Book: Sticky Faith

Over the last week and a half, I read Sticky Faith (Youth Leader Edition) on my Kindle. There were many times during the process that I click on the highlight button. There was a ton of good information throughout the book and a lot of things that we will end up using at CTS and many quotes and thoughts that we will throw out on the big board for discussion.

As you know (or will know), I am a huge fan of “Orange” and they did an article about the book and an interview with Karen. Here is a “snip it” of it:

Dr. Kara Powell and the team at the Fuller Youth Institute have been working hard for the last six years to try to figure out how to help kids have long-term faith, or “Sticky Faith”.  We asked Kara to share a few excerpts from her brand new book that would be most helpful to parents wanting to intentionally set their kids on a lifetime trajectory of faith and service.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids

Find Compromise If Your Kid Doesn’t Want to Go to Church

About half of the time I share the importance of intergenerational worship with parents, I get asked,“Should I make my kid go to church?” Believe me, as much as I am an advocate for intergenerational worship, I’m not naïve about how teenagers feel about sitting through church. I felt that way a fair amount myself as a kid.

This is a tough question, one I wish we could discuss over coffee so I could ask more questions about your kids and family. But not knowing your specific family, let me say this: while your long-term goal is intergenerational connection primarily in and with a church family, the first hurdle is to help your kid to feel like they are part of something they are choosing and enjoy. Forced friendships do not work very well for adolescents. Depending on the issues your child is dealing with and why they do not want to go, perhaps you could consider the following:

1. Make sure your kids know that, as important as church is to you as the parent, you respect their desire not to go.

2. Find ways to connect your child to Christian friends in casual or organic settings.

3. Find out what, if any, faith activities they would like or are willing to be part of.

4. In the end, do your best to seek a compromise.

For her answer to be expounded upon, please visit the original article which can be found here.

Over the next week or so, I am going to open up the book on my Kindle and click through the highlights and put down some of the ones that mean the most to me and how I am wrestling with them and what it might mean to me and my thought process at CTS.

Book Review: More Lost Than Found

This past weekend while my daughter was having surgery, I decided that I would download two books onto my Kindle to take to the hospital and read. The first book that I chose was More Lost Than Found by Jared Herd. I have been familiar with Jared for years through Big Stuf Camps, Orange Conference and the XP3 curriculum that I have used and continue to use.

Here is the product description from Amazon:

I vaguely remember finding Jesus when I was a child, but I vividly recall losing him.”

Jared Herd grew up the son of a preacher, baptized in religion before he was ever baptized in church. As a child, his parents went through a painful and public divorce, and Jesus became a distant memory, like an artifact of childhood that gets put away and forgotten.

Eventually Jared broke a promise he made to himself and walked back into church. He realized the problem wasn’t God- it was how he had been told to think about God.

Like Jared, teenagers and young adults are leaving the church in astonishing numbers. Something is obviously wrong. Is the problem Jesus? Or is the problem how we have been told to think about Jesus?

Perhaps you’ve always wondered how music, movies, friends, or anything on the outside of Christianity could relate to your life inside of it. Perhaps something in your life keeps you from believing you would ever fit in as a believer. Maybe you were always told what to become, but no one tried to understand how you became who you are.

In More Lost Than Found, Jared Herd comes alongside anyone who has ever struggled with faith to reengage them in the truth they long to hear. If you have ever felt you didn’t fit at church or had questions about God, maybe it’s time to give your faith another chance. God wants to find you where you are. 

My Thoughts

I appreciated the book that Jared has penned down. I know that there are many who are describing this book as average to even below average and there are many that are describing that he is moving away from tradition Christian teaching. I differ on both of those statements. I think that it is a good read and that there are things in the book that will give you plenty to ponder. I am going to give a few thoughts/quotes that I highlighted.

Illusion vs. Reality

He talks about illusion and reality and he shares this statement:

Whenever religion forces you to forgo who you are and where you are, choose to trade that pressure for a walk with God into his reality.

I think that many individuals struggle with illusions versus reality.

Disillusionment / Doubt / Pain

These three words have been coming up in various places for me lately and Jared talked about them in one of his chapters. A good friend, Kathy Escobar, finished a fantastic book a few months ago called Down We Go and she does a tremendous job on devoting a chapter of her book on pain and another chapter on doubt. If you have not read her book; you need to get it – it is a 5-star must read. But, back to Jared and his comment on doubt. Here is the statement/quote:

Most people I know who walk away from faith don’t walk away because of doubt. They walk away because of pain. Perhaps they don’t walk away from God. Perhaps they walk away from religion that doesn’t have room for their disillusionment.

In ministry, I have seen many individuals struggle with this and unfortunately, I think that it is due to the fact that we do not allow individuals to openly wrestly with these three concepts.

Jesus Words

I think that this is a paragraph that many will cringe at when they read and have but I think that we need to explore them a little deeper, here it is:

I don’t think Jesus came to teach people how to become Christian. He came to show people what the human experience should look like. If we let him, the red words of Scripture can lead us out of the illusion created by ingenuity and move us closer toward reality. The beauty of Jesus words isn’t just that they offer salvation, it is that they actually make us thought-provoking, fully engaged, inspiring people when we follow them.

Final Thought

Jared says the following: In the Bible, when Jesus encounters someone, they always leave different than they came. We need to connect with people lately and we need to make sure that with each encounter; individuals are changed.

My Rating

I will go with a 3.5 out of 5