IDENTITY CRISIS

Dan Kimball who knows a thing or six about church planting and growth has written an article for Outlook magazine in which he describes the six most common perceptions of the church among post-Christian 20- and 30- somethings.

Buckle up ...

1. The Church is an organized religion with a political agenda.

2. The Church is judgmental and negative.

3. The Church is dominated by males and opresses females.

4. The Church is homophobic.

5. The Church arrograntly claims all other religions are wrong.

6. The Church is full of fundamentalists who take the Bible literally.

We can protest all we like, but you can't argue with someone's perception. And of course to them perception is reality.

Not a pretty picture - even with #6.

I do take the Bible literally and I used to identify myself as a fundamentalist, but that's before the term was hijacked by right-wing, arrogant, uncompassionate, King James Bible waving bigots. So being referred to as a fundy by the unchurched is definitely not a good thing.

There's a lot of PR work to be done!