"Already Gone" by Ken Ham

I just finished reading "Already Gone" by Ken Ham the founder of Answers In Genesis and well known statistician Britt Beemer. The book is an easy read of 166 pages and I thought the stats where laid out very well compared to other books that seem to get confusing and boring by the way they lay out information. "Already Gone" does a very good job of keeping it simple and easy to understand. Actually, I found for the most part that the stats where the best part of the entire book. Ken makes a number of decent observations, but he will probably be quoted more for his bold statements and/or claims then his good points. It almost seems as though the bold statements were more for shock factor then anything else.

The biggest and boldest claim Ken makes is found on page 38 and says, "Sunday school is actually more likely to be detrimental to the spiritual and moral health of our children." Wow! Make that claim to most Southern Baptists and see what kind of response you get. I think the statement wouldn't have been so shocking if the authors would of given their findings first and then made their claim. I say that because their findings are very much eye opening.

Their survey was taken of 1,000 20-29 year old adults that had regularly attended church as children and teens. A few of the findings are as follows. 61 percent of those surveyed said "yes" when asked if they had attended Sunday school often during their child and teen years. According to their results, those that attended Sunday school "often" are more likely to not believe that all Bible accounts are true. They are also more likely then the 39 percent of those that said they didn't attend Sunday school to defend abortion and gay marriage. Those that spent their younger days in Sunday school where also more apt to believe in some form of evolution as well as that good people don't have to attend church. The results of this survey are a cause for the church to take a good hard look at what she is doing and why she is doing it, but I believe that Sunday school is just a small part of the overall problem and not the start of it as Ken Ham tends to lead us to believe.

The authors do make a couple of very good points about how we should transform the Sunday school program. The surveys findings show that for the most part our current Sunday school program is nothing more then irrelevant repetition of the same old stories. Mr. Ham says that we need to teach the Bible as actual history and not as stories because the very definition of the word "story" is fairy tale. He says to show the Bible as relevant we need to use real maps and artifacts. Ken goes on to say that our public schools are showing, testing, and teaching our children secular humanism all while the church says, "have faith" or "just trust Jesus" and doesn't or can't answer the hard questions coming from our culture. Ken also goes on to say that the church is starving from a lack of apologetics. I found that I very much agreed with Ken on this particular issue. Our children aren't being taught the proper information for dealing with our culture.

All in all I'm glad I purchased "Already Gone" because it did show me some new things as well as remind me of things I hadn't thought about in a long while. If you're a big fan of Ken Ham and Answers In Genesis then there is no doubt you will enjoy this book. If you aren't a fan of his, but wonder if this would be a decent read then I would suggest it because of the stats given by Mr. Beemer. Ken does gear toward young earth in his questions, but that's to be expected. Oh, and by the way, I agree with Ken on the young earth topic.

Ultimately we must realize that the job of a Sunday school teacher, VBS leader, or Youth Minister is mainly to back up what we as parents should already be teaching our children at home.

In Christ Alone,
Mr. V.