Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding to the Church's Obsession with Youthfulness

A New Vision for Faith Formation in a Secular Age

The loss or disaffiliation of young adults is a much-discussed topic in churches today. Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God?

Leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers an alternative take on the issue of youth drifting away from the church and articulates how faith can be formed in our secular age, exploring

● a theology of faith constructed from a rich cultural conversation
● a deeper understanding of the phenomena of the "nones" and "moralistic therapeutic deism"
● the reasons why forming faith is so hard in our context
● our loss of an imagination for how and where God could be present in our lives
● steps we can take to move into faith and apply a Pauline concept of faith as encounter with divine action