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For a
generation now the church has been concerned about whether or not the world is
listening to our message. Books and articles continue to bemoan our plight of a
decreasing effectiveness in evangelism and church attendance. This has caused
many to make drastic changes to the methodology and polity of the church. But
even with the major overhauls that have taken place, still many are not
satisfied with the results. Our postmodern culture has caused the church to run
the spectrum of styles from seeker sensitive to the emergent church. At the
same time, many contemporary church proponents continue to be critical of
traditional churches.
One
recent article,1 written by a professor of writing and communications
at a major university, expressed concern about what messages we are sending to
the world by the way we conduct our church services. After visiting a number of
fundamental Baptist churches, he “made an ethnographic analysis of the speech
codes that we unconsciously use in our subculture.” He means that he noticed a
number of ways in which the world seems to be turned off by our church
services. His use of “subculture” to describe our churches seems backward to me
since I rather see the world as a subculture and the New Testament as a divine
culture. But, of course, my point of view, according to this author, would be
part of the (so-called) problem!
First,
he says, “Much of the speaking we do in church is unintelligible to outsiders.”
He sees our churches loaded with assumptions about the way people relate to one
another. We talk of “having fellowship” among believers, of “witnessing” to
unbelievers, and even of “having devotions” with God. These kinds of
expressions, the author thinks, are “extremely strong forms of negation” toward
outsiders.
Second, “Our church buildings have few crosses.” He explains that our churches
have a pulpit with a preacher giving a “top-down” monologue rather than a
two-way dialogue. The Bible is our “dominant symbol.” The author wishes we
could find other ways (having more icons?) of being more “welcoming” to
visitors.
Third,
the author relates how university professors have difficulty teaching Christian
students in secular schools how to compose arguments. These students seem to
think the Bible ends all arguments. “By refusing to do research [is this really
true or just someone’s opinion?] and construct arguments, these students were
reinforcing the stereotype of Christians as obscurantist Bible thumpers.” As a
conclusion he says (of student essay contests), “My burden is that a theme of
‘Balancing Biblical Truth and Cultural Relevance’ should be an occasion for us
to look beyond the discourses we use in church. We must rethink the unconscious
messages by which our subculture alienates visitors.”
These
kinds of thoughts are not new. The church has been wrestling with relevance for
most of the last century. Before I give some rhetorical questions of my own, I
want to say that we shouldn’t lose ourselves in a minimalist mindset. Of
course we do some things for the sake of visitors. Common courtesies, general
cleanliness, friendly environment, even modern conveniences are things anyone
would do when hosting visitors. The weightier issues here, however, have to do
with the operation of the church itself; with whether or not we are changing New
Testament Christianity to fit the world’s desires. If we change what we are
convinced we ought to be, are we even being honest with those who come in among
us?
Are we worried about a belligerent minority?
Are we
attempting to reconstruct the whole house because of one squeaking door? When
studies are made about cultural relevancy, the laboratory mice are always the
teenagers, college students, or similar groups with a specific world view. Some
years ago now, I engulfed myself in a study of postmodernism. It seemed that I
saw everyone and everything through the lens of metanarrative, semiotics, or
deconstruction. I finally had to slap myself back into reality and realize that
the great majority of people I sit next to in the restaurant or pump gas next to
at the gas station not only don’t know or care about these terms, they don’t fit
into these categories anyway. I’m not saying that these things don’t pose a
threat to our society, but I am suggesting that the church has overestimated
postmodernism’s effect on the majority of people.
We
ought to at least agree that Christianity has faced many things in its two
thousand year history and it never profited by changing its message or methods
to fit the temporary cultural winds. Jesus first instructed His disciples to
enter into a town with the message of the kingdom and if there were those who
were “unworthy” of the message and wouldn’t receive it, they were to shake the
dust off their feet and move on (Matt. 10:11-15). I don’t think the Lord was
teaching hard-heartedness or cultural obscurantism, but I think He was teaching
us to not lose our heads when some in our society won’t hear the message. At
times that belligerent group may be large or small, but it should not affect the
gospel presentation.
Should we continue down a proven slippery slope?
Surely
we know by now that few things move from liberal to conservative, but rather
almost always from conservative to liberal. The twentieth century alone is
sufficient to warn us of individuals and groups who were once fundamental and
solid in their Biblical convictions but through a sincere desire to reach more
people have gone off into compromising arrangements from which they never
returned.
The
apostle John warned the church not to bid “God speed” (or “God bless”) to those
who have deviated from the message of Christ (2 John 10-11). To do so is to
fellowship or partake in their wrong actions. We never gain more evangelistic
results by compromising the truth of Scripture. Aren’t we doing that with a
lost world when we adopt their methods of worship and bring those into our
churches? Many Baptist groups slid down this slope but few have recovered.
They merely redefined their new position as fundamental. Our soteriological
methods must always be governed by our doxological convictions.
Should churches be sanctuaries or half-way
houses?
Is it
the purpose of the local church to reform the unregenerate or to strengthen the
saints? Should we make our services debating contests or places of fellowship
and admonition? It is interesting how those questions sound politically
incorrect to our ears. We have been so conditioned by our culture that to think
of the church as a sanctuary apart from the world, a place of rest from the
battlefield, a realm of safety for our families, makes us feel as if we are
somehow cowards or apathetic.
How
can we read the book of Acts and the Epistles and miss this? Read Acts 4:23ff;
5:12-14; 18:6-8; 19:9-10. It does not follow that because the church creates a
sanctuary for the saints that the church will do less in evangelism. To the
contrary, the church must teach, admonish, comfort, worship, and pray if it is
going to be effective in evangelism. We must retreat to our training facilities
if we are to perform mightily on the field! Our practices (to continue the
analogy) are not closed to outsiders, but they are closed to the advice and
control of outsiders. The church as the church will produce believers who are
ready and able to truly evangelize.
Do heralds bargain with the Master’s message?
I’m
sure we would all agree that they do not. But some evidently feel that changing
methodologies does not violate that principle. Our word for “preacher” comes
from the New Testament word for “herald (kerux—2 Tim. 1:11).” He was a trusted
agent of the king who spoke the king’s message to the people. He had no right
to change or barter that message. His method of proclaiming the message was
“preaching” (kerusso—2 Tim. 4:2). The message itself was the subject of the
preaching (the kerygma—2 Tim. 4:17).
If we
really believe the Bible is our authority for faith and practice, then we have
no right to rearrange our practices because those we are preaching to don’t like
it. That may grieve our hearts and may even cost us relationships but it cannot
change our devotion.
Are we to evangelize or win the world?
There
is a vast difference between faithfully proclaiming our faith to whomever will
listen, and insisting that every listener must accept our faith. We are
commissioned to preach the gospel to every creature (Mk. 16:15-16) but not to
win every creature. We don’t baptize every nation but the converts from every
nation (Matt. 28:19-20). We are to be “witnesses” in all the world but there
will be both times of revival and persecution. Must we insist that our time be
a time of great revival? Must we say that if we are in one of those difficult
times that we are doing something wrong? God doesn’t ask us to evaluate our
evangelism or our faith by how others respond. That is the Holy Spirit’s
business and we should be satisfied with His decisions.
Does our generation really not understand us?
Does
the average American citizen have a difficult time following a simple sentence
with nouns and verbs? Does even the punk rocker not know what we are saying
when we speak of the gospel of Christ? I think he understands perfectly and
reacts according to his conscience. We’ve been watching too many TV shows and
reading too many vogue magazines and watching too many Hollywood movies. The
generations, cultures, and faiths may have their own homey way of speaking
within their circles (where would the world be without such variety?) but to say
that one cannot be understood by the others is to be a bit culturally myopic.
The
Bible does say that the lost man cannot grasp spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14) and
that unless the Holy Spirit works in his heart he will call it all foolishness.
But this is not the same as saying he cannot understand language. Besides, if
he could not even understand our language, then there would be no purpose to
evangelism at all. The lost man understands all too well the claims of Christ.
We are the ones who are uncomfortable.
Do we really want to be like the world?
Are
some trying so hard to be “understood” by the world because they love it more
than the church? One has to wonder what the motivation is for turning the
church of Jesus Christ into a cultural retreat for the world. If the local
church assembly is to be designed by sinners, where do the saints find
fulfillment for the New Testament commands of Christ? Where is the reverence?
Where is the specifically Christian fellowship? Where is the love of the
brethren? Where is the place to do the business of the church decently and in
order?
Some
say that they make these changes in the church service for the sake of the lost
who are there. But if they see that no lost are there for a particular hour, do
they quickly dispense with all that and have a normal service? No, these
changes are made for Christians who like it that way. It is because they spend
the other six days of the week watching American Idol that they cannot bring
themselves to love the church on Sunday. John wrote, “They are of the world:
therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God:
he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby
know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:5-6).
And So . . . .
Cultural relevancy is not all it’s cracked up to be. This isn’t the first
generation of believers who have found themselves on the outside of cultural
elitism. History and eternity will judge how we hold the banner behind a long
line of faithful men and women. “Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due
season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
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