DISCLAIMER: If you are a follower of Christ- who is already going to heaven – and talk about changing the traditions which define the methods of the “church” (lower case “c” on purpose) irritates you, you’ll definitively not appreciate this book…just sayin’ 🙂
…we must be honest enough with ourselves to determine where our allegiance is merely cultural (like first-generation immirants) rather than biblical
– pg 56 “You Lost Me”
I had been waiting what seems like forever to get my hands on David Kinnaman’s new book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are leaving Church…And Rethinking Faith. Almost as long as I have been waiting for an opportunity to share my thoughts on the book.
Before I talk about this book, I should share that most of my excitement for reading this book comes from 2 reasons.
- Reading Unchristian (see my review here) totally blew me away
- My heart personally is deeply invested in seeing people live an engaged life as Christ Follower – and the question “How do we reach the next generation with the Gospel” is a question that is constantly on my mind.
I’ve been joking with my fellow staff members that one of these days I’m gonna write a book for people I like to define as those who are going through a “Quarter-Life Crisis.” Not because I am making fun of them or seeing them as a project to fix, but because they have a special place in my heart. For one of the reasons, this book is timely.
Young Christians are leaving the church – but they are not necessarily leaving Jesus. This is what I have seen. This is what You Lost Me affirms through its research.
This should not be.
Not for the sake of the institution that is the church in the western world – it’s for the sake of biblical mission. If the local expression of God’s fellowship of believers is to remain a witness for Christ in their community then making sure the next generation is reengaged in church is important. If it is God’s design that the changing power of the Gospel is to find great effectiveness through what we have defined as the local church – then making sure the next generation not only finds value in staying engaging in church but finds meaning and purpose by being a part of it is mission-critical.
Maybe I am old school. Maybe I am naive to believe that the church can become not only something followers of Christ live to be a part of, but even become martyrs to defend, then this is important.
There is soooo much in this book. I can’t even begin to scratch the surface of all that this book is, but I will share some of my favorite parts.
- the cultural setting in which young people come of age is significantly changed from what was experienced during the formative years of previous generations…we …must commit ourselves to understanding our culture today to be effective translators of faith to the next generation. We must come to grips with the challenges and with the opportunities for the gospel to advance.
- I am concerned that too many Mosaic Christians are so interested in pursuing the good, the true, and the beautiful that they forget to acknowledge and draw near to the source of those pursuits – Jesus.
- …only a traditionalist would argue that all talk about sex is vulgar
- How would the church be different if we were to reject exclusion as unacceptable and tolerance as not good enough?
- The generation gap is growing, fueled in part by technology, so it takes extra effort to be on the same page.
- New churches must be formed where all believers are expected to do the work of evangelism and discipleship. This generation sees the potency of a church where pastors equip and shepherd disciple-makers rather than service-attenders.
- (1) the church needs to reconsider how we make disciples; (2) we need to rediscover Christian calling and vocation; and (3)we need to reprioritize wisdom over information as we seek to know God.
As I look over these bullet points I feel that I I am not even doing the book justice. If you are a statistics junkie (I am not) there’s tons of info based on their research that you’ll love. If you’re the type that doesn’t like books related to Christianity that are devoid of biblical passages and teachings on them – you’ll find plenty of that as well.
I do not feel the need to go into all of the book – after all this is a review, not a summary. If I could give a summarizing statement, it would have to be from the book itself.
…the Christian community must rethink our efforts to make disciples. Many of the assumptions on which we have built our work with young people are rooted in modern, mechanistic, and mass production paradigms.
…We need new architects to design interconnected approaches to faith transference. We need new ecosystems of spiritual and vocational apprenticeship that can support deeper relationships and more vibrant faith formation. We need to recognize the generational shfts from left-brain skills like logic, analysis, and structure to the right-brain aptitudes of creativity, synthesis, and empathy. We need to renew our catechisms and confirmations-not because we need new theology, but because their current forms too rarely produce young people of deep, abiding faith. We need to rethink our assumptions and we need the creativity, honest, and vitality of the next generation to help us.
Pick the book up. You may not agree with all of it, but you’d be hard-pressed to not feel engaged by it and challenged to rethink the difference between defining the end result of Christian discipleship and defining the methods by which you have been exposed to and embrace for Biblical discipleship.