Orthodox Schmooze

I can probably give you around 177 or 178 reasons why I love Heritage Presbyterian Church in Edmond. Here's one of them. Friday night my 14-year-old son and some of his buddies from church spent some time at the home of our church's youth director. And what, you may ask, was the featured youth group activity? Well, a discussion of G.K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy, of course. Isn't that the sort of thing most evangelical youth groups are doing these days?

As it happens, that same day Ed Veith had a post about the sorts of adolescent activities — Veith calls them "stupid youth group tricks" — that are actually much more common in modern evangelicalism. "What do teenagers learn from these youth group activities?" he asks.

Nothing of the Bible. Nothing of theology. Nothing of the cost of discipleship. But they do learn some lessons that they can carry with them the rest of their lives: Lose your inhibitions. ... Give in to peer pressure. ... Christianity is stupid.

Teenagers get enough entertainment, psychology, and hedonism from their culture. They don't need it from their church. What they need — and often yearn for — is God's Word, catechesis, and spiritual formation.

Orthodoxy, you might say.