unChristian

I just finished reading the book unChristian by David Kinnaman. It is about the perceptions that outsiders of the church have of Christians. Some of it was very interesting information. Some of it was things I already knew or suspected. Basically, people on the outside of the church, especially Generation X and the Mosaics have seen what Christians have to offer and have rejected it.
They see us as hypocritical. They see us as judgmental. They see us as antihomosexual. They see us as being sheltered. They see that what we have to say is worthless because they do not respect Christians.
Several Christian leaders gave little comments throughout the book on the different topics. Almost all fo them said that we ahve to stand by our beliefs, but the way that we communicated and connect with outsiders has got to change. It's God's responsibility to change hearts, it is our job to love people and serve people. To change the country's perceptions of Believers we need to start living in a way that is radically following the ways of God, by focusing on what God wants us to focus on and living like Jesus lived. We need to love people. We need to stand up for people who are being taken advantage of (sex slaves, people with HIV, the hungry, the illiterate). Only if we begin to do this, can we hope to change the perceptions of the unbelievers in our country.
The book had some great ideas. It was hard to read, because there aren't many illustrations. I think he repeated himself a lot. He could have made the chapters about half as long as they were and still got all the research and information in there. But, the information and the research was worth reading, and I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to change the perceptions of the world towards Christianity.