Another year over, another year group leaving. But how do we prepare our young people for the daunting prospect of university ahead? RZIM speaker and former student worker Michelle Tepper unpacks the importance of apologetics for nurturing a confident faith in the lives of our young people, as they head out into the unknown.
‘Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity’ (1TIMOTHY 4:12-13).
The majority of us, regardless of our age, are probably familiar with these words of encouragement that Paul gives to a young Timothy who was taking over the leadership of the growing church in Ephesus. We have often heard these words used at youth conferences and camps when young people are told they are the ‘future of our church’, or in those rare occasions when a promising young person is given the chance to give a talk or lead a small group. We tend to reserve the application of Paul’s instruction to ‘not despise youth’ for the ‘exceptional’ ones who take us by surprise with their intellectual aptitude or overwhelming charisma. Yet the Bible is full of examples of young people setting not only an example, but ‘the bar’ very high in ‘speech, conduct, love, faith and purity.’ David was a boy when he was anointed as King, and Josiah was only eight. The latter was 18 when he led a reformation calling the entire kingdom to return to the Book of the Covenant. Daniel and his three friends were young adults when they stood out as beacons of truth and light in secular government, whilst Esther was probably no older that 20 when she helped save the Jewish people. There were countless Judges and Prophets in the Old Testament who were made spiritual or political leaders of God’s people in their youth. Jesus himself first made his debut among the leading rabbis of his time when he was around 12.
What should all of these examples and Paul’s words to Timothy tell us? They show that we should not only expect but also welcome and encourage young people into leadership in ministry, evangelism, preaching, teaching and even apologetics! If you put Paul’s exhortation into context with the verses that precede and follow it, you will see that the high proportion of young leaders in the Bible doesn’t happen by coincidence or simply because of natural talent. In 1 Timothy 4:7 Paul says ‘train yourself for godliness’ and he goes on to say, ‘Devote yourselves to public reading, exhortation and teaching…practice these things, immerse yourself in them…persist in this’ [emphasis added].
Perhaps the reason why we do not see more young people leading the way in the Church is because we have not taken the time to train them the way Paul seems to suggest. Have we created a safe place where young people can voice their concerns if they feel, as Paul says early in verse 7, that their faith is nothing more than a silly myth? How do we handle their questions? Are we training them to be able to confidently engage with not only their own but the most difficult questions they will face? Will we give them the room to publicly ‘practice’ doing so? It takes time and confidence on our own part to allow our children and youth to press into the real questions and assumptions about God that lie behind their most innocent (or seemingly irreverent) questions, without either patronising them with our set answers or getting embarrassed by the fact we may not have a perfect answer to give.
I had the privilege of serving as the University Student Pastor at St Aldate’s Church (Oxford) for six years before I joined the RZIM team. The thing that struck me again and again was that the students who had the hardest questions and the biggest struggles with God were often those who came from Christian backgrounds. They arrived at university and had to make their minds up about morality, purpose, meaning and our origin. They often realised that theirs was an inherited faith instead of one they had accepted as their own. Subsequently their basis for just about everything – identity, decision-making, behaviour and purpose – would start to crumble. The same exact evangelism and apologetics that was needed to engage the atheist students’ hearts and minds was needed to engage the ‘Christian’ students who had become immune to their inherited faith. There is more and more on offer for students these days when it comes to apologetics. Most Christian Unions run regular apologetic talks and many churches in university towns hold events for students, but maybe waiting to introduce our Christian young people to apologetics right before or as they enter higher education is too late. After all, many of the prominent new atheists rejected God before they had even reached university age.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes: ‘The fact that what you are thinking about is God himself does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a five-year-old. It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any the less or have less use for you…He has room for people with very little sense, but he wants everyone to use what sense they have.’ Of course, God can raise up not only young people, but Christian leaders of any age who do not have degrees in apologetics, or any formal theological training – the Bible and Church history are full of people who fit that description – but imagine the possibilities, if we took the time to help our Christian young people develop their genuine and precious childhood faith into an unshakeable confidence through coming to know Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation. Is it possible to raise up a generation of 12-18 year-olds who could shake up politics like Daniel, rule countries like Esther, or lead amazing churches like Timothy? This doesn’t have to be just a dream. What will keep our young people from losing their faith in university? Confidence.
CONFIDENCE THAT: - The Church is a place where they can ask their biggest questions and still be accepted and loved. - The Bible and Jesus can stand up intellectually, emotionally and practically to life’s biggest questions. We not only believe in them, but need them and will train them to stand up and pass on this confidence to the world.
1 Timothy 4 ends with these words: ‘Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.’ This type of training and equipping takes persistence, but it yields great reward. If we help our young people gain confidence in their faith sooner, we will be equipping them to stand firm when they face the hardest challenges to their own faith. By doing so, we could also help them to become powerful evangelists to those in the world around them.
RZIM will be hosting its first ever Youth Apologetics day on September 14th in London, featuring the likes of Amy Orr-Ewing, Michael Ramsden and Michelle Tepper (above).
Watch the trailer below for more information:
#REBOOT2013 Trailer with Amy Orr-Ewing from OCCA Oxford on Vimeo.
