GREAT line. Hope you don't mind me stealing it for my tagline--my old one was a bit played out.
And your point is right on the money.
To Kjam22: When the earliest Christians left Jerusalem to preach to the world, do you think they insisted on speaking only Aramaic because "that's what the Lord spoke, and that's good enough for me"? Or did they instead speak Greek, Latin, Arabic, or whatever the local language was?
This is no different. Trying to preach to the youth in America using technical Biblical terms and formal theology is as good as preaching in Hebrew. If you want to get a message across, you have to explain it in terms that mean something to the hearer.
For example, if I talk about God being a Heavenly Father to a girl who has never known anything but abuse from the father-figures in her life, do you think that she'll really know what I mean? You may argue, "But everyone knows what a father is." Sure, the dictionary definition, but what about the gut-level knowledge that comes from experience? Or how do you explain the need for a sacrifice to atone for sin to a person to whom relativism is the catchphrase of the day?
That's not saying that you water-down the message of the Gospel, or that you happily engage in a sinful lifestyle yourself--and I don't see that being expoused in the above article. What it does mean is that you sometimes have to learn new ways to explain the Gospel, or take on some cultural attributes that the Bible is silent on in order to win trust.
Most of the people in today's youth that I know who most need the Gospel shy away from anything Churchian--and not without good reason, in most cases. Even those who don't have a "screwed by the Christians" story tend to be cynical and/or gunshy. "Dressing down"--wearing an earring, growing a goatee, whatever--can often lower barriers and get a characatured idea of what a Christian is out of the way. The outward appearance and the lingo isn't Christianity; it's the changed lives and the love of Christ that we're supposed to be bringing to people.
Paul became a Greek in his outward appearance to open up doors to the Greeks. Hudson Taylor reached the Chinese by dressing and speaking as a native Chinese. These kids are reaching their fellow young people by dressing and speaking Gen-Xer--what's the difference?
It's true that in the end, no one will be in Hell because they just weren't preached to the right way. It's also true that if you're not willing to share the Gospel with someone in their own language, He'll find someone else who is.
If you are talking about a ministry in prisons or juvenile detention centers I could maybe go along with you a little bit. But we have been talking about ministry in churches, to Christian kids who grew up in church. They are being sold out to this watered down version of Christianity. How can we expect them then to be prepared to pass the truth on to the next generation? Some of the material out there, like Relevant magazine, is like someone above said, pretty much beyond watered down and into being just water.
Glad you liked the line well enough to use it as a tagline. And I love the attribution. :^}