The final session of Shift 2008 featured Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California, and regular contributor to Leadership and Out of Ur. Kimball shared some insights from this book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church.

He began with the good news - our culture is very interested in Jesus. He pulled a number of items from a bag: a Jesus bobble head figure, Jesus band-aids, a Jesus eraser, and then showed images from a Madonna concert where the queen of pop hung on a cross with scripture verses above to highlight the 12 million kids dying from Aids in Africa. Kimball says there is no doubt that people in our culture are curious about Jesus - and many find him very attractive.

Now the bad news - popular perceptions of the church and Christians are very different. Kimball showed a video of college students in his town describing Christians as judgmental, homophobic, and hypocritical. He humorously recounted the response of a girl at the health club when she discovered ...