Should We Stop Evangelizing??

John Shore very kindly sent me his recent book I’m OK - You’re Not to mention and review for you, my readers.  As part of the package I also received a press release from the publisher, NavPress, with the headline: Author Suggests That Christians Focus On The Great Commandment Rather than the Great Commission.  Here is a part of the press release:

Most every Christian feels as if they should be evangelizing someone, somewhere.  In fact, most of us probably feel guilty because we’re not meeting our "evangelism quota" for this lifetime.  But sharing our faith with non-believers can often feel like making a sales call during dinnertime: uninvited, unacceptable, and highly unlikely to get any results.

In I’m Okay - You’re Not, author John Shore proposes a radical solution: Maybe it’s time we simply took our focus off of evangelism….

"Trying to convince a non-believer to become a Christian is necessarily disrespectful to that person," says Shore.  "It’s asserting that their mind is inferior, that they’re spiritually immature.  And disrespecting that person does mean not loving them, because love without respect is no love at all - it’s patronizing…."

Let me start by saying that I am beginning to find that it is fairly typical for some recent books of the more "popular-level" genre to be….how shall I say….theologically imprecise.  By that I don’t mean that my expectations are for every author always to have their theological "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed with systematic precision.  I’m very glad that there are folks out there writing these sort of books who aren’t PhDs or MDivs.  But what I find in this book and some others like it, is theological overstatement.  I suspect some of this is intentional.  It makes for good and sometimes "shocking" reading.  Grabs your attention.  Gets you on your toes. 

John Shore is not really anti-evangelism.  He just writes like he is.  I suspect that is for effect.  The point I believe he wants us to get is that the modern evangelistic sales pitch often comes across like a poor version of Madison Avenue hucksterism.  Yeah.  Beer companies don’t really believe that drinking their product will make bikini-clad women begin to fall all over you.  They just want you to think that so you’ll buy what they’re selling.  In the same way, Shore is showing that many forms of modern evangelism leave non-Christians with a similar feeling - that Christians don’t really care about them as individuals but view them as "projects" or as a notch on their belts.  Once the Christian gets either a "yes" or "no, thanks" to the gospel invitation the Christian will soon be on his or her way to the next "prospect" and the last person will be left sitting in the dust.  In other words, we don’t appear to genuinely love or even care much about them.  They are simply a means for us to fulfill our religious duty of evangelism.

So Shore suggests that we need to move away from the Great Commission and take seriously the Great Commandment.  What I think he is actually saying is that if we take the Great Commandment seriously it will open doors to the Great Commission that were previously closed because people will begin to be drawn to the love they receive and wonder how they can get some of that for themselves.

If I’m reading him right, then I think Shore is saying something valuable.  We are overdue for a good examination of the methods we use in evangelism, where they originated, and what underlying message we’re communicating in them.  Shore gives quotes at the end of each chapter, quotes from non-Christians from all over America and their perceptions of Christians, which would seem to validate this sort of re-examination.

But I’m not sure it is necessary to overstate that case, as I believe Shore does in this book.  At the grass-roots level, which is where I believe this book is aimed, this book might accomplish the good of getting people to reexamine whether or not our desire to take the gospel to others is out of love for them or out of duty to the command.  Jesus was effective in offering life - and often being confrontational about it - because he could still be described as "the friend of sinners."  Too often our motive in sharing the good news has nothing to do with being anyone’s friend, especially if they are "sinners."  But I fear that this book may also have the negative consequence of leading people to the conclusion that even if we are with a friend we have no need of saying anything about the victory of Christ.  We’ll simply let them find their own path.

On a literary level I hardly liked this book at all.  According to the back cover, "John Shore is a humorist…."  But his humor just doesn’t work for me.  I’m a fan of humor, by the way.  I believe it is a powerful tool in both written and oral communication, especially if you want to disarm your audience and get people to relax with you and your topic.  I just find the humor in this book to be a little trite.  It is an easy-to-read book, but I was highly unmotivated to finish it because it’s just not my style.

For a much better read on evangelism in the postmodern context I would recommend Brian McLaren’s More Ready Than You Realize.  For slightly less money you’ll get far more value.

Blogs Of Note

Today I wanted to highlight a couple of blogs that I recommend to you and encourage you to check out regularly.

The first one is Dino Zaragoza at Z Life.  Dino is a sharp thinker and a guy who is absolutely great to just sit down with and have a good conversation.  In fact, the last time I saw Dino I nearly wet my pants because I just couldn’t pull myself away from the conversation.  And now that Starbucks is a historical note on his resume he is blogging much more frequently.  You can also find Dino in my sidebar links.

The other is David Phillips at wdavidphillips.com.  David is another great thinker.  A church planter in Delaware, David is also in the DMin program at George Fox Seminary studying with Leonard Sweet.  If you want the skinny on some relevant reading and want some exposure to good missional thinking, then check out David’s blog.  You can find him in sidebar links also.

Check those guys out.  You’ll be awfully glad you did.

El Gato

I’ve mentioned previously that I did not grow up a cat lover. Not much has changed. Until today. Well…I still don’t love cats, but I have found another use for them besides a long drive contest.

In our neighborhood we have moles. The rodent kind. Little buggers that look like field mice except with shorter tails and fatter heads. The other day I was watering one of our flower beds next to the house and noticed that water was bubbling up in another part of the yard. They’ve done a good bit of damage to our lawn in the front and our two boxers have done a bigger deal of damage in the back yard digging for them.

We have a neighborhood stray cat that has been hanging around for a couple of weeks now. Today as I was at home for lunch I noticed the cat in our yard, once again, but this time he seemed to be eating something. Yes. It was a mole. Maybe I don’t hate cats as much as I thought.

I Woke Up This Morning…

One of the things I share in common with our Youth Minister is a love for The Blues.  But his name is Doug and mine is Paul.  Not exactly Blues names.  And neither of us has shot a man in Memphis.  At least I haven’t.  Yet.  But once I do I’ll be changing my name to Blind Lemon Littleton, takin’ that southbound train and sellin’ my soul at the crossroads in exchange for fame and fortune.

Think you might have what it takes to be a Blues man? BluesGuide has a list of qualifications.  Go see how you stack up.  Here are a few:

Blues are simple. After you have the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes. Sort of.
            I got a good woman—with the meanest face in town.
            I got a good woman—with the meanest face in town.
            She got teeth like Margaret Thatcher and she weighs 500 pounds.

The Blues are not about limitless choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch; ain’t no way out.

Adults sing the Blues. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. In the Blues, "adulthood" means old enough to get the electric chair when you shoot that man in Memphis.

Good places to have the Blues: the highway, a jailhouse, an empty bed, the bottom of a whiskey glass. Bad places to have the Blues: ashrams, gallery openings, weekends in the Hamptons, golf courses, Tiffany’s, and Ivy League institutions.

For more, check out the BluesGuide.

Picture This

A little late again…but here nonetheless:

Journey Of The Magi

In light of my last post I offer this poetic reflection given to us by T. S. Eliot

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the now line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of sliver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.  I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;  this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Competing Interests…Or What Is A Baptist?

My posts last week on worship have gotten me thinking about just what I am/we are as Baptists.  In some ways we aren’t even sure ourselves.  William Estep defended the idea that Baptists arose from the Anabaptists.  In a recent article in the Southwestern News Malcolm Yarnell writes about Baptists and Anabaptists synonymously.  Leon McBeth, on the other hand, argued that Baptists came out of the English Separatist movement.  James Leo Garrett and Glenn Hinson took opposing sides in the same book on whether or not Baptists are evangelicals.  I grew up being taught that Baptists are not Protestants.  Of course, we weren’t Catholics, either.

There is an historical distinction between the Reformers and the Radical Reformers who not only rejected the Roman church, but Luther, Calvin and Zwingli as well.  We do see similarities with modern Baptists in that the Anabaptists generally believed in the baptism of confessing believers only and a congregational form of church government.  But there are many dissimilarities as well.  For instance, the Anabaptists generally believed in a simple lifestyle, radical non-violence (pacifism), an absolute belief in the sanctity of life (not just anti-abortion, but also against capital punishment), communal living and the sharing of goods - things we see more in the direct descendants of the Anabaptists - the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers and Church of the Brethren.  Little, if any, of that is descriptive of present-day Baptists and even the most staunchly independent of Baptist churches would reject nearly everything from the Anabaptists except for their polity and baptismal beliefs.

In addition, very early on the Baptists in England sought to identify with mainstream Protestantism as can most clearly be seen in one of the earliest and most widely used and known confessions of faith among Baptists, the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith which borrows extensively from the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of 1646.  In fact, growing up it was common to hear that "all the good Baptists use the Presbyterian commentaries."

So I’m experiencing a bit of a personal dilemma that I don’t yet know how to reconcile.  Unlike most of the Baptists that I see today I would identify with most of those things the Anabaptists believe(d) yet which we have rejected.  You won’t find Richard Land coming to me for advice on how to formulate a "just war" position.  Some might argue that just war theory is based upon Biblical principles, but you’ll generally have a difficult time convincing me of that - though I wouldn’t rule out the necessity of war in any and every case, though certainly most.  I tend to be against capital punishment, though there may be exceedingly rare instances when it is justified and/or necessary - but only when the facts are crystal clear.  I believe in a simple lifestyle, not that I always have.  I’ve been burned by a lesser degree of opulence, perhaps, and have learned some lessons from it.  I admire communal living and wish our family participated in more of it.

Yet I reject the radical congregationalism of the Anabaptists (as most of my Baptist brethren do) and believe, instead, that there are those who are called to fulfill specific functions of leadership within the church.  Elders, even [gasp!].  There is a lot of the Reformation theology that I admire and personally believe.  I’ve somewhat advocated the use of liturgical practices which is a radical departure from my free church tradition where it is evidence of dependence upon the Spirit to be spontaneous ….well ….ok …..so Baptists aren’t really any more spontaneous than the typical Catholic.  We like to think were at least open to the possibility of someone else being spontaneous.  As long as it is also somewhere else. 

And I’m not big into separatism.  I think that in separatism we lose our connection to the church of history (meaning history beyond 1950 - or even 1689).  We suffer from an unrootedness with the work of the Spirit in the church for about 1500 or 1600 of the 2000 years of church history.  Yes, much of that history has been a mess.  So has much of the last 400-500 years.  Heck, the last year in Southern Baptist life hasn’t been all that admirable.  I also think accountability is a good thing.  We talk about our "independent autonomous" churches which simply means that no one has the right to tell us we can’t be heretics if we want.  If we had greater levels of mutual accountability perhaps we wouldn’t be tolerating these notions of Baptists telling Mormons that they have more in common than a Baptist and a liberal Christian [HT: Kevin/Susan Stilley].

So it seems as if I’m about as confused about my own religious identity as Baptists have been throughout their existence.  Which I suppose just means that I’m a good Baptist.

[Image via Wikipedia]

Those Blasted Arminian/Emergent/Liberal Types

I wish my friend Steve Walker had a blog, but alas, he has opted for something better - a motorcycle.  I, on the other hand, have a blog.  However, with the rising price of gasoline my wife, who is "frugal" is now beginning to weigh scales of economy with probabilities of skin coming into too close contact with asphalt.  I’ve had motorcycle wrecks before, but always on a surface much more forgiving than concrete.  For now I’m left to pay more than $60 to fill up my van.  And some time for blogging.

Which brings me to a quote Steve sent me last week.  It’s about the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  And unity.  Here it is (from an old post at PostReformed.com):

Jesus, of course, gives us the right model to follow. Take a look at
Jesus’ ministry. Seriously, look at it. Read through the gospel
accounts, and tell me this about the three and a half years we have
recorded: Is Jesus concerned with going around and correcting the
systematic theology of the day? Or is He calling the poor, the
downtrodden, the demon-possessed, the prostitutes, and the tax
collectors to gather around Him and have a meal?

You may say that’s a false dichotomy. Maybe it is. But I’ve spent a
lot of time around a lot of different types of Christians. Want to know
what I’ve found? There are a lot of Arminians, Emergents, and “liberal”
type Christians who follow Jesus a lot closer than I do when it comes
to the stuff that separates the sheep from the goats. What am I
supposed to do? Go tell them that if they just fixed their theology,
got Reformed, and started confessing Westminster, they’d be more
gracious people, better followers of Jesus? And give them what as an
example? Myself? No way! Would that I had the heart for the poor found
in many of them! Various Reformed churches that spend all their time on
the finer points of theology while battered women can’t find shelter?
Certainly not! Would that we were more like some of our brothers and
sisters, to whom we impute all sorts of evil, in following Jesus!

As it says, there’s probably a bit of a false dichotomy in there, but there is a good point being made and it isn’t just about the need to be both orthodox and compassionate toward the less fortunate.  It is about the relative importance of some of the doctrinal hills upon which we are willing to die, and/or kill.  Which reminds me of the other quote Steve sent which is from Tim Keller about B. B. Warfield.  Keller said that Warfield had a vision one time in which a
sheet was lowered from heaven, and in the sheet were all sorts of Arminians, and
Semi-Pelagians, and so forth. And the Lord said to Warfield, "Kill and eat!"  Hahahaha!  Hehe……..he…….[ahem].

I’m not a "unity at all costs" kind of guy.  But for the most part I think that most of our denominational/interdenominational responses have been of one extreme or another.  We either work for unity with just anyone and everyone with little if any parameters (so long as a person can make at least a half-hearted affirmation of a potential deity somewhere), or we require people affirm all of the essentials of the Christian faith along with a litany of other doctrinal positions besides - or just declare that everything is essential.

Given the world and religion of his day, it does seem that Jesus was rather ambivalent about most of the things that get people all doctrinally worked up these days.  He never demanded a singular view of the atonement - or even advocated a primary view, at least not in the doctrinal terms that get bandied about today, his eschatology was very non-particular (yes, I’ve read Matthew 24/Mark 13), he never laid out an established ecclesiology and he never baptized anyone, whether infant or adult, either by sprinkling, pouring or immersion.  I’m not suggesting those matters don’t have their place.  I am suggesting they may not have the place to which we have elevated them.  One thing he did elevate was the unity of the brethren and sistren.   Maybe we should all get into a good heated argument about that. 

And motorcycles and blogs.

Picture This

Here’s my Friday Saturday photos.  Better late than never, eh?

These two are prom pics of our girl Jay.  They boy is Tyler.  The reason he isn’t looking at the camera is that there were about six people trying to take pictures at the same time.  Unfortunately he’s also pasty white and it was hard getting both he and Jay exposed just right - so he looks a little washed out.  Sadly he really is almost that white.

Worship And The Local Church

Well, I meant to post this yesterday, but a late night Tuesday night and a field trip to "The little Smithsonian of the west" with my six-year-old’s kindergarten class means that blogging matters had to wait.

In the previous post I suggested that an element in establishing immersive worship is the recovery of the church calendar - rescuing it from the American cultural calendar.  The comments migrated toward the next inevitable question: what might that look like in the local church?

Let me simply list the things Fitch suggests in The Great Giveaway and then I’ll try to interact with those suggestions.  For Fitch, immersive worship would include: 1) patterning worship after call and response.  In other words, pattern worship in such a way that God’s call initiates and sustains worship rather than our activities (singing, praying, etc.) being what initiates and sustains worship.  This is, according to Fitch, the Biblical pattern we see for worship (e.g. Exodus 15; 1 Chron. 16; Rev. 4-5).  2) Revive the church calendar.  3) Reinvigorate the Eucharist making it a central part of worship.  4) Use candles and other tactile symbols [how’s that, Doug? ;)].  5) Use the visual arts.  Utilize the power of the message viewed with the eyes as well as that heard with the ears.  6) Sing substantive music.  Substantive does not necessarily mean "old," "hymn," or "of a traditional style."  It means that the words have substance.  They lead us to great thoughts of God.  They speak a message that engages us at a deep level.  It may be that we take a great old hymn and update it musically and/or contemporize it lyrically.  7) See the sanctuary as an art gallery.  Employ visual depictions of the church season.  Show the story along with telling it.

Fitch writes:

We evangelicals should visualize and ritualize our worship around tangible symbols that invite us out of our heads into the existence of God. We need to symbolize mystery and recognize his transcendence in ways science and modernity won’t let us. We need to touch, see, and remember the cross because it was and is real.  We need to be invited into his drama with real things.

He is aware that to many this will sound Catholic.  It is, without a doubt, a departure from the Free Church tradition.  But the Free Church tradition struggles with being disconnected from the past and therefore uncertain in its present and future.  What Fitch seeks is worship that is connected to its past, yet is at the same time flexible enough to speak evangelistically to the present and adapt to the future.  Strict adherence to historical liturgical forms may very well lead to a dead traditionalism.  However, we can maintain the historical substance of the liturgy of the church while adopting more current and relevant forms.  I know this will sound anathema to Baptists.  We generally pronounce it li-pfft-tur-blblpht-gy-plplbft.  But I’m finding more and more especially among the younger crowd who are disenchanted with a faith that seems divorced from its past (meaning the ancient roots.  For most Baptists "the past" means the 1950s, or if you’re lucky the 1850s).  Reconnecting worship to what Robert Webber called "Ancient-Future" ways may well be an avenue for escaping the self-centered/consumer approach to worship.

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