Tag: evangelism

Book Review: Questioning Christianity by Dan Paterson and Rian Roux

Disclaimer: Dan is a friend, and a review PDF was provided to me free of charge. Dan is the founder of Questioning Christianity.

If Sam Chan’s books on evangelism (reviewed here and here) are the sorts of textbooks or handbooks you give to Christians to provide a framework for how we share the good news about Jesus in a post-post-modern, post secular context, then Questioning Christianity by Paterson and Roux is the book you give to Christians to give to their friends (and a book you give to your friends) who are seeking to make sense of the world we live in.

I’ve written here, and elsewhere (part 1, part 2), about the power of story in a post-post-modern world — the snapshot summary is that if post-modernity involved the death of ‘grand narratives’ about life (including the idea of God), the pushback against post-modernity’s overreach — whether that’s ‘post-post modernity’, meta-modernity, or the “new sincerity” — has included a rediscovery of the place of, and existential satisfaction connected to, a meta-narrative. Meta-modernity basically fuses post-modernity with the reaction against post-modernity — recognising that post-modernity rightly reacted against modernity’s disenchanting atomisation of life into a series of propositions, and while it killed ‘metanarratives’, it replaced those big stories with stories and recognised experience and emotion as legitimate parts of the human quest for truth (even if that truth was largely ‘subjective’ and in the context of one’s own story). A summary of meta-modernity says the difference is:

“Whereas postmodernism was characterised by deconstruction, irony, pastiche, relativism, nihilism, and the rejection of grand narratives (to caricature it somewhat), the discourse surrounding metamodernism engages with the resurgence of sincerity, hope, romanticism, affect, and the potential for grand narratives and universal truths, whilst not forfeiting all that we’ve learnt from postmodernism.”

Evangelism and apologetics in this age is going to look different; it’s going to look like the skeleton you find in Sam Chan’s work, and the fleshed out body you find in Questioning Christianity (and also, hat tip to Glynn Harrison’s A Better Story, that applies this model to a particular ethical question — around sexuality). It’s an ambitious book — it aims to serve multiple audiences and both present a positive, sincere and hopeful account of the Christian story as the story that organises the universe (and life within it), while also engaging big questions that might be raised in response.

The ‘big story’ — the book’s first section — charts the Biblical story through narrative settings — garden (Eden), tower (Babel), Nation (Israel’s story), Cross, Church, and City — and matching ‘character developments’ — created for good, damaged by evil, chosen to bless, redeemed by love, sent together to heal, and set everything right. There’s a sort of ‘hero’s journey’ going on in that set of movements for those familiar with Joseph Campbell’s work on the shape of stories.

Though the book works with a narrative framing, it manages to teach the importance of profound doctrines, with real and appealing clarity, along the way — for example — zeroing in on the importance of the Trinity and God as loving-community in the chapter telling the Garden story

There’s a commitment to a Jesus-centered Biblical Theology here that is rich and good. There’s a small quibble I have with the way the book zeroes in on the ‘universality’ of the ‘mythic’ shape of the Bible (that is, the way it functions to provide a meta-narrative for all human people). It’s a quibble the book seeks to address, but may not fully resolve. The Bible’s story is not merely archetypal in a way that answers, say, the Jordan Peterson’s of this world who see the power of myth and archetypes in organising life here and now, but also in C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien’s sense it’s the ‘myth that became history’ and the ‘eucatastrophic tale’ that ‘hallows all other tales’ — the “true fairy tale” — it’s not just a story that mirrors and meets our desires and quest for a true self, but first God’s story about Jesus that becomes our story through our union with Christ. I think Questioning Christianity threads that needle. Especially with this paragraph, recognising this dilemma:

“Perhaps one of the most unique and striking elements of the Christian story is that it is not merely religious philosophy or ideology, for its central claims are based on historical events that can be investigate and verified. That Jesus is history is what makes the gospel good news rather than simply a good idea. Christians believe that the One who made the world has left His historical footprint on it.”

Another minor quibble is that I think while the narrative does good work with God’s presence (Eden) and exile from Eden, and then Israel’s exile, I think I’d’ve liked to have split the Israel chunk of the ‘metanarrative’ a bit more decisively around the land, and exile into the nations — and done a bit more on recognising that we modern (gentile) readers are sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, not of Israel, and that Israel’s exile in Babylon represents them joining the rest of us in need of re-creation.

The way the story becomes our story is, in part, a function of God’s redemptive commitment not only to Israel through its Messiah, Jesus, but for all nations through the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, who is exalted to the highest place above all powers and principalities. Our position as readers of the Old Testament is as those brought in not through heritage, but through God’s gracious act to unite us to himself in Jesus, so our lens, in the Old Testament, isn’t only what’s going on for Israel, but what’s going on in the hearts of the Babylonians. Where Israel is ‘chosen to bless’ — it’s not just chosen to experience God’s blessing, but to be a blessing to the nations (like it is, for a moment, under Solomon). It’s, in part, the failure to do this that leads to Israel’s exile. That gets a sentence or two along the way, it’s not missing from what is an excellent retelling of the Biblical narrative, but, personally I’d have made it a bigger deal. As I say, this is a minor quibble. I do think it’s a quibble that leaves us with a slightly different question, as gentile readers, at the end of the Old Testament to the ones listed in the book, something like: “If it isn’t clear God is blessing Israel, does God care about non-Israelites like me?” The payoff to adding this thread might’ve come in the section on the church, and on Pentecost, where the Spirit descends as a clear sign that not only is exile over for God’s faithful Israel, those who recognise Jesus as the Christ, but as the Spirit spreads with the proclamation of the Gospel from Jerusalem, to Judea, to the ends of the earth — our exile ends as we are united in Jesus. And, again, this is not absent, it simply enriches the story as it is presented — but, more importantly, it shows how this story about Jesus becomes my story as an Aussie (gentile) living in the 21st century.

“This moment marked the birth of the church, where God’s holy presence was no longer cloistered in tents or temples built by human hands. Now He dwelled in His people. Christians became mobile temples, taking God’s presence with them wherever they went as hotspots of heaven on earth. And God’s power animated them to do the impossible.

Where God had scattered humanity by confusing their languages at Babel, now at Pentecost He began a global gathering of tribes and tongues by enabling Jesus’ followers to tell the Christian story in languages they never knew.”

Once the story has been told, Paterson and Roux shift to showing how we step into that story. Before, I again, offer some quibbles (that may actually simply be expressions of my different theological tradition), I want to say this attempt to move from the abstraction of ‘narrative’ to something more tangible and concrete is often the missing link in the shift back to metanarrative; part of the move from modernity (just believe propositions) to post-modernity and beyond is trying to capture the language of belief/faith/trust that is more than simply ‘give rational assent to’ — and there’s whole theological schisms around this stuff (think the New Perspective), but capturing the sense of inhabiting and embodying a story does seem to sit in a rich vein of both Old and New Testament writings and practices. I think Questioning Christianity offers some really helpful language to bridge this gap.

That said, I do think this section would sing, even more, if the language around relationship was grounded in Union with Christ, not only ‘believing and following’ (though I recognise those are fundamentally Gospel invitations in that they are what Jesus calls for in the Gospel. This is, for what it’s worth, how I understand the language of repentance in the New Testament — not so much as a call to ‘reject sin’ but to ‘follow Jesus’ (and so reject sin). This slight change in language would’ve represented a shift to seeing ourselves positioned in this grand story ‘in Christ’, by the author of the story — rather than us choosing this story as the one we’d particularly like to inhabit, but maybe that’s my Calvinism coming through…

“Perhaps the best way, though, to come at defining Christianity is to let the Bible shape our answer. As best we can distill, becoming a Christian is fundamentally about stepping into the Christian story in response to Jesus’ invitation to believe in Him and follow Him. And first and foremost that means beginning a new relationship with God.

This is the beating heart of the Jesus movement.

From here, a new life story begins to emerge as we embrace a new community gathered around the gospel, receive from God a new identity as our foundation for self-understanding and expression, follow Jesus’ roadmap into a new way to live, and launch into a new purpose for our lives.”

I have not-insignificant concerns around the use of the word ‘identity’ here, and the way it freights in the ides of ‘self-understanding and expression’ via consumer choice; but this is a pretty niche concern of my own, and I simply would’ve replaced the word “identity” with “character”, and connected that back to the quote from Alisdair MacIntyre that Paterson and Roux share up front. And yet, this is such a helpful section in what is, overwhelmingly, an excellent book that sits in a unique position in the landscape. As a pastor of a church, I found the chapter on church within the broader work incredibly encouraging.

Each of the chapters in this section moves from ‘abstract’ to concrete transformative practices and resources, and these bits are terrifically helpful and memorable distillations, grounded in the Scriptures. They’re also where the six-stage framework setup in the first section are brought to life in helpful and integrated ways.

It’s one thing to commend the goodness and beauty of the Christian story — and life in it — which this book does admirably in parts 1 and 2, it’s ‘next level’ to then engage deeply with the questions raised by Christianity, which is both the heart of Dan’s ministry organisation Questioning Christianity, and this book. The book could’ve been an adequate evangelism resource — an excellent one even — if it finished up after section 2. But section 3 tackles big apologetics questions: what if the snake was right? How can a good God allow suffering? Why isn’t God more obvious? Has Science disproved God? Can I trust the Bible? Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? How can God be good when the church is so bad? Dan cut his teeth as an apologist working with an international apologetics organisation, and these chapters distill his time on the road answering big questions into erudite and tight answers that don’t simply assert a bunch of propositions, or get hyper-defensively aggressive, but seek to resonate with experiences and curiousity — engaging the questions as good faith exercises in the pursuit of truth (a bit like Paul in Athens).

A questioning faith is a robust and growing faith, and the book gives a grammar for the sort of Christianity that can withstand the pressures of the world we live in, and produce resilience rather than fragility. This section is, I think, as much for Christians to create and grapple with questions we should be wrestling with as it is for non-Christians coming at them for the first time (or over a long period of time).

God is not afraid of your questions. Why? Because if some- thing is true, then any doubts, rather than subverting faith, should serve as a doorway to a deeper faith. For the healthy response to any doubt is to launch an open investigation. Doubts should spark you to study the reasons for faith, and upon embarking on that journey, if your curious questions are met with credible answers, then you can emerge with a more fully-orbed trust that there is a substantial why behind the what of your beliefs. Serious space should always be made for questions and questioners to explore whether the Christian story can stand up to scrutiny. Such is the hallmark of any true story.

Truth invites questioning.

Yes and amen. There’s been a substantial debate within evangelistically minded Aussie pastors (and podcasters) around how we should promote Christianity in our present climate; whether we should emphasise the ‘good’, or acknowledge the place we now occupy in the post-Christian landscape. Whether our language should acknowledge and create doubt and curiousity or push toward certainty. I think there’s scope both for surprisingly positive presentations of the Gospel to people who’ve dismissed it (the first third of the book), and for engaging with the hardest form of the real questions (and accusations) people bring to the church, even in forms people might not’ve considered yet.

Paterson and Roux offer us an engagement with questions people are actually asking, which is better than hypothetical questions that people in were asking back in modernity — there’s a shift, in some sense, that I’ve observed from ‘is Christianity true’ to ‘is Christianity good’ and even if it’s held to be true, if it isn’t good, people don’t have a place for it in their lives. Questioning Christianity presents a Christianity that is good and true, and an account for why sometimes it hasn’t seemed either.

I must confess that these aren’t the existential questions I grapple with — I’m a bit weird — maybe. But they are questions that get asked (anecdotally, I’ve now had a series of people call my phone number, listed on our website, to ask about the apocalypse and Covid and a sense that we’re in the midst of a massive socio-political moment, and those have been fun conversations).

I’d love to see a follow up book applying the first section (the story) to ethical issues and questions — a bit like Harrison’s A Better Story — not just those the church struggles with, but those that are evidently problems that any grand metanarrative has to answer (around things like justice, personhood, the environment) — places where the goodness of the Christian story shines through (even if the church has been an agent of Babylon at times).

This is a good book — one that like Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s Resident Aliens left me inspired to view my faith as an adventure — a story to engage in — not just dead letters or propositions — and so I’d urge you, wherever you sit on the spectrum from unbelief to unquestioning Christian, to pick it up and give it a read. Maybe you, like the authors, will find truth and goodness in questioning Christianity again, they describe their experience living in this story as follows:

“We have found rich meaning and help and hope in following Jesus. And perhaps the most exciting aspect of becoming a Christian, of joining Jesus on the road, is the unpredictability of God. For it is when you hand over the pen of your own life story that you find yourself swept up into an adventure as wild as the imagination of God.”

That’s also my experience.

Buy a bunch of these for your friends — and, be sure to follow Questioning Christianity on the socials.

June 21, 2021

Review: How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being That Guy) by Sam Chan

Disclaimer: The review copy of this book was provided to me by Zondervan, the publisher, at the author’s request. There was no obligation for a positive review. You can read my reviews of other works by Sam Chan, on preaching, and evangelism, to see that my review of this work was always likely to be slightly biased.

Sam Chan wrote Evangelism in a Skeptical World back in 2018. It was a hefty tome, that dug deep into some of the challenges for making the good news about Jesus more plausible for a post-Christian, post-everything, world. As a practitioner, a preacher with a bent towards evangelism, I found it profoundly useful.

I worked hard to roll it out in our church community; we spent 2019 working through his book in weekly staff meetings at church, we presented sections of the book in 5 minute highlight spots in our Sunday services, we flew Sam to Brisbane to run a public training night in partnership with another Presbyterian Church up here, and I gave away 30 copies to families in my congregation, and to friends. I am an enthusiastic supporter of Sam’s material. Evangelism in a Skeptical World is a textbook. How To Talk About Jesus (Without Being That Guy): Personal Evangelism In A Skeptical World is a popular level repackaging of some of the material in the textbook, especially geared at everyday Christians — not just professional practitioners like me.

Sam says:

“One shortcoming of that book was that it served as a textbook that addressed any of the concerns of professional evangelism — evangelism done by those in professional Christian ministry. That’s why I’m writing this follow up book. This book is for everyday Christians, not just those in Christian ministry.”

The goal is to equip such Christians with ‘fresh insights’ so they become more confident and competent in evangelism, and walk away “thinking not just, “I can do that,” but also “I want to do that.”” This is a lofty and noble goal. I’d love just 10% of my community — or the church at large — to be driven to evangelism — to adopting an evangelistic lifestyle — the way this book depicts it. Were that to happen, there’d be plenty for the other 90% to do just in hanging around as part of the ‘plausibility structure’ of the Gospel.

There’s an age old debate in evangelical circles about whether the work of evangelism is reserved for particularly gifted individuals, or whether it is the task of all believers; the beauty of Sam’s approach is that it has space for both views, because it places the task of evangelism in the hands of the community, and helps us see how we might each play a part in the body, and its task of evangelism, but it’s also the work of a professional evangelist who has written, previously, a textbook for the professional evangelist. The question is whether this book makes the jump from ‘professional’ to everyday enthusiast. And I’m not sure; partly because I’m ill equipped to make that judgment from where I stand.

How To Talk About Jesus unpacks key principles in the Everyday Evangelism chapter of the first book, and adds a few insights and ideas that represent developments in Sam’s thinking since its publication. It’s a much more accessible read, coming in at 130 pages, and boasts a stunning line up of endorsements from around the globe including Ed Stetzer (who wrote the Foreword), Mark Sayers, Rebecca Manley Pippert, and Glen Scrivener.

People familiar with the textbook will find a package that’s much easier to dig into and discuss with others — partly because it is a much less intimidating form than a book that spends a significant volume of ink justifying its existence by anticipating objections, and working at establishing a model. Those who, like me, see Evangelism In A Skeptical World establishing a theological coherent and sociologically engaged methodology will have confidence to roll this book out in our own lives, and as a resource in the lives of others. The previous theological justification for this methodology is reduced to a couple of pages.

All your (my) favourite ideas from the first book are there (sometimes a little repackaged) — merging universes, go to their things first, coffee-dinner-gospel, listen before you speak, tell a better story, tell a story about Jesus — these were the six strategies in the Everyday Evangelism chapter in his first book; each is unpacked in a chapter, simultaneously tightened up, and expanded to include updated cultural analysis. Lots of Sam’s strengths lie in his whip-smart (though always humble) ability to integrate ideas from a variety of realms, his theology, his personal experience in relationships, his listening to others and their observations, and a reasonable grasp of other disciplines related to persuasion (from speech act theory to sociology). So, for example, his chapter on merging universes includes a section on friendship in the modern world that digs into loneliness that expands on the earlier book:

“Sociologists say that human beings need friendships at three different levels. First, they need a tribe of 150 people for belonging, status, and identity. Second, they need a network of thirty friends. And third, they need an inner circle of five trusted friends — the sort of friends you can call on for a favour, to help you move to a new house, or to babysit your kids in an emergency. Studies are now showing that most people in the West lack this tribe, network, and inner circle… It’s harder now than ever before to make friends because of our fractured, isolated, and transient lifestyles. Studies show that loneliness is the new health epidemic in the West. Sixty percent of Australians report themselves as lonely, and 80 percent say it’s a problem in their world.”

That sort of analysis of the opportunities for Christians to provide the sort of community that the command of Jesus to ‘love our neighbours as we love ourselves’ ought to generate is helpful, so to is how, in a later chapter, he explores the balance between friendship as an ends in itself, and friendship as a means to an ends in a way that stops this being a sort of ‘dark arts of Christian persuasion’ manual. The pub test for an evangelism hand book is, I think, would I be happy for a non-Christian friend to read this to see how Christians think about the purpose and nature of evangelism (and so the nature of those we seek to reach). This book, from where I sit, passes that pub test. Sam’s work incorporating family systems theory into our friendships and where evangelism sits is really helpful, he uses the dilemma of ‘overfunctioning and underfunctioning’ to unpack how we might approach relationships with integrity as people who genuinely believe the Gospel is good news and the source of truth, and life, and hope.

“God has blessed us with great friends We should enjoy our friends just for who they are — a good gift from God to enjoy — regardless of whether we get to tell them about Jesus. But at the same time, we should make the most of every opportunity God has given us to tell our friends about Jesus. If I only see the friendship as a means to tell them about Jesus, them I’m overfunctioning. I’m trying to make something happen that might not be there. And I am using them as a means toward an end… On the other hand, if I don’t try to tell them about Jesus I’m underfunctioning. There will be times when I could have and should have tried to tell them about Jesus.”

The new tips (chapters 7 and 8) are useful additions to the six strategies from his first book; they are ‘Become Their Unofficial Defacto Chaplain’ and ‘Lean In To Disagreement,’ there are elements in both these chapters in the previous book, but the disagreement chapter perhaps represents some reflections on the ongoing changes happening in the west since the publication of Evangelism In A Skeptical World, which had a significant section devoted to defeater beliefs and apologetics framed on the defensive, this chapter suggests the time has come to adopt more positive apologetics; this observation perhaps owes a debt to Mark Sayers, whose analysis mirrors the analysis Sam provides in the front of the book for a time such as this; namely that the nature of the post-Christian west is that we’ve not moved back to a pre-Christian era, but a world profoundly shaped by Christianity where people now want the fruits of the Gospel without the Gospel, or as Sayers puts it ‘the kingdom without the king.’ There are, then,  actually positive aspects of Christianity that create the sorts of objections people now bring to Christianity (Sam works this through, for example, with the idea that a God should be assessed using criteria like ‘goodness’ or ‘love’). One of the beautiful things about Sam’s methodology — built from his theology of evangelism — is that it lives up to the title; it is relentlessly about Jesus. If you want help talking about Jesus in a way that grapples with the world as it is, in ways that might work, Sam is a good guide.

Chapter 7, ‘Become Their Unofficial Defacto Chaplain’ is perhaps where the biggest question about whether the book nails the brief comes up for me, but as a bivocational professional, Sam is actually better positioned to assess the questions I have than I am.

Many of the examples Sam shares from his own life involve conversations, and relationships, built from particular opportunities that are created as a result of his profession. It is profoundly easy for me to get into conversations about religion because 90% of my conversations with new strangers involve the question ‘what do you do?’ and the inevitable awkward conversation that develops from my answer; I can relate to lots of the opportunities Sam describes in the book, but it’s harder for people in my church community to pivot those interactions towards the sorts of conversations and relationships Sam describes. It is easy for me to slip into the de facto chaplain role in the lives of my friends — and probably even for him to do this as a bivocational worker. There’s a bit more groundwork to put in that we professionals don’t have to do. And look, a significant chunk of my audience (so far as I’m aware) are professional ministry types — and you guys and girls, you have no excuse. Imagine your community if you modeled the sorts of relationships that Sam describes to the people around you, involving them in the work of the Gospel happening in your neighbourhoods and suburbs.

That said, Sam doesn’t shy away from the fact that the lifestyle change required for the approach to evangelism his book advocates is costly and requires a deep systemic commitment, not just for him, but also for his family. It’s not a set of evangelism tactics, silver bullets, or pre-packaged solutions. I don’t think it’s necessary to be a professional evangelist to practice hospitality, or have a sense of how to listen to others, and ask questions, or to take up any of his other challenges — lots of it boils down to a commitment to people, and to Jesus — I just think it helps. The way of life he pictures is compelling (but probably difficult for introverts, though Sam, himself, is an introvert).

While there are parts of the two final tips that are likely to prove challenging, there’s gold in these chapters that are worth the cover price if you’ve already got Evangelism in a Skeptical Age. The section on ‘How to be a Chaplain‘ and especially ‘how to be wise’ could be titled ‘how to be the things I love about Sam Chan,’ other than the great section on hospitality earlier, it’s the closest he gets to acknowledging that his BBQ obsession is a useful part of his evangelistic tool kit. In my time at Bible College I became pretty convinced about the idea that the Wisdom Literature in the Old Testament was essentially Israel’s international evangelistic strategy — that the nations flocking to hear Solomon’s wisdom, in the Bible’s narrative, was a model of how Israel was to be a compelling blessing to the nations, connecting them to truths about the world and the ‘fear of the Lord’ as the beginning of true wisdom, and that the texts in the wisdom literature are deliberately ‘global’ in their approach (so, Proverbs borrows stacks of Egyptian wisdom material and reframes it). Sam finds similar examples in the faithful, chaplain-like, presence of Israelites in foreign courts — from Joseph, to Moses, to Daniel, to Ezra — all of whom were known for their wisdom. You’ve heard of the Daniel diet, here’s the Sam Chan diet:

“I’ve learned so much by going to parenting courses run by experts, most of whom are not believers. I read the New York Times and the New Yorker regularly. And I have a steady diet of podcasts: The Moth, TED Talks, This American Life, Conversations (ABC Radio), Invisibilia, Reply All, Pop Culture Happy Hour, You Are Not So Smart, The Savvy Psychologist, Malcolm Gladwell, Planet Money, and Radio Atlantic. And at the same time, I have access to God’s special truth — not only through the Scriptures, but also through the blessings of being a believer — and a Holy Spirit who lives inside me to change me and guide me.”

I know, too, that while Sam was in hospital for a while he didn’t just watch Aaron Sorkin movies (which he describes in the book), he also binged on Master Classes, because the guy is relentlessly curious about the world.

Look, we’re not all going to be Sam Chan. He’s an evangelism genius (probably just a genius genius). And that’s ok, but we could all do with being a little more like Sam Chan, I read this book and I want to be more like ‘that guy,’ it is a guide to better (Evangelistic) living, which makes it a great book for “a time such as this.”

November 2, 2020

Evangelism as team sport (a review of Sam Chan’s Evangelism in a Skeptical World)

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book for the purpose of review, and I know the author so mostly just refer to him as ‘Sam’; I’m sure this breaks all sorts of conventions, if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have reviewed it (and I would’ve told him). 

Sam Chan is a sharp thinker, so when he set out to write a textbook on evangelism (literally a textbook, not metaphorically), it was always going to be a must read. Here’s the short review: if you’re interested in helping people understand Jesus get hold of this book and read it; the chapters on ‘Everyday Evangelism’, Evangelism to Postmoderns, and Gospel-Cultural Hermeneutics are particularly useful summaries of game changing ways to think about how we do the task of evangelism (which isn’t to say you should bother with the rest)

Like many people who write textbooks, Sam is an exceptional thinker — what makes this book particularly useful is that he’s also both an exceptional practitioner and an exceptional teacher. While lots of textbooks deal with abstractions and theory and even feel beyond the grasp of us mere mortals, Sam practices what he preaches — in that evangelism is ultimately about connecting with people and helping them change what they believe and how they live. The book is written in a way that manages to bridge the ‘technical world’ of the theologian with the practical world of the layperson who is keen to share their belief better with friends. There are some technical parts of the book (perhaps especially chapter 1, A Theology Of Evangelism and the last chapter on Religious Epistemology, Apologetics and Defeater Beliefs), but the technical bits are essential to the very practical and relatable technique-applying chapters. It’s packed with practical advice that’ll work for anybody interested in sharing their faith, and those of us who may be asked to speak publicly at different events. It draws strongly on his (previously reviewed) doctoral work on speech-act theory and preaching as the word of God (and the Word of God being the proclamation of the Gospel).

I want to acknowledge certain beliefs that I have up front, so that you’re aware of my biases… I think the way the church in Australia (and particularly my Reformed Evangelical scene) approach evangelism is largely fundamentally broken; not just because we are living in a ‘skeptical world’, but because our theological emphases, developed through internal conflicts with other Christians, are limiting our ability to speak the Gospel in its fullness to our Aussie neighbours in ways that resonate with their hearts; plus I use hearts because I think we’ve bought holus bolus into modernity and a propositional way of arguing from rational evidence because we think people are rational creatures who are predominantly convinced by ‘thinking things’ (the ‘brain on a stick’ model of the human discussed at length by James K.A Smith in his ‘Cultural Liturgies’ series). I think our attempts to persuade people about the truth, beauty, and goodness of Jesus are limited by our western individualism. So, as a result, people in my tradition have tended to emphasise evangelism based on reason, rationality and evidence (particularly history), on trying to establish a certain set of categories that help people ‘know’ the truth, and with a particular (almost exclusive) emphasis on penal substitutionary atonement and its individual implications as the ‘entire’ Gospel. If you ask the average Joe to summarise the Gospel I suspect you get something like ‘you are a sinner and Jesus came to save you by dying in your place’. I don’t think this is wrong, but I do think it is limited in its scope (in terms of what the Gospel is, and even what the word ‘Gospel’ meant to its first users whether Jewish or Graeco-Roman), and I think as a result it is limited in its ability to engage with actual people who aren’t fully bought in to all the categories we’ve assumed.

 

Our approach to evangelism is broken. Last year the Presbyterian Church of Queensland — my denomination — buried more people than it baptised; and we baptise babies; our death rate is outpacing our birth rate and the rate of non-Christians joining our churches; while we’ve grown numerically it seems to me that growth is mostly ‘transfer growth’… and we need a bit of a shake up in terms of how we evangelise.

This book is important because I think it points out several examples of where the ’emperor’ we’ve created of this particular system of thinking about the Gospel, and thus, evangelism, actually has no clothes on, or perhaps is in a state of undress where not everything that should be covered is. It invites us to think afresh about how topical presentations of the Gospel might still be the ‘word of God’ (continuing on from Sam’s speech-act treatment of preaching as the word of God); it invites us to embrace multiple ways of presenting the Gospel as good news (beyond just guilt and forgiveness, it gives us different pictures of sin to use (from the Bible) and their antidote — like ‘idolatry and true worship, ‘ or ‘brokenness and reconciliation (or restoration). It gives a bunch of different examples of proclaiming Jesus as good news and reminds us that all of these are faithful and pictured in the life of Jesus. It’s also a whip smart reading not just of Christian culture and where we might have miss-fired by buying in to the worldview we swim in, but of the culture around us and where it has changed so that these old clothes no longer cover what we need to cover.I found his embrace of some of the positive aspects of the death of modernity and swing to post-modernity — especially his wholehearted embrace of narrative in the place of dry propositions — refreshing (especially when we hear so much negativity from people looking back to the halcyon days of modernity that ends up being hopeless for us young’uns, and people like us).

I reckon one test of an evangelistic textbook is how comfortable you’d be for your non Christian mates to read it over your shoulder — how much it feels like a handbook for the Christian equivalent of ‘pick up artistry’ or a manual for manipulation; this is a book I’m quite happy to very publicly recommend and discuss because it so charitably engages with and depicts the thoughts of those who don’t yet know Jesus, and it doesn’t recommend anything underhanded or tricky; it’s, in some ways, a rebuke for Christians in that we tend to place our confidence in the wrong things (sometimes methodology, sometimes particular aspects of our theology) rather than doing the not so hard work of listening to and connecting with those people in our lives such that we understand what part of the good news of Jesus might resonate with them.

Another test for me, as a pastor, is to imagine how I might use a book in the context of church life; can I just hand this book to anybody confident they’ll find it helpful without interpretation? Could I use this as the basis for training at church for key leaders? Is there stuff I feel like I need to qualify as I hand it to someone, the ‘just skip that chapter because it’s the opposite of what we taught on Sunday’ disclaimer… I’m happy to think about how to use this book almost without reservation — in fact, my only reservations are that I’d like Sam to write whole books on some of his chapters (or just to come up and run the seminars he’s been running or his old lectures on evangelism in the flesh) because one of the weaknesses of the brevity and breadth of the text book genre is some gaps aren’t filled and you’re left to make certain connections yourself.

I want to be really clear that I heartily recommend this book; I’ll be both handing out copies to people at church and running training based on a few of the chapters (both training people to preach, and in terms of thinking about how we participate in the mission of God to make Jesus known together as a community).

What follows is a slightly longer review teasing out some of how to apply the textbook to life as an average Christian (rather than a ‘professional’), and connecting it to some broader conversations about what evangelism is and who should do it (and how we should do it).

Evangelism as team sport

Sam defines evangelism as:

“The essence of evangelism is the message that Jesus Christ is Lord. Evangelism is our human effort in proclaiming this message — which necessarily involves using our human communication, language, idioms, metaphors, stories, experiences, personality, emotions, context, culture, locatedness — and trusting and praying that God in his sovereign will, will supernaturally use our human and natural means to effect his divine purposes.

In a general sense evangelism refers to our human efforts of proclaiming this message to any audience of believers and nonbelievers. In a narrower sense, evangelism refers to our human efforts of proclaiming this message to nonbelievers. But in both senses, we proclaim the gospel with the hope that our audience responds by trusting, repenting, and following and obeying Jesus.”

Also, because to proclaim the Gospel is to preach — following Sam’s book on preaching — evangelism is to speak (or communicate) the word of God; so when we do this as his people according to what he commands, it is God speaking. I want to make the case that this means that evangelism is a speech-act not simply of an individual, but of the whole body of Christ. It’s not an individual act, though individuals might do particular tasks of evangelism, but the product of a ‘team’… and I think Sam’s book gives us certain building blocks to solve a dilemma or debate that operates around the question of who is meant to do evangelism. And the answer is ‘everybody… differently and together’… like any good team.

Sam spent some time in the US, and refers to that context throughout the book, so I’m going to use a sporting metaphor from that scene — from American Football. Teams playing ‘gridiron’ live and die by the playbook; they have to imbibe it (there were great stories about our own Jarryd Hayne trying to cram his team’s playbook into his head in his short lived career with the 49ers), but nobody more than the quarterback, the guy who does the work of calling and implementing the plays on the field. In some ways this feels like a playbook for evangelism. It feels like the sort of thing a coach works up from his experience as both player and coach, and the sort of thing that is useful for a whole team, but especially necessary for the quarterback; and then each person filling the other slots in the team needs to know the plays they’re involved in. It’s clear from different parts of the book that evangelism in a skeptical world is basically a team game, but it’s also clear that not all of us are going to have to decide between giving an expository evangelistic talk and a topical one.

There’s been a longstanding debate about whether evangelism is a thing that all Christians, as individuals are called to participate in as individuals, or whether it is a particular gift for particular individuals; Sam’s book goes some way towards providing a helpful corrective to both positions in that debate. It’s clear that not all Christian individuals are called to stand up and preach an evangelistic talk, but perhaps all of us are called to think about how we present our testimony or use our houses in ways that promote the Gospel (to borrow the title of John Dickson’s book (reviewed), that advances the idea that ‘evangelism’ itself is a technical function of particular, gifted, individuals, though we all have a role to play in ‘promoting the Gospel’). The debate is alive and well, a recent multi-hundred comment discussion in the Christian ‘deep web’ (Facebook), confirmed it… But I’ve long suspected this ‘figuring out what ‘evangelism’ is’ debate — whether it’s for some individuals or all individuals — seems to miss something fundamental about what Paul says about how gifts work; that they’re functions of the body, the church. What does seem clear is that evangelism is a necessary function of the church; a thing that all of us are invested in, and that all our lives support. If we particularise that function too much we fail to see how truly integrated any action within the context of the body of Christ, using gifts given by God for the building up of that body, is, if we generalise a function too much we end up with everybody doing the same thing, when we might actually all have slightly different and complementary roles to play. A team can’t function if everybody wants to play quarterback; but a quarterback also can’t function without the team (and isn’t actually more important than the players on the field around him). It’s perhaps unhelpful to suggest the person carrying out the function of an evangelist is more like the quarterback than a running back who receives passes and tries to get things over the line… but I had to pick a position.

Lots of Sam’s book is exceptionally useful for those with the particular gift or calling to ‘do the work of an evangelist’ (2 Timothy 4:5), there’s great and useful gear in there for the individual, let’s call them the quarterback in this team effort, but it isn’t just a book for these individuals, but it’s real strength is in starting to stretch our categories a bit, to understand that maybe part of us buying into a western model revolving around individual brilliance and focused on intellectual arguments or logos doesn’t actually mesh well with how humans really tick (let alone how the church is meant to understand our shared task in the world). Sam challenges several elements of our assumed anthropology in order to provide some alternative solutions for how we evangelise together; with some people playing particular roles.

First off, if we adopt an individualistic anthropology we’re likely to have certain assumptions about how individuals shift in their beliefs that particularly emphasise the individual will, and our reason. If we assume people are simply rational beings, then that will shape our content and methodology… but this picture of being human seems wrong, or as Sam puts it in his chapter on Religious Epistemology, Apologetics, and Defeater Beliefs:

“The way we choose to communicate reveals our anthropology (our understanding of what it means to be a human being). If we reduce human beings only to rational minds, then we will think that we only need to transfer ideas and cognitive information. But if we believe that human beings are holistically bodies, minds, and emotions, then we will try to communicate the gospel at the level of information (logos), body (ethos), and emotions (pathos). This is what James is getting at in his New Testament letter. He points out that it’s no good only telling someone the idea — “God loves you” — without also feeding their bodies (James 2:14-17).” — Page 244

For Sam, this has obvious implications for our emphasis on the skills needed for evangelism.

“I’m emphasising the need to include the pathos and ethos because in the Western church, we’ve traditionally encouraged smart and gifted people — doctors and lawyers — into full time paid Christian ministry. But cultural changes suggest that maybe we should also encourage emotionally smart people — those in the creative arts — into full-time paid Christian ministry. Conversely, rather than encouraging people into seminary, where we learn the cognitive aspects of Christianity, we may want to encourage some people to pursue the creative arts, where we learn to express ourselves through body and emotions.”— Page 244

Some of this gear on ethos and the focus on plausibility coming from communities of belief and practice dips back into an earlier chapter. One of the things I’d most been looking forward to in the book is the chapter everyday evangelism works, I’d seem this material presented in evangelistic training sessions Sam ran, and I’ve been encouraging people to take up his concept of ‘merging universes’ — creating overlaps where your friends are hanging out together so that you aren’t a lone wolf — the only weird Christian your non-Christian friends, family, and colleagues know — since hearing him speak on it (McCrindle’s last faith and belief in Australia survey showed most Aussies still know a few Christians, but a staggering (and growing) percentage (8%) no longer know any Christians let alone many Christians, 38% know less than 5 (NOTE: the first version of this piece wrongly suggested ‘a majority don’t know any’ — a misremembering of the data, and I should’ve checked it before publishing).

“Here is the key idea you need to grasp: people will find a story more believable if more people in their community, their trusted friends and family, also believe the story.”  — Page 43

There’s a weighty amount of sociology of knowledge stuff under the hood of his gear on Plausibility Structures — especially Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Sociology of Knowledge which makes the case that none of us arrive at positions through purely rational thought, our beliefs are made possible (plausible) because of our thought categories but also our environments (especially the people who teach us things) — we believe more than we think we do because of the people around us. Berger and Luckmann weren’t writing particularly about religious belief (or to help people ‘trick people’ into belief), but were rather giving an account of how and why people come to believe anything (and for anyone reading trying to figure out if this is a playbook for manipulation — it’s worth pondering what plausibility structures any of us are part of and how they might account for beliefs we think we’ve come up with on our own):

“The most important social condition is the availability of an effective plausibility structure, that is, a social base serving as the “laboratory” of transformation. This plausibility structure will be mediated to the individual by means of significant others, with whom he must establish strongly affective identification.” — Berger and Luckmann, Sociology of Knowledge

Or, in other words, if you want to help someone ponder their beliefs, and maybe make a shift, get your friends to become friends with each other. The thing that I reckon keeps Sam’s stuff particularly above board is the vital first step of making sure you’re getting out of your own plausibility structures and entering the world of the people around you first (‘go to their stuff first’). That being open to having your own view shifted, and showing an openness to not exist in some sort of cultic bubble is important for more than just understanding other people. Merging universes is wise advice because we are social animals, and it’s one way that evangelism is quite clearly a team thing, but it is wise not just because of plausibility increasing in a rational sense where other people believe, but belief becoming more plausible when you’re around people who do. This comes up more as Sam focuses on ethos or the place of the Christian life in evangelism throughout the book, in the chapter Evangelism to Postmoderns, in his section on authenticity (the “buzzword for postmoderns”) he says:

“Unlike moderns, the first question is not ‘is it true?’ but ‘is it real in our lives?’ Are we living consistently — or better, coherently — with our beliefs? Are we being true to ourselves? Do we walk the walk as well as we talk the talk? This should lead us to think about how we evangelise to our postmodern friends in a way that communicates authenticity.” — Page 116

Note: there’s an irony in talking about the ‘strategy’ of being authentic — it doesn’t work it if’s put on for show… he goes on:

“While the gospel is something we speak, words that communicate God’s truth, there is also a sense in which we ourselves are a component of how the message is communicated. We speak the words of truth, but we speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15). Our message is embodied. It doesn’t come in a vacuum. It comes in the context of shared lives and trusted friendships. This is the model of evangelism that Paul himself uses with the Thessalonians. “Our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake (1 Thess 1:5). The Thessalonians don’t just believe the gospel to be true; they also see that it is real by Paul’s authentic living.” — Page 116

Now. I want to very gently point out the plural in that italicised bit (emphasis Sam’s), and suggest that it wasn’t just Paul’s authentic living that was convincing, but the authentic lives of the Pauline circle on mission in Thessalonica that made the Gospel plausible. Evangelism was a team game for Paul — even as he ‘did the work of an evangelist’ — and his evangelism was very much a product of his embodying the Gospel (so he appeals lots to his example and his suffering for the crucified king), and in the next chapter he says:

“Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well. Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed.” — 1 Thessalonians 2:8-10

The ‘we’ isn’t just a quaint referring to one’s self in a third person plural — a ‘royal we’, but Paul appealing to the lives of his team.

The real challenge from the insights throughout Sam’s book aren’t just for the individual (even if there are great tips for individuals in how to put the theory into practice), but for our Christian culture — for our communities — our churches. One of the things I’d love to have seen more of in the book is the implications beyond how we think of evangelism to how evangelism drives and shapes the way we live as the church — the body of Christ — in the world; how it impacts the typical Sunday and the typical sermon (if to evangelise is to speak the word of God — why would we want to speak anything else? Why wouldn’t Sam’s suggestions about talk structures — whether expository or topical — shape how we preach every week if one of our shared tasks is to evangelise?). There are small challenges to recalibrate this way dotted through the book… but here’s a clear call to re-think moving from the training paddock to game day in our mentality.

“Our usual approach to evangelism is to add some activity to our lives: maybe I’m going to try to tell someone about Jesus at lunch, or I’m going to join a book club. Churches do the same thing by adding an event such as an outreach night to their calendar. But we need to change our lives so that we live an evangelistic lifestyle, not a life with add-on bits of evangelism. Churches need to do the same thing.”

It’s a worthwhile challenge; and this playbook is a great asset that I’m hoping will help our church community do just this; I’m thankful for Sam and look forward to reading the ten extra books this one commits him to writing…

March 8, 2018

How to ‘exegete’ a place

town-crier-reading-the-news
Image: A town crier in the public square, From this fun post about why they dress the way they did

Next week I’m taking a group of students from my old stomping ground, Queensland Theological College, to my new stomping ground, South Brisbane. I had to think of something that a wet behind the ears graduate church planter person could possibly hope to offer these guys that is valuable. And that isn’t just grunt work like door-knocking (the bane of college missions, I can say this now that I’m a graduate and a minister, not a whining student — don’t treat college mission students like an army of grunts who really need to learn how to doorknock or do some suitably mundane thing, make mission interesting and helpful). So we’re going out on an excursion to South Brisbane to exegete the suburb. To read the culture. To think about how we might speak the Gospel into this culture, and live the Gospel as part of this culture. (So, maybe I’m getting them to do my market research, but at least it’ll be fun — as you’ll see below, it’s really just going to involve them drinking coffee and using their eyes and ears).

In Christian parlance we use the word ‘exegete’ to describe the task of reading, interpreting, and understanding a text. In my circles this means interpreting a passage using a framework that we bring to each text — where we ask what God is saying in that passage through the person who wrote it to the people he’s saying it to, the people who first read it, and by extension, us. We ask how it fits in the bigger picture of God’s story, The Bible (Biblical theology), particularly with a view to how it helps us understand the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and how it fits with what we know about who God is via the rest of the Bible (systematic theology). We’re guided by trying to understand the historical context, including the language originally used (Hebrew, and Greek). We’re guided by trying to understand the literary context — the genre, the author, the audience. Exegesis is really important for drawing sound conclusions from the Bible in order to point people to the truth it contains.

Good preaching, good evangelism, requires good exegesis. A good understanding of God’s word, and the Gospel.

Exegesis. It’s a good word. Even if it sounds a bit fancy pantsy.

Good evangelism also requires good listening. Good loving of the people we’re speaking to. Not just belting people on the head with what we think.

To be good proclaimers of the Gospel we need to conduct an exercise similar to the exercise we conduct with God’s text, the Bible, with the people we speak to. We need to exegete the culture we hope to speak to — just as loving God’s word leads us to carefully interpret it, loving the people we hope to speak to leads us to carefully interpret them. Exegesis is a sort of attentive listening. We can’t just bring our own pre-conceived agenda to a text, reading it on our terms and bringing our own meaning (that’s called eisegesis). That’s not treating the text with respect. In the same way, we can’t simply shout (or speak) our message to the people around us. We need to listen to, and respect, the people we’re speaking to in order to love them, as much as we need to tell them our good news in order to love them. And we’ll tell them our good news, about the life changing death and resurrection of Jesus in a way that makes it clearly good news if we understand them better.

We need to exegete the people in the places we’re sent to share the Gospel. The best, clearest, picture of what this looks like is found in Paul’s visit to Athens. It’s there in the text of Acts 17, but it’s also beneath the text (and we can make this picture richer through good exegesis). This post isn’t ultimately exploring Paul’s methodology in Acts, its trying to give a guide to what applying this methodology might look like in our time and place. But I’ve bolded the bits here I think are really important for building our own model. The odd bits I’ve bolded in his speech at the Areopagus are where Paul quotes important philosophers and poets from the world of his hearers (and his own world — one is a philosopher from Tarsus). Paul carefully splits his audience by quoting some people he knows appeal to certain thinkers, and then showing some inconsistencies in the tests they’re trying to apply to his message  — his good news — about ‘Jesus and the resurrection’…  Even as Luke writes he demonstrates, himself, a familiarity with the lay of the land in Athens and with who was who in the Athenian zoo. He knows what parts of Paul’s time in Athens are significant to observe and record for the sake of those looking to Paul’s methodology for a model for our own presentation of this good news.

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus,where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else [note: Paul is articulating a common, stoic, belief about God here, as well as a Jewish/Christian belief]. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ [Paul is quoting sources his audience is familiar with, though the ‘in him we live and move and have our being’ also has Old Testament roots]

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. — Acts 17:16-34

Paul’s evangelism is pretty savvy. It’s savviness doesn’t guarantee wholesale conversion, but this is Paul speaking in an environment that is hostile to Christianity, and because he lovingly pays attention to the people he is speaking to, and takes the time to connect, he gets a hearing for the Gospel, and some people, by God’s grace, and through the work of the Spirit, hear what he has to say and believe. They’re left wanting to hear more about Jesus and the resurrection.

Anyway. How might we do a Paul? Do we need to read ancient philosophers? Or was Paul doing something more like watching reality TV and being an astute observer of culture? It would be easy to make this sound hard, but I suspect as a Tarsus born Roman citizen, as well as being an educated Jew, Paul was simply bringing who he was and what he knew to the act of lovingly and carefully observing the people he spoke to. It’s not rocket science. Evangelism is simply a matter of carefully listening to the people you love, in order to lovingly offer the Gospel as a better path to human flourishing. That’s what Paul does. He says you guys really want to find God. You long for that. Well here he is.

Our modern idols might not be statues — but they tap into, and represent — similar longings, and are part of similar frameworks or philosophies. We’re creatures of desire. Part of presenting the Gospel is understanding these desires as they take shape in different places. You could do worse than checking out the TV guide for the Lifestyle Channel. But desires manifest themselves differently in different places and amongst different demographics. Place is important. Paul operates differently in Athens, Corinth, and Jerusalem (though both require a careful exegesis of where he is, and he’s equally lovingly incisive in each place).

This isn’t hard. We invent all sorts of labels for this, like contextualisation. But what we really mean by this is loving the other person. Listening. Understanding. And doing this before we speak. The only reason that’s hard is because our default is still to put ourselves and our truth first. We’re meant to put Jesus first, and then the other. That’s meant to flavour how we speak. So Paul says in Philippians 2:

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” — Philippians 2:1-5

Listening well, loving well, involves humility. Christ shaped humility. That’s part of living out and speaking the Gospel. It’s the humility that leads us to put others first in the way we speak about Jesus. Because the way we live and the way we speak should line up. Like they did for Paul, in Athens, and in Corinth, where he ‘resolved to know nothing but Jesus and him crucified’ and later says:

I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. — 1 Corinthians 4:17

As I mentioned in a recent post, I love the idea from philosopher Iris Murdoch that loving goodness, virtue even, requires us to unselfishly try to truly see the world around us, and to understand what drives the people around us in order to understand them in a good and loving way. That’s what Paul does, and its at the heart of a virtuous approach to sharing the good news (and its why bashing people over the head with what we believe about them, rather than engaging with what people believe about themselves is frankly an unloving way to undermine our message by through methods that don’t match up).

“…goodness is connected with knowledge; not with impersonal quasi-scientific knowledge of the ordinary world, whatever that may be, but with a refined and honest perception of what is really the case, a patient and just discernment and exploration of what confronts one, which is the result not simply of opening one’s eyes but of a certain and perfectly familiar kind of moral discipline.” — Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good

I collected some advice from smart people on social media, and I’d written a thing on ‘exegeting a place’ a few years back with my public relations hat still on, which turned out to actually be somewhat sage advice. So. Here’s what I’ll be asking this team of students to ponder as they wonder the streets of South Brisbane (bonus points if you’re a QTC student reading this ahead of time.  The reason I’m posting this now is to ask you, the hive mind/brains trust to suggest better questions to ask when reading a place.

Questions to ask when exegeting a place

I reckon these are some good questions to guide us in ‘walking around’ and ‘looking carefully at the objects of worship’ in a place.

Who

Where do the people here come from? Are they locals? Do they work here? Or is this a ‘third place’ (somewhere they come to play, rest, eat)? What are people doing with their time? Are the cars parked on the road new or run down? What demographics of people are here?

How does life here match the stats? Where would you find stats about this area? See if you can find some. What stands out? How would you find out about the future of this area? Who could you talk to to understand life here?

Are the people working or running businesses here busy? Optimistic? Happy? Satisfied?

Where

What would it be like to live here? Where are the key places/nodes? Transport? Services?

Count the cranes in the skyline. Investigate. What are they here for? What is being built? How does this make locals feel? How might it shake up the fabric of this area?

Where are the marketplaces where ideas are discussed? What are the idols? What are the longings that create these idols? What are the “common objects of love” here? The things that bring people here, and bring people together? Where are people forming community? Where is shared life happening within this community/place? What are the ‘rituals’? What are the ‘festivals’? What is the default spiritual practice?

What

What is ‘life’ like? What’s On? What’s trending? What looks new? What looks old? What looks run down? What looks empty? What looks popular? What art is being produced, displayed, and celebrated here? What are people photographing in this location online (Instagram etc)? What are they reviewing on trip advisor? Beanhunter? Urban Spoon? What are they saying?

What are people spending money on? What are people giving time and attention to?

Why

What are the loves driving people in this place? What are the obvious needs? What stories do you imagine people living in this setting? Where are the ‘philosophers’ behind these stories? What is being advertised on location specific ads here (advertisers do demographic research so you don’t have to)? What does local media talk about (find a copy of the West Ender)? What is the history of this place, how is it present in the present?

How

What observations can you make about this place that would help shape how you proclaim the Gospel here? What sort of things would you do in this community to help people hear about Jesus and the resurrection?

September 17, 2015

Re-thinking church planting and evangelism: A bunch of questions and maybes for post-modern, post-Christian Australia

What follows is a collection of (speculative) thoughts, ideas, and questions from a novice church planter about church planting and evangelism

My college principal (and friend), Gary Millar, caused a bit of a stir on social media with this post asking whether the new, trendy, church-planting-is-the new-black, movement is taking the focus off evangelism in the church. I like Gary a lot, and learned much from him, and I think it’s funny that a guy who was a church planter prior to joining the academy is copping flack online for being anti-church plant. He’s not. He’s certainly pro-evangelism. And pro-church plant.

His post, and the subsequent discussion have been stimulating, and got me thinking some thoughts that I needed to put into words so that I don’t lose them. I feel like it’s a conversation I should be part of, even though I’m not the most experienced church planter in the world, and didn’t even want to be a church planter. I think one of the big challenges the church faces though is figuring out how to do church and evangelism for people of around my age, and younger, and I feel like maybe I can offer some insight here, especially because Gary mentions “QTC graduates who are planting in Brisbane” and that’s me, and there aren’t many of us. I feel like he was singling me out a bit with the bolded line in this paragraph too…

“Biblical church planting flows from evangelism, as the message of the gospel is clearly proclaimed in every possible context. Some of this proclamation may be cutting edge, but some of it may look extremely mundane—teaching Scripture in inner city schools, building intentional relationships with baristas and road-sweepers, inviting the faceless residents of the other units into our block for dinner, eating at the same time every week in the RSL, going to the annual show just to be there… And doing it all to make the most of every opportunity to speak the gospel to a world which desperately needs to hear it.”

Before I begin…

And a slight disclaimer: This is the stuff I’ve been mulling over since Gary’s post, and while reading (and entering) some of the discussions about his post. Some of this reads like its a vague critique of strawmen ministers out there, and you might want empirical evidence that such ministers or thinking exists… I’d like to offer you Exhibit A, the only exhibit I’ll be offering throughout (apart from my ability to accurately represent the aforementioned conversations).

Me.

I’ve assumed at some points that how I feel and think is representative of how others might feel and think. I know there’s great stuff happening out there in many churches, and in many locations, and I thank God for that… but this is also based on conversations I’ve had with others and things I’ve observed as a participant in various churches that have either planted churches with varying degrees of success, or suffered as a result of people leaving to join new churches.

On the necessity of more evangelism

I think most people in Gospel ministry, if asked “is enough evangelism happening” would, and should, say no. Right up until the time that 100% of living people are following the living God (the new creation we long for), the answer to this question is no. That’s why the parable of the lost sheep is so profound in how it values the lost. We live in an age where there are maybe three ‘found’ sheep, and 97 lost…

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” — Luke 15:1-7

So evangelism is necessary. And obviously it’s about pointing people to the good news. The ‘evangel.’ Which is the good news about Jesus.

But I wonder if we really need to figure out is what it is we mean by evangelism (both in content and form), before figuring out what the relationship is between the church, members of the church, and what a proper emphasis on evangelism in the church looks like.

Maybe the problem Gary identifies is more about how we think of church being somehow distinct from how we think of evangelism. Maybe the move to church planting is actually a shifting understanding of the relationship between church and mission

It could just be me, but I’m pretty sure that evangelism has slipped down our agenda. Church planting has, it seems, taken up the headspace that was once occupied by evangelism. And much as I love church planting (it’s what we did in Ireland), it does provide more places for people to hide who don’t want to talk about Jesus to their friends.

Churches in our circles, especially in Australia, tend to think about church as the gathering of believers for the sake of believers. Sundays are inward looking, they’ll often feature the Gospel pretty heavily, because we realise that the Bible is ultimately a story centred on Jesus and to teach bits of the Bible without the Gospel is to not teach the Bible properly… but this way of thinking, that the body gathers for the sake of itself, doesn’t really give much clarity on how mission, or evangelism, fits with the life and rhythms of the church. So preachers throw “tell your friends about Jesus” in as the application to most sermons, churches put on evangelistic events, and might, if they’re really organised, occasionally teach people how to have conversations about Jesus with their friends (and I can’t help but think we make this more complicated than it needs to be, I don’t need coaching to tell my friends about the new coffee place I found, or my love for the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, even in a terrible year, perhaps people just need to be convinced that the need is urgent and that this isn’t something they have to do by themselves). Here are some things I think we forget that we need to remember.

1. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. (Luke 19:10).

If the Zacchaeus story is the culmination of a bunch of stories that show who Jesus thinks the lost are — sinners who know they need a saviour —then this climaxes at the Cross, and in the resurrection. The reason to think this is how this verse should be understood, as a summary of Jesus’ lifelong journey to Jerusalem, is that Luke tells the Zaccheaus story in a way that ties together a bunch of different lost ‘types’ we’ve met on this journey.

2. Jesus sent the Spirit to the Church so that we could be united with him, and then sent the church into the world the way God sent him. (John 17, John 20).

“As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world…My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” — John 17:18, 20-23

“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said,“Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” — John 20:19-23

What’s interesting, I think, is if the prologue of John’s Gospel (the first 18 verses) sets up the themes of the Gospel, the way God sent Jesus is as the life-giving word who becomes flesh and dwells in the world (John 1:1-5, 14).

3. The Church is the body of Christ (and God gives gifts to the body to help it be the body). Part of being the body is corporately imitating Jesus in seeking the salvation of many.

Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 12. If the letter makes sense as a whole, I don’t think it’s a massive jump to link the stuff he says in 12, with the stuff he says in chapters 9-11, and 13-14, to figure out how people might do together what he sees as imitating Christ (1 Cor 11:1).

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” —1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1

Perhaps we have a problem if the way we understand church (ecclesiology) is not deeply connected to the way we think church should be oriented to the world (missiology). I think the short shrift evangelism gets in our reformed evangelical churches in Australia is a product of us thinking that church is a community for believers, not that the church is the community of the people of God for the world. Church isn’t just a Sunday gathering (or a gathering), but the way we gather, and what we invest in, will reflect what we think church is.

Evangelism is necessarily proclamation, but it’s not necessarily something an individual does as an individual. It necessarily involves words, but words are amplified or cancelled out by the actions and emotions of the proclaimer(s). Evangelism is more than saying “Jesus is Lord” — it’s living this truth together in a way that is intentionally compelling and persuasive to the people we dwell with.

Maybe, then, we proclaim the Gospel as we live it out in our community, as community, and speak clearly about why we live the way we do, because of points 1, 2, and 3 above.

If you think the church exists to proclaim the Gospel, and church communities exist to do that in particular places and cultures — then the dichotomy breaks down. Church planting is evangelism. That’s why we preach about Jesus every Sunday at the church plant I’m part of, and in our established mothership. If churches are missionary communities gathering to reach and serve a hostile culture, not simply the place where everyone from a culture is expected to rock up for an event on a Sunday to tick some sort of box, where evangelism is another checkbox on the “good Christian” to do list, then the dichotomy at the heart of Gary’s post gets resolved a bit.

It’s only in churches that don’t think of church or evangelism in this way that this conversation is a problem.

Evangelism has to be something that stretches beyond the Gospel being clearly proclaimed on a Sunday, it has to be part of the lives and relationships of Christians in community in their wider community.

Maybe there’s also a more complete approach to the content of evangelism (the Gospel) than exclusively emphasising the atonement, which also changes the forms of evangelism we look for, develop, and promote?

I don’t hear of many churches who are doing evangelism training these days.

Maybe what’s happening is we’re realising that evangelism training isn’t actually about learning to draw stick figures in six boxes, but is more about authentically living and sharing the Gospel story in the places we live and the relationships we develop?

Maybe part of this is because we think the Gospel is something best shared by a community of people — the body of Christ —  rather than individuals by themselves, apart from that community. Evangelism will always involve individual people boldly proclaiming and living the good news of the resurrected Lord Jesus, but we don’t have to feel like it’s something we do on our own (nor is it something just for specialists).

Maybe we’re realising that the Gospel isn’t best summarised as “Jesus died to save you (individual) from your (individual) sins (of which there is a long list)” but “Jesus is Lord of God’s kingdom and he calls you to turn to him as Lord (forgiveness of sins is then a benefit of this)”… maybe the way to present this isn’t a series of propositions or leading questions about an individual’s sin and the judgment they face, which Jesus takes (though this is part of it), but, instead, is a compelling presentation of the Biblical narrative which centres on Jesus and flows to us.

We have a really powerful story, and the opportunity to invite people to be a part of it. I really enjoyed this post today from First Things about how to reach cynical Gen X. Here’s a long quote from it. Feel free to jump to the next heading…

So you’re in quite a pickle: you can’t tell us that the Church has “the Truth,” and we know that the Church won’t miraculously cure us of our misery. What do you have left to persuade us? One thing: the story. We are story people. We know narratives, not ideas. Our surrogate parents were the TV and the VCR, and we can spew out entertainment trivia at the drop of a hat. We treat our ennui with stories, more and more stories, because they’re the only things that make sense; when the external stories fail, we make a story of our own lives. You wonder why we’re so self-destructive, but we’re looking for the one story with staying power, the destruction and redemption of our own lives. That’s to your advantage: you have the best redemption story on the market.

Perhaps the only thing you can do, then, is to point us towards Golgotha, a story that we can make sense of. Show us the women who wept and loved the Lord but couldn’t change his fate. Remind us that Peter, the rock of the Church, denied the Messiah three times. Tell us that Pilate washed his hands of the truth, something we are often tempted to do. Mostly, though, turn us towards God hanging on the cross. That is what the world does to the holy. Where the cities of God and Man intersect, there is a crucifixion. The best-laid plans are swept aside; the blueprints for the perfect society are divided among the spoilers. We recognize this world: ripped from the start by our parents’ divorces, spoiled by our own bad choices, threatened by war and poverty, pain and meaninglessness. Ours is a world where inconvenient lives are aborted and inconvenient loves are abandoned. We know all too well that we, too, would betray the only one who could save us.

Also, while I was writing this post, Stephen McAlpine chucked his latest post up, which is also relevant and provocative.

Maybe this needs to come with a shifting sense of what evangelism looks and sounds like in a post-modern/post-Christian context

Maybe stories resonate better with a post-Christian world and the way people think about life in it. Maybe while Penal Substitutionary Atonement is an essential part of the Gospel, this is a little individualistic in its approach to the Gospel (in its content), which might make us think a little bit too individualistically about evangelism (in its form). Perhaps a slightly different nuance on the Gospel that captures both the corporate and the individual implications while utterly emphasising the person and work of Jesus, especially his divinity, his humanity, and his life, death and resurrection (content) could reshape the way we talk about and practice evangelism in our churches — be they plants or established communities.

I don’t want to unnecessarily caricature the evangelism in Sydney from 13 years ago as Two Ways To Live, but Gary did this a bit for me…

“13 years ago, I made my first trip to Sydney. I came at the invitation of John Chapman and David Mansfield to spend a month working with the Dept. of Evangelism in the Sydney Diocese. It was a real eye-opener for me. Everywhere I went, it seemed like people were doing evangelism. Guest events in church. Dialogue dinners, evangelistic barbecues, men’s events, women’s events. You name it, it was happening. Everyone was learning Two Ways to Live, and new courses were coming out regularly.”

I think Two Ways to Live has been a fantastic servant for many years, and it represents a modernist/individual approach to evangelism and the Gospel. I think it has had its day, and if we’re going to train people to evangelise we need to think pretty carefully about what that looks like. We need people who walk around imitating Jesus, like Paul did, not people walking around spouting tracts or training material.

Two Ways to Live simply assumes too much that doesn’t mesh with modern Australia. It starts by assuming that the person you’re talking to believes in a creator God. Maybe this is based on the assumption that the kind of suppressing the knowledge of God that Romans speaks about is deliberate and intentional on the part of the person doing it, not something that happens corporately or culturally, maybe people relying on this material think the people who reject that concept have already ruled themselves out of hearing the Gospel through this choice (I hope not)…

TWTL works on getting people to assent to a bunch of propositions that lead to a particular conclusion. I think this method has had its day. I understand that others disagree — especially those who hate post-modernism and think people should be assenting to truth based on very clearly articulated, logical argument.

I think post-modern evangelism needs to rest more on helping people see who God actually is (that he’s not some being-in-creation, subject to the laws of nature, but the being within whom nature exists), helping them see how his plans and purposes for the universe, which centre on Jesus, include them, and helping demonstrate the plausibility of belief in Jesus, and the beauty and appeal of living life as a member of his kingdom. This isn’t the sort of thing you learn in a course, or can necessarily articulate in an adversarial large scale debate, or a conversation at a pub. Event evangelism, like the stuff Gary talks about, has a place, but it’s part of a suite of tools that a person might use in the context of a relationship with a non-believer they hope to see won to Christ.

And personally I think both the way we posture ourselves, and our content/emphasis, needs to shift gears a bit too — for an example of what I’m talking about see the difference I loved between how William Lane Craig debated with Lawrence Krauss (where I thought Krauss won) and how Rory Shiner approached his conversation with Krauss (where Rory Shiner was “gently crucified”— which I think is a substantial win).

How can we shift the way we train people to evangelise to actually speak the language of the people around us. Like Jesus did, and like Paul did as he imitated him?

 

I don’t want transfer growth (but I probably need it in order for evangelism to lead to discipleship)

We all know that transfer growth is something we should be seen to be against (even if we quietly say ‘But you know what? They’ll be much better off in our church anyway!’). But our real attitude to transfer growth is seen in the priority and energy and focused prayer we give to evangelism. If we aren’t pouring ourselves into the work of evangelism, then by default, we are just doing church in the hope that people show up… None of us wants to steal people from other churches (although a little bit of recruiting key people from other ministries is almost always necessary in the start-up phase).

I think this is interesting. I don’t just want to be seen to be against transfer growth. I’ve been part of small and large churches that have lost people to the next cool thing. I’ve thought about those churches as parasitic. I have. So I don’t want to be that church. I’m not interested in our church being the latest and greatest church that people move to until a newer, greater church starts up (as it inevitably will, because, you know, City on A Hill is coming next year). Here’s where I think Gary and I would absolutely agree about our patch of Australia. Brisbane is massive, and it’s projected to get even bigger. The city is going to grow to 3 million people by 2020. The reason it feels like we don’t need more trendy, evangelical, church plants in inner city Brisbane, the reason we wring our hands, is because honestly most of us are still trying to figure out how to do ministry in modern Australia. We can’t rely on turning on some lights and putting on a good kids program anymore. The reason it’s scary to hear about a schmick new church plant led by cool people with great ideas is because we’re (and by we I mean me) often insecure about what we bring to the table, and to our city… focusing on the size of the mission field and trying to reach lost people, rather than the limited pool of human resources around, is the best way to get a bit of perspective about this insecurity. Church plants can’t afford not to be on about evangelism (but neither can the established church).

But here’s the rub. Say my small church really goes gangbusters on evangelism, and say God blesses that effort, and say we triple in size from new converts. Who takes the responsibility for pastoring these new hundreds? Who shepherds them, who answers their questions? Where do we get the manpower from? Where do we find mature Christians if not the churches around us. Maybe if there were genuine innovative partnerships happening between churches the answers to these questions would obviously be “the church next door” — the one thing I reckon Gary absolutely nails in his post is the idolisation of numbers in church planting.

“It’s hard for those of us who aren’t church planting to appreciate just how big an issue ‘numbers’ is for those who are. Let’s face it – when you meet someone who is in a recently launched church plant, what’s the first question you want to ask?”

But it’s not just established churches that care about numbers. I ask every minister I meet how church is going, and what I mean is “how are numbers.” Almost every minister I know answers based on numbers  — and that means we’re very unlikely to be excited about not just releasing, but proactively sending, people to serve in another nearby church, be it for a season, or permanently.

At South Bank, we’re in a position where our leadership team is praying for some mature, gospel hearted, Christians to plug in with us to support new Christians. Especially new Christians from the margins of our community. These can only come from elsewhere. But where I think the transfer stuff gets messy is when people proactively seek those sort of people from other churches as they look to establish a core group. I’m happy to pray and to trust God to provide the people where necessary while we train and equip the people he’s already provided for us. So far our “transfer growth” has largely come from people relocating to Brisbane.

How do we figure out how to co-operate across churches to make sure new sheep are being cared for and fed? What does it look like for churches to partner together so that we don’t think of “sheep stealing” but “shepherd sharing”?

Maybe the reason evangelism and church planting seems like a dichotomy is because the way church planting happens is (sometimes) broken

If we played a word association game with the words around the church planting discussion, what image would pop up in your head? What do you blurt out before your brain pops into gear? Let’s try.

Church plant?

Probably a new set up with better branding, a nicer website, and a cooler pastor than you, meeting in some funky “third place” in a suburb more trendy than yours. Am I wrong?

Not all church plants are like this. Lots of them are tedious. But the ones that get all the attention because their pastors add friends and followers online if there’s even the hint of a second or third degree of separation between you and them are like this… some of the time.

Play the game with “church planter” and, well, the picture isn’t much different. Before (and during) college I had a particular set of words reserved for church planters, not many of them were nice.

Most would-be church planters take themselves too seriously, and don’t take the (established) church seriously enough. They also don’t tend to be realistic about just how hard it is to be the church in post-Christian Australia. We can’t all plant megachurches, nor should we want to. But most would be planters seem to think they need the branding/corporate identity of a mega church. I don’t mean my friends. Obviously. And I think the assessment processes of the bigger evangelical planting networks weed this out. But the perception is shaped by those people who self-identify as church planters before they’ve even designed a logo or married a hot wife (see my now ancient post on how to church plant, but if you want a funky name you can also pick a sanctified one word verb, previously reserved for conferences, or, as seems to be the case with hipster plants, a solid sort of noun that connects you to something even more solid, if you’re really stuck you could use the Hipster Business Name Generator).

Too often church plants happen in a way that dismisses the work of the established church — be it traditional churches or denominations — and this sort of differentiation comes at the cost of both the new and the old, the new because it can cut off support from the establishment, or just irk the people flogging their guts in those churches, and the old because there’ll always be a percentage of people in those churches feeling just disgruntled enough to get up and leave (which is where bad transfer growth happens). I say this reflecting a little (contritely) on how my own plant was promoted both in house, and online. There were people who had their noses put out of joint by the suggestion we needed new and different approaches to church. Typically from churches that are going pretty well and have reached a sort of critical mass.

Here are some things I hope everyone in this conversation agrees with, that change the nature of church and evangelism.

1. Australia is increasingly non-Christian. Post-Christian. Post-Christian people feel like they know what church is, but often have no idea what the Gospel is.

2. Many churches have not changed their methodologies significantly (especially outside the cities, but not only those outside cities) in response to this fairly rapid shift. Some want to, but don’t really know how. Sometimes this is because the change experienced in 1 happens slower outside the cities.

3. By the time the church catches up to change, the change will probably have changed again. Leaving us behind. And the pace of change feels like it is increasing.

4. The result of 1-3 is we need more churches being churches differently, but still proclaiming the Gospel, if we want to reach Australia.

What would it look like if we weren’t anxious about church planting in our neighbourhood but genuinely celebrated it? It happens sometimes, but even the people publicly celebrating are perhaps privately anxious (I know I am, especially about what newer, cooler churches will do to our capacity for transfer growth).

What would it look like for church plants to be supported by existing churches with people and resources even if those churches aren’t in a sort of mothership relationship? I think there are some great examples of this new paradigm in the Brisbane Presbyterian scene?

No Church (plant) is an island. Whatever church plants do it shouldn’t be done in isolation from established churches and networks

When planting happens best, churches plant churches. If churches are investing in planting churches, and partnering with the myriad planting networks and using planting resources from these networks, to put churches in more parts of Australia, then this is evangelism. It’s possible the church hasn’t stopped doing evangelism. It’s changed tactics.

I think the “churches plant churches” mantra is great. Especially in my experience. But I’d love us to get to the stage where “the Church plants churches” — where we all celebrate when new churches start (obviously, and its a shame I feel like I need to qualify, I mean churches that show they’re part of the body of Christ by presenting the good news about Jesus, you don’t need to celebrate every time someone puts up a sign that says “church”).

What if we were able to celebrate like this even if that church started in our suburb or town (so long as they start outside of the eastern suburbs of Sydney)? What if we looked at the number of people we’re completely ill-equipped to reach in our area and figure out what it might look like to share resources (including people), rather than competing? Where we view other churches at partners in the Gospel with such familial affection that we might even encourage our own people to patch over and serve there if it’s a better geographic fit, or the unique mission/vibe of that church is a better fit for a person, or just if the need is there and the person is willing to serve.

We need a big umbrella to do that, and I think denominations need to play a part in this because they’re the best set up, organisationally to do it. Too many church plants are independent, and this is an indictment on the denominations that have been suspicious of church planting, or worried about ‘protecting’ established churches. What do we need to protect geographic areas from? More Gospel converts?

But I don’t think denominations are the solution by themselves. I like the idea that church planting isn’t something that we leave to young, restless punks who have a bone to pick with the ‘establishment’ (no matter how well assessed they might be), or something we leave to a few innovative churches to do by themselves, or something that denominations set a budget for that happens in an ad hoc way… this is why I love it when groups like the Geneva Push and Acts 29 try to have a big enough umbrella to allow different groups and individuals to contribute to starting new churches. The more the group ‘sending’ the church planter looks like the universal church — the broader the ‘gospel coalition’ —and the less it looks like a random action of some splinter cell, the better.

If churches are being planted by churches that believe that the church being the church is a significant part of evangelism, then the church planting conversation doesn’t happen at the expense of the evangelism conversation. It is the evangelism conversation.

How do we reinvent the way we do church, and start new churches, so that new and old churches benefit from the reinvention? Maybe the answer to this question is tied up in the way Paul talks about (and fundraises for) mission to new places, and for the established church in Jerusalem in his letters (Romans 15, 2 Corinthians 8-9). I don’t know how sustainable it is to suggest the more established churches are owed respect and recognition in the way Paul wants new Gentile churches to recognise the Jerusalem church (Romans 15:27-28), but there could be something there…

We’ve got to try new stuff somewhere, and perhaps it’s easier to innovate in a new church.

I’ve grown up being part of some great churches, soaked in the Gospel. But I didn’t head off to college and into ministry because I wanted to see those churches duplicated. Well. Not completely. I wanted to see those churches produce fruit via the lives of the people shaped by those communities and the Gospel DNA. People like me.

I don’t want churches I lead to be clones of the churches that shaped me, nor do I want the church I’m part of to simply be a projection of the things I like. I hope we all feel the same. That we don’t want churches we’re part of to address the Australia of the past, but the part of Australia we’re in in the present, in a way that makes Jesus and his cross-centered story of redemption come alive as we embody him and live it. I hope we want to be a part of church communities that pass on the DNA that allows our ‘children’ (be they future churches, or our literal offspring), to shape the way church participates in the Australia of the future.

While the Gospel message doesn’t change, I believe there is continuity in terms of the beliefs the church has received because the Gospel has been faithfully transmitted from generation to generation, if we did church like my grandparents did church when they were kids, or like my dad did church when he was a kid, for my kids, my kids would not want to stick with church. But most churches get comfortable with their culture, and somehow baptise their practices as the “traditional” way of doing church. Being part of a church plant lets you at least tilt at a few windmills, or tip a few sacred cows over without too much damage. And gives other churches something to look at as a way forward.

Here’s an analogy. Parents know their kids need to eat good healthy food if they’re going to survive in the big, wide, world as adults. You can’t survive on KFC alone (trust me. I’ve tried). So a good parent teaches their kids to cook before letting them leave the nest.

Sometimes that child doesn’t figure out their identity, or what food they like, until leaving home. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve been missing out on until you’re out there experimenting, or eating at new places in new neighbourhoods, with new people. This variety can be a massive danger, and might stop parents letting a child leave home, or stop a child taking the risk of leaving, but sometimes the teenager moves out of home, tries a delicious new sort of food, and brings it back to the family home and everybody benefits. This is only a benefit when there’s nothing unhealthy about this new food and its simply because the family home didn’t think or know about the option that it hasn’t always been on the menu.

That’s the sort of benefit that might happen if church plants are seen a bit like teenagers leaving home and growing towards adulthood as members of the family… rather than like teenagers who feel like they need to run away, or have been kicked out.

Maybe the reason evangelism doesn’t look like it’s working is that the people in the conversation tend to be focused on people just like us

I quoted Gary’s picture of the life lived evangelistically above. And I reckon it’s a great starting point. But I think we need to come to terms with the idea that white, middle class, post-Christian Australia doesn’t really want to listen to us anymore and doesn’t think we should have any particularly privileged place in society or their lives (think the place of religious ceremony in the calendar of the average Aussie). Even if they tick “Christian” on the census, Australians aren’t getting married in church, aren’t really going to church at Christmas and Easter, and aren’t making every day decisions with reference to Jesus Christ.

Evangelism seems really hard if you think evangelism is about converting your best buddies. And certainly you should hope to convert your best buddies. But our best buddies tend to be wise, powerful, wealthy types. If we’re honest about our wealth (and if you’re reading a 5,000 word blog post you probably fit that bill). Why do we think this should be the standard makeup of our churches? Paul didn’t seem surprised that the church in Corinth didn’t look anything like Corinth’s middle class.

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. — 1 Corinthians 1:26-30

The middle class makeup of our churches is a vestige of the social privilege that came with Christendom, and as we lose that we need to be prepared for a shift in the demographic of our church communities. Not in a way that wipes out the middle and upper classes. Paul expects some people from these echelons to be part of the church (and to play their part), but in a way that upsets the default, and changes the way we think about how and where to do evangelism, and how to measure success.

Evangelism has to involve talking to people just like you. Your friends and family. Your neighbours. People who think like you and like the same stuff as you. But I don’t think we can afford for it to be limited to that… We need to break the shackles of our own personal affinities and start getting out of our comfort zones a little. I think this will be made easier because the people in our comfort zones or “target demographics” might not want to listen to us any more.

All evangelism is hard. For the reasons Paul spells out above. What we’re saying looks and sounds stupid. But the wisdom and power of God rests in us looking stupid to those who want worldly wisdom and power. And who doesn’t want worldly wisdom and power?

Why aren’t more churches working at the margins of society? You know who wants to know Jesus? International students, asylum seekers, and other people we forget in our comfortable little enclaves. I don’t know for certain where the vast majority of church plants happen, or who they try to reach – but I bet it trends urban/suburban, and trends trendy, and trends towards Sydney’s eastern suburbs if you’re a Moore College graduate or an Acts 29 planter in Sydney.

It’s hard to figure out how effective evangelism is when most of our human resources (think people being paid to do Gospel ministry in Australia) are in a relatively small pocket of a relatively big city, in an incredibly geographically diverse and increasingly culturally diverse nation.

 

July 27, 2015

Personal evangelism, oratory, and the fine art of cross-shaped persuasion

Like it or not, a recent article in the Briefing has fired up an old argument on personal evangelism that Gen Ys like me, think of in some way analogous to the worship wars… it happened in the past, and we’re slightly too post-modern to think there’s only one right answer to the question.

In a nutshell, John Dickson’s excellent book Promoting the Gospel (and other work) suggested that “evangelists” are a special category of person, much like preachers and teachers – and while all Christians are called to be part of the body of Christ, which is called to participate, together, in the Great Commission, and perhaps, the “Mission of God,” we’re not all called to play the specific role of heralds of King Jesus, proclaiming, via words, directly, and persuasively, the case for Jesus. Now, he says we should take whatever opportunities we have to give the reason for the hope that we have – but he wants the emphasis to be more on what we can achieve together, and what we can achieve in the way that we live our lives, and love the people around us, pointing people to Jesus. You can read my review of the book here.

Some people didn’t like that idea. They had an argument. Now, Tony Payne, at the Briefing, has (not intentionally), restarted the argument with his piece on Personal Evangelism.

Like a few others, I can’t really tell the difference between what he say the individual’s role is, and what John Dickson says the individual’s role is, which seems to boil down to using the skills God gives you as gifts for God’s kingdom and for those outside it.

It seems most people accept these two truths, but reach different conclusions:

1. We’re each called to serve God with the different gifts he has given us, as we worship him and take part in his mission (or worship him by taking part in his mission).

2. Some people are better at evangelism, and even human relationships, than others.

It’s this last bit of the logical chain that seems to divide people.

3. If people are better at evangelism than others, we should assume that they are gifted in that area and see part of our role, in the body, as freeing, supporting, and equipping those people to serve with those gifts. So that we’re on mission together.

Other people seem to say this is an area where gifting doesn’t come into play – because we all have to evangelise. But we’re all evangelising in that point 3.

I wonder if it’s easier to make a judgment, like Dickson’s, that not all people are evangelists if you are one, and if part of your job is helping clean up the mess that well-intentioned people make – perhaps, for example, those who stand on street corners and yell at people about sin and judgment (this isn’t really a post about the relative merits of street preaching).

Anyway.

I think Paul was an evangelist. That “evangelist” was a role that distinguished him from other figures in the early church. That he wasn’t the only “evangelist” – and that he wanted people to imitate him, in their lives as they were able, even if they weren’t especially gifted as evangelists – because promoting the gospel is about more than words – by sacrificially offering their gifts to the work of the Gospel. And we’re one body. Working for one mission. Together.

“Personal evangelism” is a bizarre outcome of western individualism being applied to the work of the church. We might live in an age of individualism – but part of the message of the gospel might have to be a counter-cultural indictment of that idea.

But each of us is called to take part in mission and evangelism, with the people we know. I’m going to suggest, in the next 3,000 words, that when it comes to evangelism as persuasion, all Christians are called to evangelise by ethos – being Christ like, and to be prepared to do logos (logic and knowledge about God and the Gospel), and I wonder if “pathos” and a strong mix of logos and ethos is what marks an “evangelist.”

So. Here are some thoughts I have, after thinking about how Paul frames his evangelism and approach to communication, that I think are somewhat relevant to the debate. This will be part of my Masters project next year, so shh… don’t tell anybody…

Oratory, Cicero, Paul, and Evangelism

Aristotle literally wrote the book On Rhetoric. He said there were three elements of successful persuasion:

1. Ethos: Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible.

2. Pathos: Persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions.

3. Logos: Persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

After Aristotle, these elements were bounced around in different shaped triangles depending on which element you thought was more important. There were literal schools of thought, like the Attic School, who thought flashy eloquence, which played with the emotion, were easier and more convincing than dry, boring speeches that were full of logic. And there were other more classical types, like Cicero, who wanted to try to balance out the triangle into something more equilateral.

I’m fairly convinced that Paul, who was a Roman citizen from Tarsus, was educated in rhetoric in Tarsus, which had famous rhetorical schools (see Strabo, the historian, on Tarsus). Cicero was the governor of Tarsus just after he wrote De Oratore – this is a guess, but I reckon there would have been a bit of Cicero on the curriculum of rhetorical training in Tarsus.

Cicero didn’t like the flashy, insubstantial, approach to Rhetoric championed by the Attic school of rhetoric, and he criticised it extensively.

Paul, in his letters to the Corinthians, is engaging with the rhetorical grandchildren of the Attic movement – the Second Sophistic – and he deploys pretty much the same argument against them that Cicero did, championing the triumph of substance, both in content – or logos – and character – or ethos, over style – the ability to speek eloquently (pathos).

Paul speaks against the Corinthian desire to have the flashiest communicators lead their churches –

Here’s an interesting comparison between something Cicero says about approaching a speech with trembling, and what Paul says about his approach in Corinth…

Cicero:

For the better the orator, the more profoundly is he frightened of the difficulty of speaking, and of the doubtful fate of a speech, and of the anticipations of an audience… While as for him who is un-ashamed — as I see is the case with most speakers, — I hold him deserving not merely of reprimand, but of punishment as well. Assuredly, just as I generally perceive it to happen to yourselves, so I very often prove it in my own experience, that I turn pale at the outset of a speech, and quake in every limb and in all my soul

And Paul:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

Paul is subverting the rhetorical expectations of his audience – but I’d say he’s doing it by harking back to an older rhetorical convention. He condemns the Corinthian addiction to eloquent oratory, and its encroachment on the church. But this isn’t to say that Paul wasn’t capable of presenting well when the need arose – Acts portrays him as a pretty accomplished orator, as comfortable preaching to a group of religious philosophers in Athens, quoting their ancient poets back at them during his Areopagus address (Acts 17:28), in court rooms (Acts 24), and before councils (Acts 23:1-9), governors (Acts 24, 25:1-12), and kings (Acts 25:13-26:32) – all places that orators would commonly perform their tasks as entertainers, philosophers, or advocates.

Imitation isn’t just about flattery

Here’s another cool thing before I get to the point (hint – I think a special role of evangelist might potentially be related to the the orator – whose job it is to persuade).

Here’s what Cicero says about choosing who you copy.

“For nothing is easier than to imitate a man*s style of dress, pose or gait. Moreover, if there is a fault, it is not much trouble to appropriate that and to copy it ostentatiously… he did not know how to choose the model whom he would most willingly resemble, and it was positively the faults in his chosen pattern that he elected to copy. But he who is to proceed aright must first be watchful in making his choice, and afterwards extremely careful in striving to attain the most excellent qualities of the model he has approved… “

This is pretty much what the Corinthians were doing in Corinth and in the Second Sophistic movement – 100 years after Cicero wrote this. So he didn’t convince everybody. Here’s how Paul addresses this practice…

31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

11 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

This comes a bit after Paul says he is prepared to become all things to all men to win some, in 1 Cor 9, which Dickson really nicely sums up in his book:

“Following the example of Paul and Jesus does not necessarily mean that we do what they did. It means that we live by the same flexible ethos, seeking the good of many so that they may be saved.”

I would suggest that one area where Paul may mean we can do what he did – if our gifts and skill sets allow – is imitating him by being a faithful persuader, or evangelist, for the cause of the gospel. I think Dickson is right to warn that we won’t all have Paul’s training, abilities, or specific calling – so won’t all feel comfortable doing what he does, but, within limits, we can imitate him by using what we have to serve the kingdom of God (cf Romans 12).

The foundational importance of Ethos

Here’s what I’m thinking. It’s not rocket science. But it has the benefit of this oratory stuff backing it up. We’re all called to persuade people of the truth of the gospel, with whatever we have at our disposal – but the most powerfully underrated element of persuasion is not words and knowledge (logos), or fine sounding words that appeal to the emotions (eloquence and pathos), but personal character and living out what you believe (ethos).

I’d say we’re all called to live like Jesus, as an act of evangelism (though also because that’s the goal of the Spirit’s work in us – see Romans 8:29) – but we’re not all called to persuade with pathos (or even logos – beyond knowing the essentials – Christ, and him crucified).

Here’s what Cicero says about the importance of believing your own press (or the press that you’re producing).

“I give you my word that I never tried, by means of a speech, to arouse either indignation or compassion, either ill-will or hatred, in the minds of a tribunal, without being really stirred myself, as I worked upon their minds, by the very feelings to which I was seeking to prompt them.”

But showing your character (and having character to show) is an essential part of Cicero’s approach to persuasion. Though he was prepared to fudge character where necessary.

“Now feelings are won over by a man’s merit, achievements or reputable life, qualifications easier to embellish, if only they are real, than to fabricate where non-existent… Moreover so much is done by good taste and style in speaking, that the speech seems to depict the speaker’s character. For by means of particular types of thought and diction, and the employment besides of a delivery that is unruffled and eloquent of good-nature, the speakers are made to appear upright, well-bred and virtuous men.”

But virtue is important, because bad people can use oratory to bad ends.

“For if we put the full resources of speech at the disposal of those who lack these virtues, we will certainly not make orators of them, but will put weapons into the hands of madmen”

Here’s how Paul shows that he really lives, and believes, his message, when he again defends his lack of eloquence in 2 Corinthians 10-13.

He defends his ministry as a triumph of ethos over the eloquence of the “super apostles” – even though he can out apostle the super apostles. He makes it clear that imitating Christ means being prepared to imitate Christ for others, here are a couple of what I think are the important bits that make this case… in Paul’s reluctant string of boasting in 2 Cor 11:

23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles,danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers;27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?

30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

And 2 Cor 12:

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing.

What Ethos based gospel persuasion looks like

Paul lives his message. I’d argue this is what he calls all Christians to imitate – demonstrating the strength of the gospel in our weakness. Imitating the crucified Jesus.

But he also knows and speaks his message appropriately to his circumstances. I’m not sure this skill is transferrable to all people everywhere, this certainly isn’t the case from experience. This is where I think the evangelist role might kick in – people who are skilled in speaking and persuading people regardless of their background.

For the Corinthians, whose ethos was broken by their pursuit of status-boosting eloquence, he resolved to know nothing but Christ, and present him plainly.

At the Areopagus (Acts 17), he quoted poets, turned his audience against each other by pointing out the philosophical differences between Stoics and Epicureans, and appeared to stick to the conventions of presenting a new God to the Areopagus for their consideration.

When he was in front of a Jewish council, he turned Pharisee and Sadducee against each other because he knew his audience, and knew how to communicate with them.

When he’s talking to Agrippa in Acts 26, he appears to obey the legal rhetorical conventions while also trying to convert the king (Festus, who’s hanging out, listening – says Paul has “great learning”):

24 At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.”

25 “I am not insane, most excellent Festus,” Paul replied. “What I am saying is true and reasonable. 26 The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.27 King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.”

28 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”

29 Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”

Paul uses legal and religious trials, philosophical speeches, and political engagement to present the gospel of Jesus to his audience.

This is evangelism par excellence. I don’t think Christians fail to be Christians when they don’t speak about Jesus at their school council meetings. But I think an evangelist is failing to use their gifts if they can, but don’t.

It’s interesting that this was also the way the early church saw apologetics – both Tertullian and Justin Martyr wrote to the Roman Empire, basically asking for a fairer go for Christians, and each of them (partly to make the case that Christianity wasn’t dangerous), spelled out the gospel for their readers.

There’s an interesting objection to this view of what’s going on for Paul – the idea that he’s a specially gifted orator, based on Paul’s own words in 2 Corinthians 11:6:

“6 Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.”

There are a few cool, and convincing responses to this.

First – the “even if” isn’t really a concession, he’s simply dealing with the criticism that has been made about him – that he writes like a rhetorician, but speaks weakly.

Second  – when he says “unskilled in speaking,” the Greek underlying this is transliterally, “idiot” – and it conventionally referred to people who were trained in rhetoric but weren’t professional orators.

Third, and perhaps more important, Paul is placing a high price on knowledge, and plain speaking –  Cicero did too. He suggested you couldn’t be a good orator without either.

On plain speaking:

“…let us select as our models those who enjoy unimpaired health, (which is peculiar to the Attic orators,) rather than those whose abundance is vicious, of whom Asia has produced numbers. And in doing this (if at least we can manage even this, for it is a mighty undertaking) let us imitate, if we can, Lysias, and especially his simplicity of style: for in many places he rises to grandeur. But because he wrote speeches for many private causes, and those too for others, and on very trifling subjects, he appears to be somewhat simple, because he has designedly filed himself down to the standard of the inconsiderable causes which he was pleading.”

On knowledge:

“Yet I maintain that such eloquence as Crassus and Antonius attained could never have been realized without a knowledge of every matter.”

Ethos-based persuasion and evangelism

Interestingly, Dickson picks up on this when it comes to how he defines an evangelist.

First, a bit of a word study to show that evangelism and oratory basically went hand in hand (as, did apologetics).

In the ancient world the noun “gospel” (euangelion) and its verb “telling the gospel” (euangelizomai) were media terms. They always referred to the announcement of happy or important events. News of military victories, national achievements, weddings, births and, in one ancient text, the bargain price of anchovies at the marketplace were all called “gospels”. The modern media term “newsflash” probably comes closest in meaning to the ancient word gospel…

The most well-known “gospels” proclaimed in the ancient world were those announcing the emperors’ achievements. The caesars’ ascensions, conquests and political deeds were all the subject of the gospels of the empire. “Gospel” was very much an imperial term in the period of the New Testament.

His definition of “evangelist” follows this definition of the good news…

“The word literally means gospeller, that is, one who announces the gospel. The term seems to have been coined by the first Christians (it appears nowhere else in Greek literature before the New Testament) as a shorthand way of referring to those in the church who took on the task of proclaiming the life, death and resurrection of God’s Messiah (the gospel) to those for whom this message was still news”

And he doesn’t rule out the option of having gospel conversations with the people you’re in relationships with (so I can’t see how it’s possible he rules out personal evangelism).

In reality, most of our opportunities to speak about Christianity will occur in passing, in the to-and-fro of daily conversation. It should not surprise us, then, that the two clearest passages in the Bible calling on all believers to speak up for the Lord urge them simply to “answer” for the faith—to respond to people’s comments, questions or criticisms with a gentle and gracious reply (Colossians 4:5—6 and 1 Peter 3:15). Most Christians are not “evangelists” (in the technical, New Testament sense of the word) and should not be made to feel the pressure to be something they are not. The Scriptures certainly urge us all to be open about our faith whenever opportunity allows, but doing “the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5) is something God’s Word asks only of some of us.

But here’s the fourth characteristic he identifies for an evangelist (after desire to proclaim Jesus, ability to relate well to people, and Christian maturity).

“An evangelist will be clear with the gospel. I do not just mean clear about what the gospel is-hopefully, that will be all of us. I am talking about clarity in outlining the gospel. This point arises directly from the word “evangelist” itself. A “gospeller” must be particularly able to explain the message plainly. I am not talking about having a gift of the gab or even being an extrovert-clarity does not always go with these. I am talking specifically about an ability to take the truths of the gospel and make them plain to others (key here will be an ability to talk about Christ without jargon, in the everyday language of those who don’t believe).”

I think there’s a good case to be made that there is a specific role within the body of Christ for people who are skilled as modern day orators and keen to use those skills sacrificially, as a gift for others and in an act of worship to God. And I don’t see why you wouldn’t call that role “evangelist.”

I wonder if the pay off, for those championing every member evangelism, is that orators were built for imitation – both Paul and Cicero say it’s important to pick who you imitate. And imitation, of good models, will boost the quality of gospel engagement with the world across the board. Our corporate ability to know and tell the gospel – our logos and pathos – will improve if we recognise, equip, and imitate the right people, and work at knowing complex truths and speaking them plainly.

But the pressure is off, a little bit, at least for evangelism, for those who are worried about not having the right skills for doing the logos and pathos stuff well. Because without a Christ shaped ethos – and a good corporate ethos within the Church – our words are powerless. Our rhetorical triangle is flat, or a point with no foundation.

If we focus on doing the much harder work on getting our character, or ethos, to imitate Paul, but more importantly – to imitate Jesus, that’s going to communicate the gospel clearer than any words we speak – and the words we speak will be much more powerful if we, and others in the body of Christ, are consistent with the way we live, both individually and corporately.

November 24, 2012

What if this was your last month on earth?

The Mayan Calendar reckons we’ve got a month until something really big happens. Either the world ends with some sort of cataclysmic bang or whimper, or the beginning of a new world order.


Image Credit: Sevenstreets.com: The radio cast of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy performing at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I think, frankly, that’s a load of bollocks. I don’t think the world is going to end in a month. I’m not planning to run out of food, or money, and I’m still thinking about the good things I want to do next year, and in the future.

But I also think, frankly, that there are no guarantees that the world won’t end next month, next week, or tomorrow. It’s pretty clear, if you listen to the Greens, some scientists, or the weird guy at the train station, that our ability to live on this planet is finite, and things are going to come to an end sooner or later – some say sooner, some say later.

It’s also pretty clear, if you are a Christian, that we should be living like the end is near. Because it might be. And because that shapes our priorities in a really helpful way. Knowing that tomorrow could be it, means you spend today on what’s important.

So what if we had a month to go? How would you spend your last 30 days on earth? How would you spend the last 30 minutes?

For some people, getting ready means fleeing to a mountain in France. Sadly, the French government is getting in the way. But how do you get ready if you know the earth is a fleeting mist?

What Jesus says

In Matthew 24 Jesus talks a bit about the end of the world as we know it… and what that means for people who think he’s the promised Messiah, from the Old Testament, God’s chosen king (that’s what messiah means), and what it means for the world – if he is the king, he’s king of the world.

He says, just to make it clear that there’s a bit of urgency in deciding who he is:

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

It could be tomorrow.

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

He’s speaking mostly to his followers – he says you better make sure you’re not just off partying until your master suddenly returns. Because he’ll smash you, just like he’ll smash his enemies.

A little earlier in Matthew 24, Jesus makes it pretty clear what’s involved in waiting for the end, if you believe he’s who he said he is…

13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Interestingly, he also somewhat figuratively, talks about fleeing to the mountains as legitimate. So there you go. French government… take heed…

“16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains”

But it’s the other two bits – the standing firm to the end, and the gospel being preached to all nations, that are the important part of the response to knowing the world could end.

This preaching, in particular, becomes the mission of his followers a couple of pages in the Bible later, in Matthew 28, after Jesus has been killed, and, to prove he is who he says he is, been raised. That’s the evidence he offers for his claim – it’s the truth that Christianity is built on. And Jesus says now that you’ve seen who I am, that I am the king… this is a little passage called the “Great Commission”…

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So, I hope the answer, if you’re a Christian, is that you’d do lots of this in those last 30 days – excited by the prospect that Jesus is king, and wanting people to know that so they avoid the pain of not being one of his people.

What Paul says (for those who don’t believe Jesus is king)

But what about if you don’t believe Jesus is king, or that aliens are going to blast off from a mountain in France? What do you do in those last days? Paul has one answer, when it comes to whether or not you think the resurrection happened – which is what Jesus’ claim to be king hangs on, he says if you don’t believe – and that’s up to you – then this is what you should do, in 1 Corinthians 15:

“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”

I love how Paul sums up what Christians are hoping for, at the end of the world here – the future for all people, dead and alive, who follow Jesus.

51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

What I think is incredibly cool is that his advice for how to live in the light of this is exactly the same as Jesus’ advice – so much for the idea that “Paul invented Christianity”…

58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

What’s the work of the Lord – that’d be the stuff Jesus said in the “Great Commission” – the job he, the Lord, gave those who believe he was raised.

I like that we’re meant to live like the world’s going to end next month every month.

November 22, 2012

Book Review: The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission, John Dickson

I’ve found John Dickson tremendously helpful at just about every stage of my Christian life – even when he edited a magazine called Zed magazine that I remember reading as a kid. His books are helpful. His take on public Christianity is pretty paradigmatic for me, and his apparent commitment to excellence – particularly as manifested in his approach to scholarship, and the resources he produces – is something I aspire to.

This comes as a sort of disclaimer to be read to account for my bias in this treatment of his exceptionally useful book – The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More Than Our Lips.

This isn’t a new book, it has been around for a while, but we’re doing a series at church this term on connecting with people, where the book is suggested as a good way for understanding what evangelism looks like as a church family – it takes the pressure off a little bit, by lowering the bar – and treating evangelism not just as God’s work – which is a robustly reformed understanding of the task, but as the church’s work. A team effort.

My experience while reading this book was quite bizarre – almost an out of body experience. It was like I was reading my own thoughts written to me. This was scary, and somewhat reassuring. Though I hadn’t read the book until a month ago, this is largely the framework I use when I’m thinking about church, mission, and our role as individuals within those contexts.

My take on his foundational premise – that our lives, our whole lives, essentially function as a declaration of who we are, so we should think about that and live intentionally in a way that our lives are consistent with the gospel, in a way that promotes it – means I think it’s an incredibly useful resource, especially as it applies this concept to real life, it’s not abstract, and its incredibly well argued, with occasional references to the author’s PhD thesis, which I read a lot of for an essay once, and found equally helpful.

Here’s a lynchpin sort of paragraph…

“But perhaps the best kept secret of Christian mission is that the Bible lists a whole range of activities that promote Christ to the world and draw others toward him. These include prayer, godly behaviour, financial assistance, the public praise of God (in church) and, as already mentioned, answering people’s questions. All of these are explicitly connected in the Bible with advancing the gospel and winning people to Christ. They are all “mission” activities, and only a couple of them involve the lips at all.”

But wait. You say, observant reader that you are – this sounds exactly like that Sir Francis of Assisi misquote (h/t Gary Ware) that you don’t like: “always preach the gospel, when necessary use words” – you’ve said before that words are necessary. Thankfully, I’ve also said that I think a whole bunch of other stuff that communicates the truth of the gospel, deliberately, and alongside the use of words, also counts as word ministry (how we live/act, how we sing, multimedia, though I remain unconvinced about gospel mime).

I think words are necessary for word ministry, and for mission, but they aren’t the only part of our testimony. I think this book seeks to avoid people saying “words alone” – because our testimony will be much richer if we’re living them out, together, and letting people who are gifted in particular areas carry the load in those areas.

I like this quote from Augustine on the place of good works.

“Now of all who can with us enjoy God, we love partly those to whom we render services, partly those who render services to us, partly those who both help us in our need and in turn are helped by us, partly those upon whom we confer no advantage and from whom we look for none. We ought to desire, however, that they should all join with us in loving God, and all the assistance that we either, give them or accept from them should tend to that one end.”

Dickson is not denying that the gospel is words – he simply says we promote the gospel with more than words. Importantly he says this:

“Does this mean that people can start believing in Christ without hearing the gospel at all? No. As the apostle Paul makes clear, “faith comes from hearing the message” (Romans 10:17). First Peter 3:1 shows us that the gospel’s role in conversion is more complex than we sometimes realise. It is not enough simply to affirm that people are won to faith only through the hearing of the gospel. Let me explain. Leaving aside the important theological observation that all conversion is ultimately the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, let me try and account for conversion from the human side of the equation, which is what Paul and Peter are talking about in the above texts. Humanly speaking, hearing the gospel is the necessary and sufficient cause of faith in Christ. It is necessary inasmuch as people cannot put their faith in Jesus without first learning the gospel about him. It is sufficient in that the gospel can bring people to faith all on its own—it needs no other factor (other than the work of the Holy Spirit). However, none of this means that hearing the gospel is the only cause of faith, or even that it is always the primary cause of faith. Other factors (on the human side of the equation) will frequently play a minor or major role in winning people over to the One revealed in the gospel.”

I could wax lyrical about this book and its benefits for a couple of thousand words – or you could just buy it and read it.

I’ll start with what I thought was a question I would have liked a bit more time spent on, or where I think something could be added – the first is his definition of the gospel…

“The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed his kingdom and opened it up to sinners through the birth, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return to overthrow evil and consummate the kingdom for eternity… Any account of the Christian gospel that does not narrate the basic content of the books we rightly call the Gospels does not deserve to be called a “gospel outline”. It might be a true and accurate statement of biblical truths—and, for that reason, valuable and useful for our hearers—but it is not the gospel that Jesus said must be preached to all nations (Mark 13:10).”

I largely agree. I think the best three word reduction of the gospel is “Jesus is Lord” – if it was six words it would be “the resurrection shows Jesus is Lord” – but reductions suffer because they are simplifications… I’d want to suggest that while this is an incredibly useful description of the Gospel, it kind of cuts loose the Old Testament, especially creation and fall – which, though I have hesitations about the predominant usage of 2 Ways to Live (seriously, how many other conversations do people walk up to somebody, and unless they’re a professional cartoonist, or playing pictionary, say “can I draw you a picture”), though I have hesitations about this use – starting the gospel account from creation and fall is, I think, an essential part of the gospel narrative, I think John’s gospel, in the prologue, agrees with me, as does Matthew with his fronting of the genealogy – so this insight isn’t precluded by the summary above. I just think making it explicit is useful.

God’s role in creation, as the sole author of creation, is the foundation of his commitment to the act of promoting the gospel, so it’s not absent from his thinking. He says:

“There may be different ways of expressing it but I think I would have to answer this question with the simple statement: there is one God. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible makes the resounding, unapologetic declaration that there is just one Creator and Lord of the world. It begins in the Bible’s opening line: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). To ancient readers, this was not simply a sensible way to start a holy book. It was a huge swipe at the entire religious outlook of the time. The opening lines of the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish, to give just one example from the period, list no fewer than nine separate gods, each with its own part to play in the events leading up to creation. Saying that “God created the heavens and the earth” was tantamount to saying that no other deity was involved in the universe… If there is just one God in the universe, everyone everywhere has a duty to worship that Lord.”

Tying the motivation for preaching to the Lordship of Jesus, rather than to fear of judgment or as some sort of good work, is incredibly freeing – from guilt, and from any sense of obligation, outside of the joyful gratitude that being one of the people of the true Lord of the universe brings. This is very helpful. He says:

“We promote God’s glory to the ends of the earth not principally because of any human need but fundamentally because of God’s/Christ’s unique worthiness as the Lord of heaven and earth. Promoting the gospel to the world is more than a rescue mission (though it is certainly that as well); it is a reality mission. It is our plea to all to acknowledge that they belong to one Lord.”

To which I say: “Amen”…

I think this paradigm really helpfully anchors the good that we do – promoting the Lordship of Jesus should be behind our care for the environment, and our love of other people – we do these things because both creation and people are good objects to love, but we ultimately do them because we live for the Lord Jesus, not ourselves – and the act declares something about that Lordship. It’s a complex relationship. I think “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

“Good deeds must never be thought of as a missionary tactic, a means of getting people onside before hitting them with the gospel (“throwing cakes to children”, as Emperor Julian would say). They are the essential fruit of the gospel. Good works must be done for their own sake, in obedience to the Lord. God’s grace proclaimed in the gospel finds its essential outcome in the godly life of those who believe the gospel. Nevertheless, it is precisely because good deeds are an essential fruit of the gospel that they so powerfully promote the gospel. Although we must not find ourselves “doing good” simply as a gospel ploy, there can be no question that Jesus expected unbelievers to observe our acts of love (for the world and for one another29) and through them to be convinced to worship the source of all love: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).”

He also says:

“Following the example of Paul and Jesus does not necessarily mean that we do what they did. It means that we live by the same flexible ethos, seeking the good of many so that they may be saved. Every aspect of our lives—including our social lives—can and should be directed toward the glory of God and the salvation of our neighbours.”

Being already convinced of the place of mission in the Old Testament – or the place it should have occupied in Israel’s approach to the nations – I found his stuff on Israel’s role as proclaimers of this truth convincing and helpful. Sadly, there was nothing that specifically supports my theory that the wisdom literature was a model of evangelism through participation in an international wisdom dialogue, as far as I know I’m still essentially alone there… but his understanding of how Israel was to promote the good news of God in their words, their life, their worship, and their distinctiveness from the nations is useful, and surely forms some of the working in developing a Biblical Theology of mission.

The sections relating to what it meant for Israel to evangelise by being Israel is, alone, worth the price of the book. This is one of the money paragraphs:

“Worship by the Book, Tim Keller of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church writes: Israel was called to make God known to unbelieving nations (Ps 105:1) by singing his praises (Ps 105:2). The temple was to be the center of a “world-winning worship.” The people of God not only worship before the Lord but also before the nations (cf. Isa 2:1-4; 56:6-8; Ps 47:1; 100:1-5; 102:18; 117). God is to be praised before all nations, and as he is praised by his people, the nations are summoned and called to join in song. This pattern does not essentially change in the New Testament, where Peter tells a Gentile church to “declare the praises” of him who called us out of darkness. The term cannot merely refer to preaching but must also refer to gathered worship…

Passages like these illustrate just how natural it was for biblical writers to see corporate praise as public proclamation, as a type of evangelism. This doesn’t mean that all gospel proclamation is “praise” but it does mean that all true praise has the potential to be gospel proclamation, for in it we recount the wonders of Jesus’ life, teachings, miracles, death, resurrection and return.”

I love it. If you read this post – that won’t come as a surprise.

This leads to a particular approach to how church is conducted – it’s not about being seeker sensitive, but about being clear about who we are praising, about why, and concerned about how we conduct our gatherings – concerned for their quality.

“There are all sorts of reasons some of our churches have visitors – location, architecture, demographics and so on-but, in my experience, the most significant factor is the quality of the church service. By “quality” I do not mean the professionalism of the leader or the standard of technology and music. I mean the degree to which the congregation revels in its experience of praising God and encouraging one another…

I want to stress in the strongest terms that visitor-focused services are not an evangelistic necessity. Normal church meetings conducted exceptionally well will not only inspire the regulars; they will draw in visitors and, through the powerful vehicle of our corporate praise, promote the gospel to them.”

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this book, in terms of its reception, and the bit that I took the most convincing on, is the question of the semantic range of the word “evangelist,” and specifically whether or not everybody has a responsibility to speak the gospel, not just promote it. Dickson’s take is interesting. I feel like he’s onto something. Especially because I’m pretty committed to the idea that the body is made up of different people with different gifts – but I feel like in the absence of other people gifted in evangelism, or in smaller manifestations of the body – people have to be evangelists, I don’t think this is something that Dickson would deny… but I can’t put words into his mouth, here’s what he says:

“We are involved in God’s mission, and so we must allow his Word to shape our part in it. The slogan “Every Christian an evangelist” has a noble purpose, but it is not a biblical way of speaking. For Christians in general—as opposed to evangelists in particular—telling the gospel to others (evangelism) could be described as the icing on the cake of mission.”

His argument essentially seems to be some people are icing specialists (evangelists), some people are cake makers (promoters of the gospel), and that it’s fine to just make cake because that’s where the substance is, and its the harder bit. I guess I’d want to say that everybody should be able to make the icing, and evangelists have to be pretty good at making cake too. Again. I don’t think he disagrees. His tips for picking those people who are especially called, or gifted, as evangelists are valuable – but I do think that each one of the characteristics (keenness to share the gospel, relate well to non-believers, Christian maturity, and clarity on what the gospel is – including speaking intelligibly) is something that all Christians should aspire to.

One other very minor criticism is only really relevant if you’re convinced that Bruce Winter is right about what Paul is doing at the Areopagus, in Acts 17, if his exercise is an exercise in wisely assessing the situation, and meeting a social convention for his audience, which expected to be introduced to “foreign gods,” while presenting the gospel, then I’d say Paul’s speech there isn’t an anomaly, but rather, an essential demonstration of his approach to gospel preaching. I’d argue that rather than simply being an apologetic to their concerns, it is a presentation of the gospel that adheres to how they expect to hear about new gods. But that’s not a point that in any sense undermines this fantastic book.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for me – personally – coming from a guy whose excellence I admire, as someone who is too often tempted to think that my own pursuit of excellence in evangelism will be what produces fruit, came in this paragraph…

“A few years after these strange days, I asked Glenda [the lady who led him, and many of his friends from school, to Jesus] what she put her “success” down to. Without blinking she answered, “Prayer. We prayed earnestly, regularly and specifically for your school, and the Lord in his grace answered us.” As an evangelist who is sometimes tempted to think too highly of skill, style and creativity in evangelism, her words were (and are) a salient reminder that the “harvest” is the Lord’s, not mine. The most basic gospel-promoting task, therefore, is not evangelism; it is prayer to the Lord of the harvest.”

This is really powerful stuff for anybody who thinks too highly of their own God given skills, and ability to think. I thoroughly recommend this book that you’ve hopefully all read already.

October 16, 2012

The song that runs through my head every time the ACL says something dumb

This has been bouncing around in my brain all evening.

Partly because of the title, I’m no longer surprised when they say dumb and harmful stuff. But especially because of this line: “They don’t, they don’t speak for us”…

Here’s why they don’t speak for Christians. Christians who want to speak for Christians, and for God, have some parameters for their message that come from the Bible.

2 Corinthians 5:20

20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Colossians 4:2-6

3 At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— 4 that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

5 Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Romans 10:14

“14 How then will they call on him [Jesus] in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

Romans 15:18-20

18 For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, 19 by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; 20 and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation

Luke 4:18-19 (about Jesus)

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Oh yeah, and that has something to do with how Christians should think about themselves… (John 20:21)

“21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.“

There’s a lot of stuff there, and a lot that I didn’t copy and paste, about talking about Jesus, and sharing the gospel – which is talking about Jesus. Not a whole lot there about railing against people you don’t like and calling them bullies.

September 5, 2012

Chappo on life, death, and following Jesus

If I was the type to create Super Apostles then John Chapman would be right at the top of my list. But he’d doubtless hate that. I love Chappo, and he frequently tops the list of “things I love about growing up in a ministry household”… Chappo is a family friend, which is splendiforous (a Chappoism).

Gordo has been posting the transcript of an interview between Chappo and Kel Richards over on his blog (part one, part two). It’s heartwarming and encouraging stuff to read the reflections of a wise saint who has lived his life pursuing God’s glory and telling people about Jesus. I highly commend them to you. Here’s a sample, where he talks about being/getting old…

“John: When you get old, you don’t become a different person. You’re the same person who was always there, only it takes you longer to do things. Why I thought I’d be able to catch up I’ve no idea. See, when you become old, you don’t become different.

One of the nice parts about living in this [retirement] village is, collectively, we’ve got an enormous amount of knowledge. If you want to know how to do something, there’s somebody here to teach you. And, that’s the nice part about living with a hundred and twenty, hundred and fifty people. Amongst us all, we’ve got a massive amount of skills. You want to learn to use the computer, the computer club’ll spend time, and they’ve got it, to do with you. If you want to play chess and board games, there’s someone who’ll play with you in the living, in the sitting room.

Kel: So if old age is just like the rest of life, then older people, even though death is approaching, don’t give any extra thought to God.

John: Don Howard* used to tell a story of a man he visited in Burwood East. And he urged this man to turn to Christ, he was fit and well. And he said Don I don’t need God.

Don said I visited him in hospital where he was lapsing in and out of consciousness. And Don said you don’t have a lot of time left, you should turn to Christ. And he said you don’t think a fit man like me is about to die do you?

Now you see, if you’ve spent a lifetime of saying no, why would you suddenly say yes? There’s no more new information to have. I’m a sinner; Christ died for me; I need to repent; I need to trust him. If I don’t believe that when I’m seventeen, there’s odds on I won’t believe it at 37.”

*Don Howard is my grandfather.

October 12, 2011

“By the book” evangelism: no longer means what you think it means

The World Council of Churches has taken upon its good self to release a guideline for converting the dirty heathen. Here is the document – Christian Witness in a Multi-religious world. But for now. This seems:

a) Dumb.
b) Possibly well motivated.
c) Unlikely to be effective.
d) All of the above.

Here’s a Reuters story that will no doubt filter through the interwebs and the media this week.

“It reaffirms their right to seek converts but also urges them to abandon “inappropriate methods of exercising mission by resorting to deception and coercive means”, saying that such behaviour “betrays the Gospel and may cause suffering to others”.

That seems ok. Right? Coercion is bad. But what could they possibly mean by that? Bait and switch “we’ll give you food if you convert” doesn’t really appeal to anybody but the most hardened numbers driven pragmatists.

Here’s what the story suggests…

“Christian missionaries have long been accused of offering money, food, or other goods to win converts in poor countries, either from other faiths or from rival churches.”

The problem, I’m noticing, is that this seems to suggest some sort of dichotomy where we are to seek converts using words and logical arguments, rather than actions. Deeds follow doctrine. Love is an important part of Christian testimony. It should be precisely that we offer the above, without strings attached, that serves as evangelism in multi-religious impoverished countries.

The WCC document actually recognises this tension (and having had a read through it, doesn’t do a bad job)…

Acts of service, such as providing education, health care, relief services and acts of justice and advocacy are an integral part of witnessing to the gospel. The
exploitation of situations of poverty and need has no place in Christian outreach. Christians should denounce and refrain from offering all forms of allurements, including financial incentives and rewards, in their acts of service.

Here’s the media release from the World Council of Churches spruiking its document.

I set out really wanting to dislike this document. Who is a post-modern ecumenical council to try to tell us how to do a job the Bible already spells out pretty clearly? And I’ve decided it’s actually not bad. And it’s sad that there’s a perceived need for a document like this. Have a read and tell me what you think.

July 4, 2011

A plea for the Australian Christian Lobby to get “on message”

In my time as a PR hack for a regional lobby group one of the golden rules I learned for lobbying via the media (or for trying to change opinion via the media) is to stay on message. Over and over again. Make sure you get your point across. Make sure the questions you get asked become opportunities to give the answers you want to give. Done well, this is brilliant. A good message (or platform) is important.

We all hate the way modern politicians seem to simply repackage the same sound bite over and over again in broadcast interviews. When they do it, and get caught out, they look dumb. But most of the time they don’t get caught out. Because journalists, in reality, are after an eight second sound bite. And you’re much better off making sure that eight seconds is going to cover the message you want them to cover, not the message they want to cover. Being mindlessly on message is better than talking about things without being on message.

The best way to be on message is to know how your message, or more correctly, your platform, relates to the issue at hand. For a politician that doesn’t mean banging on about “creating jobs” or “stopping boats” it means giving reasons that the policy decision has been reached in a way that is attractive to a voter. A good way to do this is to involve real people. People like stories about people. But integrating one’s party platform with one’s media statement in a way that is catchy and repeatable is one step towards using the media effectively.

It can be hard being on message in the middle of a broadcast interview, and especially hard if it’s in the form of a debate, which has been the case in many of Wendy Francis’ recent TV appearances. But it is incredibly easy to be on message in a media release, and if a media release isn’t on message it shouldn’t be released, because anything you say that is not on message is a distraction from your real message. Let me repeat that in bold.

If a media release isn’t on message it shouldn’t  be released, because anything you say that is not on message is a distraction from your real message.

Unless you have some sort of key performance indicator that involves distributing a certain number of releases per month, or some sort of contractual obligation,  you should only put out releases that have a point. If you do have such KPIs or obligations you should seriously consider changing them. Nothing is more damaging than a brand than irrelevant and confusing messaging. Because when you have something valuable to say you’re either less credible, or a story will make reference to your previous position on an unrelated issue, or people just won’t listen to you because you’ve become the proverbial boy crying wolf.

Which brings me to the Australian Christian Lobby. And my big problem with how they do PR and how they’re almost never “on message”. Well, they’re not on “gospel” message anyway. A simple yardstick for being on message for a Christian Lobby would be talking about Jesus, wouldn’t it? Given that Jesus puts the Christ in Christian and is the leader of our political party, and that all our interactions with culture should be framed by the relationship we have with him by grace, and his Lordship over the world… I’d say Jesus is pretty foundational to Christian belief, and thus, Christian lobbying.

But not according to the Australian Christian Lobby. Now. A lot of the releases they put out in the Month of May are about good stuff. Serious issues. Issues where a Christian voice is valuable and necessary. And they get copious media coverage. They are nominally the spokespeople for the Christian cause in Australia. They keep getting wheeled out in front of cameras and recorders and notepads. And they keep straying off message. It’s foundational stuff.

Here’s a wordle of their media releases from May. I’ve removed the names of spokespeople quoted because they were a dominant feature.*

Now. You may think it’s unfair to take a sample of media releases about issues where they are on message about a response to an issue which may over cloud mentions of Jesus, word cloud wise. Which would be fair enough. But none of these releases actually mentioned Jesus. There is no flavouring of the gospel involved. Defenders of the ACL in recent days have mentioned that we’re called to be salt and light. Fair enough. But this isn’t even salty stuff. And, lest you think that just picking the word “Jesus” isn’t fair, I conducted the same exercise with the words gospel, God, and Bible. And got no results. Search results on their website reveal that most mentions of Jesus come in mentions of the Jesus: All About Life campaign, which they support.

A media messaging strategy for a Christian organisation of any flavour, but particularly a public voice of Christianity claiming to speak for all of us (they’re not called the Politically conservative Christians from Australia Lobby are they…), should fundamentally involve the issue that Christians of all flavours agree on. The Lordship of Jesus. Further, they should be motivated to see other people acknowledge that Lordship. While addressing injustice is a fundamental Christian activity, doing it in a manner so removed from our motivation is an off message distraction. This is why I think Christians who are interested in moral issues should form some sort of family/morality lobby (maybe stop the charade that Family First is a political party and turn them into a lobby group) and the Christian Lobby should get on with being a Christian voice (a role they try to claim for themselves on their about us page without actually mentioning Jesus, or the gospel, again). They claim a Christian “worldview” and yet don’t articulate it. A Christian worldview must start at the foot of the cross and work outwards, not start with morality and work inwards. The cross makes morality make sense.

Here’s what I think a Christian media strategy should look like, from 1 Peter 3:

15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

At the moment the ACL is failing on most counts, but still copping the slander. Why not do the first bit well, at least then you’re being slandered for a reason. And you’re not distracting people from the work of the gospel.

Interestingly, one of the few pages on the ACL site that mentions Jesus (that’s not a daily summary of news from around the traps) is an article they’ve posted from Sydney Anglicans where Michael Jensen talks about Jesus and the gospel alongside gay marriage. He integrates his key message with a response to an issue.

Deviations from the message of Jesus are a distraction from the gospel. But the message of Jesus has relevance to all areas and issues of society. The ACL, at this stage, aren’t doing a great job of integrating these two concepts.

*Data Source: Australian Christian Lobby National Media Releases from the Month of May:

 

June 6, 2011

A trillion dollar tip

To say I’m not a fan of the Way of the Master evangelism methodology is an understatement. The name is misleading – unless by “Master” they mean Kirk Cameron or Ray Comfort. Because Jesus didn’t evangelise the way they suggest you evangelise. I share their enthusiasm for the great commission, and for looking for opportunities to evangelise, but to suggest that all proclamations of the gospel should begin with a proclamation of the predicament that requires the gospel is a little misleading (check out their “how to botch an altar call” article.

I don’t like their methodology. I’d say that for every one person they lead to the cross they’ve turned away significantly more by the way they present the message. They’re seasoned with hot chilli, rather than salt.

And perhaps the bit I don’t like most of all is their money tract. Used by cheap Christians instead of tipping all over the US. It’s products like this trillion dollar bill that make me glad I don’t live in the states, because I can’t imagine having to try explaining the lack of monetary tip to the waitress who has done a great job of serving a customer only to be left one of these in the place of actual money:

You can’t pay for your groceries with one of these – and yet there are bozos out there (and I’ve spoken to a few Christian waitstaff who have been given these) who leave these as a substitute for a tip. Perhaps because they’ve actually bought each Trillion Dollar Bill for $5. Here. Buy some of my fake money for $5. That’s a get rich quick scheme.

Ray Comfort suggests that this note is actually a “light hearted way to get the message across” – which it could potentially be, if the message on the back was an invitation to start building a relationship with a church that teaches about Jesus. Instead the blurb on the back reads:

“The trillion-dollar question: Will you go to Heaven when you die? Here’s a quick test. Have you ever told a lie, stolen anything, or used God’s name in vain? Jesus said, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Have you looked with lust? Will you be guilty on Judgment Day? If you have done those things, God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous adulterer at heart. The Bible warns that if you are guilty you will end up in Hell.”

That’s the opening. Now. It’s all true. And they do get to Jesus. Eventually – but who is going to keep reading? I know one guy who was converted reading some tracts, but only after he’d spent so much time with the lady who gave them to him that he thought “maybe I should read that stuff she gave me”…

Here’s where the blurb goes next.

“God, who the Bible says is “rich in mercy” sent His Son to suffer and die on the cross for guilty sinners. We broke God’s Law, but Jesus paid our fine. That means He can legally dismiss our case. He can commute our death sentence: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Then He rose from the dead and defeated death. Please, repent (turn from sin) today and God will grant everlasting life to all who trust in Jesus. Then read your Bible daily and obey it.”

God loves you. He paid the price. Turn to Jesus. Trust and obey. Great. That’s the gospel. (though it does have huge potential to become pretty legalistic, doesn’t it? Is daily Bible reading really required for those who trust in Jesus?).

There is just so much wrong with the strategy behind this. It completely fails to understand the importance of medium in presenting a message. It’s just awful. How any Christian can not see how important and related medium and message are when we worship the Lord Jesus, God’s word become flesh, is beyond me. If that’s not a case of medium and message being all wrapped up together I don’t know what is.

The problem isn’t just “strategic” – in reacting against something bad (sloppy presentations of an “all loving God”) these guys have gone to the other extreme. And I’d like to see a passage in the Bible where Jesus deals with an outsider by treating them as an outsider. I’m writing an exegesis paper on the story of Zacchaeus today, where a corrupt outcast meets Jesus, who doesn’t turn to him and say “Zacc, you’re a horrible sinner and you must repent before I’ll have anything to do with you.” No. He says: “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” And then Zacchaeus responds by repenting. I just don’t get the “way of the master” part of the act of handing out fake money that tells people they’re going to Hell.

May 13, 2011

Vintage Christian Marketing: How not to a tract people to Jesus

Get it. These are “tracts”… I’ll be here all day. These are from a blog dedicated to such ethereal ephemera called Old Time Religion. They remind me that I should finally start my “bad Christian books” blog – I’ve got about thirty books on my shelf that I haven’t blogged yet, and I still haven’t finished reviewing Help Lord the Devil Made me Fat.





April 5, 2011

Justin Bieber: an “effeminate little sissy” says Pisseth Against the Wall pastor

Steven Anderson likes to say controversial things to get attention. It works. Here’s his take on Bieber Fever.

It’s pretty much all because the NIV translators use the word “male” instead of “men”… and being effeminate is a sin. See 1 Corinthians 6:9. In the KJV because that’s Anderson’s preferred version.

” 9Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

10Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

I suspect, given the Roman cultural context of the passage, there may actually be some homosexual undertones to this word (certainly there’s reference to that in the ESV translation notes). The ESV translates it as:

” 9Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Here’s the Greek – which means Mr Anderson isn’t being very nice to Justin Bieber.

μαλακός,a \{mal-ak-os’}
1) soft, soft to the touch  2) metaph. in a bad sense  2a) effeminate  2a1) of a catamite  2a2) of a boy kept for homosexual relations with a man  2a3) of a male who submits his body to unnatural lewdness  2a4) of a male prostitute

Once you’ve jumped on the meterosexual hating bandwagon – here’s how to doorknock… I love the way he listens.

February 4, 2011