Clearly, Christ’s own earthly ministry would have been more effective if he just had a youth basketball program, alternative worship service on saturday nights, roller-skating parties, and pizza.
(insane sarcasm)
What you’ve been saying has completely removed the work of the Holy Spirit from effectual calling, salvation, and sanctification.
Leave it up to people? Leave it to programs? Have the right kids ministry and parents will come? Does this save people in 3rd-world countries? Did it save people in 1st-century Rome? Europe during the Renaissance? America during the great Awakening?
Charles Spurgeon should have just put on a goofy hat, gotten some puppets, and told a cute story about Noah?
Church does NOT need to be relevant to society. The gospel is the exact OPPOSITE of what society says people should want, so how can you “win them” by using the very means that destroys culture? Listen to this great Christian rock band! It’s just like what’s on the radio - only cleaner and about Jesus! Good grief, seriously?
The gospel is a scandal, it’s offensive to sinners - and can’t/won’t/shouldn’t be dressed up and made to look like something that it’s plainly not.
God, through his Spirit, calls sinners to repentance, regenerates sinful hearts, and causes them to walk in his ways - all of this, done through the faithful preaching of his word.
This whle notion that someone makes a profession of faith, attends the cool programs, falls away, then comes back in their 30’s is not a problem that needs to be fixed by better kids programs. It’s a problem of identifying false conversions. An emotional response to a sad song about God when the lights are low and the lasers are shining is not the same as God’s spirit regenerating the heart of a sinner. One lasts because it’s purposed by God, the other doesn’t because it’s purposed by man.
The church must be engaged in society. To fail to do so is to step back from The Great Commission.
if you don’t like how we do it, do yours differently.