:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Yesterday I kicked off my survival guide series on evangelism by addressing the anxiety it causes.

Now, before you have a panic attack with me, we should move on to some basic Christian principles that tie into evangelism. Let’s begin with a story about panic attacks, but panic attacks about something other than evangelism.

My friend Billy had a crush on a girl named Jenny from our college. After we’d graduated, he managed to keep in touch with Jenny and so whenever we hung out he’d turn into the Jenny newswire. He saw her at the store, she replied to his latest e-mail, and there was a slight chance she may actually talk to him on the phone before the next solar eclipse. If he managed to speak with her in person the residual anxiety seemed to make him dizzy.

And then one day Billy pulled off a coup. Under the banner of a “reunion,” he managed to convince Jenny to come over to his place for a party with a few friends who came in from out of town. He had all kinds of time to hang out with her, and those of us subscribed to the Jenny newswire made sure we kept the other guests entertained while the two of them caught up.

Billy didn’t need a lot of coercing to hang out with Jenny, to talk about Jenny, or to organize an event around Jenny. He was smitten with her, loopy beyond the bounds of reason, and willing to organize his day around her if he could spend more time with her. That’s what love can do to us.

It’s easy to talk about someone you love.

I love this story because I’ve had my own Julie newswire when I’m visiting friends and Julie isn’t there. Love prompts us to talk about the beloved. And that’s the most basic first step in evangelism: fall in love with God.

It’s actually not that hard to do if you think about it. The problem comes when we don’t think about it. Christianity is built upon the work of Christ, dying for us, rising from the dead, and sending his Spirit. As we embrace what these events mean for us today, we can worship him in gratitude and appreciate the selfless love he has given us.

Keep in mind that Jesus literally spilled his blood on our behalf. This is not just a mystical other-worldly reality. Nails and a spear were literally driven into his body, killing him. It was horrible, violent, and painful, and yet he was so head over heels in love with the people on earth, his treasured creation, that he suffered and then defeated death so that we could live with him.

That’s a love worthy of throwing a party.

Our next post will sort out some of the biblical teaching behind the way we share the Gospel.

This series of posts on sharing your faith continues my series of posts on Christian Survival…

Some days you fear that you’re sending everyone you know who isn’t a Christian to hell. Well, not exactly. You’re just afraid to share the Gospel with them, which you’ve heard is just about the same thing as opening the gates of hell for them and giving them a kick on their way down.

Images of blood-stained hands fill your mind whenever you think of the unevangelized around you. Lady Macbeth has nothing on you. No matter how often you say, “Out darn spot!” you move between guilt and fear because you can’t think of a way to share the Gospel with these people who supposedly are your friends, colleagues, and family.

You tell yourself that if you truly, truly cared for them, then you’d evangelize them by starting some kind of conversation about purpose and meaning in life, tie it to a time when you feared God would banish you to hell, wrap things up with a whirl through Romans and a slam dunk salvation prayer.

You’ve been told that real Christians share their faith, but you’re terrified. I’ve had anxiety attacks about evangelism… while shopping… at Wal-Mart. I mean, we could make ourselves insane with evangelism. If every person is an eternal soul who could end up in hell, shouldn’t we walk from person to person every minute of every day asking them if they know Jesus?

For the more introverted in the church, the majority of our evangelism training is a one-way ticket to a panic attack.

Perhaps that sounds silly or overdramatic to you, but if we follow some of our evangelism and salvation teaching to its natural conclusion, we have a recipe for nervous, pushy, and awkward Christians who either try to share their faith in strange ways or cower in fear.

Oh, and by the way, that’s sort of what we have a lot of, so perhaps we should talk about this.

And if there really is so much at stake, an eternity of torment, then shouldn’t we make evangelism our top priority?

What is a faithful follower of Jesus to do? We are commanded to be witnesses, but how should we do it and how frequently? Can faithful Christians neglect this charge to make disciples? Should we worry about the destiny of those around us and the blood on our hands or can we just rationalize these things away?

Right… these are weighty questions.

We’ll spend the rest of this week asking hard questions about hell, salvation, and evangelism survival strategies.

My father-in-law wisely pointed to an article about a denomination’s new outreach campaign. While the campaign mentioned preaching the Gospel, the motivation behind the campaign struck him as odd: attracting new members to the denomination’s sagging membership rolls.

In other words, these churches needed new members, and as a bonus they could have Jesus.

This trend of turning Jesus into the bonus that comes with church membership is easy to slip into. I know that I want more people in my community to know Jesus, but I have often slipped into wishing for more people at church services. Growth is the mark of health in our economy, just listen to the news for a few minutes, and membership growth has become the goal for many churches.

We’ve all done it at some point.

More bodies equals health. If we’re losing people, then our churches are in danger of shutting down, and we need to figure out a way to get them back.

If you stop to reread that sentence, I hope you’ll notice that Jesus is missing from it. We’re not calling people back to Jesus; we’re calling them back to church. Some may say that Jesus is implied in this, but I think it should be the other way around: by calling people back to Jesus we are also calling them back to Christian community.

Brett McKracken’s post in the Wall Street Journal illustrates this quest for church survival. Citing a 2007 Lifeway poll, McKracken states, “70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.” I’ll share a note at the end about these numbers, but for the time being, let’s focus on how McKracken addresses this alleged problem.

He says we want to keep people “In the Church” so we need to, “figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.” There is a fine difference, but I think it’s an important one when we say that we are called to make disciples. The disciple-making happens in community, but we don’t make disciples to keep our numbers up.

He’s right to critique this: “Increasingly, the ‘plan’ has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant.” However, some of this rises out of someone’s cultural location, and not a desire to simply be hip. There’s a world of a difference between a church-plant in a thriving artistic community using art in its service and McKracken’s example of “looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and Helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials.”

I agree with McKracken’s point: we can get lost in trying to be hip or relevant, but to a certain degree churches need to be who they are where they are at. Not every church that meets in a bar is pulling off a hipster stunt. Many are sincerely trying to reach people where they’re at.

McKracken brings a valid critique to gimmicks and consumer marketing strategies that have infected the church, but his motivation for this is still flawed, “Are these gimmicks really going to bring young people back to church?”

My point of contention with McKracken is subtle, but critical for our understanding of the Gospel. Churches can come and go. The survival of a church is not a reason to share the Gospel.

I love my church, but I’m not called to share the Gospel in order to get more people to attend. If the goal is the survival of my church, then I can become desperate, resorting to the hipster gimmicks that McKracken rightly lambasts. I’m no longer motivated by the love of God and the call to discipleship. I’m motivated by the call to membership.

I understand that church attendance serves as a helpful mark of how we’re doing. To that end, a church that’s losing members should certainly take note of that trend. It could be a symptom of something gone awry.

McKracken wants to point Christians toward a more authentic way of following Jesus rather than relying on marketing and clever tricks. I appreciate that. I think we could do much better at reaching our communities by serving them in a hands-on way rather than trying to lure them into church.

Nevertheless, trying to get people back into church pews misses the point. It’s a subtle mistake, but it’s important. I agree with McKracken that we want to make disciples and not just another Jesus brand, but the solution is not getting people back to church for the right reasons.

We do want people in Christian community, but we want them to come because they are learning to pray to Jesus, to serve others, and to love. Our job is not done when the pews/chairs are full. Our job is done when we have made disciples who count the cost and imitate Christ. That is a much more difficult job because it’s hard to measure, and impossible to do without the work of the Holy Spirit. In fact, we may draw some back to Jesus and not to our churches.

If someone is drawn to our church because they see us serving Jesus but fail to become disciples and servants themselves, then they aren’t doing much more than those who stay home and watch cartoons.

About the 2007 Lifeway Poll

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I met Dr. Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, about a year ago at a small group meeting in his home. We quickly set to talking about publishing, writing, and his upcoming book that dispels myths about the state of Christianity. Since my project at that time relied heavily on a 2007 survey by the Barna Group, I was eager to learn more.

I spent the following day getting a taste of his work at his blog, and was delighted when he handed me a copy of his book about a month ago. While I bring the perspective of a friend to the following review, I hope you’ll see why Brad’s book is essential reading for pastors, journalists, and writers of Christian nonfiction…

Review of Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites and Other Lies You’ve Been Told

Bradley Wright’s new book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media">Christians are Hate-filled Hypocrites and Other Lies You’ve Been Told, dispels a number of widely held myths about Christianity that are often trumpeted from pulpits, in newspapers, and on the news. In the process of sharing his findings, Wright establishes himself as a trustworthy guide to surveys, polls, and other research, training his readers to both seek out reliable sources and to critically evaluate their methodology and analysis.

Wright’s book walks readers through myths that have taken hold of late. Are Christians living just like the rest of the world or worse? Is Christianity veering toward extinction in one generation? Based on the research available, the answer is a resounding no to those questions and many others addressed in the book.

Poorly-worded questions, small sample sizes, and faulty analysis have resulted in head-line grabbing studies and stories about the downfall and failure of Christianity. In fact, for church-attending Christians, they are generally more likely to remain married, to tell the truth, and to avoid drugs.

Wright’s conversational prose and frequent use of graphs make this a fun and easy book to read, which is myth-busting in and of itself when it comes to sociology books. An interesting sociology book? Get out of here! Hilarious one-liners sprinkled throughout each chapter add to the book’s charm and hint at Brad’s light-hearted and gentle spirit.

As the title suggests, Wright does not spare anyone from warranted criticism. There are some big names in Christianity such as Josh McDowell who regularly rely on faulty statistics that deliver more shock value than accuracy. In addition, conferences, publishers, and magazines have latched on to these polls in their marketing, and Wright gently chides them for irresponsibly utilizing faulty data.

And if you don’t think Wright’s book is important, just look at Brett McKracken’s article in the Wall Street Journal lamenting the state of Evangelical young people. While McKracken makes several salient points, he once again relies on shaky shock numbers at the front of his piece. I can’t blame McKracken for citing that poll, but if he had read Wright’s book, he may not have relied on the LifeWay poll so completely when there is conflicting data and analysis available from a professional, peer-reviewed sociologist.

Before we can prescribe solutions for what ails Christianity today, we need a clear idea of the real problems. I don’t think we need to worry about wholesale moral failure or the demise of Christianity based on Wright’s book. Though he never claims certainty about his analysis or predictions, I put his book down convinced that we’ve spent a lot of time worrying about problems that aren’t quite as severe as we’ve thought.

Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media">Pick up a copy of Brad’s book today or check out his blog.

Have you ever noticed that the dictionary is a boring read. The plot is lacking, the main characters aren’t developed, and after the first few pages you know that you’re in for hundreds, if not thousands, of pages that  feel exactly the same.

Clearly the authors of the dictionary did not care about words and language.

And while the dictionary is organized alphabetically, it’s terribly difficult to find anything in a dictionary. There’s no search box. If you misspell a word, it doesn’t supply corrections or words that you may have meant. You’re left flipping pages, hoping that you spelled the word correctly and can read the tiny print crammed onto the page.

Clearly the authors of the dictionary did not care about helping us find information.

Using the Wrong Standards

The Bible is capable of doing a lot for Christians today. Nevertheless, sometimes we ask it to do something that it cannot do and judge it by the wrong standards: to support our faith as the completely error free foundation. Even if we aren’t staying up late to line up the chronology of Israel’s kings, which some folks do, many of us still speak of the Bible as the number one item in our doctrinal statements.

Does that sound familiar? If I had a nickel for every doctrinal statement that lists the Bible first, I’d be able to buy a lake house… and probably a mountain or two.

The trouble is, we’re asking the Bible to be something that it is not able to do, and we’re using standards to measure it that are not relevant to its original intent. The Bible is a reliable and trustworthy source of information about God, it is not deceptive, and it certainly is essential.

However, it was not intended to stand as the foundation of our faith. Minor oversights in chronology or numbers do not nullify its status as inspired by God. We weren’t intended to read the Bible and to then worry about the Bible’s minute details.

If reading the Bible only makes you more obsessed with the Bible, you’ve missed the point.

Witnesses to What?

The book of Acts utilizes the word “witnesses” frequently in reference to the testimony the apostles gave. The Bible is the written account of witnesses—their testimony about something that happened.

The testimony itself can only be judged successful if that testimony persuades listeners and readers that the events described are true. A testimony from a witness points to something other than the testimony itself. The testimony is valuable and reliable, but as Christians we can take things a step further.

We ourselves become the witnesses.

So, we read the testimony, we believe, and then we meet with God. And when we meet with God, we have reached the goal of the testimony. The testimony remains valuable, but there is no other foundation to our faith than Jesus himself and no greater source of truth for us than the Spirit of God who was given to us. We use the Bible, and use it often, to keep ourselves focused on meeting with Jesus.

Whatever folks prove or disprove about the Bible, it only exists to connect us with God. And when we meet with God, encountering him becomes the evidence we rely upon. The testimony is proven true when we ourselves experience God as we were told to expect.

When you meet the living God described in the Bible, suddenly controversies about chronologies become moot points.

Keep in mind that significant chunks of the Bible, say half of Exodus and all of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, spell out the laws that govern God’s interaction with his people in the tabernacle. The goal is meeting in the tabernacle, not the boring book that explains how to set up the tabernacle.

I know we don’t usually read those books in the Old Testament, but that may be why we have this problem. Fellowship with God is our goal, and the Bible is one of the tools used to make that happen.

Note: This post addresses some of the issues brought up in Jason Boyett’s post.

On certain occasions when I’ve served with my in-law’s prison ministry, I’ve met some men who were entangled in the occult and all sorts of dark magic. Their conversion experiences were dramatic, spiritual encounters with Jesus. They remind me that Christianity is dealing with real spiritual powers.

I recently learned about Kristine McGuire who is a former “Christian witch.” She wrote about her experiences with the occult in a book entitled Escaping the Cauldron: What You Should Know About the Occult.

I think Kristine raises some issues that are worth considering. The little that I’ve learned about spiritual warfare has been beneficial in my own Christian walk.

Christine offers a perspective that is beyond anything I’ve ever encountered, which speaks to a void in our Christian discourse today. My interview follows. Enjoy!

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Over the summer a month passed without much seeming to happen between myself and God. Oh, things weren’t too bad, but it was all quiet and stuff when I prayed. I was used to getting some kind of sense of God’s will from my prayer time, but that didn’t happen for a few weeks.

What was going on?

I know that God has answered my prayers in the past and ministered to me and through me. I have also seen God speak to and use others. What was up? As my prayer time fell flat, I began to doubt a bit. Had God given up on me? Was I just making stuff up in the past? Was I classifying my emotions in the divinity category?

That season passed. Well, it sort of passed. I heard God say “Intercede” one day, and it was like old times all of sudden. I was praying for other people, rather than my own issues, and I was on the same page as God for a while—at least, until things quieted down again and some doubts crept in.

I still get extremely introspective at times, but thankfully God still breaks in and screams into my little troubled world, “Get out of there!” I come out, go back in, wonder why things are not clicking with God, begin to doubt, and then he has to snap me out of it again.

There are plenty of reasons why we may doubt God. Speaking from the context of American evangelicalism where the Holy Spirit gets treated like a footnote in the Bible when he/she should be a main character, it’s easy to turn Christianity into this game of information and report cards. Behave and get the answers right, and you’re good.

The trouble is that we can unwittingly shut God out of our lives and not know why or how it happened. I can’t tell you why you have doubts or how to get rid of them. That’s something you need to seek out in the quiet place by yourself and with a trusted group of Christian friends who can handle hearing you say, “I’m not so sure about God sometimes.”

What I can say is that I’ve stared into that void. I’ve wondered whether God is real or whether God really cares about me, and he’s come to me. Not right away. Not when I demanded he show up. Not even in the way I expected. But he came.

As I learn to wait, to remain open, to listen, and to get out of my own head, he can speak to me, use me, and tell me how he really feels about me, about you, and about the world. How does he feel about us? He loves us with an intensity that will one day drive out our doubts and fears, even if we imperfectly move toward his Kingdom, stumbling forward and backward and forward again—and again.

Doubts can be a daily struggle. They can be normal. But God wants to move us away from them and into his love. Perhaps the first step to overcoming doubt is believing that last sentence is true.

I can still remember laboring through the book Redemption Accomplished and Applied while in seminary. Maybe it’s a helpful book for some Christians out there, but for me it stood for a kind of mechanical, almost formulaic Christianity that failed to connect with real life.

As I moved through each carefully detailed step in redemption, I thought the process was too detailed and therefore easy to misunderstand. The language was technical and precise. If I missed one part of the redemption process, what would become of my faith?

I don’t want to sound overdramatic, but that theology book almost wrecked my faith. I thought to myself: If this really is Christianity and redemption, do I really want to be a part of something like this? Is God really this technical and complicated in his dealings with us? It made the Bible, a book alive with passion, poetry, and real life, feel like a scientific manual.

I have since realized that my struggle was not with the nature of Christianity, but rather a particular approach to Christianity—a specific theological approach among many. Jesus didn’t lay out the Kingdom of God in a technical step-by-step guide. He used stories, parables, and Spirit-filled action.

The truth is all in there, but the presentation is quite different.

In a sense, theology aims to take what’s in the Bible, understand it, and then present that interpretation so that we understand the Bible better. When theology becomes a kind of meat grinder that refashions the Bible to the point that we can’t recognize it, we have a problem.

Good theology can help us study the Bible and actually understand what it means. Good theology will lead us away from fear and sensationalism when we understand that the book of Revelation was Apocalyptic literature. Good theology will explain what the “Kingdom of God” could mean in the teachings of Jesus. Good theology will try to figure out how Jesus influenced the letters of Paul.

Good theology brings clarity to the Bible and helps us grow in our Christian faith, knowledge, and practice. Do we know God better at the end of the day? If our answer is no, then we need to take a look at the kind of theology we’re studying.

I’m sure that the author of Redemption Accomplished and Applied had every intention of making the work of Christ clear for readers. He paid great attention to detail, and I don’t want to say that he is in danger of ruining the faith of all who read this book. It’s not necessarily a dangerous book by any means.

However, in my own case, that book represented a kind of lifeless theology that did not push me closer to God. Even theology books that are technically correct, as that book was to a certain degree in its content, can have unintended effects on their readers. Isn’t it ironic that the study of God can sometimes turn us away from our subject?

We moved to Connecticut about a year ago, and a big part of that move involved letting go of things: our lifestyle in the country (including a garden), our professional networks, our home, our few friends, proximity to family,  and the list goes on. Toss in the stress of selling our home and moving, and there were times when we felt crushed by the pressure.

Letting go feels terrible sometimes, even if we know that we’re following God’s lead into something else. That’s because we have a period of time when we’re empty, holding nothing. That is, we’re stripped of the many things we value.

When we move and let go of things, we have an opportunity to root ourselves in our unmovable and unshakable God.

Last year I had sleepless nights as rejection letters replaced my regular pay check and our house sat two months longer than we would have liked. We had to start over professionally and personally from scratch in a new place.

In the midst of that emptiness and brokenness, God showed up in new ways that I still cling to in dry times.

And then he began to fill us up again with new things we like to do, new friends, and new opportunities. Between the growth and the new blessings that came, I realized that letting go wasn’t all that bad after all, even if it was tough at the time.

It’s not like we had a carbon copy of our old life after we moved, but once we let go of one set of things, we found both a deeper connection with God and new things to love. The trick is to remain dependent upon and full of God as we embrace these new things.

It’s also important to remember God’s provision for us so that we’ll be ready to move when he calls us to something else.

This little survival guide series aims to offer some ways to help you flourish as a disciple of Jesus, and part of thriving as a Christian is learning what you need and what’s the dead weight you can toss overboard. Let’s face it, we can spend  a lot of time worrying about the nonessentials.

I study theology, so I’m all over that one.

One of the things Christians get worked up over are these things called absolutes or absolute truth. Last week I heard a speaker extol absolutes as essential for the survival of Christianity. Are they really?

Part of the problem is we don’t have a clear notion of what they are, and there are all kinds of imperfect explanations out there that cloud the issue.

Then we spend our time at conferences learning about how Christianity is going to disappear from the face of the earth because the young people in your youth group don’t believe in absolutes. We all know that fire and brimstone from heaven will follow that, which sort of makes all this talk about “global warming” a bit of a moot point.

God’s like, I’ll show you godless liberals some global warming!

So, let’s begin by asking what this absolute business is all about and then talk about whether we need them. Hint: we don’t, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

What are Absolutes?

Part of the absolute discussion revolves around how we frame our questions and definitions. For the sake of brevity, I’ll ask two related questions:

Is there is a universal, scientifically verifiable perspective on the world?

Can human beings have a universal, scientifically verifiable perspective on the world?

Both of these questions get to the heart of what absolutes are all about. The trick is that Christians have to insert some caveats into such philosophical questions that sort of take us out of the realm of religion.

You see, absolutes and the idea of a universal perspective are the product of the modern/Enlightenment movement of philosophy when the scientific method was applied to all aspects of life, including religious belief. While Christianity and core doctrines such as the resurrection are based on solid evidence and reliable witnesses, we unfortunately cannot say, reproduce the resurrection in order to verify it in an absolute, universal sense.

However, this way of defining truth collapsed upon itself in the late 20th Century. With the rise of globalization and an awareness of multiple perspectives on the world, many realized that level of certainty is a bit tough for humans to reach. In fact, as Christians, we can chalk that quest for certainty up to human pride and claim that only God has such a universal perspective.

Is there certain, absolute truth out there? To a certain degree, yes, but only God knows it in that sense. That’s not our place.

Do We Need Absolutes?

Some may say that I’m killing Christianity, but the truth is that our faith rests in part upon, well faith. There is a measure of mystery and uncertainty as we rely upon both truth and the experience of God. Keep in mind that God gave the Israelites both laws to keep and a tabernacle where they could meet him.

Christianity does not boil down to beliefs, law, or words on a page.

And speaking of Israel, let’s remember that Christianity began in an Eastern context in which Enlightenment principles of knowledge would have seemed over the top. Movements such as postmodernism and relativism have reacted strongly to the unrealistic expectations that absolutes have placed on truth and knowledge.

Christians can say that truth has its limits, but it’s also not a truth-free-for-all. God has revealed to us what is right and what is wrong, and he has incarnated the truth in the person of Jesus. We continue to experience truth through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Far from being stranded on the rapids of relativity, Christians have scripture and the Spirit as their paddles. We may not know as much as we’d hoped, but then again, Christianity has survived and even thrived in contexts other than the Enlightenment. Absolutes do not guarantee the survival of the Christian faith.

In fact, in order for Christianity to continue to thrive, we need to make sure we aren’t letting either the old context or the new context to determine our beliefs and practices. The modern and postmodern have been both friends and foes to disciples. Our faith can survive in both, but it’s up to us make sure we don’t anchor ourselves in either of them.