How to lead youth to Christian life?

This article is the first in a mini series that is going to examine the challenges of leading a Christian community in our time, with special reference to the Christian family.

In this regard, we all know that all those in leadership positions are urged to lead by example. This applies as much to Christian parents as it does to priests, pastors, teachers and others who lead Christian communities.

In the past it was relatively easy for parents to impose their religious views on their children, even adult children. In our time there are challenges for parents.

One reason for this is that the modern parent can claim to be a leader only in relative terms. There are areas of life in which children know better than their parents. Among these is the area of information communication technology (ICT). Young people are generally more skilled in operating computers, cellular phones and other gadgets than their parents.

Another challenge facing parents is that children are exposed to many influences through television, Internet, computers, cellphones, peers and so on.

It may be easy to impose our views on our children when they are very young, but once they are at high school, college or in the workplace, our influence as parents begins to wane and children may begin to view religious practice differently.

One area in which many adult children in our time seem to view religion differently is the area of sacraments.

To traditional Catholic parents, obeying the teaching of the Church in regard to sacraments is a given. For example, one must go to Mass every Sunday, and if one misses Mass deliberately without cause or commits a mortal sin, one must go to confession before receiving Holy Communion.

But some young adult Catholics tend to view these things differently. You see a young woman and a young man cohabiting, but the next time they find themselves in church, they go to receive Holy Communion with everybody else. A young woman may miss Mass without sufficient cause, but the next time she is in church she stands up and goes to receive. There are other areas in which younger Christians may behave differently from traditional Christians.

The question that comes to mind is: Why do young Christians of our time behave the way they do?

Is it only because of the influences they are exposed to, or is there more to it? Is it perhaps partly because they do not have the same sense of “sin” as we the older generation of Christians have? In other words, is sin one of those things that do not prick the consciences of young Christians of today?

This should lead us to ask the question: how well are the young people of our time prepared for the Christian life?

Furthermore, is the kind of preparation we used to have when the world was less complex still adequate as a basis for preparing our children for the full Christian life, or do we need to rethink the whole approach to christening in the context of a complex world?

Whatever the case, it seems to me there is a major challenge to developing Christians of tomorrow that cannot be solved by merely looking at parental responsibility.

The Church needs to come in and ask fundamental questions: Is it perhaps necessary to reconsider whether infant baptism is a sound basis for developing the Church of tomorrow? Is it perhaps necessary to put more emphasis on spiritual formation before baptism so that young people can be challenged to reflect more seriously on what Christian life is and how it differs from secular life? This presupposes that people are baptised when they are mature enough to understand what it really means to be a Christian.

If the approach suggested above is to be considered, there is a challenge for both the Church and parents.

The Church must come up with a more challenging and effective way of developing Christians.

On their part, Christian parents have a major task in not only assisting the Church in this regard, but also in being authentic role models of what it means to be a Christian parent in the modern complex world.