“These days nearly two out of every five young outsiders (38 percent) claim to have a ‘bad impression of present-day Christianity.’ Beyond this, one-third of young outsiders said that Christianity represents a negative image with which they would not want to be associated.”
“The most common ‘favorable’ impression (for outsiders) is that Christianity teaches the same basic idea as other religions; more than four out of every five young outsiders embrace this description.”
“In fact, we discovered that one-fifth of all outsiders, regardless of age, admitted they ‘have had a bad experience in a church or with a Christian that gave them a negative image of Jesus Christ.’ ”
-Dave Kinnamen, in unChristian
Present-day Christianity is shooting itself in the foot. That was one of the big take home messages from the book I recently read, the book “unChristian” by Dave Kinnamen. This text, based on surveys administered and data collected through the Barna group, is a broad base look at self described non-born-again Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 (aka. the outsiders) and how they view Christianity as it stands in America and the world today. The results are none-too-flattering.
Of course, to myself, and probably most others, the general results were not surprising. However, what is surprising, and even more so very convicting, is the high percentage of like minded abashment’s of Christians behavior and the detail of their distaste in our actions. Throughout my reading I was continuously questioning myself, seeing how I felt my lifestyle stacked up against the charges that were being brought. As well as bringing out the complaints, the author and his various contributors from the American church provide suggestions and encouragement for ways in which we can break through all of these negative barricades being built against the Christian message.
To myself, one of the most wrenching sections was on the views of outsiders that Christians are only interested in creating new converts and not necessarily in actually knowing and loving the people who they witness to. On top of this, Christians are oblivious to this disconnect with the younger generations. The author reports that 64 percent of Christians believe that outsiders perceive their efforts in evangelism as genuine, while only 34 percent of outsiders actually do. Also, he notes that we fail to continue in discipleship, as demonstrated by the fact that a majority of people who make a decision for Christ are no longer connected to a Christian church within 8 to 12 weeks following their decision! This is a big problem. This means that we as Christians are failing to both demonstrate and communicate the revolutionary nature of the decision to believe on Christ and seeking to be sanctified into His image.
In all, I found this book somewhat depressing, though in a welcome sense, and very helpful in preparing myself to engage those in my generation who do not know Christ as Lord of their life. Moreover, it strengthened my conviction for the need of revolutionary Christianity, for a lifestyle which represents a drastic difference from the world in which we live, adhering to the holy and inerrant direction of God’s word.
If we as Christians stand any chance of reaching the future generations of Americans it is clear that we can no longer live the blase, lukewarm life of the last 20 to 30 years. We must stand on scripture, we must seek holiness, and most importantly we must humbly proceed in love towards the lost, willing to lay down our lives in sacrifice so that they may come to know Jesus as the Savior of their souls.
