7/41 Do You Like Jesus, But Not the Church?

As we continue with the theme of Burnout in the Church, the following is an interesting Book Review – but careful, not all agree with his theme!

“I always have a stack of books to read on my bookshelf. Right now, it numbers a dozen deep, but just yesterday one book came in from Amazon and I picked it up immediately. It jumped right over the waiting list.

“It’s called ‘They Like Jesus But Not the Church’ by Dan Kimball.

“The first chapter starts off with a story of when he went to a local gym. He was assigned an instructor to help show him around. During the course of their conversation she asked him what he did for a living. He’s the pastor of a church. To which she responded, “No ##$&& way you’re a pastor. I don’t believe you.”

“It took him several minutes to convince her that he really was a pastor. He wasn’t anything like her impression of what a Christian was…and she felt all pastors were creepy. When asked if she knew any other pastors, she responded she didn’t. Her knowledge was simply from the stories she read, what’s on TV, and street preachers.

“All throughout the book are stories of people Dan spoke with about Jesus and the church. The basic principle he found was that people will tell you they like Jesus…but they don’t like the church. The love Jesus shows is attractive, but Christians and the church are seen as negative and judgemental.

“The church has become irrelevant in the minds of many 20 and 30 year olds. When I personally visit many churches, you can see the average age of the attendees continually going up. You just don’t see any new younger members who weren’t raised in the church.

“What I liked best about Dan’s book is that he doesn’t just cover the problem and the opinions people shared with him. He always shares possible solutions of how to bridge the gap of Christianity and the world today…AND he does it without wimping out on the Bible and the truth.

It’s available on Amazon.com…

You can also find Dan Kimball’s blog posting about this new book over at http://www.dankimball.com/vintage_faith/2007/02/they_like_jesus.html

…but not all agree!

Susanne Fengler, Blog Author

www.christianfoundations.jesus-treeoflife.info/blog

Leave a Reply