This article appears courtesy of Rev Magazine.

What’s in a Name?
by Dan Kimball

To most Christians, the University of California at Santa Cruz would be considered liberal, unreached, and pagan, not unlike Berkeley in the ’60s. All across the campus there are fliers for Wicca gatherings and various alternative lifestyle groups. Sexual freedom and progressive thought abounds. Out of the 11,000 students there, to my best estimate there are fewer than 100 students who participate in any Christian student group on campus. From a pastor’s perspective, it seems like a hopeless place—students have absolutely no interest in the Christian faith.

Yet a strange thing happens when you actually talk to students at UCSC. At Graceland, we occasionally show videos of street interviews. We recently went on campus and asked the question: “What words come to your mind when you hear the name Jesus?”

Immediately, there were smiles, and students’ eyes brightened. They had glad and ready responses, such as: “He’s beautiful!”...“I want to be like Jesus”...“He was someone who stood up for women”...“I’m all about Jesus.” You could see there was passion and total openness when the name of Jesus was mentioned.

But a fascinating thing happened when we asked the same students another question: “What comes to your mind when you hear the word Christian?”

Immediately, the very same faces turned to expressions of sadness or anger, and eyes looked downward. “Christians have taken Jesus’ teachings and really messed them up”...“Christians are all angry”...“Gandhi said he’d become a Christian if he ever met one, and like him, I don’t think I’ve ever met a true Christian”...“Jesus would be disappointed in Christians today.”

Pretty stunning change of answers. While I realized that these students were probably unfamiliar with the fullness of Jesus’ teachings in the Bible, their answers haunted me. I couldn’t help but wonder why emerging generations are hard-pressed to name positive experiences with Christians.

Could it be that we’ve become such a subculture ourselves that younger people are becoming increasingly unfamiliar with lives that have been transformed by Jesus? I wonder what answers you’d hear in your community if the same two questions were asked. And I wonder what we can do to see the people in our churches model true Christianity for those outside of church circles, so that maybe if this question were asked again, even the most “pagan” non-Christians would be able to tell stories of Christians who’d demonstrated the love of Jesus to them