The author's focus and intention for this book was provoked by several stimuli. One is that more than 50 percent of the world's population is under twenty-five years of age, and for the most part not formed by the church. Secondly, in the coffee shop where he hangs out, when his conversation partners learn of his long career as a pastor, they inevitably ask about the church: ""What in the world is the church? What is its purpose?"" And thirdly, it is provoked by the lament of a very gifted journalist and editor who rejected his strict Christian upbringing and has been in his adult years an...