Colleen G. (matrixmom76) reviewed Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can do to Stop It on + 16 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
It's not awful but it's not great either. When I read it I was one young person who had walked away from church, not from God just church-as-we-know-it. One key element when I got to the book was glaringly missing. Why I left and what I felt why it was not worth my time going back. The kinds of churches I had grown up in and was attending loved God and the bible they had just forgotten the core heart of the gospel. God loves/loved us so much He took on human form to come and suffer to death for the love of us. For all the churches I had been around God was a stern judge-king, holy and untouchable, the gospel was something you used to get the lost through the Jesus door and Jesus was a moralizing teachers giving sermons bout being good obedient children. it was not until I stood on the verge of walking away from God as well as the church that I found the truth. The gospel isn't the tactic you use to get the lost saved and on the road of strict obedience, keeping score of good deeds and paying penance for the bad ones. The gospel is while we were yet sinners Christ died for us and once we put our faith I Him we are fully adopted by the Father and God the Father is not a child abuser trading His love for the rites and habits of "holy" Christian living.
Sorry for the sermon but I have heard my story repeated many times over by those who left church, some leave the faith totally, others leave the trappings called church. Sadly the author and the survey-research do not know this vital aspect of church leaving.
Sorry for the sermon but I have heard my story repeated many times over by those who left church, some leave the faith totally, others leave the trappings called church. Sadly the author and the survey-research do not know this vital aspect of church leaving.
Michelle C. reviewed Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can do to Stop It on + 18 more book reviews
This book proposes what Christians want to believe is happening to the church: that it is declining, that their children are leaving the faith, never to return. The problem is that the study the authors based this book on has been retracted because the findings were inaccurate. Young people are leaving the church at the same rate they were in your parent's generation- they are leaving for a while and they will be back when they have kids of their own. The Pew Research Institute has an excellent study out on this. The facts are that denominational loyalty is at an all time high, and kids will come back to church in 10 or 20 years when they have kids of their own. Enough with the fear mongering, Ken Ham, and you really shouldn't use retracted studies to base a book on.
