The "Christian Image"

I recently read a newsletter from Lyall Mercer and he quoted the following stinging data.

In his new book “The Last TV Evangelist” Phil Cooke quotes David Kinnaman – President of the Barna Research Group – who found through his research that the public uses the following words to describe Christians:

Anti-homosexual – 91%
Judgmental – 87%
Hypocritical – saying one thing, doing another – 85%
Old-fashioned – 78%
Too involved in politics – 75%
Out of touch with reality – 72%
Insensitive to others – 70%
Boring – 68%

Wow! As I look at this list, it hurts and feels unfair! I know I’m not like that! (At least I hope I don’t come across like that.) However, how it feels and how unfair it may be really is irrelevant. Without relationship and conversation with us, the people who describe us in such unpleasant terms will probably not change their opinion.

It seems clear in the gospels that “non Christ followers” didn’t find Jesus very “anti” anything except the religionist of the day. (They seem to fit the above list quite well.) What has happened to the church Jesus designed? Has the North American church moved so far from the personality of our living Founder? If our target audience seems to think so, it doesn’t matter what we think. What are we doing to redefine what “Christian” looks and sounds like?

And how about the last on the list? Fully 68% of the public describe us as BORING! If that stems from our living a righteous life – fine! However, if that stems from no obvious zest for life, an absence of hope or economic anxiety, etc., then I guess the shoe fits. If I am full of the Spirit, I won’t need to “wear” that shoe.

The opinion I find most intriguing is that 78% say we are “out of touch with reality.” OK, if “reality” is that no intelligent designer set the universe in order and that we are randomly connected cells floating through the cosmos without guiding purpose or accountability to a Creator, then I am guilty of being “out of touch with reality.”

I just pray I can connect with some of these people and be enough like Jesus to reshape their opinion enough so they will actually consider the claims of this living King and submitting their lives to Him.

Posted on Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Terry Yancey

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4 comments (Add your own)

1. Mark Lehman wrote:: Glad to see you are using digital discipleship.

May I encourage the opportunity to subscribe, either RSS feed or email to this content?
December 4, 2009 @ 3:00 PM
2. J W wrote:: Terribly disheartening that NOTHING positive is mentioned

Maybe we have been so vocal about what we are AGAINST that people
don’t pick up on what we stand for. Have we not learned, from our early
Pentecostal leanings, this terribly important principle:
“Preaching ‘against’ things can be good for ‘amen’s’ from the Church, BUT, isn’t the Church a training ground for Christian’s so they can show the love of Christ to ALL people??”

Doesn’t the words of 2 Corinthians 5: 16 NLT
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view.
{Obliviously we still look at people for what THEY ARE, NOT what they
could be in Christ---at least that’s the perception}

Please do not take this wrong, I cherish my Pentecostal heritage and out stand on holiness, but I've learned that ranting about "Things" or "People groups" is not a good way to reach the lost.
December 7, 2009 @ 3:02 PM
3. Mike Tracy wrote:: I love the facts as they inform us as communities view on the body. Negative can at times moves us toward a new and better future. Jesus wasn't always positive when speaking to the church in the hope of effecting change.
January 6, 2010 @ 2:04 PM
4. david wrote:: First i like to say i think its very sad that we are looked at in this way but i also know why i do a nursing homes here in kansas and on sunday my pastor tells the church and not to offten does anyone join me not even to say hi to the old folks is that itself not againest the word of god so you see if christian will not do what God tells us to do how do we want a unbeliver to do what God what them to do we to let them judge us by are fruit i read this somewhere that we are where we are cause we are who we are if we would think about why jesus came he came to safe us and teach us so we could go tell the world and he came to serve so thats my take on why we are looked at like we are
March 2, 2010 @ 8:48 AM

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