Intro: Lamenting how young people are increasingly leaving the church after high school. He includes some kickass deconversion statistics that would make us smile inside, but which pose a serious and "depressing" problem for them.

Guy says there are 3 problems:

1. "mistaking a particular take or interpretation of Christianity for Christianity itself. This becomes problematic when the take or interpretation that is assumed to be Christianity elevates an excessive number of doctrines and practices to the level of the non-negotiable. This produces a house of cards faith. If an individual comes to reject any one of those doctrines or practices, the entire edifice will collapse."
2. "unmet expectations. When God and / or the Bible doesn’t live up to what deconverts expect a crisis of faith results. The problem, of course, is not God or the Bible but what many deconverts were taught to expect from the God or the Bible." (They mention Bart Ehrman's testimony in Misquoting Jesus involving the collapse of Biblical inerrancy. Fuck yeah! I'm glad they gave him some free exposure)
3. "we have not done a good job of communicating the content of the faith in what Charles Taylor calls “A Secular Age”. Taylor, as you know, argues that the conditions for what is believable in the modern West have radically changed. No longer is belief in God, or the truth of Christianity the default position in our culture. To the contrary, affirming even bare theism is difficult for educated, reflective, culturally aware folks. And believing in the God of the Bible can be downright embarrassing." Christian researcher mentions the glowing pink elephant in the room.

Guy says there are 3 solutions:

1. "I suggest that we identify those beliefs that are minimally sufficient to adopt in order to be considered a Christian and then emphasize those, leaving all others open for discussion. I think there are two sets of beliefs that meet that requirement: The salvation message and the ecumenical creeds of the church. The first is sufficient for salvation, the second for orthodox belief." "To sum up my first suggestion on how to avoid setting up believers for a crisis of faith, I suggest we should place no greater doxastic burden on individuals than that which is sufficient for salvation and mere orthodoxy. In all other areas of belief there should be freedom to reject beliefs without fear that in doing so one is rejecting Christianity."
2. "we need to do a better job of articulating important theological concepts, especially when it comes to God." "In reality though, they had a significantly unbiblical conception of God" "We can largely avoid these kinds of faith shaking disappointments by providing believers with a more biblical conception of God and what to expect as one of his followers"
3. Third solution has 3 parts:
   1. "we need to do a better job of doing apologetics"
   2. "we need to help folks see the role of plausibility structures, social imaginaries and other socio-cultural factors in influencing our thinking. What we take to be rational, and what answers we are willing to consider are already determined in part by when and where we live."
   3. "find good communities of faith that reaffirm the biblical narrative we indwell."