Greetings everyone! Sometime in 2011 I started reading The Next Christians: How A New Generation Is Restoring The Faith by Gabe Lyons. I finished reading it just now.
The book is mainly about how the world is messed up and it’s not how things where like in the beginning, and how the next Christians are setting out to restore things to how things used to be.
The book is broken down into three parts.
The first part is about how the world is totally different. It has changed dramatically. The world wasn’t always as it is now. The world has drifted away from the God who made it.
The second part of the book describes the next Christians as restorers. As restorers, the next Christians want to study and know how things were, so they can help restore things back to how things used to be. Next Christians want to stay where they are and evangelize those they already know. They want to use their current vocations as a means to extend the boundaries of God’s kingdom. They want to be counter-cultural and extend God’s grace here on earth.
And the third section is dawning a new era were all things are made new again. This calls us to a world were Christians are an extension of Jesus on earth. We extend grace and love to those who need it.
I think one of the most profound things Lyons says in this book is when he eludes to Jeremiah 29 when Jeremiah reads a letter God sends him to read to the Israelites who were then in captivity in Babylon. It said something to the effect of they were to take up residence in the city, to make their homes there, to give their children away in marriage there, to be extensions of God grace there. They were to pray for their city and be His people there. Lyons calls all of us to do that in our own cities.
I highly recommend this book. It is a sequel to a book Lyons co-authored with David Kinnaman called UnChristian (a book about why younger generations are turned off by the Christian faith). Both of these books are excellent studies, and I would suggest anyone who is concerned about the younger generations and about the future of Christianity should read these books.
God bless you all. Grace and Peace.
Zack
