Some have asked me why I am considering the pursuit of a PhD. Others ask why I have such a passion for teaching youth, particularly middle schoolers. I think the results in this report can shed some light on that.

Youth today view religion as a very small and mainly irrelevant section of their lives. They usually view it as the part that is forced upon them by their parents, a part that they fully intend to shrug off as soon as they are old enough to do so.

I have a passion for teaching youth that their faith must be their own, not that of their parents, and that their faith is the lens through which they must view the entirety of their lives. When our youth’s worldview is shaped by MTV, perezhilton.com, and ESPN, we as a church must count the cost of how we have handled cultural issues in the past and determine if the future of our youth is a price we are willing to pay to be able to remain in our comfortable silence.