Already Gone Has Arrived

Yesterday I was thrilled to receive the first copy of Already Gone sent from the binder last night.

As I have stated in other blogs, I believe this is the most important book I have ever participated in. On the back cover is written:

If you look around in your church today, two-thirds of the young people who are sitting among us have already left in their hearts: soon they will be gone for good. This is the alarming conclusion from America’s Research Group led by respected researcher Britt Beemer. The results may unnerve you—they may shake long-held assumptions to the core—but these results need to be taken seriously by the church. Already Gone reveals:

· Why America’s churches have lost an entire generation of believers

· The views of 1,000 twenty-somethings, solidly raised in the church but no longer attending—and their reasons why

· Relevant statistical data effectively teamed with powerful apologetics

The study found that we are losing our church kids in elementary, middle school, and high school rather than mostly in college, and the “Sunday school syndrome” is contributing to the epidemic, rather than helping alleviate it. This is an alarming wake-up call for the church, showing how our programs and our approaches to Christian education are failing … and our children are paying the price. Though the statistics reveal a huge disconnect taking place between our children and their church experience, Already Gone shows how to fight back for our families, our churches, and our world. We can make a difference today that will affect the statistics of tomorrow in a positive and Christ-focused way!

Case Lots of Already Gone

You can order Already Gone from the AiG website ($12.99 each)—but please consider ordering case lots (only $4.99 each for a case of 48) and handing this book out to as many in your church (including all your church leaders) as you can. Bulk stocks arrive in AiG’s warehouse on Wednesday—the book should be available in the Creation Museum bookstore by Thursday

Lessons from the Mortenson Home

Sometimes there are events in the personal lives of our staff that can be instructive for all of us. AiG Speaker Dr. Terry Mortenson shared something with a few us recently, and told us that on Saturday morning something sad took place in Terry’s home. Here’s what Terry wrote:

Our family shed a lot of tears (myself included) as together we made the decision to put our much loved dog, Shadow, to sleep this past Saturday. She had diabetes and was blind. Shadow’s just a dog, but as most of you probably know from experience, dogs can be a part of the family.

However, Terry, like all of us, used this as a teaching point for his family:

We know it’s just not right or good that our pet should get diseased and die. Genesis chapter 3 tells us that when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, He cursed the whole creation, including the animals (Gen. 3:14); and Romans 8:18-25 tells us that the whole creation is now in bondage to corruption waiting to be liberated at the second coming of Christ. It wasn’t this way in the “very good” creation before Adam fell (when the animals and the people were vegetarian; Gen. 1:29-31) and it won’t be this way in the future (Isa. 11:6-9 and 65:25). This is one reason why the animal death, disease and extinction seen in the fossil record cannot be the record of millions of years of history BEFORE Adam sinned, but rather is the sobering testimony to God’s holy judgment in Noah’s Flood AFTER Adam and millions of other people sinned.

The teaching of millions of years destroys the Bible’s teaching about death and the Curse, and undermines its teaching on the full redemptive work of Christ. And that’s why the age of the creation matters so much.

We understand what the Mortenson’s are going through—we had to put our beloved dog down last year.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying

Ken