This is a book that our whole congregation was asked to read by our Pastor. He is going to be doing a sermon series on it and we're having a guest speaker as well.

Background: this is by Methodists and addresses a major concern of the Methodist church which is aging congregants. The average age of an attending member is 57.

The book addresses ten ways that congregations may be alienating the post-civil rights generations (anyone born after 1961) and ideas of ways to make some changes or at least do some soul-searching. The best suggestions were to be authentic (i.e. make sure to be living and acting in a way that reflects their beliefs), to be truly welcoming to all people not just the ones that look and act they way you do, and to be willing to take the mission work in to uncomfortable places and go as equals not as though we are perfect helping people the imperfect.

So even though I appreciate the intent of this book, I have to say I was incredibly annoyed by the book itself. For some reason, the authors decided to use current slang to describe each of the ten ideas. It actually made them sound ancient instead of "with-it" as they probably intended. I also think that lumping together everyone born after 1961 is pretty ridiculous. And for all their ideas, they didn't seem to really give many concrete ideas of what to do.

I'd skip it . . . unless your Pastor asks you to read it. :-) ( )