Why We're Leaving Church...

Hey everyone-

thanks for being thankful readers of Archaen! I've been going nuts these past few weeks adjusting to a new job and life after moving, and I havent been as regular as I would like to with keeping everyone up to date with Archaen... IM SORRY!! OK?

Are we cool now?

Great.

Anyways, I've been wanting to tip everyone off to yet another amazingly thought-provoking book called

...(drum roll please)...

"You Lost ME.
Why Young Christians Are Leaving the Church...
And Rethinking Faith"

It was like a lightning bolt out of a clear, blue sky. It helped express much of the frustration I've actually been venting off on this blog and also through Speakeasy radio (sat nights @ 6p on http://mykkim.com ). You see, it's not just that churches and Christians need to have new services and new product design- new t-shirts and new worship songs- its that the world has changed- and frankly, when it comes down  to it, we've sort of been left in the dust.

Here's what I mean:
before, the entire western culture was centered, arguably, around Church. Churches expected to merely open their doors on Sunday and have congregation members. Hymns were enough and Sunday School lessons were considered Tech-Saavy if they included depictions of flannel-board Jesuses... the deep questions that most people were asking en masse were satisfactorily answered. God was represented well and everyone seemed happy.

But something happened between then and now.

The world kept on moving,
society changed
new questions started being asked,
new questions which inherently demanded a new, wider way of thinking-
and for the most part, the church chose to dig in to how it usually did things... and we often didnt see other questions as credible if they didnt speak our Christian language.

We choose to see the unsaved as lepers- sad depressed degenerates, next to animals and needing to be saved.

We never saw that the world was changing, and suddenly the roles were reversed- suddenly it was the world asking questions of us- challenging our legitimacy through the countless lives of real individuals with real hopes, real fears and real challenges to overcome.

The 'enemy' was in the gates, too. We were raised right, and encouraged to ask questions and, for the most part, come to our own conclusions within the church- so long as we arrived to the previously concluded, elder-board answers... and when we began, overwhelmingly, to ask questions which the very fabric of the words used were next to incomprehensible to the status-quo- we were either absorbed, exiled or quietly tolerated for respects' sake.

Now pastors ask me what sort of service should attract university students... and im at a loss at how to answer, because it takes someone who can not only name off worship songs and bible references, but someone who has walked in young people's shoes, and understands the dialogue of everyday life which occurs between classes and the social scene-

between Facebook and the party.

between tweets and the bar.

there is a new culture- a new fabric- a new city-scape of life which must be entirely integrated into our faith-lives. It is simply not enough that we should know about the bible or God- it is that we must take all our faith, all of our real encounters with God and say,

ASSUMING all this, now what.

...

So.

I guess what im really trying to say here is -
check out the book "You Lost Me."
and listen to Speakeasy this Saturday at 6p MST (listen live at http://mykkim.com)
and thanks for checking out Archaen!

(if you want to help contribute- PLEASE shoot me an email- i would love to get regular contributors from other regions of the world, too! thanks!)




Like what you read? Join in with your own insights, stories and art- send them to ryanpfreeman1@aol.com. Through how you've seen God move, we can change people through love. For more, listen to SpeakEasy radio, every Saturday night at 6pm MST on KKIM. Listen live at http://mykkim.com. Thanks and God bless -Ryan