September Newsletter from Emmaus Campus Ministry
A Different Narrative of Faith by Pastor John Lund
“My son isn’t sure if he is a Christian.” “My granddaughter doesn’t believe Jesus died for her sins.”
I often hear these words from concerned parents and grandparents about youth and young adults who have grown up in our mainline protestant congregations and even work at our Bible camps. I hear these words of doubt or uncertainty about faith even more often from our regular and active students when they are given the chance to be honest. This has been a consistent and prevalent message coming from a growing majority of our young adults. If this is a wide-spread sentiment, as I suspect, it can feel like a crisis of faith and a crisis for our future church.
However, it may help to understand the doubt. When I was in college there were many who said you had to be a Christian to go to heaven. I realized that if only Christians went to heaven, then most of the world’s people (and my friends) would not make it. I also knew that it was dumb luck that I was a Christian because of where I was born. My problem was that I had been taught my whole life that we have an all-loving and gracious God who cares for all people and all creation, which was not consistent with sending two-thirds of the world’s population to eternal damnation. I knew something was amiss, and I was ready to bag the whole thing like most of my friends. The alternative was to go deeper and find a different narrative of the Christian story, and for me that meant going to seminary. Click here to continue reading John’s article and the entire September Newsletter from Emmaus Campus Ministry.