A chart meant to shame the church can still tell the truth — if we learn to read it as a mirror, not a verdict.
I came across a chart recently in a book called Rebranding Christianity. It lines up two columns. On the left, how Millennials and Gen Z see themselves. On the right, how those same generations see Evangelical Christianity.
| Millennials and Gen Z | Evangelical Christianity |
|---|---|
| Open-Minded | Closed-Minded |
| Accepting LGBTQ+ | Rejecting LGBTQ+ |
| Intellectual and Pro-Science | Anti-Intellectual and Anti-Science |
| Inclusive and Kind | Exclusive and Mean |
| Diverse | Segregated |
| Fighters for Racial Justice | Perpetuators of Racial Injustice |
| Fighters for Social Justice | Protectors of the Status Quo |
| Protectors of the Environment | Climate Change Deniers |
| Spiritual | Religious and Institutional |
Read it slowly and you will feel the pull. Every word on the left is a compliment. Every word on the right is an accusation. The author’s point is that if you are an Evangelical Christian, this list should sting — and the answer is to rebrand.
I want to say clearly where I stand, and then I want to help you hold this chart the way I believe God would have us hold it.
The trap built into the chart
Before we argue about a single row, look at what the chart assumes. It makes the values of a generation the measuring stick, and then grades the church against them. Whatever the culture prizes becomes the standard of righteousness, and the church is judged good or bad by how closely it matches.
Scripture will not let us start there.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.” (Romans 12:2)
The gospel measures the culture. The culture does not measure the gospel. So the moment the goal becomes a “rebrand” — changing the church until the world approves — we have already surrendered the one thing the church was never ours to change. Paul settles it in one line:
“If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)
That is my starting conviction. But I do not throw the chart in the trash, because a stopped clock is right twice a day, and this chart is right more than twice. The problem is not that it accuses us. The problem is that it cannot tell the difference between the sins we should repent of and the truth we must never trade away. So let us do the work it refuses to do. The rows fall into three very different piles.
Pile one: legitimate rebukes — repent of these
“Exclusive and Mean.” “Perpetuators of Racial Injustice.” Often “Anti-Intellectual.” When the world names these, it is not slandering the church. It is agreeing with God against us. Look at how much harder Scripture is on these sins than any survey of young people:
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.” (1 John 4:20)
“If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” (James 2:9)
“The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:24)
Where the church has been cruel, tribal, or proudly ignorant in Jesus’ name, the world is recoiling from something Jesus would rebuke too. That is not a marketing problem to spin. It is a repentance problem, and the risen Christ does not tell such a church to rebrand — He tells it to remember, repent, and return (Revelation 2:5). I will not defend meanness by calling it conviction.
Pile two: caricature mixed with fair warning
“Closed-Minded.” “Anti-Science.” “Climate Change Deniers.” “Protectors of the Status Quo.” “Spiritual vs. Religious.” These are part strawman, part earned.
Believing that truth exists and is found in Christ (John 14:6) is not closed-mindedness — but a defensive, shallow posture in some corners made the caricature easy to believe. The faith that produced Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, and the founders of modern science is not anti-intellectual, yet we sometimes acted as if thinking hard were a threat.
And creation care is not a liberal invention. God placed Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15), and “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). When a subculture reflexively mocks stewardship of what God called good, it has handed away ground that was ours by Scripture. These rows should make us examine our reflexes — not our doctrine.
Pile three: where faithfulness is relabeled as sin
Now the load-bearing row: “Accepting / Rejecting LGBTQ+.”
Here the chart’s logic breaks. The Christian sexual ethic is not a cultural habit we picked up and can quietly set down. It is woven through the whole of Scripture — the creational design of Genesis 1 and 2, affirmed by Jesus Himself:
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female… So they are no longer two but one flesh.” (Matthew 19:4–6)
— and carried through Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–11. A church cannot rebrand its way out of that without abandoning the very book it claims to stand on. This is exactly the hill Galatians 1:10 is talking about. This is my position, and I will not move off it: the Bible’s teaching on sex and marriage is not up for a redesign.
But hear the other half, because it is not optional. How we hold the truth is fair to critique.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
Grace and truth. One phrase, not two menu options. Much of what the world calls “mean” is truth handed over without grace — or worse, truth wielded as a culture-war trophy instead of offered to real people made in the image of God. We can be completely right and completely unlike Christ at the same time. I refuse to let that be true of me.
A mirror, not a verdict
Here is the real tragedy the chart exposes: the world can no longer tell the difference between the offense of the cross and the offense of our own making.
Peter says both things in the same breath. Christ is “a stone of stumbling” — some will reject Him no matter how beautifully we live (1 Peter 2:8; 1 Corinthians 1:23). And — “keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that… they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:12). Two offenses. One is the cost of following Jesus, and we should bear it gladly. The other is a wound we inflicted ourselves, and we should stop.
So read the right-hand column of that chart as a mirror, not a verdict. Some of it should drive us to our knees — for our cruelty, our partiality, our pride. Some of it is simply the price of discipleship, and we can carry it with joy. The chart’s fatal flaw is that it cannot tell those two apart, and its cure — rebrand until they like us — would throw out the stumbling stone along with the self-inflicted bruises.
My prayer is not that the church would be better liked. It is that we would be so honorable in our repentance, and so full of grace in our conviction, that the only thing left to stumble over is Jesus Himself.
Father, give us the honesty to repent of the wounds we have caused in Your name, and the courage to keep the truth we did not invent and cannot surrender. Make us full of grace and full of truth, like Your Son. Let the only offense left in us be the offense of the cross. Amen.
Scripture at the heart of this devotional: Romans 12:2; Galatians 1:10; 1 John 4:20; James 2:9; Romans 2:24; Revelation 2:5; John 14:6; Genesis 2:15; Psalm 24:1; Genesis 1–2; Matthew 19:4–6; Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6:9–11; John 1:14; 1 Peter 2:6–12; 1 Corinthians 1:23.