Signs of the Times

Des Wilson

The Times

Des Wilson, Director of Shelter (National Campaign for the Homeless) in The Times London, England

I believe the Church's best chance of winning through to young people is to show that it appreciates that tomorrow belongs to youth and is prepared to give them a place in the creation of it. And is prepared, too, to help them create their ideal. Its chance lies, too, in its acceptance of the need to win the hearts and minds of young people with logical and practical argument. It is not enough to say: "You must have faith."

So often in my own search for the key to Christianity, I mentally searched friends of mine who are ministers of the Church, and whom I much admire, to find some piece of logic. But always in the end they fell back on '"faith." I just cannot believe that young people will today take faith as an answer in itself.

Let us assume for a moment that it is acceptable to the Church to regard youth as a "market." If it is prepared to accept that it must sell in a world where salesmanship of anything and everything is essential, then it must first study its product and then its market.

Its product is the most remarkable and well defined and reasonable approach to living together as a human race that has yet been devised. But in a world of competition, into which the Church is being dragged, perhaps unwillingly, even unwittingly, it must keep reviewing that product, modifying that product, and updating that product. The old image is no longer acceptable.

Young people need to be convinced. Therefore logic must replace faith. Young people like to get involved in practical action. ... [They] put homes for human beings before cathedrals. ... Organizations like Shelter are giving them some kind of useful outlet to their energy and their enthusiasm and their idealism, and perhaps are helping them to retain those qualities a little longer. But they need something else, some greater ideal, to carry them all the way through life. Christianity still remains the most likely contender. But, instead of despairing, or instead of retreating into the past, it must step out boldly and sell.

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