Theology in the Raw - 762: #762 - Faith for Exiles: David Kinnaman

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

As the president and owner of The Barna Group, David has been analyzing data about Christianity in America for more than 20 years. Despite being a terrible bird hunter, David is one of the most important and relevant Christian analysts in America today. His most recent book Faith for Exiles helps Christians think through how to best disciple the next generation of Christians in our post-Christian, post-internet culture. David Kinnaman is the author of the bestselling books Good Faith, You Lost Me and unChristian. He is president of Barna Group, a leading research and communications company that works with churches, nonprofits, and businesses ranging from film studios to financial services. Since 1995, David has directed interviews with nearly one million individuals and overseen hundreds of U.S. and global research studies. He and his wife live in California with their three children. www.barna.com www.faithforexiles.com Twitter - @barnagroup @davidkinnaman Instagram - @barnagroup Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is the one and only David Kinnaman. David Kinnaman is the president of the Barna Group. And if you've been a Christian in America for more than two months, you probably heard of Barna. Barna is the premier organization that does a ton of data collection and synthesis on Christianity and culture, faith and culture, Christianity in America, and tons of other things. And David has become a really good friend over the years. He wrote the foreword to my book, Go. My book, Go, is the least read Press and Sprinkle book that most people don't even know exists. It's also one of my favorite books. It's kind of like my manifesto on what church

can and should be. I think the title is actually lame now that I think about it. Maybe that's part of the problem. Anyway, I worked a lot with David in that project on looking at the state of discipleship in the church. David and I also go back, as you will hear in the podcast, we met on a hunting trip with a few other Christian leaders up in Montana. And I have just so, there's just, I don't know, there's so many things I can say about David that I just absolutely love. He's gracious. He's incredibly thoughtful. He's a very fun hang. Um, he likes good bourbon and, um, he's a terrible hunter. So we have a lot in common, but I, I, so what I love it, here's what I love about David. The main thing I love about David, when I get to get, get together with him

is I have a lot of kind of intuition and experiences and anecdotal evidence for this belief or that belief, or, you know, I mean, I just kind of have hunches about this or that. What I love about David is I get to cross-check these anecdotal experiences or thoughts or convoluted ideas about church or whatever. And I get to go to David and say, all right, David, give me the data. Give me what the comprehensive data says. Am I way off or am I way on or somewhere between? So I love, love, love talking with David Kinnaman. He's the author of a new, a brand new book called Faith for Exiles. Now, David has been authoring, he's authored several books that kind of go together. You've probably read Un-Christian that David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons wrote a while back.

It was a bestselling book. He's also written You Lost Me. And there was another book he wrote in there. I'm blanking on the name. But Faith for Exiles is kind of like the, it's kind of like the capstone or the end of the David Kinnaman saga or trilogy or whatever it is. Anyway, he's going to laugh when he listens to this intro. So I encourage you to get that book, Faith for Exiles. It's yeah, I think it's one of those books that's absolutely needed for 2019. Oh yeah. Good Faith is another book he wrote

with Gabe Lyons. Anyway, if you want to support this podcast, please go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And in return, you get access to loads of premium content. Well, maybe not loads of premium content, but some premium content. There is a lot more going on in the Theology in the Raw community that you don't have access to unless you become a Patreon supporter. So if you want to support the show, if you've been blessed, challenged, consternated by this show or some of the things we're talking about, or if you've been just intrigued by some of the guests we've had on, all this stuff takes a lot of work to pull off

each episode. So please go and consider supporting the show at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the World. Without further ado, here is my good, good friend, the one and only David Kinnaman. David and I go back a few years. You remember when we first met, right? It was in Montana, exactly. We were part of a small group of, uh, I don't know what the common denominator was. Christian people that know Gabe, I think Gabe Lyons, people that know

Gabe Lyons. That's right. And we ended up rooming together, me, you and Gabe, which is, I won't even talk about that experience. It was, it was interesting and fun. And, and yeah. Um, but we went hunting together and I I'll never forget you sharing your story. I don't know if you want this public, but this is theology in Iran where you went hunting together and i'll never forget you sharing your story i don't know if you want this public but this is theology in a row where you went hunting as a kid and actually shot a cardinal or something my dad shot a cardinal but that's all right oh your dad that's right and it was like he we were bird hunting and um luckily he didn't shoot me but he shot a cardinal in a in a tree in arizona and i remember him looking and i remember just thinking like how sad it was this little like tuft of red red feathers and my dad was looked at and he looked at me and he's like don't say anything to the other guys

oh man anyway you can get locked up i was sworn to secrecy and now it's out i i accidentally again this maybe we'll both get arrested after this, but I accidentally shot a sparrowhawk dove hunting once, which is majorly at least a huge find. I was 16 years old and didn't really know what it was. I thought it was a dove. I literally thought it was a dove. It was hovering over us and, boom, dropped him. How are you, David?

Well, I think the good news on the hunting trip that we had um was i remember there's what 30 guys something like that great great time and we were on the little bighorn river i think wasn't it so epic epic setting and we went fishing we went hunting and um what was crazy was gabe gabe lines was the host of that hunting trip. And he'll probably be upset that I called him out on this. But it was him and me who were the only guys who did not get any fish, any birds, anything on that whole trip. I think we cemented the need for grocery stores to keep our family alive. I'm surprised somebody didn't die. I remember, I won't call this person out, but there was one person in particular that I don't think has ever shot a gun before, but was walking around with a loaded gun off safety.

And at one point, this particular person had the shotgun over their shoulder pointing straight back loaded no safety finger on the trigger and somebody's face right behind the barrel and somebody says hey man is that thing the safety's on right can you get that and he's like oh yeah it's on he looked and it was not remember he also dropped he dropped the gun and it went off no he shot it on accident and then dropped it he accident at one point when he wasn't pointing at somebody, he actually pulled the trigger, shot the ground or something. That was crazy, man. Oh, my word.

Who is David Kinnaman? Give us a snapshot of your story, in particular your work with Barna over the last umpteen years that you've been. Well, clearly not a hunter. Not a hunter. I'm a gatherer of facts I'm uh not a hunter but I'm a gatherer of facts so I've been working at Barna research for uh for a long time feels like forever uh ever since college um I'm now president own the company and um so you know I mean mean, just start starting with with the professional side. That's who I am. I'm a researcher, writer, sort of a listener to try to think through what people tell us about their spiritual journeys and the sacredness of that. And then, of course, the most important parts about me is my family, my connectedness in with our Christian community, three kids, 20, 18, and 15.

My wife, Jill, who's a brain cancer survivor. That's been quite a ride, quite a run. And so, yeah, it's a pleasure to be able to do the kind of work that we do. And honestly, even though there's a lot of pressures from the cult like our cultural moment what a privilege it is to be in ministry today to think about what God's doing in a changing culture and a changing time when all the rules that we were trained to think through whether you know in bible school or whatever like it's all it's all coming apart in a way that I think is really good and healthy for the Christian community to wrestle with. Can you explain what you mean?

Yeah, that's interesting. What is coming apart and why? Can you unpack that a bit? Yeah. I mean, I feel like so many of the, I look at it from just a market dynamic in the kind of institutions that have served Christian communities and really all institutions are going through a major trend called disintermediation. And that's a hundred dollar word that just means that all the value is being unbundled and rebundled. So Amazon is a great example of the disintermediation trend. You don't have the same sort of retail environment, the same sort of middleman.

I mean, a lot of different things are changing. And I actually think churches are going through that same sort of disintermediation and they're not fully aware of it yet. The value of a youth group, for example, is very different today than it was 20 years ago. years ago, the value of a Sunday morning worship service as far as what it does for a person in terms of their community and spiritual development is just very different. So major media networks are being disintermediated, institutions, governments being disintermediated, publishing, Christian institutions, Christian higher education, Christian K-12 churches. So that to me is what is being sort of changed is the institutional world in which we live is being reorganized around a whole new sort of set of value exchange. And so to me, that's a great opportunity. It's like it's an

era of new wineskins being created. And I think that's a lot of fun to sort of imagine what that future might look like. So, and why is this happening? I, my, the first thing that comes to mind is obviously the internet as a overarching reason for all this. Um, would you agree with that? And then can you be maybe more specific within the internet world? Yeah. I mean, I think the technology is absolutely part of the driver of that. In some ways, I think a good historical perspective is that the age of industrialization and electrification have enabled mass communication and sort of different sorts of ways in which cities and human communities can work and organize differently. And then the digital revolution as part of the last 10 years, 10, 20 years has accelerated, sometimes called the hockey stick. It's like the amount

of information, the amount of connectedness, the amount of inter interdependence, the unbundling of things. I still remember one of one of my colleagues early on during the internet was like, you know, like, we decided to put a barn dot org site up. And, you know, she was like, Well, we'll see if the whole internet thing sticks around, you know, it's like, I think it's going to be here for a while um and sort of sort of like the printing press changed the dynamics of institutional power in in the middle ages and then and then through the enlightenment period and obviously the protestant reformation in some ways was as much a technological as it was a theological reformation. And so printing press allowed for, you know, these, these, um, uh, you know,

sort of outlier voices like Martin Luther to, um, have a disproportionate influence. He unbundled, he, he disintermediated the power of the Catholic church. Um, and so I think we're in that kind of great shift, that great seminal shift. I mean, even my son and I, Zach and I were talking about, um, you know, the, the next hundred years, this, this was, um, Steve jobs comment before he died that he thought that the next hundred years would be largely around the fusion of technology and human bodies. Um, and, and sort of what technology would do to what it, what it is we think about what it means to be human. And that's an incredible revolution that for many people is going to improve their quality of life.

You're talking about people that have abilities or disabilities. So, you know, there's technology, the ability to solve complex problems, the interconnectedness through the internet, those are all things that are part of this current, you know, context that I think, and we have a phrase for it called digital Babylon. You know, there's a sense in which this age old part of humanity, the Tower of Babel, the experiment of the city of man, all those are both laden with good and not so good implications. But, you know, I think, again, it's like, it's a privilege for us to be thinking and trying to

think theologically about our current moment, given some of those great macro trends that are taking place. There's so many different strands of this we can go down. The one I would love to begin with is, you mentioned church, that church, let's just say church structure, traditional church structures are going through an overhaul and upheaval. But a lot of churches maybe don't, aren't, and maybe should be, or at least they're not recognizing that the pre-internet models of church might not, not will not, but might not be the thing that's going to be the most effective in our post-internet age. Can you go into more detail about the effect of everything you're talking about and church models and why what worked in the 80s might not

work, whatever work means here? Well, one of the ways to think about it is that the phrase I've come to use to describe it is that we're trying to do dial-up ministry in a Wi-Fi world. And so the way a local church organizes itself is around a series of encounters, experiences. Sunday morning worship is sort of the capstone of that. Other kinds of youth group meetings or community groups or small groups. And none of those are bad. I mean, they're all important places. And I think actually the church is the original social network. And it's an important place where we find ourselves. We find intergenerational relationships, multiracial relationships, different socioeconomic classes, different abilities, different backgrounds and stories,

that the church is the one place where all these people, if you see this in the early New Testament, you see this all the way now to the present day, the church at its best is a place of people gathered together across their differences for the sake of Jesus in the world. And so none of those things are going to go away, but the forms and how they work. And in particular, you know, we've been doing a big study focusing on what works for discipling this emerging generation. And we're finding that so many young people walk away from their faith and the reason

for that is this we're doing dial-up ministry in a wi-fi world like the structure of a youth group as a pedagogical structure as a training structure is not sufficient for the amount of content that a young person receives whether it's through public education or even christian education and through youtube and through other sort of like enculturating forces. So, you know, the Mormons actually get this much more right than I think the Protestant community does. And that is they have, I mean, I grew up in a very Mormonized community in Mesa, Arizona,

right across, this was before the internet, of course, but they had these structures, these deeper structures for pedagogy. And for example, right across the street from our high school, there was the Mormon seminary. And every Mormon that I knew, whether they were really into it or not into it, they went to 7 a.m. Mormon seminary, and then they would have prayer meetings and sessions at lunchtime and after school. And I think that by doing – and then, of course, they were all leading up to doing a missions trip, a missions two-year deployment for most young Mormon men and many young Mormon women. deployment for most young Mormon men and many young Mormon women. And, and the reason why that kind of like, that's, that's closer to the kind of thing that I wish we would do within Protestantism. You know, we have great campus ministry. We have people that, you know, go on campus and

create deep relationships with students, but that's not sufficient to create a pedagogical structure. So that's an example, one example of some of the changes that I think are coming down the road. What can churches do? Is it just more pedagogical avenues or different kind of avenues? Because you also, somebody could, I think, maybe misinterpret what you're saying and say like, oh, so what we need is not just Wednesday night youth group. Now we need Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night youth group. But with the growing busyness of people, adding more is almost going to be even more counterproductive because there's more. I don't think that's what you're saying. But what is the kind of what would be the, the, the wifi response to our wifi world?

Well, it isn't actually too far off the mark. I mean, I certainly think that the pressures of overcommitment are, are huge. And we shouldn't assume that because the church is offering it, that it is all of a sudden sacred and it's worth people's time. And that somehow the rest of life, all the other commitments that they have are somehow less important. And I think a lot of churches do a disservice to that by shaming people about part of their commitments in kids' sports or other things. But I do think that we need structures that are more like classrooms more like mission experiences

more like mentoring um you know like like the mormon seminary where we are able to create um uh you know you don't learn piano by you know going to a watch a p you know a piano player play on wednesday nights for 30 minutes. You know, if we're going to teach people to play in the symphony of God's body, uh, to mix metaphors a bit, um, you know, if they're going to have a role, a part to play, then we've got to really train them for that. And there's, and I think there's ways of enrolling people, not like every week of every day, every day of every month of every year, you're going to be, you know, in some sort of spiritual setting or, you sort of like spiritual training setting but i do think that

we need to be much more creative about trying to help propel people towards life in christ and a good example of this where the rubber meets the road is uh you know what we call vocational discipleship part of our our one of our areas of research that there are places where we can really help to propel people on the mission that God has put them on earth to do vocationally in terms of their career

and their areas of study. We're losing, the research I did for this book called You Lost Me about six, seven years ago, show that we're losing young entrepreneurs. We're losing young creatives. We're losing young science-minded students because the church feels completely out of step with the world of science, creativity, mathematics, technology, entrepreneurship. And it's almost as though the church is silent on those issues at the times when

these students are really coming to understand who they are and who they're created to be and that's a perfect example of where i think you know the mormon church sort of gets that a little bit more right you're you're immersed in a community where you think about generosity you think about mission you think about who you are in light of your calling, and that is largely to the Mormon church. Again, all that's part of how a cult propels itself. But I think there's some things we have to learn about the kinds of immersive learning communities that actually make for a different way of thinking about the world. And I think a lot of Christian communities are sort of missing that at the core. I'm so curious about this. I mean, I want to get back to your book, You Lost Me. I've got a few questions there. I love that book,

by the way. That was when I was doing a lot of research on discipleship and church and everything. That was one of those helpful books I read. So I have a couple of questions about where we are now in relation to what you said in that book. But I'm curious if you, because you have such a good pulse on where we are going as a culture and where it's in particular with youth. If somebody came to you and said, David, okay, you have a blank slate. You can create any kind of youth group, youth structure, whatever. We as a church want to disciple our youth well. Blank slate, blank check. You come in, you can do whatever you want or establish whatever structures. What would you say to that church? How do we disciple our youth in 2019 and beyond? Well, I've been thinking a lot about this. And one of the ways that I would suggest us changing our mindset is rather than simply trying to build our local church, we try to think about building the whole church in a city, in a community.

And what that might look like is that we might come together as youth ministry and church leaders to say, how could we love, care, develop students in our community? And maybe our church isn't best at every aspect of that, but we're good at a certain part of it. And so, for example, in Ventura, which is our hometown here in Southern California, there are probably a little bit under 10,000 students that graduate every year from high school. And what if we created over the course of a four year or a six year horizon from junior high through high school, a set of experiences that we hoped all the Christian students at least were able to go to. I think a vocation Bible school is a great concept. You're going to go off to college, trade school, be working in the world.

And so for at least those people that are going, uh, that are Christian and actually for people that may not be Christian, there's an opportunity for us to say, we're going to help you, introduce you to a theology of what it is that you might be made to do. And, um, so there's a, there's a way we rethink, you know, the great part about what the Mormon community does is they don't, they don't, they don't try to build, quote-unquote, local churches. They're doing their very best to instill in each of those young Mormons a sense of Mormon theology, a sense of being on mission with Mormonism.

a sense of being on mission with, you know, with, with Mormonism. Um, and so they, they're, all their resources are going in towards developing those students and they're, you know, like we should be, we should be brought buying property right next door to public schools where students can come and there's, there's a set of programs that we're running there, you know, teaching about human sexuality, teaching about, you know, prayer, teaching about mission and, um, more than just like, you know, teaching about human sexuality, teaching about, you know, prayer, teaching about mission. And more than just like, you know, the cool bro, you know, youth ministry

leader coming on campus and like making friends with students. That's not bad. It's just not enough to create a pedagogical structure for this generation. I don't know if you know this, in Boise, a good friend of mine started this 12 years ago. It's called Launchpad. He basically saw that in Idaho, in most states, if you're a public school, you can have one hour a week or two hours a week of religious release time, which is why the Mormon church is capitalized on that. So he's done that here on 22 different high school campuses in the state of Idaho. He's built a building. I mean, exactly what you're saying. And it is very pedagogical.

Yeah. I mean, I've taught at it. It's fantastic. I'm surprised. I can't wait to learn more about it. I can't wait to learn more about that. I think that's a huge opportunity for us. And this is, you know, this is what I mean about that new wineskin moment. Kara Powell has this incredible phrase that she says, 14 is the new 24. So a 14 year old is dealing with 24 year old realities. And 28 is the new 18. So a 28 year old isn't fully grown up. They don't have kids yet. They may not be married yet. And those two, those two, excuse me, those two phrases, I think perfectly capture this, this generation and the put the pressures they're being both, you know, childhood is being compressed, but adulthood is being extended. And, um, and, and so so um i think we have a great opportunity to rethink our our interactions

with students um you know and and meet them more clearly on on on the on the frame of reference with where they are um like i was i was talking with mark sayers about this actually a few about a month ago how cool it would be if the church were to develop a set of classes or you know like a like a course or some some sort of interesting content around a theology of dystopian literature and why this generation is so interested in dystopian fiction and i think that you know like could we teach you know and like my son's really reader rabbit kind of kid he's 15 years old and you know he's been reading um he read 1984 in his english class as a freshman and then he and then on his own he read brave new world and

then he read read fahrenheit 4 and 451 and then this this weekend i noticed he had he had picked up on amazon neil postman amusing ourselves to death because it was recommended on some, some subreddit. And, and I mean, now he's a, he's a, he's an outlier of a kid, but I actually think that students are interested in deeper things. Like, why is it that, I mean, when we talk about gun violence, when we talk about, you know, politics, when we talk about the power of media, I mean, I think students would be really, really interested in what a

Christian worldview might have to say about the power of literature, the power of entertainment, the power of these stories, the feelings of being, you know, sort of in a chaotic world, why dystopian literature sort of resonates with us that these great powers are sort of using and abusing human beings and human bodies. So that's an example of how we might imagine if in a place like Boise or a place like Ventura, students came to see Christians as both missionally active, active in their prayer lives, active in their generosity, active in their vocational development, active in their philosophical and intellectual lives. And this is, again, I don't mean this cynically, but so much of youth ministry is designed to you know, to keep the parents happy.

So, you know, the kids should keep the kids happy. So the parents keep showing up. And again, it's just not going to work. It's not going to cut it for this new this new this new Wi-Fi ministry world. I mean, if not, if but since 80, 90 percent of kids have, you know, a smartphone by the time they're 13, 14. They have access and are engaging, whether you think so or not. They're engaging ideas and worldviews that the average person didn't engage until they're in their mid-20s, when they were kind of out in the real world. So now they're having things about gun violence, things about politics and immigration and sexuality and gender stuff.

I mean, they're trying to process this at 13 and 14, but it feels like, and this isn't an overstatement, but it feels like for the most part, the church is not, they're still training youth as if they don't have questions about this, as if they're not exposed to this. I mean, I don't, this is going to be maybe, maybe an overstatement, maybe not, but I mean, any junior high leader or high school leader, especially who's not doing thorough discipleship in terms of gender and sexuality is incredibly naive. Like, that's just, I don't, I mean, this is what, when I go into youth groups, even junior highs and stuff and talk, which isn't a lot, but enough. I mean, the questions the prepubescent kids are asking me are way further ahead than the average, even pastors, sometimes pastors, you know, we'll talk about intersex and half the people are like, no, what's that again? You know,

and the average kid is like, you know, what does the, what does the Bible say about non-binary? Are you talking about internet sex? I know, right? Yeah. So I, and again, that kind of goes back to, we have model. It seems like we have models that may have worked. Maybe they didn't work. Let's just benefit the doubt. Maybe they worked in a pre-internet age, but we haven't. Yeah, I don't know.

I'm just kind of agreeing with what you're saying. Well, I mean, this is a lot of what my brand new project called Faith for Exiles is all about, that the screens are the new disciple makers and that screens disciple and that the church is structured fundamentally excuse me to to miss that to to try to protect preserve create safety environments where we don't talk about the real issues of life and for me an exile is someone who really wants their their faith to be firmly planted in the real world, the world as it is, not the world we imagine it to be. And for all the reasons you've just laid out,

we have to be courageous enough to educate our kids, to train them to think. And you can almost just hear the parents whose kids may be exposed to content or thinking or to the ambiguities of life. You know, and some of the, I mean, I'm more convinced than ever. My work with Gabe Lyons on a book called Good Faith. And, you know, like we have to be, we have to be convicted of the hard truths of scripture and that those, that those ideas in scripture about sexuality, for example, still hold true and hold sway. But it's really complicated to go through all of that. And I mean, I know that's really the hallmark of your work in that by having a conversation with people

we disagree with doesn't necessarily mean that we're endorsing it. But that's a good example. Like I actually, I'm convinced that part of the way of ministry about sexuality today is to hear from in real life, people that disagree with us in a safe enough environment that we can really wrestle with it. So, you know, to hear from someone who is same-sex attracted in youth group is a good thing. And it has to be in the right context, and you have to have a, you have to, you know, think it all through. And, you know, like, it may not be for every church in every context the best way forward but if you can't help a student be better friends with people who are lgbtq um then your church isn't doing ministry uh well and and let me just explain that what i what i mean is this generation isn't just looking for for whether christianity is true they also

want to understand whether christianity is good and and if And if Christianity can't be good for their friends, for their communities, for their own lives, for the world, and when Christianity is viewed sometimes rightly as anti-homosexual or anti-LGBTQ, they can't reconcile that. And so the church has to help them reconcile these, these really competing claims in a way that's consistent to scripture and to the historic Orthodox ways that churches have, that the church has applied a sexual ethic, for example. But if we can't help wrestle through that in a real relational way of how do you have a real conversation with somebody who is same-sex attracted or who is intersex? What do we do with that? And this generation is really testing the veracity, the plausibility of Christianity overall, based on how well the church can model that for them. And that has to

be done in large part through relationships. I want to keep going on this, but I want to do so through talking about your first and most recent book. So I came across your name, I mean, through UnChristian, probably a lot of my audience, that first book you and Gabe, that was your first book, right? That's right. I ultimately want to know like what's changed or have you seen things play out the way they were kind of the foresight in Un-Christian was fascinating. But give us a snapshot of what Un-Christian was about and then let's jump to your most recent book. Well, one way to think about Un-Christian was, you know, Gabe Lyons asked me to write this book with him. It wasn't a hard, hard yes. It was an easy, an easy answer to work with him it wasn't a hard uh hard yes it was an easy an easy answer uh to work with him and to do that study what we was originally called the brand of christianity and

was like like a perception study of how people 16 to 29 perceived the brand of christianity that's where perceptions like anti-homosexual and you know judgmental came up and you know power of that being anti-homosexual that was like one of the first it was almost like we went out into the field with a geiger counter it was like you know kept like you know showing this radioactivity this this the sense of of um uh the the generation the youngest generation now who would be uh the research was done in like 2004. So, you know, that would have been the early millennials, um, you know, when they were young. And, um, and so they kept saying, you know, you're, you're unfair to this whole category of people who are same sex attracted

and you're anti-homosexual, you've elevated this sin. So a lot of that book, the whole premise of that was what does Christianity look like to an outsider's perspective? I talked to a guy who's a professor of Jewish studies at Stanford about a year ago, a year and a half ago. And he was like, he was a big fan of unchristian. And it was so it was so like surreal for me because I knew a little bit about his work. his work and he's a he's a wonderful sociologist and he was super complimentary of unchristian for the fact that it asked non-christians to sort of weigh in on the issues of the day for evangelicals like like he's like that's such an unusual premise that you would ask outsiders to help you think about the issues that you're dealing with internally and and i didn't you

know think about that gabe and i just sort of approached it as innocently as we did as the Brand Christianity study. So fast forward to 2011, I did the You Lost Me book, which was really focused on young, lapsed Christians, the reasons why young people walk away from the church. And we largely came to the conclusion that for those that walk away, the church does not answer the complicated questions in a way that's deep, thoughtful, and challenging. So this is the entrepreneurs, you know, the creatives, the science-minded students. And it is true, there's a lot of young people who walk away for, you know, kind of dumb reasons, if you will. But I really, there's sacredness to even very pedestrian reasons. And, you know, there's a lot of judgmentalism that we have as Christians towards people that walk away.

It's almost like, well, you know, I remember one guy interviews, like they all walk away for pelvic reasons. They want to have sex. They don't want to have any kind of repressive, repressive, you know, sexual ethics. And I was like, I think it's a little more complicated than pelvic reasons.

But I thought that was pretty descriptive. And, and, and then, so the last one, this new, new book is, and in the meantime,

I did good, good faith with Gabe Lyons on how to be a Christian when society thinks you're irrelevant and extreme, which was really about the pressures of why Christianity was not just being viewed as irrelevant, but extremist and a lot of stuff related to sex and sexuality. And so this faith for exiles is in a way, the end of this, for me, this focusing on the next generation of, I'm not going to do any more generational research, but we interviewed 18 to 29 year olds and who were the most resiliently faithful. And 10% were sort of what

we call resilient disciples, just 10% of those who grew up Christian. So there's some real sobering findings there, but a lot of hope because those 10% are really, really different in the way they live their lives and the way they orient themselves towards Jesus, towards the scriptures, towards the church. So it's a very hopeful and inspiring thing, despite the fact that it's just 10%. How did those 10 percent become who they are what created the 10 percent and don't get me like well god did or whatever like what what what are some practical uh things was it parenting was it youth groups was it yeah so essentially one of the ways to think about this is through the research we interviewed 16 to 29 year olds sorry 18 to 29 year olds who were who who grew up Christian, we found that 10% were resiliently faithful.

And then we compared a lot of their experiences and perspectives and other things to other categories of young people who grew up Christian but who weren't resiliently faithful. And so we can't say from the research, what are the causes? But we can say more than like God did it and parents did it. And you know, they were just active churchgoers. We found a lot of evidence that there are these different components. They experienced Jesus, they have cultural discernment, they have meaningful relationships, they're vocationally discipled. They have a sense of countercultural mission. So those are the five practices. And so they parent about some things that I could do a lot differently and I'm trying to do differently in light of the findings. So I want to poke a bear here really quick. Was there any, with the 10%, whether they were public schooled, Christian schooled, or homeschooled, this type of schooling, did it

play a role in that and create another 10 percent um it did but there were also resilient young people who grew up in in public schools and and and there were people who were christian schooled or homeschooled who were not resilient and the big difference was you know you had a higher chance of being resilient by being homeschooled or being, you know, being in a Christian school, but you also had some chances of really falling out of resilience based on part of the way we defined it. So for example, you know, being a resilient disciple, the way we define in our research was you had a very active relationship to a local church. You attended worship and you were involved in more ways than just attending.

And so that could account for a house church or other things as well. You had to believe in the authority of scripture. You had to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And importantly, you had to believe that your faith mattered in the real world, that you wanted your faith expressed out in culture, you know, in society. For example, that Jesus is alive and active in the world and you want to join him in that work. And so Christian school students and homeschool students were, you know, they were very dutifully Christian, but they didn't always express this desire to see their faith out there in the world. And that's part of this idea of being an exile or being a resilient disciple, that your faith matters in your work, in your communities, in your lives.

They were not as active in evangelism. So it's almost like going to a public school made you more ready to live in the real world and having faith conversations with people who were different with you, different from you. You got to sort of experience a little bit different side of the world. So it's an interesting mixture. You sort of help your kids, to put it plainly, you help your kids in certain ways by homeschooling or Christian schooling them, but you also create other pressures for them to live on mission with Jesus evangelistically or out in society or in their jobs and careers. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting balancing act that I think we as parents have to have to navigate.

So there was though a higher percentage of homeschooled kids who were part of that 10% or? a higher percentage of homeschooled kids who were part of that 10% or? Yeah, there were a disproportionately higher number. But remember that there were, there were still a majority of those homeschool students that were just in the, what we call the habitual churchgoers category. So if you're, if you're raising a homeschool student, you know, the chances are still less than, less than average that they're going to be a resilient disciple. So I've often said, and this is what I love about talking with you, David, is I can cross-check my anecdotal experience with data, you know. So in my experience, and what I've often said is like the form of schooling isn't as important as, you know, obviously just that you're discipling your kids.

Like there's pros and cons to each model. Like you kind of hinted at, I mean, homeschooling has the advantages of just spending much more time discipling your kids, assuming that you're actually discipling the kids, not just, you know, compartmentalizing everything. compartmentalizing everything. But you're also going to be more prone to, or the weakness could be one, creating Pharisees, which is even worse than sometimes lukewarm Christians, or not actually preparing a kid to be able to exercise their spiritual muscles in the real world of culture and work

and all these other things. Again, I'm not saying you can't do that homeschooling. I'm just saying those are greater challenges and vice versa with, you know, there's other challenges with the other models. But my big thing has been, there's no, the model itself is not going to, it's going to bring its own pros and cons. So don't rely upon the model to do the discipling for you. You have to disciple your child through whatever model you choose. Would you resonate with that, with the data? Absolutely. And that's really the theme of these five practices is that they're more like CrossFit than they are, you know, like we've got to have a whole

approach to developing, you know, strength in our spiritual lives and across these five dimensions it's like our life with god our life of the mind um our life with others our our sort of sense of calling and purpose in our work and then our our heart and mind and calling in the world to live counter-culturally and that's where these five practices are, you know, are designed to help us think in whatever setting, whether public school or home school or Christian school, whatever, you know, there's young Catholics, there's young Protestants in the resilient disciples. And so it's not just even a theological perspective, obviously, because we approach things as an evangelical researcher, probably the way we

word our questions is less likely to show that Catholics are resilient disciples. But we try to approach these things without foregone conclusions. We don't say, well, great, since we're evangelicals, I'm sure the evangelical church is just killing it. Quite quite the opposite we try to test all these hypotheses with research and and sort of let the chips fall where they may and then and then analyze it that still has a lot of limitations as researchers we have to kind of like keep saying that like we can't show causation we can't show um you know every different permutation of a theological perspective but we do learn a lot and And we do learn that it's more about, you know, the kinds of, it's what you'd expect. It's like, it's less important that people know all the right answers in their brain than it is to how they feel, how they feel warm and

connected within the church community. You know, those are meaningful relationships are so important. They actually want to be around other Christians. And when they want to be around them, they actually want to believe the same things. I think sometimes we try to make them believe everything in order for them to be around us. But it actually turns out that the warm relationships within the church are part of what propels young people towards loving Jesus. So good. So good. The book is Faith for Exiles and it came out already, right? Or is it due to come out? You know, today, September 3rd, we're recording this. It's the launch day.

So brand new, man. It's the, the, the baby is still in need of diaper changing, et cetera. Awesome. Have you, I know we had a couple more minutes left, but so, so since, so that's the trajectory of the books you've written. And the books are really just a reflection of the work you've been thinking through and working on. The perception of the church was pretty dismal, not unexpected, but sobering. I'll say sobering in unchristian. Have you seen the church improve its, for lack of better terms it's brand since unchristian or has it gotten better or worse stayed the same well we're doing a big study with world vision that will come out on september 10th so depending on when people have a chance to listen to the podcast if it's before september 10th you can actually tune in and watch it called

a big webcast called faith for the future. Uh, and you can find that on barn.com slash faith for the future. If it's after September 10th, then you can actually go and, um, and, and listen to it, um, you know, on a, on a website called the connected generation.com or you can find it at barn.com, but we're, we're doing this large study, 25 countries, 15,000 interviews, nine languages. We interviewed 18 to 35-year-olds. And part of that study actually looked at the perceptions of Christianity again, the brand of Christianity. And we'll be launching some of that.

Gabe and I will be doing some releases of that over the next few months, over the next six months. And in general, actually, I mean, just a quick highlight is that the data show that people, it depends a little on who you interview. So if you interviewed young non-Christians, they've actually become a little less anti-Christian, anti-evangelical, the perceptions aren't quite as bad, but they have become more indifferent.

And that's an equally challenging problem in some ways. They're more post-Christian than they were even 10, 15 years ago. And interestingly, those that walk away from faith, the sort of ex-evangelical or those who are prodigals, they say they're no longer a Christian, they become even more angry and frustrated at those perceptions. So their perceptions have even grown worse. And so I'd say we're entering a period where the sense that, you know, indifference and sort of post-Christian sense of like, does Christianity even matter? I love that Jesus has this question.

He says, you know, when the Son of Man comes back to earth, will he find faith on the earth? You know, and I think that's, we're entering this period where technology, you know, um you know other other forms of sort of religiosity can sort of answer these age-old questions of human of human beings um you know that's a very pertinent question but but yeah it seems as though the the perceptions of non-christians are getting a little softer a little a little a little more neutral um young people that walk away from church are actually more negative than they were when we did become Christian. Okay, I got one more. I have to ask you this question. This may take us a minute or two over our time. I've seen a few different studies pointing out that

there is a surprising swing towards conservatism among younger millennials or even Gen Z, that we thought that the younger people get, the more progressive they're going to keep getting. And I read a couple studies that said, no, there's actually been a surprising surge toward more conservative values. Can you verify that? Have you seen that? Is there anything to that? Politically or theologically? that? Is there anything to that? Politically or theologically? Let me just say both. I mean, just, yeah, let's define conservatism as broadly as you want. Pro-life kind of stances, maybe waiting to have sex more, like they're not as sexually promiscuous as they once were, probably because they're all on porn. But I mean, just other, you know, a concern for being,

you know, for safetyism and other things. But also, yeah, I mean, I other, you know, a concern for being, you know, for safetyism and other things. But also, yeah, I mean, I read one study saying there's been more conservative ways of thinking about LGBTQ questions among younger people in a way that was surprising. And I don't like the site. When I read one study, I'm like, OK, where's the other 19 that I need to read that might balance that? So but have you seen anything with that? Well, I've seen the same kinds of things that you're alluding to. I think part of what's happening, the mega trend that I think could best describe it is we're living in a much more fragmented reality.

I think that society, at least in the United States, which is where we'd have our best social polling as of today at Barna, it's always been pretty fragmented, but we're becoming even more fragmented and sort of professionally fragmented by media, social media, the sort of echo chamber effect. And in that respect, I think there's pretty good evidence to say that young conservatives are virtually as conservative as their parents on a lot of different fronts. In fact, the idea that younger Christians are more biblically illiterate is mostly untrue. That is that boom know boomer boomers and elder christians are just as likely to be biblically illiterate as our young christians um and and conversely they're

just as likely to be you know interested in scripture um as their older older christian generations were but the difference that i see often is that the world of sort of Christianity as part of the social fabric of our society is certainly shifting so that younger people have a much harder job of convincing the sort of, let's call them the swing voters, both literally and metaphorically, that Christianity has any sway in the world. And so we did this really fascinating study with American Bible Society asking about, you know, whether politics would be more civil if politicians read and use scripture and whether, you know, sort of our political environment would be improved if the Bible was used in any way.

And the generational differences were simply profound. Like, I mean, literally, if I sat and just dreamed up some numbers, I wouldn't have the guts to say that the generational differences that we saw would come out. It's like three quarters of elders, two thirds of boomers agreed the Bible would make our society better. two-thirds of boomers agreed the Bible would make our society better, but only half of Gen X and only one-third of millennials thought that was true. And that just is, I mean, like, again, it's almost like make-believe world. And some people who say, hey, you know, don't worry because the kids are going to, they're going to be all right. They're going to grow up older. When they

get up older, they're going to be conservative and, you know, blah. The ground is really shifting in terms of the public claims of Christianity on a mass scale. So if you were to look in individual evangelical communities, are those students just as committed to Scripture and to evangelicalism and to Jesus? In some ways, yeah, that's the power of these Orthodox conservative communities. I mean, that's true within Orthodox Jewish community. That's true within the Orthodox Catholic, the elements of conservative Catholicism. That's true within Islam. That's true of evangelicalism.

That isn't changing very much. But what is changing is the broader society in which the norms and values are changing very rapidly towards what we could describe as sort of external sources of authority, government, politicians, leaders, sacred scripture to internal forces. Like, what do I want? You do you. You be true to yourself. And that's the larger shift that I think is really, is very troubling, is that even if people subscribe to conservative politics or to whatever, they're, they're increasingly being influenced by what we'll call, you know, call it sort of this, this, this, this morality of the self. And, and, you know, so I think, I think that's where we sort of preserve our best, our best interests. And I think that's going to be one of the hardest things in, in American Christianity to deal with, which is, you've got this sense that, you know, we've even, we've even grafted that we want the Bible,

that it's best for me, it's best for the world, that that must then sort of translate into a certain sort of, you know, Christianized nation. There's a lot to talk through that, you know, and to really wrestle through that. But I think this is, that's why, that's why to me, this generation, I call them a generation of exiles, because they're feeling those tensions, even as they're holding more conservatively to, you know, to theology or political values, whatever, they're feeling the tension that they can't, they can no longer have one foot, you know, in the church and one foot in society. You know, they're going to be sort of torn apart by that. So they've got to find a new faithful way of being planted in the

real world. Man, that's a long answer. No, that's, I'm just, my mind's kind of reeling right now. So you've given us a lot to think about, but I would highly encourage our audience to check out your book, Faith for Exiles. And yes, this will be released, but when people are listening to this, it might even be early October. So the book is well on its way. I'm sure it has several reviews on Amazon, although I don't recommend reading Amazon reviews, especially if you're an author. I've loved all of the stuff you've put out, David. Thanks so much for being on Theology and Around for giving us tons to think about. Let's catch up sometime soon.

Thanks, Preston. You're a great friend. I sure appreciate being able to do the interview. Thanks to you and thanks to your listeners as well. You're a great friend. I sure appreciate being able to do the interview. So thanks. Thanks to you. And thanks to your listeners as well. It's a real privilege to be able to use research and some of the kinds of thinking that we do, the kind of listening and telling the stories of others, which is in some ways what I sort of feel like my spiritual gift is, is this gift of discernment to try to help listen to hear, to understand, uh, to open up our eyes to some new ways of thinking and doing. So thanks so much for the conversation today. And I sure love you and your family. I appreciate all that you're trying to do. Thanks brother. Appreciate it. We'll see you later. Thank you.