My Sunday School class has been reading unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity...and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. We finished it this past Sunday, giving me the opportunity to reflect on the book as a whole. There are six essential points: that 'outsiders' see Christians as too hypocritical, too focused on the get saved mentality, antihomosexual, too sheltered, too political, and too judgmental. For the most part, I agreed that Christianity does seem to have a bad rap in society today, though I'm not sure how much of that is our fault, and how much of it can be ascribed to other forces.

What really gave me food for thought, though, was the final pages in which the authors printed responses from several notable Christian public figures on the question of where they saw the Church and the Christian image in thirty years. It wasn't something I'd considered before. Like many who have grown up in the church, I have lived in a fairly safe bubble. Not a great deal has changed within that bubble in the past few years, and though I can see a general decline in people's views of Christianity, it has yet to affect me in a major way. Despite that, however, I can say with all honesty that I would hate to be someone's example of what it means to be a Christian.

Anyway, I was thinking about where Christianity might be in thirty years, and I started thinking about where we were thirty years ago. Did anyone expect the changes we've seen from 1980 until now? I don't think anyone could have predicted any of what we've experienced since then.

I don't really have a point with this, I guess, except to recommend that you read the book for yourselves and tell me what you think.

Next book: Answering Islam by Norman Geisler