You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...

and Rethinking Faith

By: David Kinnaman

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Book Review

Presented to

Dr. Daniel J. Morgan

Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary

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In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Course

2I1216: Church Planting for a New Generation

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by

Matthew Howden

August 2018

Cochrane, Alberta
 1. One page overview of the main points the authors are trying to make.

David Kinnaman has written a nationwide study of 18-29 year olds who have a Christian

background but have grown disenchanted with the church during emerging adulthood. Kinnaman

sees this generation “living in a new technological, social, and spiritual reality; this reality can be

summed up in three words: access, alienation, and authority.”1 With all this access to information

via new technologies and digital tools, it has created different and challenging relationships and

worldviews. With all this access to technology, this generation experiences high feelings of

alienation and high levels of disconnection in regards to relationships and institutions. This

generation also questions authority. They have new questions about who and what to believe and

why.

Kinnaman says that “ages eighteen to twenty-nine are the black hole of church

attendance; this age segment is “missing in action” from most congregations.” 2 He does not want

people to make broad generalizations, and asks us to listen to each person’s story. Kinnaman has

three groups to put these “dropouts” in and their attitudes towards the church:

1. Nomads: These people walk away from church engagement but they still consider

themselves Christians.

2. Prodigals: These people lose their faith, and they would describe themselves as no longer

Christian.

3. Exiles: These people are still a part of the church and invested in their Christian faith but

1Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and
Rethinking Faith (p. 39). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
2Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and
Rethinking Faith (p. 22). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
 they feel stuck (or lost) between culture and the church.

For the rest of the book these are the people we are going to travel with. We will see how they

have become disconnected with the church and how the church might reconnect with them to

bring them back to faith.

2. Which of the author’s points seems most applicable to your future ministry

David Kinnaman was “looking for a single “smoking gun.””3 to explain why this

generation was leaving the church but he did not find one reason to explain why they were

leaving. What he found in the study was that these people had six things that caused them to

disconnect with the church. This list would be helpful for my future ministry. Here is the list:

1. Overprotective

2. Shallow

3. Anti-science

4. Repressive

5. Exclusive

6. Doubtless

From this list of six I would say that “doubtless” and “shallow” would be points that would be

most applicable to my future ministry. There are lots of people who have doubts and have

questions and the church needs to have the space for them to ask these questions. The church

needs to walk with people during this time of questions and doubts, as Kinnaman writes:

“Is the Christian community capable of holding doubt and faithfulness in tension,
welcoming hard questions even as we press together toward answers? Or will the
church continue to be seen as a place where doubters don’t belong because

3 Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith
(p. 91). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
 certainty is the same as faith? Will we push doubters to the margins in order to be
people with no doubts?”4

The church needs to create the space for people to have their questions and their doubts. Even

people who followed Jesus had doubts. In the Gospel of Matthew we read “And when they saw

him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17, ESV) Also one of Jesus’

followers, Thomas, was given the nickname “doubting” Thomas because he did not believe that

Jesus had come back from the dead. If people could doubt with Jesus with them, then the church

needs to be a place where people can doubt and ask their questions about God.

Regarding the second point, “shallow”, the research shows that those that left the church

thought the church was a place where it was “easy platitudes, proof texting, and formulaic

slogans (that) have anesthetized many young adults,…” 5 They believed this was not a place

where they could grow in their faith and see how the Gospel is a part of their whole life not just

at the start of their faith journey. They believed the church to be a place where simple answers

were given to complex questions; a place where people were putting on a front and not being real

and not offering love, grace and forgiveness to those around them. The Gospel needs to impact

everything. I would show the ministry I am leading how this can happen, how the Gospel can

impact every part of life not just your church life. For example, if someone has truly accepted the

Gospel, it should be evident in how they treat their co-workers or employees, by offering grace

and forgiveness when their employees make mistakes. If the Gospel is not shown to be authentic,

people will leave.

4 Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith
(p. 187). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
5 Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith
(p. 92). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
 3. Which, if any, of the author’s points seem less useful for planting biblically sound
churches?

The point that seems less useful for planting biblically sound churches is this point that: “The

third arena where the church must rethink its approach to disciple making is helping the next

generation learn to value wisdom over information.”6 This generation needs more than

information and they need more than just wisdom. What they need is to be changed by the

Gospel message. When this generation goes out to live in the world what they need to bring with

them is the good news about Jesus. They need to be changed by Him to be able to live in the

culture and not have the culture change them. Wisdom is a good thing to have but it cannot just

stop at wisdom.

4. If you were going to take a group through this book, what would you emphasize?
What would you skip over? What would you disagree with and call the groups
attention to?

When taking a group through this book, I would emphasize the sections that deal with the

disconnections list. Kinnaman also has a list of reconnections to help bridge the gap with the

disconnections. The list of disconnections with the reconnections are:

1. Overprotective → Discernment

We cast out fear by discerning our times and embracing the risks of cultural engagement.

[Link] → Apprenticeship

We leave shallow faith behind by apprenticing young people in the fine art of following Christ.

3. Anti-science → Stewardship

We respond to today’s scientific culture by stewarding young people’s gifts and intellect.

6 Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith
(p. 30). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
4. Repressive → Relational

We live by a relational sexual ethic that rejects traditionalist and individualist narratives of sex.

5. Exclusion → Embrace

We demonstrate the exclusive nature of Christ by rekindling our empathy for the “other.”

6. Doubting → Doing

We faithfully work through our doubts by doing acts of service with and for others.7

This is where I would spend a lot of time with the group working though the book. This would

be helpful since we all know people that are in one of these areas of disconnection and if we

could reconnect them with a church that would be great. Identifying what the disconnections are

in people is helpful to understand how you can help bring them back to the church.

The section I would skip over with the group is the last section of the book where David

Kinnaman has a list of the “fifty ideas to find a generation.” This was a list of how to reach the

next generation for Christ. I would rather create our own, separate list as a group that we could

use to reach our family, friends, co-workers and neighbours. I believe it would be helpful for the

group to do this together, rather than using Kinnaman’s list which may not be applicable to those

we are trying to reach.

I would point this out to the people in my group. Kinnaman wrote: “the Christian

community needs a new mind— a new way of thinking, a new way of relating, a new vision of

our role in the world— to pass on the faith to this and future generations.” 8 I do not think the

church needs all these ways to reach this and future generations. What we need to do is stick with

7 Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith
(pp. 205-206). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
8 Kinnaman, David; Hawkins, Aly. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith
(p. 202). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Jesus’ plan about making disciples and we should follow his plan for making disciples. He spent

time with people, he had them in his life and they were around him. He also sent them out to

proclaim the Gospel message after they had been with him. This book lacks Gospel application

and this is something I would point out to the people I am going though this book with.

I wonder if questions about the Gospel were even in the survey? It does not seem evident

that questions about the Gospel were in the survey. I think the Gospel is helpful to a lot of the

issues the people might have with the church that they walked away from. I wonder if the Gospel

was proclaimed in all these churches the people were a part of, and if they would have still

walked away from the church.

Overall, I thought that this book was helpful in understanding the groups that these 18-29

year olds fall under. It was encouraging to read about these reconnections that could be useful

when dealing with people’s disconnections with the church.