Chaplain's Corner

Tom Blanchard is a fellow I went to Seminary with back in the early 1970’s, I went into pastoral ministry and he went into missions.  I still receive his prayer letters; they come via email these days.  He always includes short recommendations for books to read.  Tom is much more the academic and reader than me so if he gives a book a good review, I often pick it up.  Back in January he recommended the book unChristian by David Kinnaman so I picked it up and have had much of what I have been feeling about the church, about Christians confirmed.  It isn’t a pretty picture.

Although the research done for the book was done in the United States, five of the six broad themes that emerged in his research certainly ring true of my experience with and as a Christian in Canada.  Let me share the five broad themes that Mr. Kinnaman discovered that people outside the church believe about Christians and the Church.  Christians and the Church are perceived by young people 16-29 as: 1) hypocritical, 2) too focused on getting converts, 3) antihomosexual, 4) sheltered [old fashioned, boring and out of touch with reality], and 5) judgmental.  The one theme that doesn’t seem to be true of Canadian Christians is that they are “too political”.

Now no one likes to be criticized and our initial response to criticism is be become defensive, but let’s suspend those two reactions for a moment and take a look at the perception these 16-29 year olds who live outside the church have of those who call themselves Christian.

Hypocritical – This has been a criticism leveled against the Christians for decades, maybe even centuries and the reason is that it is true.  We do a very poor job of practicing what we preach, of walking the talk.

Too focused on getting converts – For many they see Christians a bit like gun slingers from the old west that are just looking to put another notch on their belt.  “Getting converts” is a depersonalizing way of looking at others.  Don’t get me wrong, we need to be concerned about the eternal destiny of others, but that concern must be personal, not impersonal.

Antihomosexual – Why not antilying, or antiaudultry?  Why not antigossip or antiselfish?  Can you see how picking on one group of sinners looks?  Christians believe that sins is sin, so why is it that we are known for being anti one sin and not so many other sins?

Sheltered – this criticism reflects on our tendency to be old-fashioned, boring and out of touch with reality.  We have demonstrated the tendency to be “head in the sand”ish, wanting so desperately to keep our own personal lives pleasant and comfortable that we tend to cloister ourselves away and remain somewhat out of step with what is happening around us.

Judgmental – We are quick to judge, we make judgments with lighting fast speed, often failing to stop and listen and really understand others.

What a discouraging picture these young people have of Christians and the Church.  But this is the picture they have.  I confronted this picture myself when I moved out of the security of church ministry into the world of inter-faith ministry.  Before I hardly opened my mouth, those I trained with and some that I have worked with have had a similar impression of who I am.  You see, this is the stuff that prejudice is made of, and we are as guilty and others for having our “prejudgments” of others made without even trying to get to know others personally.
 
If you are interested in David Kinnaman’s conclusions, pick up his book, I have found it to be a profitable and insightful read.  I think it is useful for us to reflect on what I do, what we who call ourselves Christians do to fuel these judgments.

It is so easy to take a stand for or against something, as Christians we need to listen to the words founding 1 Peter 5 where we are encouraged to “humble ourselves”.  We need always to carry our convictions about what our faith teaches about morality with the humble admission that these lofty aspirations are often missed and that we often fall short of what we aspire to.  If we could humble ourselves, keeping clearly in sight how difficult we find it to live up to these lofty aspirations, we would not come across as hypocrites, but as faltering souls aspiring for the high standards that we believe God calls us towards.

We can be far too “convert focused” for we appear to care not for the person but for our statistical success.  I have been around the church far too long to deny that when ministers get together their conversation almost instinctively focuses on number, as if the size and the statistics of the work they do tells the story of their success.  Statistics depersonalize people.  They cause us to lose sight of the real, human, needs.  Statistics tell very little about whether we have truly touched the heart of another person.  And when we take credit for conversions, aren’t we in error.  I am unable to convert my self and even less capable of converting anyone else.  This is the business of God and when we start taking credit for it, we are robbing God of his due.

Antihomosexual – my, my, how Christians like to find one group and pick on them.  In my experience, we almost always find a group that we are not a member of to pick on.  Heavens, we wouldn’t want to be too hard of gossips, that would indict far too many of those who frequent the church.  Nor would we want to pick on fornicators that would get too close for comfort for there are far too many in our midst who practice sexual impurity of many other kinds.  So we focus on a group that we can feel comfortable pointing the finger at for we are quite sure the finger will not end up in our own nose.

Sheltered – we do cocoon ourselves and insulate ourselves as Christians.  We have such a fear of our own weakness that too live authentically among those outside our church might “contaminated” us.  We keep to ourselves, busy ourselves with our own business and keep our distance from the others and come off appearing as if we live among them begrudgingly.
 
Judgmental – we are so quick to condemn, so hasty to draw conclusions, we take no or so little time in getting to know others outside our comfortable circles that we come off looking as if we are nothing more than stone throwers, standing on our side of the line, lobbing stones at those on the other side and having very little idea as to why.

For me to claim that none of these criticisms are true of me would be nothing short of a bald faced lie.  When I read these conclusions that David Kinnaman discovered after doing extensive research on how this demographic sees the church, sees Christians; I was painfully aware of how I have contributed to the perception for sadly it is far more than a perception, it is a fairly accurate reflection of who we have been in the last decades and who we remain even today.

What can I do?  I can only take the perception to heart and with God’s help grow up spiritually and leave behind these all too accurate perceptions that are putting young adults off and causing them to dismiss me and the faith I claim to embrace as irrelevant and ingenuine.