Food for thought: From Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity

A quote I found interesting:

When you talk to the people who walk down the aisle at a Billy Graham crusade to make a “first-time Christian commitment,” who say something called the “sinner’s prayer” in response to an evangelistic invitation, or who join a new church, you discover that over 90 percent of them are already lifelong churchgoers. That means that over 90 percent of the so-called new converts come from the 40 percent of the population who are already “in the choir,” and less than 10 percent come from the “unchurched majority.” So we have a lot of Baptists becoming Pentecostals, and Catholics becoming Episcopalians, and so on, but surprisingly few “unchurched people” getting connected with the church. (p. 4)

McLaren’s point is interesting in light of this piece from the Huffington Post, “Listen Up, Evangelicals: What Non-Christians Want You To Hear”: http://is.gd/aaCCI. An observation from this piece that struck me:

“I have no problem whatsoever with God or Jesus – only Christians.”

Sad. I have heard this from other Christians as well.