Is telling others about Jesus an act of extremism? What about waiting for marriage to have sex?
David Kinnaman, author, speaker and President of Barna Research, joins us with some shocking findings on what unchurched people really think about Christians and gives us practical ideas on how to bridge the gap between Christianity and the culture we’re trying to reach.
Welcome to Episode 82 of the podcast.
Guest Links: David Kinnaman
Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme
Churchless: Understanding Today’s Unchurched and How to Connect with Them
You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith
unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why it Matters
Links Mentioned in this Episode
3 Things You Can Do Right Away
When you look at how culture is shaping the church, and how the church is shaping culture, their influences are moving at different paces. David elaborates on how Christians can shift the conversation.
- Recognize the Kingdom things happening in the church. Encourage others by telling them that the church is doing things out of faith, and do more of them. We need to bring the Gospel to the forefront more. Get it out there, and celebrate it! Create a bubble of good faith and acknowledge others’ love of Jesus.
- Acknowledge the opportunity for revival. Conditions of culture in North America are ripe for the church to be revived. There’s a hopelessness in our culture in which we think this is going play out. We think people are going to come to the end of themselves, and the church will be a counter-cultural response. We think there is a crisis in how we think about humanity, but the revivals begin within the church. They can happen because the people of God are revived to His purposes in their lives, and we live counter-culturally to the spirit of the age. We think there are tremendous opportunities for revival and renewal, and it should be seen as an exciting time.
- Pursue diverse relationships. If we want to live in good faith, ask yourself in you’re in good dialogue with those who have different beliefs. Do you have people of different faiths, backgrounds and world views that you engage with? We need to teach our communities to ask the right questions: what’s wrong, what’s right, what’s missing, and what’s confused? As Christians we believe every person is created in the image of God. When we only understand the brokenness of humanity, we’re only getting a partial description.
