church through the eyes of an athiest

I have to say, I think I will buy this book. I don’t think it hurts any of us to know how an unbeliever views the church when they walk through those front doors. For most, it is a scary experience.

From Publishers Weekly, this review:

I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist’s Eyes
Hemant Mehta.WaterBrook, $13.99 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-4000-7347-4

Mehta,
an atheist, once held an unusual auction on eBay: the highest bidder
could send Mehta to a church of his or her choice. The winner, who paid
$504, asked Mehta to attend numerous churches, and this book comprises
Mehta’s responses to 15 worshipping communities, including such
prominent megachurches as Houston’s Second Baptist, Ted Haggard’s New
Life Church in Colorado Springs, and Willow Creek in suburban
Chicago.(Mehta ranks Willow Creek as the church most likely to draw him
back.) Mehta, who grew up Jain, offers some autobiographical context,
then discusses nonreligious people’s approach to topics such as death
and suffering. But all that is just a preamble to Mehta’s sketches of
the churches he attended. He doesn’t find much community in churches;
families sit far apart from other families, and people race "out the
front doors to their cars" as soon as the service ends. Churches earn
high marks for Mehta when they offer great speakers and focus on
community outreach, but they also do many things wrong, including
singing repetitive songs and alienating non-Christians by ubiquitously
proclaiming them to be "lost." Mehta’s musings will interest Christians
who seek to proselytize others and who want to identify their
evangelistic mistakes. (Apr. 17)