The Unsaved Christian

I recently read The Unsaved Christian by Dean Inserra.

It was a good read that stimulated my thinking about reaching cultural Christians in several ways. Here are some key takeaways for me:

• We need to see Cultural Christians as a distinct people group. They may not fit the classic definition of a people group, but when it comes to the idea of barriers to the Gospel that keep it from spreading, they are a very identifiable segment.

• In fact, that mega segment of Cultural Christianity can be separated into smaller groups. I love how Inserra found the smaller groups in the broader category. Most Cultural Christians fit into one of the following sub-segments:

  • Country Club Christians (ie. church is just a social club)

  • God & Country Christians

  • Liberal Social Justice Christians

  • Generational Catholics

  • Mainline Protestants

  • Bible Belt Christians

  • Moralistic Therapeutic Deist

  • As with most groupings, people can fit into a couple of the above categories.

• Inserra regularly gave words and stories to back up what I have consistently seen when engaging the lost in the Midwest. Because I’ve seen it in real life, I think this is a very important conversation to have. Yes, cultural Christians in America have closer proximity to the Gospel than Muslims in Afghanistan. But (and this is a big but), if we, the followers of Jesus in the West, are not taking advantage of that proximity to share the gospel, the end result is the same. People live, die, and go to hell without a chance to respond to Jesus.

I do have a few unsettled things I’m still wondering about after reading:

• I didn’t feel like he gave many practical handles to entry-level spiritual conversations with cultural Christians. There were some good insightful questions to ask when you are deeper into a conversation, but I didn’t find enough to get me past the initial “You’re a weird religious guy” part of the conversation. (Which is something Inserra also correctly calls out as happening regularly in gospel conversations).

• I did love the spreadsheet at the back where he details the above segments.

• Mostly his action points were along the lines of ‘continue to preach gospel-centered sermons’, realizing that cultural Christians that come into church services still need to hear the Gospel. There was very little about how we GO to the cultural Christian across the street (or cubicle) and reach that person with the Good News.

I think we need to continue to see America as smaller groups of peoples and places and not one homogeneous people group of 335 million people. As we do that, it will force us to ask the question: Is there a sustained gospel witness among this people or place? If not, what’s it going to take to get us there?