Monday Meanderings, 03/24/08

Some things that caught my eye this week…           

+ Since we have entered the Easter season (yes, that’s right, it’s not over!), it’s good to be mindful that once again, the so-called “Jesus-tomb” theory has been firmly debunked. Remember the big splash from last Easter, when James Cameron ( director of Titanic) and a lay archaeologist produced a special for the Discovery Channel in which they claimed to have found the tomb of Jesus, which would shake Christian belief to its very foundations? Well, turns out within weeks of that broadcast most real archaeologists weren’t buying.   Ben Witherington of Asbury Seminary has links to a final set of reports from a recent conference at Princeton University that was woefully underreported in the mainstream media. (Shocked?) He concludes, “It’s time to roll the stone in front of that tomb theory once and for all, as it has been tried, and found wanting over and over again in various ways.”

            + Interesting commentary over at Slate.com: Happy Crossmas! : Why Easter Stubbornly Resists the Commercialism that Swallowed Christmas. Catch this quote: Even the resurrection, the joyful end of the Easter story, resists domestication as it resists banalization. Unlike Christmas, it also resists a noncommittal response. Even agnostics and atheists who don’t accept Christ’s divinity can accept the general outlines of the Christmas story with little danger to their worldview. But Easter demands a response. It’s hard for a non-Christian believer to say, “Yes, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead.” That’s not something you can believe without some serious ramifications: If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, this has profound implications for your spiritual and religious life-really, for your whole life. If you believe the story, then you believe that Jesus is God, or at least God’s son. What he says about the world and the way we live in that world then has a real claim on you. Easter is an event that demands a “yes” or a “no.” There is no “whatever.”

            + I have avoided getting involved with the discussion raised by the comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the resulting speech on race in America made by Sen. Barack Obama.  I think the “More Perfect Union” speech is worth reading or watching-and then thinking about carefully. Obama casts a compelling vision and frames the discussion with valid observations, though I do think it is important to remember that the speech comes from his context and experience; it is not as objective as the media wants us to believe. (Of course all of us would approach such a speech from out of our own stories, too.) Also, consider that a speech as an act of political courage and a speech as an act of political necessity are not the same thing.  African-American pastor Thabiti Anabwile has two interesting posts on this, here and here.  Also, check out  David Anderson on “Racism vs. Gracism”.

           It is important for us to consider race relations honestly, lovingly and Biblically, especially from a gospel perspective.  It’s important because we have a responsibility as Christians to express the heart of Christ in our culture.  It’s also important because the Lord is bringing more and more African- Americans to Victory, and a multi-ethnic church has a unique opportunity to model a way of relating to each other that can be a sign of hope to the world.  

     + “Now it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and easy also to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance which is exacting.”-John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, page 43 (HT: Josh Harris)  Yes!  That quest is exacting, exasperating-and at the core of the adventure of living as Christ-followers in our world.

 

An Absurd & Beautiful Love

  A mid-Holy Week meditation from Walter Wangerin:

It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”  And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.  She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14:1-9)

Woman!

What a blessed contrast you make to the rulers in Jerusalem! They would preserve their power; you came with no power at all.  They vaunt themselves; you have-except for one remarkable characteristic-no self at all.

What is your name that I might address my praise to you?  I don’t know.  Were you someone’s mother?  I don’t know.  Were you old, bent by years of experience?  Were you a prostitute?  Or else, praiseworthy for purity and virtue?  Were you poor, the ointment an impossible expense for you?  Or rich, with easy access to a hundred such flasks?  I don’t know.  Mark never says.  I know nothing about you save this: that you anointed the head of my Lord. 

Ah, but that’s enough to know!  That deed alone is your identity, your entire being: your self.  It memorializes you forever.  “What she has done,” says Jesus, “will be told in memory of her.”  Woman, now you are that deed, neither more nor less than that deed.  I marvel at you. I pray God that I might do-and therefore be-the same.

For what was your gesture?  An act of pure love for Jesus particularly.  It was an act so completely focused upon the Christ that not a dram of worldly benefit was gained thereby.  Nothing could justify this spillage of some three hundred days’ wages, except love alone.  The rulers who sought to kill Jesus were motivated by a certain reasonable logic; but your prodigality appears altogether unreasonable-except for reasons of love.  The disciples, in fact, were offended by an act that produced nothing, accomplished nothing, fed no poor, served no need. They reproached you as a wastrel.

They were offended by the absurd, an act devoted absolutely to love, to love alone.

But Jesus called it “beautiful.”

Who else anointed our High Priest, as priests should surely be anointed in office?  Who else anointed our King, the son of David?  Who else anointed the body of our Savior for burial?  No one but you.  I don’t know that you consciously recognized these offices of the Lord; but love instinctively sees the truth.  Love enhances and names in truth.  No one else anointed him and by that gesture declared him Messiah, the Christ.  The act, therefore, was more than beautiful.  It was rare and rich with meaning.

And since the act is all there is of you, since humility has reduced you to this single thing alone and now you are no more nor less than your love for the Lord, you yourself are beautiful and rare and rich with meaning.

You are the beauty of faithful loving.

To those who do not truly love, you will ever be ephemeral or else an offensive. either a shadow or an idiot.  To me you are a model.  You gave up all; you became nothing at all save love for the Lord; and exactly so are you remembered.  Here, “wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world,” is love’s monument.

You, nameless, anonymous, lovely indeed: thank you.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Jesus, I love you, I love you!

             Cleanse me of anything that is not love for you, even though the world will think   me preposterous and my friends-some of whom are your disciples-will not be able to make sense of me.  You are all the sense and meaning I need.  I love you.

                         [from Reliving the Passion (Zondervan, 1992), pp.42-44]

 

Monday Meanderings, 03/17/08

 Feelin’ lucky while wandering across the web… 

+ Dean Potter is a wiry 6′5″ and 180 pounds-and is one of the world’s best, most daring climbers.  After becoming the first person to free climb both El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite, meaning he used only ropes, climbing only his hands and his feetnto climb for a vertical mile.  Since he has been working on a new technique combining highlining and BASE-jumping.  His latest climb is even terrifying to think about. Interesting quote: “When there’s a death consequence, when you are doing things that if you mess up you die, I like the way it causes my senses to peak.  I can see more clearly. You can think much faster. You hear at a different level. Your foot contact on the line is accentuated. Your sense of balance is heightened. I don’t seem to feel that very often meditating.”  Now take that and apply it to living our days with eternal urgency, constantly aware that our witness is a life or death matter for the people we encounter.  It might caue our spiritual senses to peak, help us see more clearly and hear people at a different level.  It might change us.

+ “Drop & give me twenty!”  The push-up is the perfect exercise-and a measure of physical fitness.  Yikes.

+ A timely and sobering wake-up call about the impact on children who have television sets in their bed rooms.  It effects them physically, intellectually-and spiritually.   

+ Check out Commission Stories.  It’s a way to get up close and personal with our International Mission Board missionaries, to hear and see the stories of reaching people all over the world. It will stir you to pray for unreached peoples in ways you never dreamed. 

+ OK-fill out your NCAA bracket here.  Here’s hoping that UK-Marquette is not a repeat of the past time (where Dwayne Wade became a star).

 

Mad and Wonderful

The madness has begun!

I flipped through channels this afternoon and found college basketball on 5 different channels.  How great is that?!?!

I may be a little sleep deprived for the next few weeks, especially for West Coast games– even without Drew at home to watch them with me.  But that’s a small sacrifice to watch the greatest sport there is– college basketball, especially in the NCAA tournament!!

 Go Blue!! (even though we’re starting over an hour late tonight)

 

Talking Around Dad

               A recent article in the New York Times business section tracked the growing use of cell phone technology by younger people.  That wasn’t the news.  The angle of the story was how young people are using the technology to create new ways of relating that are reshaping the relationships between parents and their children.

             The story opens with an encounter between Russell Hampton, president of Walt Disney’s children’s book and magazine publishing division, and his daughter, Katie.  He was taking Katie and two friends to a play in Los Angeles.

            “Katie and her friends were sitting in the back seat talking to each other about some movie star; I think it was Orlando Bloom,” recalled Mr. Hampton, whose company produced the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, in which the actor starred. “I made some comment about him, I don’t remember exactly what, but I got the typical teenager guttural sigh and Katie rolled her eyes at me as if to say, ‘Oh Dad, you are so out of it.’ ”After that, the back-seat chattering stopped. When Mr. Hampton looked into his rearview mirror he saw his daughter sending a text message on her cellphone. “Katie, you shouldn’t be texting all the time,” Mr. Hampton recalled telling her. “Your friends are there. It’s rude.” Katie rolled her eyes again. “But, Dad, we’re texting each other,” she replied with a harrumph. “I don’t want you to hear what I’m saying.”

            Cell phones and text messaging, with its unique language (including parent-watch signals like  POS - “parent over shoulder’) are a primary force increasingly enabling children “to define themselves and create social circles apart from their families, changing the way they communicate with their parents.” It places children in control of if –and how– they might communicate with their parents.  One researcher noticed, “Just because you can reach them doesn’t mean they have to answer… Cellphones give teens more of a private life. Their parents aren’t privy to all of their conversations.”  That means some parents set limits, like no cell phones at the dinner table or while the family watches television together. That dad said, “They become unaware of your presence.”

            It was at that point that I began to wonder: are there “technologies” of soul that we use in an attempt to keep our heavenly Father from hearing what we’re saying?  Or, to put it another way, are there things we do that make us unaware of His presence?  

             In general terms, a technology is something external to us that we use.  So, it seems that many of us use busy-ness as a means of creating a new circle of being and relating.  We spin endlessly from morning ‘til night, moving from work to stuff with the kids to church activities to ballgames to…. It just never ends.  Such busy-ness means there are no spaces for nothing. No spaces for nothing means no time to dream, create, ponder, reflect, muse, consider or…pray.  Busy-ness means the only channel I play is me.

            And then there’s noise, or lack of silence.  The clock radio kicks you into gear first thing in the morning.  You watch the news while you get ready, listen to the radio (music or talk) as you zip around during the day.  Maybe you have an I-pod with ear buds plugged in at times. The tv plays in the background through the night until you fall into bed at night. There’s a soundtrack that just never hits pause, so I tend to miss the ‘still, small voice” whispering on the edges of my soul.

            What about just being consumed with now?  Our minds are filled with bills, work, school, tests, gas prices, the stock market, ‘Dancing with the Stars”, what’s going on with Brad and Angelina, school projects, basketball, what’s on sale at Kohl’s, the price of milk, asking for a date, ordering a latte at Starbucks, going to the dentist, dealing with a sticky gearshift, double cheeseburgers, planting tulip bulbs, watching old movies, collectible bobbleheads, surfing on-line, running a mile, playing peek-a-boo, college applications (or tuition), politics, global warming, walking the dog and on and on and on…. When thoughts never stretch beyond the borders of the world I can see with my eyes, I may be unaware of the expansiveness of a world beyond ours - or the Presence that is in both.

            In all of these ways ( and a dozen more like worry or planning), we can arrange our lives so that we never really engage our dad, our Abba-even when He is right next to us.  In all of these ways, we can miss His presence, which means we may miss His wisdom, hope, joy, peace, love and guidance as well. 

            Maybe we just need to stop talking

                                                        phoning

                                                        texting

                                                        e-mailing

                                                        planning

                                                        working

                                                        deal-making

                                                        pressing

                                                        wrestling

                                                        worrying

                                                        doing

                                                        going

                                                        coming…

and simply hear our Father say, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

            Maybe, like Elijah, we need to step outside the cave of our little world and stand in the huge space where God is.  “And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.  And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire, the sound of a still, small voice (some translators say “a thin silence”).  And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak…and there came a voice to him….” (1 Kings 19:11-13)

            The silence invited Elijah to hear the voice of His Father.  He stopped talking around dad, and was able to hear His Abba.  And that makes all the difference.  

                                                         

                                                       

 

Monday Meanderings, 03/10/09

  Interesting stuff from the web over the past week or so…           

               + Scot McNight, writing in Christianity Today, gives his answer to the question: “is our gospel too small?” by outlining eight marks of a robust gospel. He begins with this observation: “Our problems are not small. The most cursory glance at the newspaper will remind us of global crises like AIDS, local catastrophes of senseless violence, family failures, ecological threats, and church skirmishes. These problems resist easy solutions. They are robust-powerful, pervasive, and systemic. Do we have a gospel big enough for these problems? Do we have the confidence to declare that these robust problems, all of which begin with sin against God and then creep into the world like cancer, have been conquered by a robust gospel? When I read the Gospels, I see a Lion of Judah who roared with a kingdom gospel that challenged both Israel’s and Rome’s mighty men, gathered up the sick and dying and made them whole, and united the purity-obsessed “clean” and the shame-laden “unclean” around one table. When I read the apostle Paul, I see a man who carried a gospel that he believed could save as well as unite Gentiles and barbarians with Abraham’s sacred descendants. I do not think their gospel was too small. I sometimes worry we have settled for a little gospel, a miniaturized version that cannot address the robust problems of our world. But as close to us as the pages of a nearby Bible, we can find the Bible’s robust gospel, a gospel that is much bigger than many of us have dared to believe.” Worth reading and pondering. 

          + Unbelievable…sad…scary and it ought to tick us off.  A California appellate court has ruled that no parent can home-school their children unless they have a teaching certificate issued by the state. (Denny Burk has a nice set of links here.)  This frontal attack on parent’s rights essentially outlaws 99% of the homeschoolers in California.  Before you dismiss this, realize that what rolls out of California often shows up in other states.

         +Moses was tripping-literally-when he saw the burning bush.  Or so says a researcher at Hebrew University. What amazing lengths to which we will go to explain away the miraculous that doesn’t fit our categories!

            + Ken Sande and Peacemaker Ministries have one of the most unique ministries among evangelicals.  They help Christians deal with conflict-primarily with each other– in a Biblical way.  Check out their new blog at Route 5:9.

            + Jena High School was the site of a racially charged incident, trial, demonstrations and noose-sightings that seemed to symbolize a new wave of racial tension in our country. Now, the same school in a small Louisiana town is the site of a revival that is sweeping the area-and bringing racial reconciliation.  Read here-and pray.  

 

 

Victory in Grand Isle

  Early this morning, before the freezing rain started, a team from Victory headed out for a week of work in Grand Isle, LA.  We started working in that coastal island community in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  The rebuilding continues for the people of the island and for First Baptist Church of Grand Isle.           

 Pray this week for our team:  Nancy Isaacs, Shirley Jones, Bob King and Lewis Layne.  They’ll be connecting with some more folks from our Elkhorn Association. So, this expression of our glocal mission commitment enables us to celebrate Kingdom partnerships on several levels.

Our team will be working to repair several houses.  Along the way, they will make new friends — and bring the compassion and encouragement of Jesus to people who desperately need it.   Pray for them-and you’re a part of the team, too!

 

Baptist Press Misses the Point

          Every major news outlet in America covered the recent story on the U.S. Religious Landscape survey from the Pew Forum. CNN, AP, Time, Newsweek and all the major newspapers covered it. As noted in a previous post, most came to similar (and mostly correct), analyses of the 140-page survey: the religious world in the United States is volatile and fluid, people easily move away from their religious heritage, and the growing edge of religion is among the unaffiliated.

            Now, let’s consider the coverage of the survey by Baptist Press. What was the focus of their coverage?  Listen…

            Paragraph 1: Southern Baptists make up nearly 7 percent of the United States adult population, according to a new Pew study that also shows evangelicals outnumbering mainline church members and Catholics.  (Translation: we’re bigger!)           

Paragraph 2: It showed that 6.7 percent of 225 million American adults (18 years old and older) say they are Southern Baptist, which makes it the largest represented non-Catholic denomination in the survey. Adults affiliated with the United Methodist Church total 5.1 percent of U.S. men and women, while every other denomination makes up 2 percent or less of the adult population. (translation: we’re still bigger!)           

 Paragraph 4: Evangelical Protestant Churches — which include Southern Baptists — comprise 26.3 percent of adults and outnumber Catholics and Mainline Protestants (18.1 percent). (Translation: really, we’re so much bigger!)           

 Paragraph 7: Both the Pew report and the GSS findings are in line with the results released in 2002 by the Catholic-affiliated Glenmary Research Center which showed growth among conservative evangelical churches and decline in liberal mainline denominations. (Translation: even our team is bigger!) 

 Paragraph 8:  People affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Alliance of Baptists, a general “liberal/progressive Baptists” category and those with an ambiguous Baptist affiliation in the mainline tradition make up less than three-tenths of a percent of U.S. adults. The survey lumped all four into one category (Other Baptist denomination in the Mainline Tradition) and named them among Mainline Protestant Churches. (Translation: see, we’re bigger and better than all those lousy liberal types, too)

            The unaffiliated group is not mentioned until the last paragraph—and the fact that it is the fastest growing religious group is not mentioned at all!

              I could go on an on about what this says about my tribe, but I’ll just note two. First, it displays a remarkable level of hubris—a not-subtle arrogance over our numbers, relative size and self-perceived importance in the religious landscape of our nation.  This is the sort of report that gets spread across the nation as an example of how we view ourselves.  It’s embarrassing – even coming from the press mouthpiece of the denomination.

              Even more troubling, the report displays a remarkable level of cluelessness about the realities of the challenge we face in reaching people in our culture with the good news of Jesus.  The point is not how many we have, but how many we’re reaching.  The North American Mission Board gets it– and heroically tries to communicate the differences between a churched culture and a generation that is increasingly checking out of the church and its message. 

             I pray we Southern Baptists will change our focus away from being the biggest and having the most, to being the most broken-hearted over the lost and passionately humbled before the Lord whose power we desperately need to reach the people of our generation.  

 

Monday Meanderings, 03/03/08

             Totally unrelated things from the web…

 + Steve Martin has been on a long, strange trip from the “arrow-through the head” stand up comedian to “wild and crazy guy” on Saturday Night Live to genuine movie star to successful novelist and screenwriter.  The older he has gotten, the more reflective and thoughtful he has become. In a recent edition of Smithsonian Magazine, Martin ruminated on Being Funny, tracking how he discovered and developed his unique style of being funny by not being funny.           

+ Starbucks closed all 7,100 of its stores for 3 hours last Tuesday night. The reason?  To retrain all 135,000 in-store employees in “The Starbucks Experience”, because  CEO Howard Schultz felt they were losing their focus on what had made them an iconic company.  (And they have been losing some market share to Dunkin’ Donuts).  Schultz distributed a memo that said, “We are passionate about our coffee. And we will revisit our standards of quality that are the foundation for the trust that our customers have in our coffee and in all of us.”  Every organization-from families to schools to Life Groups and churches-can profit from taking time every so often to evaluate where they are in light of their stated objectives.

+ In light of our current election year political posturing ( ongoing charge /counter-charge, exaggerate/ distort your opponent if it helps your position, etc.) I was fascinated by this interview with Os Guiness on the need for civility in our public discourse. Guiness notes, “I am arguing for a civility that is far more than nice manners. I am talking of re-forging a ‘civil public square’ as opposed to the present extremes of a ‘naked public square’ on one side and a ‘sacred public square’ on the other. I am not saying that the issues at stake in the culture wars are unimportant - they are very important - but that the way we are fighting them is wrong and also destructive to freedom in the long run….Jesus is famous for his harsh denunciations of the legalism and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and others. Here he is in the tradition of the prophets, such as Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah, and there are times when we must be outspoken too - above all on behalf of the oppressed and in opposition to evil. But as his followers, we are also called to love our enemies, to forgive without limit, to speak the truth with love, and to be always ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us ‘with gentleness and respect.’ Put differently, we have deep Christian reasons for a different style of public speech that are different from mere civility. And we always need to remember that civility is not a matter of being nice or squeamish about differences. It is a republican virtue and a democratic necessity that is a habit of the heart that knows how to deal with real differences with robust civility.”

            + You just need to stop and listen to this hymn from the Welsh Revival of 1904.  It was called the love song of the revival.   It is here as a haunting instrumental from a Korean ensemble, here in the original Welsh and English, and here as performed by Matt Redman (ignore the cheesy slides).  The text alone is worth meditating on…

                                    Here is Love

Here is love vast as the ocean
Loving kindness as the flood
When the Prince of life, our ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
Throughout Heaven’s eternal days

On the Mount of Crucifixion
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide
Grace and love, like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
And Heaven’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love

 

The Growing “Unaffiliated” Chasm—and Why We Have to Leap into It

            One of the most difficult things for “churched people”-like most of us-to grasp is how different the world outside of faith is. It also may be the most important thing for us to explore and learn, because if we take our Great Commission calling seriously, all of us live as missionaries to people in a different culture –people who live next door, or work in the next cubicle, or sit in the same classroom.           

          Thus, the release last week of U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is an important one for us to consider. The findings are the result of a massive survey of 35,000 Americans aged 18 and older, conducted last summer.   The report made all the major news outlets, usually focusing on the report’s primary conclusion: the American religious marketplace is extremely volatile and fluid, with more than 40% of American Christians leaving their religious heritage for another.  It confirms the general findings of other recent surveys that mainline Protestant churches are declining, non-denominational churches are growing and the nation retains a Protestant majority (though by an increasingly slim margin). Catholics have retained their numbers-but primarily by the influx of Hispanic immigrants.  None of that is really news.

            As I read the report, one aspect jumped out and shook me.  The people surveyed placed themselves in one of three primary religious groups:  Christians, adherents to world religions (Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, etc.), and Unaffiliated-those claiming no religion.  Any guesses as to which is the fastest growing religious group in the United States?  Yep-it is the Unaffiliated.

            Walking through the report, here’s what we find out about the unaffiliated. Read this slowly and let the implications sink in…

            + Overall, 7.3% of the adult population says they were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child. Today, however, 16.1% of adults

say they are unaffiliated, a net increase of 8.8 percentage points. They thus comprise the fourth largest “religious” tradition in the United States, nearly approximating the number of members of mainline Protestant churches.

+ Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13% of women.

- People not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions. Among the unaffiliated, 31% are under age 30 and 71% are under age 50. (Note: this is right in the middle of Victory’s median age.)

+ Young adults ages 18-29 are much more likely than those age 70 and older to say that they are not affiliated with any particular religion (25% vs. 8%).  (We have not been effectively passing the faith on from generation to generation)

            + One-quarter of all adults 18-29 are not affiliated with any particular religion, which is and nine percentage points higher than in the overall adult population. (We’re losing the emerging generations)

            + Among people who are currently unaffiliated with any particular religion, nearly eight-in-ten were raised as members of one religion or another.

+ 17% of those raised Baptist end up non-affiliated. (what does this say about our discipleship and faith-shaping of children, youth and families?)

+ Between 15% and 19% of members of all educational groups say they are unaffiliated with any particular religion. But among the most well-educated groups, the unaffiliated tend to be more secular than among the less well-educated.

+ One-third of the unaffiliated have at least one child at home. (Reaching children and teenagers may have multiplied impact)

+ 11-20% of population of Kentucky identifies themselves as unaffiliated.

          Do you see? I’m quite sure some of the “Unaffiliated” are our neighbors, co-workers, classmates and family. These precious people are the focus of our mission.  These are those we want to lead to know and treasure Jesus above all things. But is that possible?   Aren’t people who say they have no religion angry and antagonistic?   Can we have any sort of conversation with an atheist, agnostic or angry former church member?

            Note this fascinating finding of the survey:

“The Landscape Survey finds that the unaffiliated population is quite diverse and that it is simply not accurate to describe this entire group as nonreligious or “secular.” Roughly one-quarter of the unaffiliated population identifies itself as atheist (1.6% of the overall adult population) or agnostic (2.4% of the adult population). But the remaining three-quarters (12.1% of the adult population) consists of people who describe their religion as ‘nothing in particular….

 About half of people who describe their religion as ‘nothing in particular’ (6.3% of the overall adult population) say that religion is not too important or not at all important in their lives. Thus, they can be thought of as being mostly secular in their orientation. But the other half of this group (5.8% of adults) says that religion is somewhat important or very important in their lives, despite their lack of affiliation with any particular religious group. Thus, this group can be thought of as the “religious unaffiliated.”

…. It is important to note, however, that more than a third (35%) of young adults who have no particular religious affiliation are in the “religious unaffiliated” category, that is, they say that religion is somewhat important or very important in their lives.

So, many people who are unaffiliated with a religion might call themselves “spiritual”, or even attend a church on occasion. Many would be open to a conversation over coffee about spiritual matters, or would respond to an invitation to a Bible study or worship service.  This is especially true for the 18-29 age group; they are still leaning towards faith, and will respond.  

 Here’s another significant observation:

“Overall, 3.9% of the adult population reports being raised without any particular religious affiliation but later affiliating with a religious group. However, more than three times as many people (12.7% of the adult population overall) were raised in a particular faith but have since become unaffiliated with any religious group.”

In other words, there are a bunch of “de-churched” people out there.  These are people with some exposure to the Christian faith, but for some reason they have walked away. My guess is that if we’re willing to patiently invest in loving and authentic relationships with our de-churched friends, we will see some positive response.

One more word of hope:  

 As mentioned previously, the group that has exhibited the strongest growth as a result of changes in affiliation is the unaffiliated population. Nevertheless, the overall retention rate of the unaffiliated population is relatively low (46%) compared with other groups. This means that more than half (54%) of those who were not affiliated with any particular religion as a child now identify themselves as members of one religion or another

People who are unaffiliated are not unreachable. They are willing to hear and consider the claims of the gospel.  But somebody has to deal with them and that somebody is us.

            All around us are people who are spiritually wandering.  Many have given up on the church and walked away from connection with anybody’s church.  They don’t see themselves as belonging anywhere.  Thus, they are “unaffiliated”.

But unaffiliated people have not necessarily walked away from Jesus.  A friend (you? me?) who will love them, serve them, listen to them, invest in them, demonstrate and communicate the gospel to them may be used of the Lord to bring them to know and treasure Jesus.

Unaffiliated people need for Jesus’ people to care enough about their lives and eternal destiny to invest in them with patience, grace and even joy.

 Unaffiliated people need someone to look them in the eye so they know they are not just a statistic, but a person who matters and is passionately loved by God.

Unaffiliated people need someone to remind them that there really is a place where they belong-with Jesus and His people.