Feb 1, 2009
The Effects of unEvangelism
Here are some thoughts I’m currently processing. I’ll paste below my rough draft:
We don’t have any measure for the effects of poor evangelism, to say nothing of Christianity’s terrible reputation as a religion for the judgmental, hypocritical, and homophobic. These matters need to be viewed through the lens of evangelism, much like our actual efforts to share the Good News. Evangelism isn’t concerned only with what we say, but also with what we do because what we do can easily undermine whatever we say.
That really should be a no-brainer.
Evangelicals are so entrenched in our Gnostic bubble that keeps salvation by faith separated from the Lordship of Jesus and the resulting good works that must flow from truly saving faith (see the epistle of James) that such critiques don’t appear on our radar. If what we’re saying is true, then we assume we’ve done our part: communicated the truth.
We now know that is not enough. The majority of the younger generation and countless others think evangelicals are the problem in the world, not the solution. Can we expect to argue and reason our way out of this mess?
Hey Ed, do you have any recommendations on books comparing ancient heretical gnosticism with conservative evangicalism, or as I like to call it, the new gnosticism.
If not, you should write that book. I think most evangelicals can see the heresy in the ancient gnostics, but don’t realize how gnostic their own beliefs are.
NT Wright has a lot to say about the topic, but doesn’t have a book in particular. He hammers on it in this interview:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/january/22.38.html?start=1.
I’ll certainly be taking a wack at it in my next book “Saving Evangelicals from Themselves”, but perhaps a more full-length work is in order. Book number three on my list is going to be something like, “When Jesus Hates Christians”. That should be a fun one to write…