A colleague and I were discussing why it is that the evangelism efforts of the church seem to be so impotent. He mentioned that over his lifetime he has seen pictures of and read accounts of huge crusades all around the world with millions of people in attendance and records of millions of people of making a commitment to Jesus. In the wake of these millions upon millions of conversations, there has been little evidence of these converts to Christianity making much impact on our cultures. This seems to be true, no matter the country and no matter the culture. And I wonder why.
How could becoming a believer in the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, make so little impact on individual lives? How could linking oneself to such a life giving, life changing message and God change us so little? Something is wrong with this picture. We, of the church, look and act much like those in our culture who claim no interest in or allegiance to God. Our social and political agenda is the same as theirs. Whatever the culture and media proclaims as important, cool, cutting edge, politically acceptable, and moral (a morality based in the preceding criteria) the church embraces as our agenda, how we want to be.
For example, we are in the age of the emergent church. It can be defined in many different ways. Emergent is defined differently by different emergent church leaders. There are many different faces to the emergent church movement and each is pretty darn sure theirs is the definitive emergent church. One of the qualities that seem to be shared by the many different manifestations of the emergent church is cool and hip. At an emergent church one will find lots of people with facial hair, the newest style haircuts, T-shirts and skinny jeans. The theology, worship style and music may differ from church to church, but the uniform doesn’t. It is just another manifestation of the decades old desire of Christians to be Christian and also be a part of the in crowd. It is never going to work, but we keep trying. By definition, if one is a whole hearted follower of Christ, one is doomed to be marginalized by the prevailing culture. Deeply committed God followers are just never going to be normal, be accepted, be cool and be hip. It is just not going to happen.
Why are so many who claim to follow Christ making such a low impact on the world? Could it be our definition of what it means to be a Christian? For decades the conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist branch of the North American church has held forth the idea that to be a Christian one must only recite the “sinner’s prayer” to be saved. Say the prayer and your ticket to heaven is punched and your church membership card is issued. A change in thinking or lifestyle is optional. On the liberal/progressive/mainline side of the church we have become fundamentalist liberals. If one does not hold to the correct political views, embrace and advocate the latest social issues with an evangelical fervor and is not a Democrat, one is rejected as a heretic. We are relatively unconcerned what your theology is (as long as you will keep it to yourself) as long as your social agenda is on target.
In both of these approaches the individual and individual change is relatively unimportant. Changing a person is not the issue. For the conservatives, we just want to save the person and change is optional. For the liberals, we just want to change the world and individuals are only important in building our political base. How we think we are going to change the world without changing individual people in the world, I haven’t a clue. I have been around long enough to have figured out that governments and politics is not going to really change much of circumstance. And I have been around long enough to know that parroting a canned prayer is not going to change a life. I am pretty sure it is going to take a deep, abiding commitment to follow Christ that is going to make a difference. I think He expressed it like this: “Take up your cross daily and follow me.” Simple. Clear. Difficult.
We have been called to make disciples. Instead we spend our time, energy, and resources arguing politics, religion and pressing forward our social agendas. Just the other day I was watching a video of one of my favorite/unfavorite preachers, Francis Chan. I love him/hate him because he so challenges me in my walk with Christ. He was raving on about our acceptance of our own lukewarmness. He is addressing our willingness to hear the words and challenges of Jesus and do just about nothing about them and be okay with that. They are, after all, just words; ancient words; maybe even words that Jesus didn’t really say. The Scripture has warned us about being only hearers of the word and not doers and still we just sit here doing the same stuff as people who do not claim to follow Jesus do. Take a look and listen here.
Like I am in the habit of doing, after watching that video I clicked on another Chan video. The next one was a full length sermon. But it only got about 90 seconds into it before I shut it off and started contemplating what he had said. In his introduction to the sermon he shared that he had been down in Texas visiting with the leaders of their church’s church plant. Chan’s church is in California but was planting a church in Texas. That is not what shocked and challenged me. It was when he shared greetings from the 100 members of the California church who had moved to Texas to help plant the new church. You read that right. 100 people quit their jobs, sold their homes, left their circle of friends and relocated their families, found new living quarters and jobs in another state because of their commitment to Christ and planting a church. Occasionally a preacher type will make such a move (Though that number is rapidly declining.) to follow God’s call on his or her life. But 100 lay people. Really?
That video, like much of what Chan has to say, causes me to think and reevaluate the depth of my commitment to Christ. I find it interesting that many people criticize his teaching, writings and lifestyle as too radical. I find it challenging. Perhaps his teaching is unnerving because the rest of us preacher types preach such shallow, feel-good, non-offensive, unchallenging messages to our congregations. We encourage our congregants to do radical things like give some money to missions, vote for the correct candidates, attend a candle-light vigil for the down trodden, buy an extra gift for a needy kid at Christmas, and maybe even go on a week-long mission trip. It seems pretty obvious to me that the level of commitment among many members of the church Chan pastors is a bit deeper and more life changing than what I have seen and experienced in the churches I have served. When it comes to making life decisions I cannot think of one lay person who made a life changing decision based on what church he or she should be a part of. Their decisions to relocate depended on job or educational or recreational needs. All who did relocate expressed that after their move they hoped to find a good church to attend in their new location. And most of those also shared with me that they found that task difficult.
Perhaps we Christians are having such a shallow and weak impact on our cultures because we have such a shallow and weak faith system. Perhaps we have such a shallow faith system because we have been taught such a low impact gospel that requires so little commitment and life change. Perhaps we preacher types need to revisit the Biblical message and share the hard parts with our congregations. Then, again, I wonder if we have the courage to do that.
Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved
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