Missional Goes Spiritual
by Todd Hunter
[This is the text of an article appearing in Next-Wave E-zine, January 2008. -ed.]
Ten years ago, I’m told, I wrote one of the inaugural articles for the first edition of Next Wave. It sure doesn’t seem ten years ago—that’s so 90s! That’s so Paula Jones and Monica Lewinski! 1998: that’s the year smoking was banned in all California restaurants and bars...Dale Earnhardt (not “Jr.”) won the Daytona 500; Osama bin Laden published one of his first fatwas; Titanic won eleven Oscars; the iMac was unveiled; the Chicago Bulls won their last championship with Michael Jordan. Cruise Missiles were launched against Al-Qaeda in retaliation for bombing a US embassy. Mark McGwire—juiced or not, who knows?—broke baseball’s all-time single season home run record. Brian McLaren, well-known to NW readers, published his first book. And…Google started that year! Can you even get through a day without using Google?
A lot has happened in the last decade…on the other hand that paragraph above gives some sense of continuity with our days—2008. But here, I want to reflect on the biggest change I have seen in the last decade. It has to do with attitudes toward God, Jesus, Christianity and the church. David Kinnaman has researched and documented this shift in his recent book Un-Christian. It is a must read for anyone who cares about evangelism and the future of the church. Here are a few eye-popping findings:
…many of those outside of Christianity, especially younger adults, have little trust in the Christian faith, and esteem for the lifestyle of Christ followers is quickly fading among outsiders.
The most common reaction to the faith: they think Christians no longer represent what Jesus had in mind, that Christianity in our society is not what is was meant to be. They admit they have a hard time actually seeing Jesus because of all the negative baggage that now surrounds him.
…the growing hostility toward Christians is very much a reflection of what outsiders feel they receive from believers. They say their aggression simply matches the oversized opinions and egos of Christians. One outsider put it this way: “Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, antigay, anti-choice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe.”
It is important to realize that young outsiders attribute their image of Christianity primarily to conversations and firsthand experiences.
Many of these young people actually went through a time when they were searching for faith. They were probing the Christian faith, trying it on for size, but they couldn’t get past some of the mental, emotional, or spiritual barriers – often heightened by their experience of an un-Christian faith – so they gave up. This should be a major wake-up call for us.[1]
First, here is an observation that is not news to the readers of NW who know me: We are not in the predicament Kinnaman discovered in spite of our best efforts at evangelism and discipleship. We are here precisely because of what we have been saying and doing. What if there is so little life-change among Christians because they have simply believed the messages they heard: "say this prayer so that when you die you can go to heaven" or "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven". Those versions of the Gospel have not and will not produce disciples on a wide scale. Or sure, some people stumble into discipleship from there, but not many. What those messages have produced, according to Kinnaman is “un-Christians”.
This observation was true ten years ago too; we just didn’t have Kinnaman’s research to affirm our gut feeling. What is different now is that people in post-Christendom USA will no longer let us get away with it. In short, spiritual transformation into Christlikeness has always been right to do; but now it is strategic. Effectiveness in evangelism depends now on “the Christianity” of Christians.
Thus we need a new story to tell. We need a version of the Gospel that naturally and routinely affects our actual life—not just our death and afterlife. It is clear from Jesus and the major writers of the New Testament that life has always been the focus of the authentic Gospel. For instance:
John the Baptist, preparing the way for Jesus said: "Change your life. God's kingdom is here…those who came to confess their sins were baptized into a changed life. It's your life that must change… What counts is your life. (Mt. 3, The Message, emphasis added)
Jesus, announcing the Gospel said: "Time's up! God's kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message." (Mk. 1, The Message, emphasis added)
Paul, describing the work of God in us, said: We're being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. (Titus 2, The Message, emphasis added)
Peter, expressing the outcome of the resurrection said: Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand-new life… As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life energetic and blazing… (1 Peter 1, The Message, emphasis added).
When I put the research of Kinnaman together with the Gospel as explained by those writers I come up with two key thoughts.
First, we need to change our evangelistic question. Instead “if you died tonight do you know where you would go” we should ask “if you know you were going to live tomorrow, how would you decide how to do life? What story would you embody? Who would you follow?
Second, when asked what does it mean to be a Christian, I now answer “it means that in our actual lives—the events and people of our daily routines—we are the cooperative friends of Jesus, seeking to live constant lives of creative goodness through the power of the Holy Spirit…and we do this for the sake of others”.
While a lot has changed in ten years, some things are not new—like the essence of the Gospel and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Let’s get together again in ten years to see if we have made some headway with this—and to see if they do put an asterisk next the McGwire’s name, see what new products MAC has introduced, see how much of the world Google owns, and how many books McLaren really can write!
Until then…
Todd
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