Internationally renowned speaker and author, Josh McDowell, flew in from America to UK recently to share his wisdom on relationships between parents and young people. Together with Roy Crowne, National Director of Youth For Christ, McDowell will reach out to parents and church leaders to relate the issue of relationship with raising a generation of Christian believers who know what they believe in, and why.
In this interview with Christian Today, McDowell talks about his own relationships he has built with his family, shares his thoughts on youth culture today, and reveals details of his personal conversion.
What will you mainly be talking about at seminars during your UK tour?
I’ll be talking with parents on how to build relationships.
You see, the principle is, rules without relationships lead to rebellion with kids. Or truth— biblical truth— without relationships leads to rejection. It’s relationships that engenders beliefs that forms our values, and drives our behaviour. And where we’re falling down in churches is in the area of relationships, especially starting with Mum and Dad.
Don’t you find that a bit challenging? Obviously, kids these days don’t really listen to their parents as much as they used to.
Well if you didn’t have a relationship with them, you wouldn’t want to listen, either. If you have a relationship with your child, I don’t care what culture you’re in, your kids will listen to you. They’ll respond to you if a child knows ‘My Daddy loves me’- it’s a whole different ball game- but maybe 20-25% of all kids in the world don’t even know that.
So you’re saying, set the relationship right with your parents first.
Yes, you set it up first with the parents and that leads to the basis of setting up a relationship with God. Then that leads to affecting their behaviour. You can be the greatest parent in the whole world- you can do everything right- but there’s no guarantee your child won’t grow up to hate you and walk away. But if we apply the right principles and build a relationship, the chances of that happening is almost nil.
Your biography indicates that you weren’t a Christian before.
Yes. But before, I was not an atheist like a lot of people say. I was an agnostic. And there are two kinds of agnostic- there’s an ordinary agnostic and an obnoxious agnostic. I was kind of an obnoxious agnostic.
