unChristian: Get Saved!

This is one of those chapters that proves the worth of Barna. Most insiders make assumptions that are totally out of synch with the truth. Here's a sample of those assumptions, all false according to Barna research:

• TV, radio, and large tent meetings are effective evangelistic tools.
• Quick little tracts are persuasive.
• Outsiders see and respect the sincerity and love of evangelizing Christians.
• Most outsiders have little experience of the Christian faith, so all we have to do is inform them.
• A "salvation experience" at a meeting or conference usually sticks for the rest of a person's life.
• Many adults are looking for a change in their spiritual foundation.

The truth is that most Americans have tried Christianity, usually as children and teenagers, and resent evangelism as an insincere attempt to bulk up a church's membership numbers. Another truth is that lack of ongoing relationship with outsiders dooms the whole project from the start.

As a personal note, the Alpha Course strikes me as just plain deceitful and wrong. The idea, as I understand it, is to set up a weekly small group, mainly for outsiders with a few church members mixed in, that includes a friendly dinner followed by a discussion of some spiritual or personal issue, with the implication being that Christian faith and community will meet some of the needs of the people who attend. The deceitful part is that the Alpha Course is a dead end. After the course is done, nobody ever has anybody over for dinner again, and small groups are never focused on friendship.

Have you ever noticed how often a newcomer to Grace shows a lot of interest, attends a lot of functions, gets  baptized, then never comes back again?

unChristian: Hypocrisy

Of course, Christians have been accused of being hypocrites for centuries. The problem is a religion with high moral and behavior standards and a population with human tendencies. The book, however, points out a couple of really disturbing characteristics.

As long as Christianity is defined as performance—acting good—something has gone astray. The old silly song, "we don't smoke and we don't chew and we don't go with the girls who do" defines the "true meaning" of Christianity for both the insiders and the outsiders. Add this to the very secularized morals and behavior of Christians today (about the only place where we differ from outsiders is that we don't like the "F" word on television), and you get a recipe for hypocrisy.

If "Christian" means "good, acceptable person," and "Christianity" means "keeping the rules," then everyone who wants to be seen as a good acceptable person will put on a façade of respectability. By definition, a façade is thin and superficial, so it's pretty easy to see through. And outsiders do. We stereotype people morally, we're cold and unhelpful, and we blur the message of Christ. As if that weren't enough, we actually believe each other's false faces, so we don't allow ourselves meaningful interaction with one another.

Proposed solution: transparency and public (yes!) apology for the church's self-righteous judgmental attitude.

E-mail

I don't know why, but I got obsessed with e-mail today. Both the University of Akron and Ashland University have opted for Microsoft's e-mail client (and they look identical), so I decided to finally learn how to send a message gracefully. They both have a "contacts" list, but the only use for that one seems to be producing a printed directory. Strange that the "contacts" simply won't work as a way to send e-mail. They have a directory that's the entire school. Nice. And they have a listing of all the addresses of anyone who ever sent me anything. Apparently people at Microsoft like to search through big lists.

I read a couple of online articles and was about to conclude that getting from a simple personal directory to an e-mail message was a six-step process of navigating, clicking, copying, clicking, navigating, etc. Then I noticed a very tiny (like about 1/16 inch) box that didn't seem to be associated with anything. Yep. That's it. The magic box that everyone knows is there, so they don't discuss it. The box that starts an e-mail message from the contacts list. It's a bad case of COIK: Clear Only If Known. Everyone knows how to use this product, so nobody would think of telling a new person how to.

That success made me bolder. I tried to find the Facebook message function. It only took about half an hour of searching through help documents, and suddenly when I clicked on something I was in my own message area. I think Facebook had mercy on me, or maybe a person must go through this initiation before being allowed to message. Anyhow, once I had done this, the item appeared on the menu above the page. I swear it wasn't there before.

And people wonder why we love the Mac so. Click the icon. Type a couple of letters of your friend's name, and the machine finds several guesses from your address book. Click the one you like. That's it. Never takes twenty minutes. Never takes even five.

unChristian

I am reading a new book: unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. This one came from the Barna Foundation, a conservative Christian group that specializes in statistical surveys related to church life. (They're the ones to ask if you want to know how many offspring of Southern Baptists end up in the Roman Catholic Church.)

I'm sort of in process with this one, and I don't agree with all the presuppositions, but I'll try to do sort of a chapter-by-chapter review and gloss of the book.

The why

My own history is tied up with the focus of the authors. I came into the church from the outside and I'm still an outsider to a great extent. My daily work is with people who are 18 to 22 years old on secular college campuses, so I'm really not too much in sympathy with the "Christian bubble." Though I'm older than the book's research subjects, I really identify with them: really like Jesus, but not that thrilled with the cultural expression of his church. Nearly every public statement by official Christian types makes my guts clench, but I don't want to bail out.

The book's title, unChristian, refers to both the faith and mindset of the "New Generation." If I can sum it up, it seems like an alienated son—good memories of the Christian faith, lots of cultural lingering, and a nostalgia, but nevertheless going off in a new direction. And if there's one thing that runs through all these incredibly numerous surveys and interviews, it's that Christianity doesn't really understand the outsiders at all. No idea of how outsiders perceive Christianity. No idea of their priorities. No idea of their mindset. The danger, of course, is that the church could become an increasingly isolated faith community, similar to the Haredi Jews who wear special clothing, keep their children away from outsiders, and live in encapsulated communities.

Where was I?

Yikes! I see that I haven't done anything with this blog since before Christmas—slightly more than a month. My main excuse is that I got wrapped up in getting started with the new semester, but I really should do some writing here too. Main stuff happening:

• I've got a chance to apply for a full-time job at North Central State College. I've got to get that one done soon. The deadline is February 1. I'm still not sure I would take it because I'm really happy at Akron and Ashland, and it's actually more work to do NCSC (15 courses per year, an nothing in the summer)
• Any day now, I'll be getting an 18-year-old roommate. I'm a mixture of excited and upset. I've been totally alone for so long now that I keep wondering just how (and where) he will fit into my life. But on the other hand, I've known Jared for almost half of his life and I really like him. This should work.
• OK—it's a minor thing, but I changed cell phone plans, so now I can receive text messages. I just can't figure out how the kids manage to pump them out so fast.