We're going to be digging around in this text this morning, starting a new series called

I Am Church.

I don't know it's a little weird title, could go a couple of different ways, but we'll unpack

it and work it out over the course of the next few weeks together, but I want us to

start the new year on a positive note.

I want to start the new year thinking about church in general, the big C church, not

just Passion City Church, but the church that Passion City is a part of, the church

that Jesus is leading.

And the thing about our role in it, and this is a hot button topic, and we work obviously

a lot with University-H people, have a passion for them, have for a long time, and everyone

will tell you right now the greatest problem with the church.

I mean, if you talk to anybody who does church research, as a student of the church, they'll

tell you the number one problem with church in America right now is that 18 to 25 year

olds, 20 year olds in general, are leaving the church in large number.

In fact, you can't have a conversation with somebody about the future of church without

this coming up, and it's like, well, you know, young people and teenagers and university

students and 20 year olds, they're just exiting the church in mass, and they give you the

statistics, and the statistics, you know, if they're true, they make your head spin around.

And you kind of wonder, well, what's our future if all the people who are 17 and 18 and

20 and 26 and 29 who supposedly grew up around church are all abandoning church, then the

church really doesn't have a future in this country, or maybe the church they're abandoning

doesn't have a future, but it's a very difficult subject to get around, and it's not hard

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