“Christianity has an image problem,” claim the authors of unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity … and Why It Matters (Baker). In interviews with hundreds of 16- to 29-year-olds, coauthors Gabe Lyons and Barna Group president David Kinnaman discovered that nearly half of unchurched young Americans hold a bad impression of evangelical believers. They are especially bothered by, among other things, evangelicals’ conservative political activism, hypocrisy, anti-homosexuality, and judgmentalism. The writers then explain how Christians can turn their image around.
It says a great deal about our age when a book that frames these weighty issues as an “image problem” gets so much press—and a good image too, apparently. Image is everything in our culture, but to analyze the problem in marketing terms will likely lead to superficial solutions. Christians are wise to wonder what non-Christians think of them; apologetics is about answering the criticisms, fair or not, of the secular world. Still, one wonders if, as books like this inadvertently imply, a church’s response should be to mold itself around the complaints of the culture. We mustn’t forget that Friedrich Schleiermacher’s attempt to address the “cultured despisers” of his day was ultimately a theological disaster for the church.
That being said, the authors do provide a glimpse into a group we often do not take the trouble to really listen to. While we think we’re standing for righteousness, we often come across as judgmental. While we think we’re trying to apply Christian ethics to the social scene, it comes across as mere politics. While we think we’re paragons of virtue, others see deep moral flaws in us. These are not merely image problems, but character issues that get to the core of what the church is and should be.
Missional is a hot word among people who think and write about the church. It’s one of those fundamentally good words in danger of becoming jargon. A missional church is one that doesn’t just have that word in its purpose statement, but one that actually shapes its life to reach those who don’t know Jesus Christ. Mission-minded leaders, people like Kinnaman and Lyons, remind us to approach our society the way a missionary approaches a host society—with eyes and ears open, expecting differences but seeking points of connection.
Contextualizing the gospel today is as hard as it’s ever been. We live among people who hear the message not as good news but as yesterday’s news, or as news only for “religious people.” Many of these people have been scarred by painful experiences in the church or have an image of the church framed by distortions of mainstream media. There are many people in our culture who, as Isaiah wrote long ago, are “ever hearing, but never understanding … ever seeing, but never perceiving.”
Indeed, the gospel, in Paul’s words, is a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks—and even to the postmoderns—as Kinnaman and Lyons acknowledge.
But there is no need to put avoidable stumbling blocks in front of people; instead, we should offer them a message that attracts, that has the scent of life in a culture of death.
As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life” (2 Cor. 2:15-16).
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Related Elsewhere:
unChristian is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.
Mark Galli addressed the ideas in the book in “Grace—That’s So Sick.”
Other Christianity Today editorials are available on our site.
