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"Let's not mess up the message..."

This notion continuously echoed in my heart yesterday; it was as if someone had parked my inner iPod on repeat. The idea followed me around all day.

"Let's not mess up the message of the Messiah."

So deeply grateful was I to catch up with best-selling author, Gabe Lyons, whose thought-provoking works have a lot of people listening to what he has to say. UnChristian, his data-driven debut book explains why young adults aged 16-29 are leaving the faith in a mass exodus. UnChristian, was a run-away hit among Christian circles. In fact, a group of us read this as a book club selection at my church; it was sensational in that Lyons really has a grip on the spiritual lives of young adults. The results of a Barna Group study showed that, to "outsiders," American believers are recognized as being too political, judgmental, anti-homosexual, nonintellectual and hypocritical. Christians have a responsibility to better present the story of Christ.

On an upbeat, Lyon's follow up book, The Next Christians: the Good News about the End of Christian America, challenges believers to revolutionize our world through our faith. Lyons offers six traits that every Christian can develop if they're interested in reaching and discipling a cynical world:

* provoked, not offended
* creators, not critics
* called, not employed
* grounded, not distracted
* in community, not alone
* countercultural, not "relevant"

Both books, to me, pointed to one outcry: cut the legalism! Legalism so thick that we feel we hold all the answers. Legalism so uptight that we police and shun secular society. Legalism so exclusive that we are threatened by change. Legalism so nasty that we take on an Us-versus-Them attitude.

I've been there. For about the first two years after accepting salvation, I tried living like Andre the Giant for Jesus. Sadly, I ended up burning out plus pissing off a lot of good people.

I was a modern-day Jonas who ran away from duty because I saw very little in my culture that was worth redeeming, as Gabe Lyons would put it. Jonas decided to be antagonistic toward all things and persons in his society. I was there. And the total, honest story is that most of the young adults around me were equally-snobbish, enormously-prudish. It was as if we were trying to "out-Jonas" one another...and the jacked-up part is that that is what we thought Christianity was supposed to be like.

What a blessing it is that we serve a God who is awesome enough to deliver us from our lousy holier-than-thou acts. What a relief that God gives us paradigm makeovers! I want to be awashed with fresh messages from invigorating voices that call for Christians to keep it real while keeping it righteous. Gabe Lyons' works do this for me. Rather, the Jesus in Gabe Lyons' works does this for me.

I'm reminded over and over to not mess up the message...to be mindful not to mess up the message of the Messiah.

Ana Guthrie is a super cool chick with a heart for God and love for youth culture. She doubles as a not-so-naughty librarian and instructor at Florida Memorial University in Miami, Florida.