I was looking forward to this book as soon as I saw that Lyons was writing it. He previously co-wrote UnChristian, a look at the characteristics of Christianity that turn people off. It was a very academic and well-researched piece of work.
The Next Christians started out just a little pessimistic for me.. He carries a quite negative view about Christianity right now — although I would mostly agree with his take. It’s a portrait of the church that I’ve seen before among younger people.
The second part is what really caught my interest. It was quite similar actually to another book I’ve read called Younger Evangelicals by Robert Weber. It is essentially a sociological look at what Christians will look like for the next few decades. For people like me (twenty-somethings) these characteristics are relatively easy to spot. I can this book being quite useful however for church leaders that may be ready to start handing off the baton to us young whipper snappers.
Lyons discusses our generation as being creative, communal and counter-cultural. (Is it a coincidence these are all “C” words? Probably not…) My question for the author is what are the next steps? Awareness is absolutely the first step to anything, but what next? Will our mode of church change? Will the way we do social justice change? What about the Christians who don’t fall into these categories? There are certainly Christians who will retain the characteristics of past generations… I dare say they might even comprise the majority of Christendom in America. Lyons may well be speaking to a very particular brand of Jesus followers.
What do you think?