Mark Bezanson is recently married and continues to live a life seeking to encourage others to grow in Christ. He is the leader of the Renewal Fellowship's Youth Pastors' Network. This article is intended to spur your prayers for youth workers and youth in our churches so they will be blessed and be a blessing to the youth in our communities.

During my recent trip to England, I asked an experienced friend a question that has been nagging me for some time. Why are there such gaps between expressions of faith among young adults and their ability to live out their faith?

About 48% of young adults in Canada hold to a conventional Christian faith perspective. Here are some of the core expressions of this faith, which seems close to evangelical faith (Bibby, 2004, pp.195-197).

1. Young adults believe in God, Jesus, and life after death.

2. Young adults believe the practices of church attendance and prayer are important.

3. Young adults want to experience a relationship with God, and God Himself as a resource for peace and joy.

4. Young adults want to know God with both an inner awareness and an outward awareness.

5. Young adults want to be good Christians and help others.

Actual church attendance and spiritual life practices (such as prayer) are the lowest among young adults, but are decreasing really in all age groups, if the research is accurate. Only ten percent of all age groups, including young adults, affirm regular practices of church attendance and prayer (Bibby, 2004, pp. 195-197) My friend in England suggested that many young adults in the United Kingdom are moving into believing without belonging, holding onto the memories of faith without connecting to a local church community (Davie, 1994). Certainly, keeping believing, behaving, and belonging closely linked in our Christian lives is not easy.

Perhaps at Christmas time, we experience a window of spiritual connection where behaving, believing, and belonging all come together around the worship of the Christ Child. The celebration of the birth of this Child was such a miracle with so many vivid stories full of meaning, wonder, and strong emotional connections. It is only natural that people would bring whatever dimensions of believing, belonging, and behaviour together, just for this time of year. The fruit of the Spirit is more evident in Christians and the wider culture. The act of giving gifts seems to connect strongly with God's gift of Christ to the world. So our culture rejoices best when behaviours of worship, belief in Christ, and belonging through giving and worship come together. Christmas calls for authentic experiences that integrate faith in Christ alone for salvation with obedient practices and worship guided relationships.

In contrast to us, the Muslim culture seems to go to the other extreme in behaving, believing, and belonging. The wearing of the Hajib is viewed by some Muslims as a command of Allah, and therefore a requirement, regardless of local secular law. For them, behaviour, belief, and belonging are fused together. Break one aspect, and you have broken them all. Since we easily separate one part of life from another, our Western minds cannot grasp this at all.

However, Christians may want to consider the costs of the growing separation of elements of faith, before we quickly criticize the apparent blindness of others. Perhaps keeping behaviour, belief, and belonging connected is good. Perhaps we need to move toward stronger links of faith, reasons, actions, and relationship, and see the damage of disconnecting one from the other. We do not want to fuse these together as some Islamic friends do, and we stand against the violence and male domination that sometimes appears in extremes of faith. Still, the gaping holes and very thin connections between belief, behaviour, and belonging may be doing serious damage to us all that is not visible to our Western eyes.

Christmas and New Years are great opportunities for renewal and reconnecting our faith. I pray that our young adults home from university will find the time to connect with many in our congregations, and find support and enjoyment in sharing how they are growing. Short term Mission trips are often occasions where we find the ability to strengthen the connections in belief, behaviour and belonging, not just for the trip, but more deeply for the rest of our lives. I hope all the readers will have a good Christmas and a New Year full of closely connected and growing faith.

References:

Bibby, R. W. (2004) Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada. Toronto: Novalis.

Davie, G. (1994). Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell.

Mark Bezanson is recently married and continues to live a life seeking to encourage others to grow in Christ. He is the leader of the Renewal Fellowship's Youth Pastors' Network. This article is intended to spur your prayers for youth workers and youth in our churches so they will be blessed and be a blessing to the youth in our communities.

In our Youth Alpha course, several of our sharp committed young people are asking some tough questions about how to share their faith. We have worked through the basic material of who Jesus is, and why Jesus had to die. However the group of five Junior and Senior students are facing different questions.

"My friends are asking — so you believe this stuff — how can you prove it? The stories about a talking snake in the garden sound more like a bedtime story, even a fable. Other miracles sound like mythology, only just in the Bible."

Later the comments became even more challenging. "Yeah — most of my friends believe that there is some kind of God out there that helped everything get started. The question is how do you choose which one of the world religions is right?"

So, with my ears still echoing with these tough questions, I began to try to outline four possible ways of "proving" the Christian faith.

I rambled on for a little while — probably too long – trying to explain how someone approaches "proving" these kinds of basic faith questions.

"The first kind of 'proof', the way of scientific experiments, is not an option for Christianity or really for any other faith. For any historical event, we cannot return in time and repeat the scientific experiment several times on any past event. Even with an event like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the film evidence and many witnesses do not agree. No one suggests that JFK did not die, but the how and the why of that event are still hotly debated.

"The second kind of proof is important for Christians. The issue is one of first principles. What are the beginning principles for your search for truth? If a person starts with the assumptions that God exists, and that He has chosen to reveal Himself to us through the Scriptures and through Jesus, then believing in miracles and handling difficult texts is not that hard.

"If a person does not share our first principles, then the question to ask is what are their first principles? For example, if your friend believes the first part of Genesis is an allegory, then the question becomes 'What do you think is the reason for all the brokenness (sin) in the world?'

"Our goal is to find out what our friend's 'first principles' are regarding the human condition. Are human beings in trouble as a society, with a serious spiritual problem that needs to be addressed by God? Or are human beings all right? What are the first principles that my friend is moving from, and how did she or he arrive at these principles?"

"Yes, but most of my friends believe that some kind of God exists," a student suggested. "They just want to know what makes choosing Jesus the right answer."

"Well, I think it comes down to the first principles of what you believe about Jesus and the resurrection," I tried to explain.

"Yes, well, Buddhism and Hinduism believe in reincarnation, and some form of Karma."

"Right, but here is where Christianity is different. In reincarnation, I come back as another person or life form each time, until I get it right. With the Christian view of resurrection, how many persons or life forms are involved?" I asked.

"Just one" a student responded. "As a Christian, I live, I die, and then I am raised to new life."

"Yes, this is key!" I explained. "Christianity is committed to the radical restoration of creation. God does not play games with us. He wants to restore this broken world, to recreate it into a beautiful place once again. He wants to recreate us in physical resurrection bodies, not as a different person, but as a resurrected person without any further battles with sin."

"I agree that the resurrection is key to everything," one of the other youth leaders commented. "This week, some close Christian friends had to have a funeral for their three-year-old who died from medical complications. Instead of a sombre service, they put together a kids party in the basement, with balloons and games and all kinds of fun food, where the children could come and play, and celebrate the life of this young child. What a great testimony that in suffering, there can still be joy."

We all sat silent as we soaked in this incredible event of resurrection faith.

"Yes, now can we get on to the next one, the evidences for the Christian faith?" one of the students asked.

"Sure, but I think we are out of time. We will have to tackle that one next week."