Barna Research: 43% of “Faith-Activated” Teens Struggle Connecting Faith with Real Life

The study looked at “Faith-Activated teens,” defined as those who “score high across six dimensions of lived-out Christian faith, from spiritual practice to service to a sense of calling,” and it found that:

• 44% of these teens “feel tension between their faith and what friends or culture expect of them, compared to 27 percent of all teens”
• 51% “strongly agree their faith feels more private than connected to daily life,” compared to 35% of all teens
• 43% “struggle to connect belief to real-life situations,” compared to 27% of all teens

What does this mean? It would seem that those with the strongest faith are the ones struggling the most with this “tension.” Barna explains:

A teen whose faith is compartmentalized or who feels caught between two irreconcilable convictions can look like someone who is drifting from their faith.

Barna’s researchers argue for a different interpretation. Faith-Activated teens aren’t wrestling with these questions because they’ve disengaged; they’re wrestling because they’re paying closer attention. Faith-Activated teens are taking their spiritual lives seriously enough to test it against what they’re learning in school and what their friends believe, and the research reveals the tension they’re experiencing as they do this.

The more these students dig into God’s Word and attempt to apply Scripture to the issues of our day, the more they notice that the two worldviews can’t be reconciled.

In other words, the more these students dig into God’s Word and attempt to apply Scripture to the issues of our day, the more they notice that the two worldviews can’t be reconciled. Well, that’s biblical! And that’s what I’ve found in my extensive travels when meeting many young people at the various events where I speak.

There is no neutrality—you are either for Christ or against Him; it’s rock or sand, light or darkness, man’s word or God’s Word. The Christian faith isn’t something that we simply add to our thinking, and the Bible isn’t merely a guidebook to life as it’s often presented. The Bible is the very foundation for our thinking, and from that foundation we can build a truly biblical worldview for interpreting the world around us.

When I travel and speak, I find teenagers are hungry for answers. They want to know how their faith applies to the issues of our day, they want answers for how they can know the Bible is trustworthy, and they want to be equipped to refute today’s secular thinking. I hear over and over again, “I’ve never heard this before! This makes so much sense.” They want to be equipped with answers and know how to best argue for the Christian faith (and that means learning to argue foundationally).

If we want to raise up godly generations, we must help young people understand how to think biblically, starting with God’s Word as the foundation. We must help them understand that we deal with any issue—any issue—by starting with Genesis 1–11. Those chapters are the foundation for our Christian worldview and the gospel message.

We need to teach them to think foundationally and arm them using apologetics teaching.

Once young people understand what the Bible truly is—the revelation from the all-knowing, infallible Creator who has given us the foundational information we need to build the right worldview—they can resolve much of the tension they feel, because they’ll understand that what they’re observing is a battle between the two foundations: God’s Word and man’s word. We need to teach them to think foundationally and arm them using apologetics teaching.

Our young people desperately need discipleship, even the ones that seem the most connected and faithful. What are you doing to disciple the next generation for Christ?

If you want to help but aren’t sure where to start, I encourage you to check out some AiG resources, including:

• Answers Bible Curriculum for Churches, which goes right through to teen and adult and is a great way to dive deep into Scripture, biblical worldview, apologetics, doctrine, and theology
• Answers TV, a great resource for the whole family with over 7,000 programs (including Answers University videos that go very in depth)
• The Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, a great resource with new videos released weekly that can help teens think more biblically about the issues of our day in science and culture
• My Ken Ham YouTube channel (one or more videos are uploaded weekly), which responds to issues in our culture and equips Christians to defend the Christian faith
• Explore Days and High School Labs at the Creation Museum, which offer hands-on science instruction from a biblical-worldview perspective

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.