There’s no dispute. There are no conflicting reports. They all independently show—and anecdotal evidence confirms—that millennials who grew up in the church are leaving the church in droves. According to Rainer Research, 70% of youth, who were active in youth group, leave the church by the time they’re 22 years old. Based on the current rate of departure, Barna estimates that 80% of those raised in the church will be disengaged by the time they’re 29 years old. Sever other... Read more
I want to talk about why millennials are fleeing the church in droves. But first, let’s circle back around to a question I raised at the end of a blog last week. Regarding discipleship, I said: “I wonder if we’ve elevated certain pet aspects of personal morality over communal and social action.” Can someone be a disciple if they remain sexually pure before marriage and yet have no heart for the poor? Is a faithful disciple one who has a... Read more
Defining discipleship can be tricky. We say we want to “become more like Jesus” but we interpret Jesus through a cultural lens of American Christian values. The porn-free, drug-free, gospel-preaching “Jesus” that we’re seeking to imitate isn’t bad. We need to be like this Jesus. He’s just not as radical as the Palestinian peasant who loved His enemies that we read about in the gospels. Another question I have about discipleship has to do with how we define success. According... Read more
As some of you may have (hopefully) noticed, I’ve been a terrible blogger over the last few weeks. Meaning, I haven’t blogged a whole lot since mid-summer, not that the content of my few blogs has been terrible, though that’s always a live possibility. Between broken down cars, computer crashes, camping trips, starting up an EBC extension campus here in Boise, and speaking at different venues, the last few weeks have been a little nuts. But I’m getting back on... Read more
One of projects I’m working on is a book about the state of discipleship in the American evangelical church. What is discipleship? Are we making disciples? What is working? What isn’t working? How do we know if it’s working? Or, to show my hand: are we seeking to produce moral Americans or exiles in Babylon? NavPress will publish the book in conjunction with the Barna Group, who is performing an extensive survey on the state of discipleship in the church.... Read more
In this third and final review of Ken Wilson’s A Letter to My Congregation I want to dive into the main point of his argument. (The first two are HERE and HERE.) As I mentioned in the first post, the “third way” uses Paul’s approach to the disputed matters in Romans 14 as paradigm for how affirming and non-affirming believers can agree to disagree about same-sex relations and yet still worship in unity. “A third way departs from the ‘open... Read more
As stated in my previous blog, there are many things I appreciated about Ken Wilson’s book, A Letter to My Congregation. I need to say this up front because this blog is going to be pretty critical. I’m going to focus on and evaluate Ken’s use of Scripture in chapter 3 of his book. And to be completely honest, I felt that it was by far the weakest part of the book and yet, perhaps, the most important part as... Read more
Ken Wilson has written a very important and provocative book on homosexuality and the church. Ken is the founding pastor of Vineyard church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has been thinking about questions related to homosexuality and the church for many years. In 2014, he published his A Letter to My Congregation with the provocative subtitle: An evangelical pastor’s path to embracing people who are gay, lesbian and transgender into the company of Jesus. I was very challenged by Ken’s... Read more
I posted a blog on Monday titled “Why a (yet another) White, Straight, Male Decided to Write Book about Homosexuality.” The blog was a response to some buzz created online regarding the release of my two books being published on homosexuality. Eliel Cruz also published a blog responding to my blog, and I have considered his words carefully. I’m writing this blog to apologize for several things I’ve said and the tone in which I have said them, both in... Read more
I just found out that the release date for my books about homosexuality (one for adults and another for teens) got moved up from the original Jan 2016 date to Nov 2015. As soon as I found out, I Tweeted the new release date and I got some interesting responses that surrounded the same general theme (or critique): “Oh great. Just what we need. Yet another book about homosexuality by a white, straight, privileged male.” Some said that my books... Read more
Theology in the Raw
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