#6 - Already Gone by Ken Hamm & Britt Beemer

If you haven't heard of Ken Hamm and his creation / evolution ministry, Answers in Genesis, yet please do go check them out. In this book, Hamm using Britt Beemer's marketing company took a survey of 1,000 young people in their 20's who had grown up in fairly conservative, evangelical churches to try and determine why they had left the church.
I guess other studies have shown that about 60% of kids who grow up in the church leave after HS graduation. So Hamm wanted to figure out why and thus how to stop it.


One of the most interesting findings of the book surprised me quite a bit. I, probably with most Christian parents, hope that my kids continue to love Jesus when they leave for college. I see the crucial point of decision as being college. However, according to this research, Hamm concludes that most children start "leaving" faith in MS and HS before college even comes.

He cites that about 40% of these people surveyed had doubts about the truth of the Bible in MS, 44% in HS and 11% in college. After the doubts about the Bible came, they started following those doubts by physically leaving the church - 95% attended church regularly in elementary and MS, 55% attended in HS, 11% still attended in their early college years.


As I have worked with children and teens (and their parents) for almost 20 years now, and having these 3 of my own, I have really begun to understand the depth of Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it." Children generally are not living one certain way until the teen years hit and then they suddenly morph into Godzilla! Though they may not evidence certain behaviors until they are older, the seeds of these practices are typically evident during their elementary and MS years.


I have been mulling this vague idea in the back of my mind for a few years now, but the evidence in this book really brought it out clearly.


The other very interesting conclusion that Hamm discovered was that young people don't truly believe in evolution. This survey and others of the general population show that most people generally don't believe that people came from apes. Isn't this ironic considering how hard the media and higher education have tried to force this conclusion upon people going so far as presenting known fabrications of fossil evidence as true? Not only does the actual evidence of science fall strikingly short of evolution, but on a logical level, it doesn't make a lot of sense that one species would turn into a completely different species.


However, the true issue is that undermines biblical authority is the earth being millions of year old. Hamm writes, "But the issue of the earth being millions of years old? This is the big stumbling block...everybody assumes that the earth and the universe are millions and billions of years old, so they interpret all the facts through that preconceived mindset. Then when the Bible says that it happened in six days, they assume that the Bible is inaccurate, and that causes them to disbelieve the Bible more than any other single factor."


"When it comes to a major factor that has caused people to reject biblical authority, millions of years is the issue; it's not really evoluton. If you can't believe in millions of years, you can't believe in evolution."


And so many Christians have accepted that the universe is billions of years old when the entire basis of this philosphy rests on circular in reasoning. No actual hard data exists that is not based on an assumption of the universe being billions of years old which is almost exactly what the Bible predicted in 2 Peter 3:1-6, specifically v.4 - the theory of Uniformitarianism.


And if you don't believe in the Bible, every single detail, it is often the first step that leads you to not believe in the Gospel. And if you don't believe in the Gospel, that's obviously big trouble. And that is why, according to Ken Hamm, our young people are already gone. His solution is to teach the Bible and defend the truth that it is.


While I agree with his overall solution, I think his solution depends too heavily on the church and does not focus enough on parents. For if parents knew God's Word, loved God's Word, lived out God's Word, could defend God's Word and explain God's Word to their children as God's Word says they should, then I'm pretty sure the statistics would be different with their children. The church, while playing a vital role in helping parents and supplementing them, is not a parent.


I wouldn't recommend this book unless you have a real interest in this subject (or you just like graphs and survey statistics!) and want more details though it was a fun and easy read.