. I want my youth to doubt while they are still with me and their parents. I want them to have that discomfort and questioning now rather than when they leave home to go to school or relocate to another city for work or marriage. I want to help them understand why it makes sense that Jesus is the only way. I want to train parents to understand and welcome the natural questions that arise from the God-created neurobiological development taking place in their teens.
What’s So Amazing About Grace?
Here is the key to helping our youth see one reason we believe Jesus and Christianity is the one and only way to salvation. All other religions of the world are about what humans have to do to please and connect with God. Christianity, rather, is all about what God has done on our behalf. This is an enormous difference. When one studies Muslim youth ministry websites, for example, one often sees the exhortation, “Stay on the Path!” Islam is about knowing and keeping the fivefold requirements of Islam, and being a Muslim is to do one’s best to fulfill those five things. That is the key, isn’t it? “Do your best” at anything works for only a few days (or minutes). The people of the Old Testament provide ample negative cases of how successful one can be at keeping 10 simple commandments. A Christian youth website might proclaim, “Just follow the commandments!” Sorry, can’t be done.
In Christ we have holistic grace—His coming on our behalf and the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living in us. We do good things (as do people of other faiths), but a Christian’s good works are not meritorious; they are offered as thankful worship. The most prominent pair of words in the entire New Testament is “in Christ,” used more than 70 times. In Him, we have His presence and power.
I was explaining this at a youth worker convention seminar when one-half dozen hands went up. They said, “That’s right…and we have Muslim kids showing up at our youth group meetings all the time, invited by their friends. If they come for a few weeks, the juniors and seniors generally come right up and tell us, “This is so much better than Islam. You have something—Someone—we don’t have.” Now, that’s a great start of a conversation isn’t it?
We also can provide opportunities for our young people to interact in a positive way with people of other religions. This is not for the purpose of preaching to them, but to let others understand how Christians truly are, not just to accept stereotypes. For example, in the United Kingdom, there a strong movement bringing Christian and Muslim youth together to raise money for Third World relief and to clean up a community park. In the United Kingdom, as well as the United States where this is happening, Muslim youth are coming to faith in Christ.
The rise of other faiths among us brings us great opportunities in youth ministry for deepening our faith and the faith of our youth and their parents. We have nothing to fear as we have One who empowers us to move forward.
Len Kageler, Ph.D., is author of Youth Ministry in a Multifaith Society: Forming Christian Identity Among Skeptics, Syncretists and Sincere Believers of Other Faiths (IVP, 2014). Among the seminars he will lead at the Youth Specialties conventions this fall (Sacramento and Atlanta) is a theology track discussion, “Making Disciples of Whom? Christology and Youth Ministry.”
