The Lord gave me a unique opportunity a few weeks ago. On a recent flight I sat next to a young man who was on his way home for the holidays following his first semester at a well-known university. Justin was one of the most outgoing and engaging young people I have ever met. Almost instantly after he sat down in the window seat in our row, he began asking me the typical “airplane questions”: Where are you headed? Where are you from? What do you do? I answered that I work with church youth workers and teenagers and that I was headed to a church to speak to a group of students and their adult youth workers.

His response startled me, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. “Why bother?” he asked before he launched into his story of how he had grown up in an evangelical church and had attended Sunday School and youth group meetings from a very early age. He was quite anxious to inform me that all of his church teachers and youth workers were inconsistent and unreliable and that his first semester at the university had demonstrated to him that Christianity is false. Justin’s brief college experiences had caused him to believe that his Christian upbringing was nothing more than make-believe, feel-good, historical stories that were made up by and for people who need that kind of emotional crutch. (more…)