Churches put a lot of effort into teaching young Christians, and still many of them leave the church. J. Warner Wallace, a cold-case homicide detective who writes and teaches on Christian apologetics, makes a suggestion that sounds provocative at first: stop teaching them, and start training them.

His point rests on a simple difference: training means preparing for a fight you know is coming. A boxer gets serious once the date of the next match is set, and a student studies differently when there’s a real test at the end of the course. Wallace believes the church has plenty of good teachers. What’s missing is a sense of urgency: the challenges young Christians will face later seem too far away to feel real. So he wants youth leaders to begin with the calendar, not the classroom. Put a real challenge on the schedule, and the teaching that leads up to it turns into training.

As a youth pastor, he did exactly that. Every year he took his students to Salt Lake City to talk with Mormons about what they believe, and to Berkeley for conversations with atheists. Because they knew those conversations were coming, the students took the preparation seriously, and their leaders had to become good apologists themselves. The idea grew out of a painful lesson. In his first year as a youth pastor, Wallace, a former designer, poured his energy into creative, entertaining meetings. Only one of the students who graduated that year held on to their faith.

The article is short and direct. If you lead teenagers, take its question into your next planning meeting: what challenge could you put on your group’s calendar this year, so that what you teach has a clear purpose? Parents can ask the same question at home.

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Read the full article: Stop Teaching Young Christians About Their Faith by J. Warner Wallace, on coldcasechristianity.com.

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This article by J. Warner Wallace first appeared on his website, coldcasechristianity.com. Pulse published a German version in November 2020 (in German).