Already Gone

I just finished Ken Ham's book, Already Gone. This is more a summary with a little personal commentary than a book review.

Nationally, 61% of twenty-somethings have left the church, 20% are still in the church, and 19% were never in church. Ken Ham had Britt Beemer survey 1000 twenty-somethings who grew up in the church but no longer attend. This survey was looking at that 61% to find out why they left the church and what we can change to keep our young people.

One disturbing factor was that there seems to be a correlation between attending Sunday School and leaving the church. No, I didn't write that carelessly. It seems that if a young person attends Sunday School more often, they become more convinced that the Bible is not true and leave the church. The research seems to indicate that not only is Sunday School not working, but it is actually detrimental.

Those who leave the church can be divided into two groups -- those who never attend church and don't plan on it and those who attend for Christmas and Easter or who plan to go back to church when they have kids.

The reasons they left the church are also divided into two groups. Those who have completely left the church did so because they no longer believe the Bible is true. Those who have practically left the church still believe the Bible is true, but do not believe the church is relevant to them.

The solutions are therefore two pronged. The first solution is that we in the church -- Sunday School, sermons, Christian education -- must teach apologetics. Ken Ham focuses on Genesis of course -- Creation, Catatstrophic World Wide Flood, Young Earth, Fossils and Rocks from the Flood, historical Babel, etc. I completely agree, although I think that is not even enough -- we need to include archaeology, the reliability of the Old and New Testaments, the Resurrection, prophecy, the existence of truth and God, the divinity of Christ, etc. The church has either abandoned the inerrancy of the Bible or replace defending the Scriptures with emotionalism. Either way loses young people. So step one -- Defend the Word.

The second solution is actually more complicated. Ken Ham says that we have three problems. First is hypocrisy. We in the church say that we believe the Bible but we don't live that way. Traditionally that means people who say that we should forgive (the Bible says so) don't forgive (don't live it). But, in my opinion, it also includes saying that the Bible is the basis of our entire lives but choosing our political, economic, educational, business, technological, psychological, etc. positions based on the thoughts of the secular world, conservative or liberal.

The second problem is shallow teaching in the church. Many chruches have gone for sugar coated, mushy-gushy, emotional, messages and entertainment oriented Sunday School and Youth programs and missed the opportunity to actually teach God's Word. The church claimed the upstairs of the spiritual life and abandoned the downstairs of the rest of our lives.

The third problem is setting tradition up as equal to the Bible. Ken Ham says that when we say "church" we think of a building, an order of service, sermons and Sunday School, and worship music. However, none of these are Biblically mandated parts of "church". [I think that preaching and singing are mandated though perhaps not the way we do it]. He argues that since these are traditions, they are negotiable. If we must change or abandoned tradition in order to reach our young people we should -- but that is very different from abandoning Biblical positions like the age of the earth and the global flood as the church world has largely done.

In summary, the second solution is Live the Word.

PS Interesting side note -- The young people who have left the church completely were much more likely to not have correct beliefs about Biblical topics than those who have left the church but come back periodically. That is true with one exception -- dinosaurs. The Christmas/Easter young people were more likely to believe that all the dinosaurs died before man was on earth than those who have completely discarded church. I don't know why, but I thought it was interesting.