God Trending Away from the West

This article, as well as books like Philip Jenkins' The Next Christendom and David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs make it clear that vibrant, biblical Christianity is leaving the West and showing up in the East and the southern hemisphere.

My favorite line from the article:

"Serious missionary work began in Nigeria in 1842, conducted by a Church Mission Society dedicated to promoting 'the knowledge of the Gospel among the heathen.' In 2007, the Nigerian outreach to America officially began, on the fertile mission fields of Northern Virginia."

For those of us in the West, I can't help but think this trend is evidence of God's judgment upon us. I don't see times getting any easier for us--both from within and from outside the church.

Premoderns, Moderns & Evangelism

David Wells, in his excellent book Above All Earthly Pow'rs, writes insightfully about the difference between premodern and modern societies and their relationship to God:

"In premodern societies, the sacred was a matter-of-fact part of life; in modern societies, God has been excluded from public life, pushed to the margins of relevance, and made to live out his life, as it were, underground and out of sight" (27).

Why mention this seemingly academic difference? Because when you're witnessing or speaking to a poorly discipled Christian, and they don't understand your Christian commitment, it may be because you're coming across as a premodern to a modern or postmodern person.

For example, if you see the hand of God in every event of your life and you see living a life that is pleasing to Him as most important than you're thinking and acting and interpreting the world as a premodern (which I'd add is closer to the biblical view of life).

However, if God is a kind of after thought in your life, and your personal history as well as world history is interpreted without any thought of God that's more modern and postmodern--and far less biblical, I might add.

Often times, our miscommunication comes from the fact that we're approaching all of life from different eras. We need to know this if we're going to communicate the premodern gospel to modern and postmodern people effectively.

The Bible's Understanding of the World

David Wells writes these helpful words about what the Bible means when when its writers use the word "world" in Above All Earthly Pow'rs:

"we need to be redeemed...from "following the course of this world"--our embeddedness in culture at the point of its fallen horizons, false belief structures, and misdirected devotions--all of which are kept in place by the powers of darkness (Eph 2:1-3). This is what gives to all culture its curiously ambiguous quality for it is an extension both of human life made in the image of God and of human life now fallen. In the Christian scheme, then, we have to be redeemed from sin and uprooted from what is dark in culture, from what in the Bible is called "this world," for Satan's captivity is exercised through the instrumentality of sin and that of "the world." It therefore becomes a matter of no small moment to be able to discern what in our culture is good, what is simply innocent, and what is neither" (23-4).

I italicized that last sentence because that is the goal of these posts on A.A.E.P. I want to be able to do this for the glory of God, the sanctification of His church, and it's witness to the world.

Am I Being Squeezed?

Listen to this argument from David Wells in Above All Earthly Pow'rs and see if it doesn't make sense about many of the problems we face as Christians and churches who seek to live lives that honor Christ and the difficulty we face:

"...the kind of world in which we live, and the kinds of ways which we have for engaging it and negotiating it, will often mean that our consciousness and our habits will reflect that wold which is outside of ourselves, regardless of generational, gender, or ethnic particularities. The habits which have emerged in the productive order of our modernized world tend to become ubiquitous, regardless of how different we may be in some other ways. ... Thus, those who gaze at a computer screen by day and television screen by night may well feel awkwardly obsolete in church if there is not another screen on which to gaze. The demands of efficiency, and the rational, impersonal workings of bureaucracy, are so much a part of who we have become that many of us also want our churches to have the feel of a smoothly run corporation. Our capitalism has been so virile and abundant, filling our lives with goods in quantities unknown in any previous age, that it seems only natural -- at least in middle class, white churches -- to expect that same range of choice in programs and services as we experience in the commercial world. The norms of the workplace so easily and so unknowingly become our own internalized norms. And this is true of most people" (22-23).

I believe truly effective and life-changing ministries will challenge these kinds of things in the hearts and minds of those attending.

I know I have to watch the lure of these things in my own heart. The world has so squeezed me into it's mold that many times I don't even know it until I read a book like this one that exposes me and encourages me to be transformed, metamorphisized, by the renewing of my mind according to God's Word.

Tribalism vs. The Gospel

While discussing trends that are facing the church in the 21st century, David Wells speaks of "the growing bonding of kin...in the new expressions of tribalism--nationalistic, ethnic, and generational" (22).

To this growing trend--which I think is blatantly evident in the niche churches that market exclusively to subgroups so as to be "specific things to specific people"--the gospel is directly opposed.

In Ephesians 2:11-18, Paul argues that Christ achieved relational peace between Jews and Gentiles on the cross where he said "For [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made the two [Jew & Gentile] one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace" (vv. 14-15).

Churches must be marked by this relational peace. Any racism, classism, ageism, musicism, income-ism, or any other -ism, or any ministry model that glories in and perpetuates our differences has the effect of reintroducing war to a battlefield Christ already brought peace to. It pretends that this very important--though often neglected--work of relational peace that Jesus achieved on the cross never happened.

A people who're truly seeking to have a cross-centered, gospel-focused, Christ-exalting life and ministry cannot let this be.

Are You Being Squeezed???

Have you ever noticed that invisible forces, influences we swim in constantly but rarely ever notice, are constantly shaping how we understand life, God, others, ourselves, what's important, what's not, etc.?

And, have you ever noticed how what we think about the world, what we think it's all about, impacts how we experience that world. Don't know what I mean? Let this illustration from David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs help:

"...a materialistic scientist and an animist who believes that trees have souls comparable to hos own will look at the same trees rather differently. The difference lies not in the trees, but in the interpretive framework in which they are understood" (20).

In the margin of my book I wrote that the difference also lies in who has the correct understanding of the tree, the understanding of the tree that matches what the tree actually is.

Why does all this matter? When a belief matches reality, we use a specific word to describe that particular kind of relationship between belief and reality. That word is "truth."

When we are "conformed to this world" (Rom 12:2), when we let the world system squeeze us into it's mold so that we think and feel and desire and live like that world, we are living in direct opposition to the truth.

This is why it is so important for Christians to attend churches that don't just make them feel good. Feelings don't sanctify. Feeling are a thermometer for our sanctification. Truth sanctifies (John 17:17), and we need churches that take us deeply into God's truth.

I had lunch with a friend of mine this week and we were talking about preaching. I remember reading an article by John MacArthur, I think it's the first article in the first TMS Journal, about the relationship between inerrancy and preaching.

The gist of his argument was that you see what people really believe about the Bible in their preaching. If you believe the inspiration of the Bible is verbal, reaching down to the very words on the page, than you will preach every word on the page. You'll feel like you're sinning if you don't explain every nook and cranny because you're skipping something God wanted said. You don't do that, you must revisit what you think about the Bible because your actions contradict your doctrinal statement.

We need pastors and churches that preach and live according to what their doctrinal statements say about the Bible. We have that, and Christians will have a much harder time "fitting in" with and feeling comfortable around and being energized by the things of this world. Instead, they'll feel at home in the truth because they're being "transformed by the renewing of their minds" (Ron 12:2).

Exegeting Culture is Critical

Back in 2002 I went on an interview at a church in Torrance where one of the pastors asked me to define "culture." Since that moment, my mind has always had that splinter in it "What is culture?"

Thankfully, David Wells has helped to remove that splinter when we takes his cue from Stuart Ewen and writes that culture is "the accumulated understanding by which a given people live and maintain themselves in a given society" and defines it for himself as "all of those ways of looking at life, the habits of mind, that become typical and normative in a given context" (18-19).

He goes on to say that culture "impinges on us, makes demands of us, sometimes alarms us, sustains us, and occupies us. it is the world that envelops us in a myriad of images in terms of which we think of existence, by which we respond to it, through which we communicate with others. And so many of these images by which we understand ourselves are commercial in nature" (19).

What I want to point out is what's behind that last sentence. The reason pastors and church leaders should take long, deep and prolonged looks at the culture around them is because all of us tend to "live and maintain" ourselves, we tend to look at and orient our lives by our culture. "Normal" is defined by what's typical in our context (as an aside, what becomes normal is usually determined by the marketing of the context).

While this is what culture does, this is not what it ought to do. Defining what's normal, what we're to think and live by, is God's role not culture's.

As a result, culture is not neutral. It's the conglomeration of a myriad of influences that have all been fused together to create it. When the major influences in a culture undermine Christianity, the people and churches will automatically reflect that undermining.

So, to really impact people enveloped by their culture, pastors and church leaders must be able to exegete the Bible, their own hearts and the culture. The Bible and the surrounding culture have the same effect on people, both want to be the dominant way of interpreting life.

Therefore, a relevant ministry must able to inflict the biblical worldview and it's norms on the hearts of those it reaches, rather than letting culture dictate the habits of our hearts. This is done by getting a good read on the culture, getting a good read on the Bible and then contrasting its superiority in every way to the culture.

When this happens, Christianity becomes a comprehensive world and life view, not merely a box we check off every Sunday in our organizers.

Culture: Delicious but Dangerous

I agree with David Wells when he writes:

"...it is not possible to live with any degree of authenticity as a Christian unless the modern world is understood to be what, in fact, it is: delicious but dangerous, like the Turkish delight that proved so irresistible and so lethal to one small boy in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" (16).

Any church that fails to help their people recognize that we're still pilgrims passing through, that this is not our home, that the concerns of this life are not primary, that life in the West--the Disneyland called America as John Piper calls it--is not our friend.

I especially saw this earlier today (on Al Mohler's blog) when I read these words from Steven Weinberg's (Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas) review of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion in the London Times where he writes:

"...although most Americans may be sure of the value of religion, as far as I can tell they are not very certain about the truth of what their own religion teaches. According to a recent article in the New York Times, American evangelists are in despair over a poll that showed that only 4 per cent of American teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. The spread of religious toleration provides evidence of the weakening of religious certitude. Most Christian groups have historically taught that there is no salvation without faith in Christ. If you are really sure that anyone without such faith is doomed to an eternity of Hell, then propagating that faith and suppressing disbelief would logically be the most important thing in the world – far more important than any merely secular virtues like religious toleration. Yet religious toleration is rampant in America."

And...

"Even though American atheists might have trouble winning elections, Americans are fairly tolerant of us unbelievers. My many good friends in Texas who are professed Christians do not even try to convert me. This might be taken as evidence that they don’t really mind if I spend eternity in Hell, but I prefer to think (and Baptists and Presbyterians have admitted it to me) that they are not all that certain about Hell and Heaven. I have often heard the remark (once from an American priest) that it is not so important what one believes; the important thing is how we treat each other. Of course, I applaud this sentiment, but imagine trying to explain “not important what one believes” to Luther or Calvin or St Paul. Remarks like this show a massive retreat of Christianity from the ground it once occupied...."

He nails us!!! And, the main reason for his experiences with Christians is not so much that science has destroyed religious certitude (although I do think that's contributed) that we've fallen in love with all the "stuff"--the fun, the values, the thought, the affluence--of our world and greatly fear not fitting in with those in it, forgetting that the world is not the Christian's friend because those who love it are God's enemy (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15).

Learn Sarkhanese!!!

In his book Above All Earthly Pow'rs, David Wells summarizes the book The Ugly American to make an important point about a church's faithfulness while engaging the culture.

"...the reader early on is introduced to Louis Sears...[who] settles on becoming the United States' ambassador to the fictional Asian country of Sarkhan. However, he neither learns the language nor the customs of this country. Indeed, he forbids his staff from becoming too involved in Sarkhanese society. The problem which arises, of course, is that he does not know what is happening, since he cannot read the papers, and in Sarkhanese society, etiquette does not allow for translators to pass on bad news to the person for whom they are translating. Furthermore, he cannot communicate American interests to most people since he does not speak their language and they do not understand his" (10).

Wells then makes this application of The Ugly American to church ministry:

"Perhaps, then, we might say that on the one end we have those theologies which have learned Sarkhanese, learned the local culture and habits, but have lost touch with the country whose policies and interests they are supposed to represent as ambassadors. Instead, having cut themselves loose, they have come to see their oles as simply representing their own agendas and policies and passing them off as if they were those of the country whose ambassadors they supposedly are. On the other end, we have those theologies which are self-consciously ambassadorial but which fail to learn the Sarkhanese language and customs. Thus they are hobbled in their ability to communicate both the content of, and the reasons for, their country's policy decisions" (10-11).

This must not be because...

"...American culture is undergoing a drastic change in cultural mood, thereby transforming the missionary context in which the Church is living" (11; italics mine).

So, what should our response be?

"...the history of the church shows that in every generation there are cultural challenges...and yet generation after generation the Church has joyfully proclaimed the greatness of Christ in his humility in assuming our flesh, taking upon him our sin as if it were his won, and in conquering that sin also conquering both its consequence of death and the devil. The looming threats of aggressive religions, of hostile government powers, of tribes and nations bound in their opposition to Christ, are no match for the power of God made known in the gospel" (11).

Yes! Yeah God!

Therefore, the goal of every church and pastor should be the goal of this book: to learn the languages and customs of the changing culture to promote and proclaim the unchanging message of Christ crucified. May God help in this great task.

Pastor: Relevant or Biblical?

As someone who’s been both studying and teaching Christian theology for the past 10 years at the college level and above, these words from Above All Earthly Pow’rs are absolutely critical for reaching people with the Bible’s message:

“…theology, if it is true to its own nature, must be missiological in its intent. Its task is not only to understand the nature of biblical truth but also to ask how that truth addresses the issues of the day. Churches today, who send out missionaries to other parts of the world, would be considered greatly mistaken if they instructed those missionaries to depend only on the Word of God and not to attempt to understand the people to whom they have been sent to minister. But the same token, evangelical theology should not need to justify any attempt that it makes to understand the context into which it is called to speak. If there is self-justification to be made, it is by those theologians who, as D.M. Baillie observed, ‘are apt to be deaf to the questionings of the outside world’” (10).

Today, biblical knowledge is severely undervalued on the priorities of search committees and elder boards when looking for any level of pastoral candidates. Right theology, a solid grasp of the Bible’s content and the Bible’s solid grasp on their hearts has been replaced by having a connection at the church, being spiritual, cool, funny, dynamic, approachable, having sideburns, a fashion sense, a wallet chain and a vision.

To our context, therefore, it is important to reverse David Wells’ words to say it is equally true that any church or theologian or pastor who thinks they can be experts in being relevant with our culture / context / milieu while having a Sunday-school knowledge of the Bible is also “greatly mistaken” as they need to justify why they’ve purposely made themselves deaf to the questionings and commands of God through His Word.

No Bible? No God!

Please take seriously these words from David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs about the Bible as it relates to a church's or pastor's ministry philosophy.

"...the Word of God, read or preached, has the power to enter the innermost crevices of a person's being, to shine light in unwanted places, to explode the myths and deceits by which fallen life sustains itself, and to bring that person face to face with the eternal God" (8).

You might be asking, 'What does this have to do with ministry philosophy?' He goes on:

"This Word of God is the means by which God accomplishes his saving work in his people, and this is a work that no evangelist and no preacher can do" (9).

You got it yet? No? He then takes this insight about ministry philosophy and uses it to explain the superficiality of Christianity in the West with these penetrating words:

"This is why the dearth of serious, sustained biblical preaching in the Church today is a serious matter. When the Church loses the Word of God it loses the very means by which God does his work. In its absence, therefore, a script is being written, however unwittingly, for the Church's undoing, not in one cataclysmic moment, but in a slow, inexorable slide made up of piece by tiny piece of daily dereliction" (9).

Jesus in Western Society

It is important to know the purpose / thesis of a book to give a context to what you're reading.

With that in mind, the purpose of David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs is:

"...to be able to say more exactly how Christ, in whom divine majesty and human frailty are joined in one person, is to be heard, and is to be preached, in a postmodern, multiethnic, multireligious society" (7-8).

This purpose makes this book critically important because I think this issue is one of, if not the most, pressing concerns facing church leaders in the 21st century.

That is why I personally found this book to be so fascinating and penetrating that I read it twice and am blogging through it quite slowly now. I want to think more on this issue so if you know of anymore books that seek to accomplish a similar purpose, please list them in the comments.

On the Road to Nowhere

David Wells is right, in his newest book Above All Earthly Pow'rs, when he writes:

"There is a long trail of contextualized theologies, written over the last half century, in which the external dimension virtually replaces the internal, cultural interests eclipse biblical norms, and the result has been the kind of compromise, trendiness, and manipulation which ends up promoting worldly agendas, be they political, social, ideological, or personal, in place of biblical truth" (7).

In order to look relevant and compassionate, the Western church has allowed a myriad of theories, ologies, osophies to flood its banks and wash away biblical teaching on just about every subject.

The quest for something new when consuming has crept into theological education so that the new insight, the new revelation, the new book, the new idea, the new understanding, the new doctrine is now better than then old.

Sadly, we've forgotten that our job is not innovation; it is proclamation.

"And somewhere in the making of each of its [theologies] the fatal step was taken to allow the culture to say what God's story should sound like rather than insisting that theology is not theology if it is not listening to God telling his own story in his own way. ... Theology stands or falls with the Word of God, for the Word precedes all theological words by creating, arousing, and challenging them." He goes on to say, "if theology wants to be something other than a response to the [biblical] Word...it will rapidly become empty, futile, and without meaning" (7).

This is the destination--empty, futile, without meaning--of the path that the Western church is currently traveling down. And the same can be said of any life, any ministry, any church, any university that walks the same path, regardless of the worldly measures of success we may look to to tell us we're OK.

Ministry as Usual?

More from David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs:

"...the relation of Christ to non-Christian religions, as well as to these personally constructed spiritualities, is no longer a matter of theorizing from a safe distance but rather a matter of daily encounter in neighborhoods, in schools, at work, a the gas station, and at the supermarket" (5).

In other words, for some time now we've been unable to minister with the assumption that the people in our environments have the same basic worldview as we do.

Therefore, church leaders and pastors must take this new religious milieu into account when "doing church," which means well-thought out and well-prayed over training, as early as elementary school, in what the Bible teaches (doctrine) and why we believe it (apologetics).

If we treat ministry as (1) business as usual in "Christian America" or (2) if we market Christianity based on the preferences of religious consumers (e.g., the seeker and emergent movements), then I think Christianity in America will become the Christianity of Europe--weak, heretical and irrelevant.

Concerned for the Church Silent

I just finished my second reading of David Wells' discernment-filled book Above All Earthly Pow'rs. Because I liked the material so much, and because the material was, at times, difficult for me to fully grasp, I decided that I'd blog through it here.

This first quote is from the introduction and concerns the silence the church has had in the face of the serious evils we're facing in our world today, and what that says about it's overall health:

"...what has become conspicuous by its scarcity, and not least in the evangelical corner of [the Church], is a spiritual gravitas, one which could match the depth of horrendous evil and address issues of such seriousness. Evangelicalism, now much absorbed by the arts and tricks of marketing, is simply not very serious anymore" (4).

It seems to me that one of the objectives of this book is to address the American Church's lighthearted, superficial nature. I hope examining these things will address these things in my own heart and in my ministry in the future.