Jesus Loves You and Evolution Is True: Why Youth Ministry Needs Science

Science is not a danger to the faith of Christian youth. In fact, Sara Sybesma Tolsma, an award-winning scientist, and Jason Lief, a leading practical theologian, argue that youth ministry needs science to help young people explore their relationship to God and engage their world faithfully.

Jesus Loves You and Evolution Is True invites the church and its leaders to open their minds and hearts to what science can tell us about our human lives and our connections to, and role in, our natural world. But it does not stop there: evolutionary science is theological, argues Lief and Tolsma, and so it must have a central place in the day-to-day work of youth ministry.

If the church wants to help youth develop robust spiritual lives and prepare them for the challenges that life will bring them, pastors, faith leaders, and youth workers must not only engage science but embrace its lessons for the life and practice of Christian faith today.

Sara Sybesma Tolsma is professor of biology at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. Her research into cancer genetics and cell biology has been widely published in scientific journals and has received a number of awards.

Jason Lief is associate professor of practical theology at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. He's the author of Poetic Youth Ministry and Christianity and Heavy Metal as Impure Sacred Within the Secular West: Transgressing the Sacred.