A Shallow Faith

I have been reading unChristian... a great book by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.
The book discusses 6 issues that the unchurched have with 'Christianity' from being hypocritical to anti homosexual.

In the 4th chapter which deals with the second of the six issues the authors points out the following facts which have been seriously disturbing me:


82% of non-Christians aged between 16 - 29 have gone to a Christian church (Most for a period of 3 months+).
Now get this... most American teenagers enter adulthood considering themselves to be Christians and saying that they have made a personal commitment to Jesus. Fast forward 10 years and most of these 'believers' would have shelved their faith.
This means 2 things:

• Most adults that we are trying to reach are not unchurched... but de-churched individuals

• The faith that the majority have teenagers have is superficial and only skin deep.

These two facts obviously have HUGE implications for us:

• We need to approach people differently. Many people consider Christianity as irrelevant... having a 'been there, tried that' attitude. One of the young men interviewed for the book had this to say,
  "Christianity seems like an old, broken down building that I have to drive by every day. I don't even notice it anymore."

• We need to change what we consider 'successful ministry' from a 'how many numbers do you have' to... (I'd love to hear your thoughts before I publish mine!)