Interview: Josh McDowell - The Importance of Relationships

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.

|PIC1|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.

|TOP|How did you become a Christian?

I saw these peoples’ lives in university that were really different. I asked, ‘What makes your lives so different?’ This young lady just looked at me, and simply said ‘Jesus Christ.’ And I said ‘For God’s sakes don’t give me that garbage.’ And they challenged me right there. They said ‘We didn’t tell you the Church or the Bible— we said Jesus Christ.’ I accepted their challenge to refute them. In fact there’s a whole background to my book Evidence that Demands a Verdict, which was to write a book against Christianity. In the process I travelled around America, England, Germany, France and the Middle East to gather the evidence to write that book.

Later, I was here in London... I recall I was in North East London in a small museum library, and it was a Friday night, about 6:30 pm. I leaned back in my chair, cupped my hands behind my head and I said ‘It’s true... it’s true!’ And there my attitude changed from being an agonistic to being an honest inquirer to find out- not to prove it true or prove it false- but to ask the question ‘Is it true?’ and let the chips fall. Well that led me to return back to the university in America. That was December 19th 1959... that’s a long time ago. I became a Christian. I placed my trust in Christ and in about six months, a year and a half later, my life was transformed. I dropped out of law school and went to seminary, went to a communist indoctrination centre with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and went to Mexico, got thrown in jail, got out of jail...

You went to jail?

It’s a long story... because of its association with Marxism in Mexico. I went to live in Argentina and started challenging Marxists and Communists to public debates in universities, and it grew into a world wide ministry. It’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever done, which was debating Marxism.

Tell me about your family.

Whoa. I got four kids and I’m married to one of the greatest women God ever created. I’m so fortunate, the greatest kids in the whole world. My son is an author and speaker. They are all phenomenal speakers. [My daughter] she’s a psychiatrist. [My other children] are in the advanced mountain climbing school with the Canadian Government- that’s a ministry. As of last week I was married 35 years- to the same woman! Not 15 with one and 20 with another.

How have you led your family to a Christ-like household?

Well first of all, if I don’t model it in my life, it won’t do me much good if I want to teach anything. Second, if I don’t model it in my marriage, and third if I don’t teach it, it does not matter what I model— they never hear it. I don’t think my kids ever doubted that I loved them, and they’ve never doubted that I loved their mother. Well that’s the whole foundation right there, it really is. Plus, I’ve raised my children to question things. We would interact, almost like debate on the resurrection, the deity of Christ, the reliability of the Bible- everything- and go back and forth with it. So my kids, they cannot run on my faith, it’s got to become their faith. And my son, who is very brilliant, came to me when he was 18-years-old and said ‘Dad, I don’t really know if I believe your faith.’ And I said ‘Son, that’s OK. It’s got to become your faith.’ I would always say, ‘Son, don’t just reject something because it’s your mum and dads’ faith. Reject it because it’s not true.’ And now he says that was the best counsel I’ve ever given him.

|AD|That’s amazing.

Yeah. And all my kids have come to a vibrant, exciting faith, all going into the ministry in a sense of wanting to affect peoples’ lives. That’s ministry.

So what do you see for young people in the future?

I hope to God I’m doing everything I can to see it get better. But right now our church kids are becoming secularised more and more. I mean these are born again, evangelical if you want to call it. Church kids have become secular in their behaviour and secular in their mindset.


What do you think about Christian rock? Some claim that Christian music is becoming secularised, and that kids are just addicted to the beat of it.

Well some people are addicted to the traditional church beat. That’s a whole other issue and a whole music issue. I think music is one of the most powerful mediums to communicate a message. I was the first national speaker in America to have a Christian rock band Petra. At that time, Petra was the epitome of Christian music.

Petra at that time was the band. You see, back then we would all sit around one style of music. Now there are 4, 5, 6 different styles. It’s hard to get a youth group to go to a concert because they like different types of music whereas back then everybody liked Petra. Well now that’s changed. But then I saw with Petra the power to communicate a message, especially through contemporary Christian music.

Why did you decide to work in the youth ministry?

Why not? I was a young person when I came to Christ. I was a young person when I challenged the Christian faith. I was a young person when I made a commitment to full time Christian work. So why not work for people that are malleable and reproduce yourself?

They have a lot of hope.

That’s right.

What’s your biggest challenge when ministering to young people?

The greatest challenge is their relationship with their parents. Because so many parents say the name of Christ but they do not live it at home. So no matter what you say, it’s rejected because for adults my age, etc, if it’s true it will work. But for young people, if it works it is true. So when young people have parents who name the name Christ, they go to church. But at home they don’t live it out in their relationships with their kids, their wife, their spouse... then their kids will say it’s not true. It’s like when you say to young people ‘Your Heavenly Father loves you,’ that doesn’t bring joy it brings pain. Why? Because they only have the image of their earthly father. It brings pain to them. The biggest barriers you have are in relationships.