Parents, thanks for getting here and keeping up with what we’re teaching!  What takes place at West in student ministry is at best a supplementation to what you as parents, dads in particular, are teaching/living at home.  You are the best ministers to your children!  This year, as you know, we are talking about “Foundations”.  There are eight we have settled on; Creation, Man, Fall, Promise, Law, Grace, Church, Eternity.  This blog is meant to keep you informed as to what we have talked about and hopefully to encourage discussion with your son or daughter.  Why?

It is no secret to the up hauling fact that young people 30 and under struggle with or walk away from faith in Jesus.  Here’s a few characteristics of what the American Research Group found:

65% believe that if you are a good person you will go to heaven, (by the way I don’t believe any of our students believe this based on how and what I teach).  20% say there are books other than the Bible that are inspired by God.  45% say homosexual behavior is not a sin, or they don’t know if it is a sin.  40% believe “gay couples” should be allowed to “marry” and have legal rights.  Almost 90% of students attend or attended public school.  35% say the Bible has errors or they don’t know if it has errors.

What does this have to do with our theme?  Oh, everything!  One issue in particular stands out to me and that is, in the American church culture, it seems emphasis is put on experiences and feelings of faith rather than on the mind, knowing and the object of faith, Jesus Christ.  Which leads to, in my opinion, people who haven’t “set Christ a part as Lord” (1 Peter 3:15) or can’t because they haven’t engaged the mind to do so.  Christ and the Church has become more of “what can it do for me”, or finding some purpose/destiny for life, or the pinnacle of virtue of Americans evangelicalism…happiness.   When that doesn’t line up with what I feel or see happening in my life, then doubt sets in and faith is minimalized or jettisoned all together. Christianity, that is faith in the God/man Jesus Christ, is a rigorously challenging, mentally sound, depth in thought and concept, religion.  In other words, it engages the mind at all levels.  That has been lost in large part in my estimation.  Ask your student sometime, “Can you explain to me what you believe and why you believe it?” “Is the Bible the inherent word of God?”

With that in mind we have endeavored to talk, teach and share in our first “block of eight” of our foundation, Creation.  This first foundation block was made up of four smaller blocks that when fused together give us the whole. Here’s what has made up our first “block”: Authority of God’s word, Why God created, God the Creative Creator, Proof of God.

I’ll post them one at a time to keep them brief to give you an overview. The purpose again of these posts are to briefly keep you informed as to what we’ve covered on Wednesday Nights with the hope that it will spur conversation with your son or daughter at home.

  1. God’s word is the foundation/authority for everyone, believe it or not.  Your belief doesn’t make something true or untrue.
  2. The point here is that everyone has a worldview in which they make sense of the world around them.  There are only two views: God’s, and everything else.  Then, we defined worldview as the lens through which we interpret everything we see. Worldview becomes the foundation of our beliefs and decisions about relationships, culture, science, education, and faith. A correct worldview begins with the infinite, personal God revealed in the Bible. God wants people to view the world from His perspective. The Scriptures form the framework for living out a consistent, Christ-centered worldview. A biblical vantage point clarifies truth about God, the infallibility of Scripture, Jesus, salvation, morality, the role of evil in the world and more.
  3. We projected this out for the year by stating it this way: Who is God? What is the state of Man?  Who is Jesus? What is Man’s response?  How does that get lived out?  That’s another way of stating our “Foundations” but it’s also another way to speak of the Gospel. Answering those questions will lead one to faith in Christ receiving the Gospel or it will lead to the rejection of it.

So right at the very beginning we have to ask is God’s word authoritative? Inherent? Infallible? God breathed? Does it govern all of life? Why? Because the Bible is going to make some audacious claims, namely it and it alone is true and it’s author is the Truth.

For His Kingdom,

Dale