B&H Academic | Renewing Minds

Jammed full of thought-provoking statistics.

Jammed full of thought-provoking statistics and analysis, Lost and Found is a must for those actively involved in youth ministries. If you have at least a fairly strong interest in youth ministries, it’s the kind of book you’ll want to discuss, and argue, with friends.

Within the last few months, the American media has run a number of stories that should be worrisome to Christians. I’m not referring to the nonstop “Is Barack the Messiah?” articles, but articles such as the Christian Science Monitor’s “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s recent article on the ban of Florida hospice chaplains using the word “God,” or Newsweek’s recent “The End of Christian America.”

Many churches across our fruited plains are, following Europe’s lead, dying out with the passing of older members and a dearth of young members to take their places. This hits home for me personally when I periodically worship at a Japanese church in California where the average age of members is close to 70 years old – seventy and rising.

With that as background, the 2009 release of Ed Stetzer’s Lost and Found – The Younger Unchurched and the Churches That Reach Them seems to have come at a fortuitous time. There are a lot of statistics and tables to digest and mull over, particularly in the first part of the book, so don’t think this is an easy read to be done while checking e-mail or watching TV with one eye.