17. Church in a New World
17
Church in a New World
Good faith churches make disciples who bless the world.
We waited to see how the story would be told in the press.
Last year Barna released the findings of a yearlong research project on the state of faith, Christianity, and the church in Scotland. As part of the release, David did a brief tour of a few major cities in Scotland. At each stop, he engaged in local press interviews on some of the most notable findings—among them, that Christianity is viewed favorably by a majority of Scots and that young adults in Scotland express greater interest in the Bible than their elders.
At first, this seems counterintuitive. Who could explain why young adults were more interested in the Christian scriptures than their parents? Because most indicators point to an overwhelming trend toward secularization in Scotland, the favorable data surprised many people (including Barna researchers). If they chose to report on the study at all, how would this research be interpreted and reported by the local media?
Over the culinary delights of a Scottish breakfast, the tour’s publicist, Stephanie, distributed copies of a daily newspaper from the city of Dundee.
“Faith in Scotland Offers Hope to Christian Groups.”
The news item recited some of the positive findings and quoted Alan MacWilliam, a minister from Glasgow, who felt encouraged about the research.
Then the article took a turn. The reporter had invited Spencer Fildes, chairman of the Scottish Secular Society, to respond to the research. He was not impressed. He questioned the validity of the findings (the typical response from those who don’t like the results). And then he expressed his true feelings.
People now struggle to associate religion with anything other than conflict, sectarianism, child abuse, homophobia, misogyny, violence and privilege. Religion is now perceived as the catalyst for the horrors we see on our televisions every day. The advent of the internet has led to an explosion of evidence-based understanding, with secularism challenging the status quo and unjustifiable privilege of the Churches.1
Wow! He wasn’t pulling any punches.
He painted a perfect picture of the two primary perceptions many in the world have of Christians: irrelevant and extreme. Now, if we Christians were to use similar language to describe another group, we would definitely not be quoted by the paper of record in Dundee—unless it was to prove once and for all how irrelevant and extreme we are!
This offers us another learning moment.
If Christians were to use similar language about another group, we might deserve whatever payback came our way. Insulting other groups, no matter how off base or “unjustifiably privileged,” is not in our love-believe-live job description. Our resolve to love the “other” must supersede our desire to win in the court of public opinion.
Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth:
I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that. I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people. It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. (1 Cor. 5:9–12)
Paul was saying there is a big difference between how we engage with the world and how we engage in Christian community. And we would humbly suggest that conflating, confusing, or emphasizing one over the other of these two postures weakens the church inside and out.
When outward engagement is our sole aim, we become moralistic crusaders or proponents of a purely social gospel that has no power to save people from sin. On the other hand, if we focus solely on what happens inside the church, we become pious separatists who are so heavenly minded we are no earthly good for God’s plan to renew the world through Christ in his people.
We believe good faith churches are called to hold these two in tandem, to live in the necessary, perpetual tension between knitting together a community of disciples and going out to bless the world.
Facing Outward
In 2010, a University of Pennsylvania professor and a nonreligious research group in Philadelphia decided to see if they could determine the economic “halo effect” of a house of worship on the surrounding community. They wanted to figure out a congregation’s economic worth, if any, to the local community it serves.
Using a metric of fifty-four factors, researchers tallied up the economic benefits of ten Protestant churches, one Catholic parish, and one synagogue in Philadelphia.
The grand total for the twelve congregations combined? Over $50 million every year.2
These startling economic indicators point to a church’s worth. And, generally speaking, people’s perceptions jibe with the economics. Most think the presence of a church is a favorable thing for a community. Half of US adults say it’s “very” and another 30 percent say it’s “somewhat” favorable—that’s eight out of ten Americans who see churches as beneficial to their surrounding communities.
But favorable in what way?
In a 2014 study commissioned by World Vision, a majority of Australians said they think churches should be involved in the public-square issues of child protection and human rights. They liked the idea of churches contributing to the overall common good. But when the question of church involvement got more personal, people weren’t so sure. Only one-quarter said being an active part of a church could help them think through the spiritual side of their lives or enhance friendships and connection with the community—and those were the most popular of the options.3
In other words, the value of a church is, for many, theoretical rather than personal. Church is good. For other people.
When we asked US adults to identify needs in their community they believe churches could meet, about half pointed to practical, physical needs such as providing food and clothes to those without, or offering shelter for homeless people and activities for teens.
When it comes to spiritually oriented needs, people would like a church to keep things general rather than specifically Christian. About half said a local church could provide “spiritual guidance,” “a place where everyone is accepted,” or “counseling services,” but they were less enthusiastic about “teaching the Bible/teaching people about Jesus” and “instilling morals or values.”
People who are not actively engaged in a church often do not consider Bible teaching to be very desirable. They might even consider it irrelevant—like someone teaching a hopelessly complex board game. Yet we know of Christians who have led people to faith in Christ by hosting Bible studies in their homes. We firmly believe the gospel is relevant to all people at all times, even if it seems unpopular at the time.
It is also disarmingly powerful when churches serve their communities in unexpected ways. This is especially true when the perceptions of Christian irrelevance and extremism are thick in the air. Mission Church in Ventura, California, led by David’s friends Mike and Jodi Hickerson, is one of dozens of churches around the country that host an annual prom for special-needs teens and young adults called “A Night to Remember.” In 2012, the first year of the event, 150 student volunteers dressed in their finest evening attire threw a huge party for 60 special guests, most of whom had never attended a prom or even a dance. All the guests got to pick out their own dresses and corsages, tuxes and boutonnieres, have their hair and makeup done by a professional stylist, and then take a limo ride with their student host before walking (or rolling, in the case of kids cruising in wheelchairs) the red carpet.
Amanda, an eighteen-year-old prom guest, had watched her three older sisters experience the prom rite of passage, but Amanda and her mom, Mary, never dreamed she would also get to experience it. Mary said, “I just think it was really great for Mission Church to recognize a need and reach out to the community. . . . There are so many things people with special needs will never be able to realize. This is not something everyone gets to do.”4
Paul calls believers “Christ’s ambassadors” who have been given the “task of reconciling people to him” (see 2 Cor. 5:18–20). But effective ambassadors don’t train themselves. They mature when they live life in Christian community, discipled to love and care for those Christ loved so much.
One of the jobs of an ambassador is to throw lavish parties that bring people together to experience the generosity of the host nation—which in our case is the kingdom of God. So it’s not hard to argue that “A Night to Remember” is perfectly in line with the church’s mission to share God’s “wonderful message of reconciliation” (v. 19).
Maybe you recall the story Jesus tells recorded in Matthew 22. He says the kingdom of God is like a big party that includes the people no one else would think to invite. Just imagine how Jesus must feel about the modern embodiment of his parable.
But attending big parties isn’t the only way people should encounter the gospel. We are commanded to tell people the good news about Jesus. This should, of course, be demonstrated in our lives but must also be proclaimed with words.
As we pointed out in chapter 3, 60 percent of adults believe it is “extreme” to share your faith with others. That’s why we must relearn the sacred art of meaningful, spiritual conversations that point people to Jesus. Without a costly investment in relationship combined with boldness to speak up, people may never hear about the opportunity to become a new creation in Christ.
Our friend Jon Tyson, pastor of Trinity Grace Church in New York City, coaches Trinity’s people for evangelism. He emphasizes forming no-agenda relationships with others; walking up to strangers and proclaiming your beliefs might catalyze a new thought, but the long, hard work of relationships is more likely to produce a transformational result.
Then Jon encourages his congregation to recognize two key times when friends, family members, and colleagues are most open to being introduced to Jesus. First, a season of personal crisis. This could be a divorce, the loss of a family member, a bankruptcy, a major career shift, or even the loneliness of moving to the “big city.” Second, a moment of national or global tragedy. Whether a terrorist attack like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Syrian refugee crisis, an earthquake in Nepal or Argentina, or the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina—when a man-made tragedy or a natural disaster strikes, our hearts pause to contemplate deeper questions about life and what it all means. So often, these are the times when Christ’s knocking on the heart’s door is louder than a person’s indifference (see Rev. 3).
When we invest in relationships, trust God to bring opportunities, and then boldly share what the Spirit puts in our heart—we can proclaim Jesus as Lord in a way people can hear and respond to.
Whether it’s throwing a prom for special-needs teens, providing practical and relational resources for homeless people, caring for children whose parents are struggling financially or emotionally, hosting weekend camps so high school students can hear the truth about Jesus, coaching immigrant students in English literacy, bringing diverse leaders together to stem the tide of racism in our communities, sharing our personal stories of salvation with friends and neighbors, supporting moms-to-be who don’t have a husband or sharing our personal stories of salvation with friends and neighbors—these and countless others are the reconciling, proclaiming, restorative, outward-facing activities of a good faith church.
When communities of good faith nurture relationships with and serve alongside people whom God loves, it’s more likely that good faith Christians will have the opportunity to follow the apostle Peter’s instructions: “If someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way” (1 Pet. 3:15–16). Because, of course, sharing the gospel is one of the most important outward-facing activities Christians do.
To be good faith Christians, we need to engage the world around us. But to do that, we must cultivate the health of our churches and our souls. The early church is described as devoted to “the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). Without robust attention to internal growth—both inside each believer (growing as a disciple) and among the church as a whole (growing as Christ’s body)—Christians are merely do-gooders lacking the power that comes from being transformed by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus gave his followers the Great Commission as a community, not as a solo project. Making disciples, while surely a mission each believer is called to, is primarily the task of the church. To most Christians, the process of spiritual growth that we commonly call “discipleship” is best defined as “becoming more like Christ.”5 And, as even a cursory look at Jesus’s life reveals, being like Christ has both an inward and an outward component.
But how does discipleship actually work? How do communities of faith help people become the kind of disciples who grow in good faith for the sake of the world?
Our work in Scotland provides a few insights. One element of the project was to assess what qualities or priorities distinguish growing churches from those churches that are maintaining or declining in attendance. What are the best practices of growing churches in a post-Christian context?
We found nine factors that make a significant difference between baseline churches (maintaining or declining) and growing churches. These factors impact church health in an increasingly secular culture. Among these nine, four are external pursuits:
1. Prioritizing outreach by serving the poor and sharing faith
2. Partnering with other churches and causes
3. Being innovative for the sake of the gospel
4. Focusing on receptive teens and young adults
And four factors are internal goals:
5. Teaching the Bible thoroughly
6. Fostering close Christian community
7. Developing new leaders
8. Leading with a team that has diverse skills and spiritual gifts
The ninth factor, praying, is both inward looking (spiritual practice) and outward facing (mission). In the growing churches, members and leaders were two to three times more likely to say they “pray specifically for living faithfully in a post-Christian culture.” Even though the two groups of churches were comprised of people who believe similar things theologically, a major difference emerged in how they practice prayer. Growing churches pray missionally and make prayer a mission.
Here’s another important difference. Among growing churches in Scotland, more than nine out of ten pastors say they teach the Bible using a systematic, or expository, approach. Among baseline churches, only about one-third of pastors approach Bible teaching this way. This is an enormous disparity and, we believe, indicates that immersion in Scripture is a driver of church growth and spiritual vitality. The difference is not just following a “successful” teaching formula, but challenging congregants to learn and wrestle with the Scriptures.
Of course no church is perfect. But overall, good faith Christians and churches are thriving in post-Christian Scotland—and should serve as an example to us. Growing inward with Christ and facing outward as the body of Christ is a powerful combination. These churches and their leaders seem to be getting the love + believe + live equation right, and it’s having an effect on a new generation.
Which brings us to the role of pastors.
Christian Leaders as Teachers to the World
Pastors play a vital role in the shaping of good faith, but it is not easy. In his book Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard identifies some of the cultural pressures on pastors. The book, first published in 2009, seems to anticipate some of the extremist and irrelevant perceptions with which we now contend. While admitting these pressures are real and difficult, Willard gives pastors a broader vision of their role than many typically envision. He writes persuasively that pastors must rethink their position in society:
The task of Christian pastors and leaders is to present Christ’s answers to the basic questions of life and to bring those answers forward as knowledge—primarily to those who are seeking and are open to following him, but also to all who happen to hear, in the public arenas of a world in desperate need of knowledge of what is real and good. . . .
[Pastors] have an audience—an audience of people spread, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout the community—and their position in the world as God’s spokespeople is unique. They deal, if they will, with the questions that frame human worldviews. Answers to those questions provide the orientations of individual lives and whole societies. For good or ill, they determine the essential character of all we do, whether we are conscious of them or not.6
Good faith, indeed.
Pastors are ambassadors and guides to the good faith way of life, and many are doing their very best to fill that role. Still, these complicated, uncertain times require an even greater degree of clarity, courage, and tender shepherding from today’s pastors and priests.
We are reminded of Paul’s admonition to the church in Corinth where he says, “I am not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children. For even if you had ten thousand others to teach you about Christ, you have only one spiritual father. For I became your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you” (1 Cor. 4:14–15).
A major challenge in the American church today is our elevation of the teaching gift. Many pastors of the largest churches, bestselling authors, and generally accepted “leaders” of the American church are teachers, not spiritual fathers and mothers. While video venue churches and podcast learning continue to trend in some communities, the deficit of “fathering” is being felt in a new generation. Confused disciples don’t do much good in a broken world. We will always need good teaching, but pastors who are loving parents may be the need of the hour as cultural change continues at breakneck speed.
Let’s acknowledge that it’s a difficult time to be a church leader. For one thing, pastors are vastly outnumbered: the ratio of senior Christian clergy to all other Americans, including minors, is 1 to 963. And, for many, a life of vocational ministry is no walk in the park. According to research Barna conducted for Pepperdine University, about half of US pastors say ministry has been hard on their family, and three out of ten say ministry has been a personal disappointment. Nearly half report struggling with depression, one-quarter with significant marital problems or parenting difficulties, and about one out of six with an addiction of some kind.7
Correlation is not causation, so it’s an open question what impact these personal struggles have on ministry effectiveness. Regardless of the causes, however, we can identify the beginnings of a leadership crisis in US churches.
One indicator is that many pastors are reluctant to teach about certain topics for fear of negative reactions. In a study among US clergy, 40 percent of Protestant pastors and more than half of Catholic priests told us they “frequently” or “occasionally” feel limited in their ability to speak about moral and social issues out of concern that people will take offense. And among these leaders, two-thirds report greater concern about their parishioners’ reactions than about the response of people outside their congregation.
It is a tall order to communicate with truth and grace in today’s polarized world, but if pastors are editing their words for fear of offending their people, this is cause for great concern.
In the long run, their reluctance will do the church no favors. Columnist Rod Dreher recently wrote:
No church can be the church if its pastors and its congregation are unwilling to speak hard truths to each other and to themselves. To think of the pastorate as primarily a “helping profession,” and church as chiefly a therapeutic community, in the sense of guiding us to feel better about ourselves, as opposed to giving us what we need to be healed, is a betrayal of the Gospel and the church’s mission.8
Sharp words, but he’s right. The old adage “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” is a decent summary of the prophetic authority inherent in a pastoral calling. The hard part, of course, is keeping the contours of orthodoxy intact while caring for the most vulnerable in our faith communities. College leaders, youth pastors, and mentors working with teens and young adults may find this especially challenging. Young people who experience same-sex attraction, for instance, need to know God loves and accepts them just as they are and, at the same time, need wise counsel and practical tools for fruitful living within God’s intention for human sexuality.
Tricky, right? But trickiness does not give leaders a pass.
Perhaps we need to be reminded, bombarded as we are by leadership strategies and church-growth tactics, that God’s definition of ministry success is nothing more and nothing less than faithfulness and fruitfulness. These go hand in hand. If we’ve got one without the other—say, if weekly financial giving has increased (fruitfulness) but we’re pulling punches in the pulpit (lack of faithfulness)—it’s time to do some serious self-reflection. Maybe Psalm 139 could be of help: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life” (vv. 23–24).
The Church as a Counterculture
Pastors play an essential role helping to fine-tune a church’s balance of discipleship and cultural engagement, the inside-outside dynamic we’ve been exploring in this chapter. The church sets itself apart as a counterculture by devoting sustained energy to both inward and outward expressions of discipleship. When Peter wrote to the persecuted Christians in Asia, whom he called “temporary residents and foreigners,” he sketched the broad outlines:
You are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. “Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.” (1 Pet. 2:9–10)
These first-century believers could bless the world by showing God’s goodness because they had answered God’s call to become a holy nation, a new community living in God’s light and shining in the darkness.
St. Augustine explored the idea further in his fifth-century classic, The City of God. His goal was to reassure Christians who were freaking out about the sack of Rome by the Goths. He reminded them that they were citizens of a City, the New Jerusalem, which could not be overcome even by marauding barbarians. The world as they knew it was falling down around their ears, but Augustine encouraged them to look beyond the borders of Rome to the new nation God was building in the church: “This heavenly city, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages.”9
The heavenly city has its own distinctive culture, which often contradicts, or counters, the broader culture. In an essay aptly titled “The Church as Culture,” theologian Robert Louis Wilken writes, “The Church is a culture in its own right. Christ does not simply infiltrate a culture; Christ creates culture by forming another city, another sovereignty with its own social and political life.”10
How can we do this?
There are many ways.
First, our commitment to Christ revealed in the Scriptures, and our submission to the Spirit’s authority in our lives and churches, mark us as children of the Father. We seek God’s will instead of our personal fulfillment, in direct contrast to the surrounding culture.
Second, our commitment to one another, our unity, forming households, practicing hospitality, being faithful in our marriages, and sharing grace with our neighbors are just a few of the ways our counterculture stands in contrast to the wider world.
Third, we can live in countercultural rhythms. We can practice the Sabbath, determined to take one day each week to rest and remind ourselves, and our colleagues and neighbors, that our value doesn’t come from what we produce. It is found in whose we are.
A fourth area is how we manage our technology—how we think about and use our digital devices. Let’s be the best at putting down our technology, setting aside distractions, and focusing on real people. Turn your phone off when entering into a coffee shop conversation with a friend. Be determinedly “present” when engaging with your family.11
Fifth is the issue of stewardship: using our talents, passions, and work life as gifts from God to serve others. God has a special and unique calling for every person to do good in his world. “We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (Eph. 2:10). Vocational discipleship—learning to be faithful in answer to God’s call—is a perfect example of inward development for outward focus. Good faith Christians understand vocation as a dynamic between an inward cultivation of our hearts and an outward expression of our faith in the world.
These are a few ways every good faith Christian can practice countercultural living. But parents especially need to get in the game.
Being a Countercultural Parent
As the dominant culture’s influence grows, our children and their children have little hope of holding firm to a faith distorted by society’s corrupt moral code. And so, as in centuries past, Christians should be intentional about forming communities and institutions (churches, schools, networks) that remain at a distance from mainstream culture. Environments that emphasize holiness as a part of good faith will help create a new generation of disciples with deep-rooted faith.
We are not suggesting that Christians should remove themselves entirely from the world or that every Christian child should go to a Christian school. We are saying that families, schools, households, and churches will need to be spaces where holy and righteous living are modeled, practiced, and taught in order to prepare our children to follow Jesus and engage the wider world.
We are both parents to boys and girls who are preteens and teens, and we know firsthand how tough it is to be a good faith parent in a culture that constantly pulls our children into an alternate reality. Based on everything we’ve been learning as researchers and leaders and everything we’re experiencing as parents, we are convinced that we must get the inside-outside tension right as we raise our kids.
We make it a habit to talk about everything from sex to Taylor Swift lyrics with our kids. Recent months have seen conversations about the money we make (and give away), the reasons modesty is important, how God uses human beauty for his good, and how he sometimes uses our brokenness more than our strengths. As our kids consider college and future careers or hobbies, we chat about how these are expressions of God’s calling in their lives. We have candid conversations about our own dreams and foibles too—working too much, taking ourselves too seriously, and more. (And of course there are lighter-fare topics like sports, friends, and smoothies.)
David’s kids regularly point out that he is more likely than they are to spend a digital moment on Twitter or email, so we don’t want to sound like we’re getting it 100 percent right.
Still, if equipping people to have difficult conversations is a big hope for this book, that has to include conversations not only with the non-Christians we know but also at home with our families.
If we focus on only the inward spiritual development of our children, we will fail to prepare them to be on a mission for Jesus in their generation. These young people may have strong faith, but faith is not Christian if it fails to be effectively expressed in the world. Conversely, if we over-focus on preparation for life in today’s complex culture without attending to a deep understanding and practice of holiness, we risk their identity becoming innately of the world.
This is Jesus’s prayer for his disciples recorded in John 17: that we might be in the world but not of the world. Growing inward and facing outward.