This is the title of two chapters in Lee Strobel’s book, Inside The Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary.

He makes fifteen observations about people who either do not embrace Christianity or are unchurched.

In the next three posts I’m going to share these observations and would love to hear back from you. What do you think about these observations? Are they true? False? To stereotypical? What experiences have you had to confirm or deny these observations?

Here we go…

• Observation #1 – Your unchurched friend has rejected church, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he/she has rejected God.

• Observation #2 – Your unchurched friend is morally adrift, but he/she secretly wants an anchor. To substantiate this claim, Strobel quotes from James Patterson and Peter Kim’s book The Day America Told the Truth, “In the 1950’s and even in the 1960’s there was something much closer to a moral consensus in America…. There is absolutely no moral consensus at all in the 1990’s. Everyone is making up their own personal codes – their own Ten Commandments. […] Only 13% of Americans say they still believe in all of them.” Stroble writes, “Proliferation of situational ethics in recent years has plunged the country into a moral quagmire. Sixty-nine percent of Americans adhere to the attitude that there’s no absolute moral standard, but that ethics should fluctuate according to the situation. That’s how many [people] live. Yet numbers of them are beginning to conclude that moral anarchy isn’t all that [it’s] been painted out to be.”

• Observation #3 – Your unchurched friend resists rules but responds to reasons. In other words, people aren’t looking for a bunch of rules without reasons! They want to know the “why” behind the “what.”

• Observation #4 – Your unchurched friend doesn’t understand Christianity, but neither does he/she fully understand what he/she claims to believe. Strobel refers to a study that showed “51% of Americans have no philosophy of life!”

• Observation#5 – Your unchurched friend has legitimate questions about spiritual matters, but he/she doesn’t expect answers from Christians.

What do you think?