Scot McKnight recently posted about a book titled unChristian ... I am not familiar with the book but it looks very interesting and his post has some good statistics from it.

I was talking with some others from my church the other day, essentially about how to promote and encourage spiritual formation. I did not mean it to come out sounding like we're not doing good things already but I just keep going back to how "institutionalized" most church attendees are in regards to what it means to be a Christian, and how very very difficult it is to change that. We continue to make great strides at our church but it is hard to change things that have been bred into peoples' DNA over many generations. Goodness knows it's been hard to change me ... I talk only from the experience of "being there" (both in the past and at present!)

This post by McKnight, and apparently the book he is reviewing, seem to show that this whole situation truly is worsening with the generations ... we are becoming less and less likely to really understand what we, as Christ-followers, should be striving for in our lives.

Unfortunately, as we do this, it is juxtaposed against a pagan world that has certain thoughts of Christianity that are increasingly different from what we're putting forth, making us look more and more hypocritical all the time.

(That last paragraph was a tough one to figure out how to word ... it is I think a very interesting idea though ... I hope it came across as intended.)