Hour 1: So The Next Generation Will Know

about God? And are you not in a moment of awe and wonder or looking out over the vast expanse of an ocean and you start thinking, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? And it makes you

wonder about the magnificence of God? I think that sense of wonder was put there on purpose, and this wonderful book includes a composite of multiple authors who have written from their perspective as a scientist, or a historian, or a mathematician or an artist, on why they all have this sense of awe through the work that they do. In other words, the heavens declare the glory. And as it tells us in Romans, we are really without excuse

because his handiwork is everywhere. And this book invites you to walk through the chapters written by people who all have a sense of awe and wonder when it comes to God through their various disciplines in life. It's an amazing book and it's yours. For a gift of any amount, just call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58. Ask for a copy of Have You Ever Wondered? And we'll send it right off to you as my way of

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didn't say Christianity, I said religion. All kinds of people are going to stop by and they're going to check it out, and some are going to stay and linger and others are going to move on. But I'll tell you what, Christian and faithful had the right response after getting over their embarrassment of being recognized. They said, we only buy the truth. Uh oh. Two presuppositions in that declaration. A they could tell truth from falsehood, and b somebody

was already there handing out the truth. That's you and me. So should Jesus tarry? The gospel needs to go forward. By the way, that is not a special gifting or a special calling. Go and tell is about as universal a directive as any Christ follower can get. But we don't. We're going to get into some of the reasons why in a little bit. But in particular, focus this hour is going to be that up and coming generation. How do we train them? Because, you know, if you don't

train them, here's what's going to happen. Colossians A whole lot of people are going to be taken captive through vain and hollow philosophies predicated on this world, rather than the Word of God. So how do we train young Christians to contend for the faith to know? As Doctor Paul Little said so long ago and so rightly, what we believe and why we believe it. By the way, that kind of applies for the older generations as well. So we're going to talk with two excellent apologists this hour.

I'm so excited. Can you tell we're going to talk to two apologists who are going to tell us how we can train young Christians in a challenging world. They've jointly written a book called so the Next Generation Will Know. We're going to open the phone lines for your questions as well. But first, I want to get into this conversation with Doctor Sean McDowell. Yeah. You know who his daddy is? He's a best selling author, co-author, director, editor of more than 18 books, including Is God Just a

Human Invention and Evidence That Demands a Verdict? Yeah, he did write that with his dad. He's also an associate professor of apologetics at Talbot School of Theology. Biola University blogs regularly, and I've got a link to all of that on my website, so you can check that out. And J. Warner Wallace is with us. A cold case homicide detective, a speaker and an author. Former atheist. Let

the record reflect. Senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola, and a faculty member at Summit Ministries. And, by the way, Jay Warner and Susie Wallace. Jim, as he's known to his wife and friends, also write popular apologetics books for kids. And they also created the award winning Case Makers Academy. What else would you think a cold case worker would do? These two brilliant minds together have put together this book

called So the Next Generation Will know. I am so excited, gentlemen, the warmest of welcomes. I'm so glad both of you are here. And, Sean, I got to start with you. Really chilling data. We do some science studies, and we find out that not only do the up and coming generation not respond to that directive to go and tell, but they've taken it one step further. So many of them think that it's Right. Uh oh. Houston, we have a problem. What's going on here?

believe in Jesus. This certainly isn't the case for every millennial or every Gen X'er, but we're seeing this broader cultural commitment and push towards ideas that are just running

deeper and deeper against the grains of Christianity. And it's putting some of this generation in tension, so much so that the study you're citing that now, a significant percentage, if not a majority, I believe, in the recent Barna study of millennials said it's actually wrong to evangelize because in evangelizing, you're telling somebody they're wrong and mistaken about their deepest religious beliefs.

Going to Sean's idea of inclusiveness. That's new. How much is that a game changer?

a generation that is enamored with storytelling and narrative. I mean, we all have been over the years. This isn't unique to Gen Z, but certainly if you look at how truth claims are made to this generation, a largely digital generation that watches videos, narratives and personal stories rule the day. So I think we can still navigate claims that are objective claims like Christianity, but I think we're going to have to be sensitive to the idea that storytelling is

going to reign supreme, right? But even then, there are some things that transcend our individual stories. Look, I always worry about it. I think about it a lot because I always think, well, look, am I going to be able to impanel a jury, given what I've been used to doing over the last 30 years? How will we impanel juries going forward when the claims we're going to be making to the jurors are that something objectively happened in this crime that transcends your feelings about the crime?

And I think that we are that's I think, where the rubber is going to meet the road for me is are we even raising a generation that could serve on a jury? I think we are. But I think it's going to mean we're going to have to maybe tweak the way we're approaching truth claims and storytelling and making the case.

to take a break and come right back. I will open the phones for questions later, but we'll continue right after this. So many in our culture today are spiritually curious but hesitant about religion. That's why I've chosen. Have you ever wondered, is this month's truth to explore how everyday experiences might be the signpost pointing to deeper biblical truths? As for your copy of have you ever wondered when you give a gift of any amount to in the market,

call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace are with us together. They have jointly authored the book so the Next Generation Will Know training young Christians in a Challenging World. So you look at the statistics, the data out there, you're seeing younger people leaving the church in droves. What what are we not doing right? What do we need to do? How do we need to redo our thinking on this? Not change the message,

but change the methodology? That really is the challenge before us. So, Sean, let me turn to you picking up on what Jim just said. So the battle that rages inside of us is this back and forth between the cognitive and the affective. So if post-truth is the new paradigm, it's wonderful that we have young people who care desperately about their fellow man to the point where they really want to love them. And that seems to be the superseding value in all

of this. But at some point, as somebody said to me once, a long time ago, you can love somebody to death. So how do we make sure that we strike that balance between loving someone and finding out that love and truth are not mutually exclusive ideas? In fact, they're ideas that work in perfect harmony together.

a huge mistake. And I found that this generation, if we approach them in the right way, if we're fair minded, if we're gracious and relational and we've done our homework and have a certain attitude, they're open to hearing truth. We just have to present it in a way that resonates with this generation and make sure that we're not unnecessarily turning them away from the gospel that has something to do with our attitude rather than the truth itself.

can adopt right away and employ right away. Whether you are a parent, a youth pastor, or a Christian educator, because those are the three groups that I think are going to spend time with the next generation, raising them in the faith. So I'll give you one approach that I think does capture this question. What are young people interested in? What is it? Maybe it's lacking in our teaching.

And this is something that Sean and I talk about in one of the chapters is that if we just shifted from giving just what is true, making claims about what is true, to providing two whys for every what you will see a change in the way young people receive what we're saying, and in the kind of relationships we will develop with young people as we're sharing truth. So what we would say is in the past, we might say, we give you a what? What is true?

We're teaching from the Bible, let's say as a youth pastor or you're having a conversation with your own kids and you'll make a claim that you know is biblically true, it's a theologically sound claim. It's a what? Here's what is true about the nature of Jesus. What is true about morality based on Christian worldview? Whatever the claim may be, young people want to know the two whys for every what, and we often don't even go there. The first why

is okay? Why is that true? Give me some reason that's beyond oh, it just says so in the Bible, which of course, you and I would say that's sufficient reason, but but young people want to know because they're surrounded by other voices on the internet. Give me a why. Why should I believe that? Can you make a case for that? And that's where we want to be able to take the extra step and give that first why. But the second, why probably in some ways is more

important than the first. Why? And that is okay, fine. You make this claim and you can tell me why that claim should be supported. Fine. Now tell me, why should I care what what what does it have to do with me in 2019. What is this ancient claim? Either it's about behavior, about the nature of God, especially the claims that seem to be about the nature of God. Why do I care? I mean, how does that impact me? Well, I think those two whys are at the root of

what will engage this generation. Because don't think for a second that the that the voices that are out there in the digital age are not providing the two whys for their what they are. They're actually suggesting that they're what's are the only things that can be supported by the two whys, and that your theological what says Christians are just fairy tales that can't be supported. You can't make it. You can't can't give two whys for every

one over on that side. That's not actually true. And I think our young people need to know that.

But if I'm going to be all things to all people, by all means, so that some might be saved in this world, in this age, that doesn't work anymore, because, as Jim just alluded to, there's a saturation of information out there, and people are not going to be able to know what they believe or to contend for what they believe, unless they know why they believe it. So now we've got not just the what we've got two eyes.

That's an extra couple of layers of having to contend for the faith that people have not been doing up to this point. Take the paradigm that Jim just talked about. Drop it in the context of a practical. Give me an example of how I would use the what and two whys in talking to a young person.

think about that. In previous generations, like you mentioned, it was kind of fine not to do that because the culture didn't always live Christian principles, but at least had the idea that Christian principles were good and you should broadly follow them. Well, this 1213 year old kid, if all he was told is don't have sex, it's bad. Believe the Bible wasn't given a why of why this is true and why it matters. That's just not a faith that is going to last. And outsiders want to

know why should I consider Christianity's true? Why does the Bible teach this?

We are visiting with Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace together. They've co-authored the book so the Next Generation Will know training young Christians in a Challenging world. Moms, dads, Sunday school teachers, youth pastors, anybody who has any kind of a regular connection with Millennials and Gen Zs. This is a book for you. And that raises an interesting question. I'm going to piggyback off of what Sean said, Jim. So what? And two eyes. Here's my why. Why bother?

Why should we care about whether or not Gen Z and millennials have a biblical worldview?

for recreation. These are things you probably did not do, the things you and your husband wanted to do. You end up doing the things that you think are right for kids because you're raising kids. So it's not going to be a French restaurant tonight. It's probably going to be something that everyone can, you know, find something on the menu and it'll be more affordable. I get all that. We make sacrifices because we think our kids are worth

that kind of sacrifice. Well, the church is always described. One word describes the church in Scripture as more than probably any other word. It's this word of family. We are a family and we have got kids. They may not be your biological kids, but we have kids that we are raising in this context of the family called the church with the big C, and I have to make sacrifices right now in order to do what's best for young people. Now you might think, okay, well, you

know what, though? I don't really like that style of those topics for me. I don't really it does not. I wouldn't choose those topics or that style of music. I wouldn't choose. Well, look, you you chose what was good for your kids when it came to all those other aspects of your personal lives, your restaurants, your vacations, the kinds of movies you watched. I mean, for Sean, I'll tell you, he will watch all the kid Marvel movies, even if his kids, if he didn't have kids, he'd

still be watching. Okay. But for for me, I'm only making those choices because of my kids. All right. So for me, it's about saying, are we willing, as a church, as a church family, to say that in this season of raising kids, especially at a time when we are seeing the large number of young people who are at least tepid about their their interest in Christianity, or about their identifying, they're less likely to self-identify as a Christian

than any other generation right now. Are we willing? Are you ready to submit that? Are you feeling okay about that? If I told you that 30% of all young people walk away from the church and never come back, you would say, oh, we should probably do something about that. Well, it's a lot worse than 30%. So. So are we willing to to do something to stem the tide of

that departure? And if so, we have to take on the responsibility that maybe for a season that we're raising kids and we'll have to make choices that favor our, our our commitment to raising our kids.

to figure out how to capitalize on that. But if you've given the what and the two whys like you had at that conference with your dad, and this young person comes up to you and goes, man, I get it. Now I understand why sex outside of marriage is no good. I understand now why pornography is not a good choice. And now it's not just conceptualizing, but now it's your friend Tom, who's involved in an activity that is absolutely abhorrent to what the Scripture says. Uh oh. Now the conundrum.

So how do we do the what the two whys and the friendship altogether?

is a warm relationship with the father. Statistically speaking, it doesn't mean the mom's not important. That's not the point. But statistically speaking, that was the game changer. Now, grandparents are important. Mentors are important. Truth is passed through relationship. That's one of the pieces. Now, the way Jim and I frame it in the book is that there's timely

truths and there's timeless truths. So there are certain timeless truths about building relationships with this generation that have been true with every generation that are really not unique, just spending time with somebody, being a good listener, etc. but then there's more timely truths about the way this generation

processes information. And because this is such a digital generation and a smartphone generation, learning to relate to this generation through technology or with appropriate boundaries around technology is the timely way to build relationships with them, and that doesn't mean everybody has to be an expert on Instagram and

all the different apps. But learning to have boundaries, learning to communicate this way and to just think and talk and relate to a generation that sees the world through smartphones is one of the most important questions we have to ask is how to do that effectively.

come on. You're really diluting the gospel, are you not, when you use some of those platforms. So that's where I want to go when we get back. Sean McDowell is with us, J. Warner Wallace is with us. Together they care. They're willing to sacrifice for the next generation. Are you? So they wrote a book called Excuse Me so the Next Generation Will know. Training young Christians in a challenging world. (877) 548-3675. If you've got a question more

after this. We live in a culture that's infatuated with the latest fads, but Ephesians 415 calls for us to be stable, no longer infants, Paul said, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching on in the market. We're exposing current trends and finding our balance by standing on the solid foundation of God's Word. To get exclusive behind the scenes information and benefits, become a partial partner. Call 877 Janet, 58 or go online

to in the market with Janet Parshall. If you're just joining us, you didn't miss a thing because you can go to in the market with Janet Parshall. Left hand side, two words past programs clicking on. And you can download the podcast anytime. And you're really going to want to download this podcast because Doctor Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace are with us, both of them very gifted communicators

and apologists. And when they team up, look out. Sean, by the way, is a best selling author, co-author or editor of more than 18 books, including one he wrote with his dad Evidence That Demands a verdict and J. Warner. Wallace is a cold case homicide detective, a speaker and an author. He's also a senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview and adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola. The book together, they've authored So the Next Generation Will

Know training young Christians in a challenging world. So this is really about tapping into who they are and understanding how best to winsomely help them fall in love with truth, and to know how to make it attractive to them. So, Jim, you started this. Let me go to you first, which is this whole idea of storytelling. Nothing new under the sun. Jesus knew that we like stories. He told us parables. By the way, that's why Hans Christian Andersen wrote fairy tales.

Who was a Christian, by the way? He knew that he could transmit truths through a good story. So now we're in the 21st century, and we have all of these smarty pants phones and websites and apps and everything under the sun. How in the world, pragmatically speaking, can we take that technology captive for the kingdom and use it as a way of training young Christians?

attributed any of it to God. And then as I became a Christian, I started to walk by those things a little less, You know, I started to see things and go, wow, that really feels like evidentially. Even this is the hand of God moving in a certain way. And because I was sensitive to looking for these things now, the opportunities to see God's work came for me. Well, the same thing happens for us as parents, as as educators, as pastors, where, where if we're if we just if

we don't start thinking about it. Yeah. The next time you're in the in the car with your kids and something happens in terms of on the radio or you're watching something on Netflix, or you're seeing them absorbed in something on their phones or on a tablet, you're going to miss an opportunity to actually talk about the Christian worldview.

But if you start to think about these things in advance and become more sensitive to the opportunities, then suddenly all of these things will open up songs, especially songs I remember taking my high school daughter to and she was going to high school with Shawn. Shawn was her teacher, and on the way there I would drive her to school.

It would take about 20 minutes to get there, and I would always let her pick the music because it gave me an opportunity to talk about lyrically what was happening in the song, using the digital media to, to to launch a conversation. And I grant you, as parents, sometimes we're tired, you know, we're we're picking up our

kids at a point. So so what Sean and I both want to say to people who are listening to us is, don't think for a second that we are these super parents who absolutely never miss an opportunity to talk about God and all of these different contexts. Of course we do. We're just like you. We're tired, and we don't always think about it, or we get lazy or we just kind of our mind, our thought life kind of runs away and we just don't get involved

in it. But but if we can start to think about opportunities as they come, we won't have to try hard. We won't have to kind of invent opportunities. It turns out those opportunities have been there all along. We just haven't been sensitive to them. So what I would say is we have opportunities. You're already absorbed in digital media right now as a culture. We already are. Uh, you know, Game of Thrones just was launched again, right? So, you know,

the whole world is talking about one series. Well, look, there's opportunities in every movie. Sean, tell, tell, tell Janet about how you've used most recently, the Marvel movies to have conversations with your own kids about God.

I looked at it as PG 13. I thought, you know what? Here's an idea. I'll go to my son. And I said, here's the deal. You want to see this? I'll take you to see it with a friend who's parent gives permission. If we just come back and talk about it for 20 or 30 minutes, that's it. Not going to lecture you, but I just want to talk about it, get your perspective and maybe see what Scripture would say about it. And he agreed. So I took

him and a friend. We went to the movie, came back afterwards and we just talked about it 20 or 30 minutes. That's an example of the kind of thing we're talking about, Janet, of how there's media and there's technology, and Jim totally nailed it. We're not saying here's a bunch of new things you have to do, but let's open our eyes up and look at the opportunities that are there, maybe differently, and take the opportunities in front of us.

one foot too much into the world. I would not let my child see Bohemian Rhapsody. I wouldn't let my child listen to that song on the radio. I just want him to open the Word of God and get into it. Okay, gentlemen, how do you respond?

kids and statistically, for their faith to last. We need to have the conversations with them about sexuality and about worldview before the world is having them and not be afraid, but confidently engaged. That's the posture we we suggest in the book.

a movie at another point. But it seems to me if you wanted to plumb the depths of that, there's a boatload of stuff that we could extrapolate out. What do you do with power? Why there is good versus evil. What happens when you don't use your powers for something good rather than something bad? Um, are these messiah like figures that can redeem us in the end? What happens if you get a power Shazam that you can't control?

Then what happens? So, Sean, it seems to me there's gold in them there hills.

really a question of what is love? And we learned that the loving thing to do is to lay down your life for another as a sacrifice to save that person and to save mankind. That sure sounds like a biblical idea to me. So I like to talk about my kids. And my point is not that Marvel is trying to teach the gospel. They're probably not. Almost for sure, but they can't tell a great story without intersecting with these great themes that really only find themselves being comfortable

at home in the Christian worldview. So this is an opportunity. Our kids want to see it. They want to talk about it. They're already there. So let's use it and find the good in it. Of course, with appropriate boundaries.

Can the church do this?

Warriors are going to play the rockets okay. If you're in Houston I guarantee you there's probably some rockets fans in Houston who have passed on their passion for the rockets to their own children, who would say they're going to carve time tonight. They're going to sit gleefully. They would say if they got to go to the game, they would say, we got to go to the game. We get to go see the rockets play. Now think about that. They'll take selfies in the stands with strangers

behind them because they're just so excited to be there. Now, can you imagine if our kids felt that excited about the experience they're having with God? Well, I think we're able to transfer this kind of passion. It's just contagious. But we have to be honest, have we misplaced our priorities and have we misplaced our passion? So in the end, we're far more likely to pass on the passions we have for music, or the passions we have for our favorite sporting team than we are to pass on our

passions about God. And I think we have to look inside. We talk about why our kids sometimes so dispassionate. Well, I hate to tell you this, but all organizations catch the passion or dispassion of their leaders and families are the same way. We have to be passionate believers if we want to pass on a passionate form of Christianity to our kids.

McDowell and Jim Wallace. It's all there. Cold case Christianity.com. Sean McDowell. So you can learn more about the great work both gentlemen are doing, but I'm glad I still have more time so we can learn more about reaching that generation back after this. So the next generation will know. Preparing Young Christians for a Challenging world. The book has been co-authored by Doctor Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace.

And it really is just filled with all kinds of ways in which we can really get the next generation Gen Z millennials interested in having a biblical worldview. The methodology is going to be a little bit different, I will grant you. But the message has never, ever changed. Which takes me to a key question that both of you address in the book. Jim, let me start with you. You know, Jeremiah talked about the word of God being

like fire in his bones. How do we get this generation, Gen Z and millennials to really be passionate about truth, if truth is situational, if truth is individualistic, if the Oxford Cambridge Dictionary or the Cambridge Dictionary the Oxford Dictionary gives us, I'll get my schools right. Oxford Dictionary gives us the word post-truth. You got to recognize it before you fall in love with it. So how can we get young people passionate about it again?

in terms of application, a strategy. Right. Because what the reason why we're apathetic sometimes is because it's everyone's got something to say, blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Interestingly, in a, in a generation in which everyone's got so much access to information, young people are less likely to trust the information they find than probably any other generation. So we have a decline in trust as the elevation,

as we have an increase in information. And if you're just going to be another clanging bell out there that's full of what, without ever providing the whys, I think it's easy to get lost in a noisy world, but but we try to write an entire chapter on chapter five here, which is called Love Ignites, where we're just trying to talk about some simple strategies that might. Now, one of them, I'll just tell you up front is

what we talked about in the last segment. Do we model passion for our young people and are we excited about this? And do we seem like we're just crazy? Or do we seem like we've got good reason to be excited? Because we know how to apply this to our lives. We know how to defend this. We know why it's important to our situation right now. We're able to talk about those things and articulate those things. I think when young people see us do that, they can

kind of catch what we model. But I will say this, and this is something that as a youth pastor, I actually saw in my own ministry that often what stands between young people, even an old people like me, and a passion we have for God, a desire to talk to God, a desire to hear from God is an obstacle that we have privately in our life that we don't want to confess. You know, we have some either personal sin that we have not confessed that we have. And it's like a wall that we have let be

constructed between us and God. It's almost like we're embarrassed to be in the presence of God because we have this, this obstacle, and we have to help young people and our leaders in these ministries and ourselves as parents, remove those obstacles that have become the barrier to passion. And I will say this too. And this is what drove me crazy as a youth pastor, is that I found in Southern California what I was competing with. More times than not. It was not even an obstacle of personal sin,

but it was instead a misplaced priority. In other words, that that if it was a Sunday morning, it used to be in Southern California years ago. If there was a soccer tournament that's going to span two days, well, they wouldn't start again until Sunday at around two. Forget about it now. I mean, there's going to be an 8:00 game on Sunday morning. There's no space carved for the Christian culture, at least not where I am right now.

And and parents often will make choices about what their kids are to do that are based on their academic or athletic goals, rather than their spiritual goals. And if you're passionate about making sure you carve time and drop your kids off to volleyball practice and to all the sports they're involved in. Kids see it. We we lean in and we care about the things that we spend time doing. Okay. And if we're not engaged in doing this, you know, seeking God and doing the things of God

with passion, they're going to get that. Really, if we're more passionate about placing first in that tournament this weekend than we are about actually spending time with God, then before long, our kids are going to be more passionate about those things too.

than they're going to be taught. Um. That's difficult. Now, if you're if the book is for youth pastors and people who have a young person's ministry time just says, can't do it all the time. So how do we with intentionality? And that was the word that you didn't want to use before, but he did want to use. How do we, with intentionality try to have these relationships? And if it isn't, I don't want to offload it to the youth pastor. Talk to me as a mom

and a dad. How do I make time for these moments?

and pick something up. Almost every time I can. I'll just grab one of my kids and go, hey, do you want to go to the store? If you like to work on your car and fix it up, Is there a young person in your neighborhood or community, or your family who you could maybe teach to do this and partner together? So it's really just we're not adding more work to the church. We're trying to get the church to just say there's certain opportunities we have in

front of us. And it's true for parents, teachers and youth pastors, let's pay more attention to these so we can more effectively engage this generation and realize every conversation doesn't have to be this deep spiritual conversation. Most aren't. In fact, I spent a ton of time with my kids. Sometimes I feel guilty, like it's too much talking about superheroes and basketball so we can have those meaningful moments that stick with them.

a boatload of ideas. Thanks, friends. We'll see you next time on In the Market with Janet Parshall.