Why you all were preparing for Star Wars Day tomorrow (how is this not a national holiday?), I was compiling the Three Things You Need to Read this Week:

I think there is a good possibility that evangelical pastors could end up in jail for preaching on the Biblical case for marriage within the next twenty years.  If radical activists get their way, America could go the way of Canada and have a Commission set up with the responsibility to sniff out “hate speech” wherever it may be.

If that happens what does a guy like with a  family to support do? Moreover, I’m a wimp! I don’t even feel comfortable in a Hampton Inn the coach section of an airplane (in my defense I have a lot of miles, get a lot of upgrades and being in first class is a lot better!).  Believe it or not, the answer lies in the Book of Revelation, which is typically obsessed over and abused or wholly ignored by Christians.

When Mozilla’s CEO Brendan Eich was forced to resign as CEO for making a $1000 donation to Proposition 8 (which was illegally leaked by someone at the IRS), gay rights activist and columnist Andrew Sullivan stated that if this was the campaign for equality than count him out. Sullivan wrote, “The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society,” he went on to say “If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.”

I am a preacher’s kid who left the faith, declared myself to be an atheist, returned to the faith after a cancer scare, nearly lost my faith again and was saved by evangelical theology and apologetics.  So, I am passionate about helping others avoid the decade of destructive sin and despair I spent wandering through the atheist wilderness.

A few years ago I was intrigued by David Kinnaman’s book You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith (Baker 2011).  Kinnaman argued that there are at least six reasons why men and women between 18-30 leave the faith behind.  He posted a summary of the six reasons on the Barna website and they were:

Young people are fleeing the church faster than Nickelback fans to a sale on Ed Hardy shirts and Axe Body Spray.  As I argued yesterday, the answer, as far as the church is concerned, is to preach deeper messages and to train all Christians in becoming capable lay theologians and apologists.  But how?

I recommend every Christian leader undergo some form of formal training in defending the faith.  I earned a certificate in apologetics from BIOLA, hope to attend Frank Turek’s CrossExamined Instructor Academy this August and will begin an M.A. in apologetics from Houston Baptist University this fall.  I would tweak BIOLA’s distance program a bit but I still recommend it and I have heard nothing but great things about CrossExamined and HBU.  I hope you will check them all out.