Lead Worship

unChristian – Chapter 2: Discovering unChristian Faith

Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: unchristian.

“Young adults enjoy challenging the rules. They are extremely-you might say innately-skeptical. Today’s young people are the target of more advertising, media, and marketing than any generation before. And their mindset is both incredibly savvy and unusually jaded” (page 21-22).

“The lifestyles of Mosaics and Busters are more diverse than those of their parents’ generation, including education, career, family, values, and leisure. Young people do not want to be defined by a “normal” lifestyle. They favor a unique and personal journey. Many young people do not expect to be married or to begin a family as a young adult (if at all), though this may have been the expectation in the past.
“For both Mosaics and Busters, relationships are the driving force. Being loyal to friends is one of their highest values. They have a strong need to belong, usually to a tribe of other loyal people who know them well and appreciate them. Still, under their relational connectedness lies fierce individualism” (page 22).

“Being skeptical of leaders, products, and institutions is part of their generational coding… They do not trust things that seem too perfect, accepting that life comes with is share of messiness and off-the-wall experiences and people” (page 23).

“If something doesn’t work for them, or if they are not permitted to participate in the process, they quickly move on to something that grabs them. They prefer casual and comfortable to stuffy and stilted” (page 23).

“Spirituality is important to young adults, but many consider it just one element of a successful, eclectic life. Fewer than one out of ten young adults mention faith as their top priority, despite the fact that the vast majority of Busters and Mosaics attended a Christian church during their high school years. Most young people who were involved in a church as a teenage disengage from church life and often from Christianity at some point during early adulthood, creating a deficit of young talent, energy, and leadership in many congregations” (page 23).

“The image of the Christian faith has suffered a major setback. Our most recent data show that young outsiders have lost much of their respect for the Chrsitian faith. These days nearly two out of every five young outsiders (38 percent) claim to have a “bad impression of present-day Christianity” (page 24).

“They are morelikely than previous generations to believe he committed sings; they are also more liely to believe that people can live a meaningful life without him” (page 24).

“Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, antichoice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe” (page 26).

“One crucial insight kept popping up in our exploration. In studying thousands of outsiders’ impressions, it is clear that Christians are primarily perceived for what they stand against. We have become famous for what we oppose, rather than who we are for” (page 26).

“In our national surveys with young people, we found the three most common perceptions of present-day Christianity are antihomosexual (an image held by 91 percent of young outsiders), judgmental (87 percent), and hypocritical (85 percent). These “big three” are followed by the following negative perceptions, embraced by a majority of young adults: old-fashioned, too involved in politics, out of touch with reality, insensitive to others, boring, not accepting of other faiths, and confusing” (page 27).

SIX BROAD THEMES

1. Hypocritical. Outsiders consider us hypocritical-saying one thing and doing another – and they are skeptical of our morally superior attitudes. They say Christians pretend to be something unreal, conveying a polished image that is not accurate. Christians think the church is only a place for virtuous and morally pure people.
2. Too focused on getting converts. Outsiders wonder if we genuinely care about them. They feel like targets rather than people. They question our motives when we try to help them “get saved,” despite the fact that many of them have already “tried” Jesus and experienced the church before.
3. Antihomosexual.
4. Sheltered. Christians are thought of as old-fashioned, boring, and out of touch with reality.
5. Too political.
6. Judgmental. They doubt that we really love people as we say we do. (page 29-30)

“Being hurt by Christianity is far mare common among the young than amoung older outsiders. Three out of every ten young outsiders said they have undergone negative experiences in churches and with Christians” (page 32).

“Some Christians respond to outsiders’ negativity by promoting a less offensive faith. The unpopular parts of Christian teaching are omitted or deemphasized. They hijack the image of Jesus by portaying him as an open-minded, big-hearted, and never-offended-anyone moral teacher. That is an entirely wrong idea of Jesus” (page 33).

“Young outsiders want to have discussions, but they perceive Christians as unwilling to engage in genuine dialogue. They think of conversations as “persuasion” sessions, in which the Christians downloads as many arguments as possible.
“Outsiders told us that the underlying concern of Christians often seems more about being right than about listening. There is an undercurrent of arrogance that  outsiders perceive. This raises the implication that even the “correct” answers, if expressed in an unChristian way, are totally out of tune with the skeptical generation. If Christians are perceived as difficult to live with-and if they do not respond in godly, appropriate, and humble ways to people’s questions and doubts-we permit the hijacking of Jesus, simply by leaving our voice out of the conversation” (page 33).

“One thirty-five-year-old believer from California put it this way: ‘Christians have become political, judgmental, intolerant, weak, religious, angry, and without balance. Christianity has become a nice Sunday drive. Where is the living God, the Holy Spirit, an amazing Jesus, the love, the compassion, the holiness? This type of life, how I yearn for that’”(page 35).

“However, before you dismiss the unChristian perception as “just Christians doing their duty,” realize that the challenge runs much deeper. The real problem comes when we recognize God’s holiness but fail to articulate the other side of his character: grace. Jesus represents truth plus grace (see John 1:14). Embracing truth without holding grace in tension leads to harsh legalism, just as grace without truth devolves to compromise. Still, the important insight based on our research is that Mosaics and Busters rarely see Christians who embody service, compassion, humility, forgiveness, patience, kindness, peace, joy, goodness, and love” (page 37).

“Are you starting to wrap your heart and mind around all this? Millions of young outsiders are mentally and emotionally disengaging from Christianity. The nation’s population is increasingly resistant to Christianity, especially to the theologically conservative expressions of that Faith” (page 39).

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