Over the last decade I have become aware of just how much the Church itself plays in generating nonbelievers.  It should have dawned on me sooner, as I myself was raised in the church.  I had 12 years of Christian schooling and was studying to be a pastor at a Christian university when all of the hard questions came.  I foolishly thought that just because I didn't know the answers that Christianity had none.  Despite my own experience I didn't give much attention to the thought.

This last year my claim that the Church is producing atheists was aired on the ChristianPost.com and I received a flood of emails and contacts, most of them Christians who completely agreed.  I had already been thinking about ways in which this trend can be addressed and corrected.  The broader vision of Athanatos Christian Ministries is to raise awareness and to try to create and implement solutions to this particular issue.

As a consequence,

I perceive that there will be some discussion about how we educate our young, what unspoken positions we promote regarding study and learning, and probably how we do 'church' in the first place.

The Emergent church and our post-modern culture would be natural places to look at.  Some Christians have proposed that the United States is like a foreign mission field and so we have to 'speak their language.'  However, missionaries have to be careful not to adopt the baggage of those they are witnessing to.  The post-modern attitude towards truth is reflected in the Emergent church's attitude towards doctrine and Christianity's truth claims. 

I can't go along with that attitude.  Nor do I think that narrative and story is the sole domain of the post-modernists.  Such expressions are underestimated and underemployed in the church but should always have been welcome.  We ought not abandon anything good, wherever it is found, as all good things come from God (James 1:17) and he has given them to us.