svelte as always. i thought for a second they were going to say that b-roll was your church.

Great stuff! You brought the cross and Jesus! Way to go. Also the news guy was fired up. I would guess he too is a Christ follower. God bless you Ed.

You're a rock star!

Great job Ed. You should talk about Jesus for a living.

Great job for being alotted such a brief amount of time. I find that many are confused in their thinking. They speak against Christians who are hypocrites when really being a hypocrite may indicate one is merely religious and has not been born again. When the goal of churches is getting the "unchurched" churched rather than preaching the gospel so God will regenerate the lost, churches will be packed with hypocrites.

Correction: I guess it would be more biblically accurate for me to say that the gospel should be preached so that the lost will be saved since regeneration is up to God.

Many unchurched say that Christians are hypocrites because those particular unchurched don't want to surrender. And this is a convenient excuse.

But also, the truth is, many christians should not be allowed outside of their house. I'm talking about the ones who leave tracks on Sunday afternoon lunch at Chili's as a tip instead of cash.

All Christians should read The Likeability Factor by Tim Sanders.

Great exposure for LifeWay Research, Ed!

Well done, Ed. I think the new haircut and those glasses made it even better.

Brother Ed,

I must agree with another of the above comments; you do look like a rock star. :^)

Seriously, a couple of questions, and then (as usual) some statements. First, what determination did the unchurched in the poll use to establish someone was a Christian? IOW, was it based on someone saying they were Christians or was it based on someone being explained the belief of Christians and then asking if they had friends that believed and lived that belief system? Second, if the church is the stumbling block before one gets to the cross, how does changing the church in order to encourage the unchurched to come help when their friends are not speaking to them about Jesus? Third, are we not falling into some bottomless doctrinal chasm by allowing unchurched people to separate the church from Jesus?

Now my statements. You said on the CNN interview that we Christians should look at these results and change "The way we live our lives and talk about our faith" Shouldn't that be the way we talk about our faith? It seems that, according to the survey, if 28% "percent of adults 30 years and older said they thing Christians they know talk to them too much about their beliefs", then that means 72% would say that the Christians they know do not talk to them enough about their beliefs.

Also, is there not some concern in allowing the unchurched to define the church. I am not saying their concerns are not valid. However, I believe we could better express the differences by using the term 'organized religion'. It seems that we are allowing Jesus to be separated from The Church. The Church is the Bride of Christ and should not be separated. What is the best way to communicate that?

Overall, I enjoyed the survey. I believe you have pointed to some things that we need to examine. I know that I will point out these stats to our FAITH Outreach Team this Tuesday.

Blessings,
Tim

Tim,

You and your questions... grin.

Here are a few answers.

First, the unchurched defined Christian by themselves. In other words, the respondents would answer based on their self perception of the terms.

They also have positive views of Jesus (at least as they understand Him), but not of the church. I think Jesus and the church are inseparable. See my article here.

Also, I think we need to recognize that they often see us as hypocrites and that is not ALL because of the bad publicity on TV. Part of it is real and we should change that. So, we should change

The big theme of the story, at least to me, is that people are remarkably open to hearing more. See the story here. Hopefully that will encourage the folks tonight.

Ed

Great Job Ed. Too bad you only get 2 minutes of air time. Maybe instead of bashing the "right-wing" they could let you and Driscoll get a half hour in...

It could be really funny.

Jason.