I am no longer an evangelical. I didn’t turn in my card because of addiction, moral failure or because I became a Democrat. I did it because I care more deeply about the state of my world than I ever have; I did it because I believe more fervently than ever that the Jesus I read about in the Bible, and the things He says, are true and compelling. I did it because evangelicalism, in this light, is more of a hindrance than a help.
This comes as a shock to my system because my experience and education are rooted in all things evangelical. Academics include a double-major in Pastoral Ministry and Bible and Theology; I also got halfway through a Master of Arts at a world-famous seminary in Pasadena, California before leaving fifteen years of pastoral ministry to become a missionary in North Africa. I have read many books by Christian authors. I highlighted passages in most and even finished some of them. Most of my adult life has been centered in vocational ministry. I Am Clergy.
I was clergy.
My life goals haven’t changed appreciably since the days I drew a salary as “Pastor Bob.” I still want to be a change-agent in bringing those within my sphere of influence to life in Christ. I still pray and look for opportunities to share Jesus with those around me. But I no longer see the movement known as “Evangelicalism” as helpful in this regard. It is not, for me or for you. It is not, especially for the millions of spiritually seeking citizens outside the Church who long to fill the void in their souls.
It is time for a new Reformation.
It is time for American Christians to re-invest wholesale in the missio dei. That’s a great Latin phrase speaking of the mission of God: the driving and chief motivational force of God and His kingdom. It is a force that won’t let Him rest until every corner of creation has been totally redeemed.
The missio dei is a dynamic power that makes no room for slackers. It forces me to critically and ruthlessly evaluate every personal priority, attitude and habit, and to include in that critique any memberships in social groups and how those memberships can be leveraged for the Kingdom. This gives me a newfound ability to see work and neighborhood relationships with spiritual clarity and to empower me to act as a member of this amazing kingdom of priests known at the Church. It also grants me freedom to move away from the activities and associations that hinder Kingdom impact. Weirdly, and surprisingly, I found that the very group I thought would be re-invested with spiritual significance—evangelicalism—became the one I had to leave. This brief paper outlines those dynamics.
The limitations of a pamphlet or a blog post on a topic like this are manifold and glaring. Each paragraph deserves several chapters peppered with explanatory footnotes and bibliographical references. No room is given to dissenting views. There is no attempt at objectivity. What you have is a guy and his perspective. What you might also find are a few nuggets worth pondering; and in so doing they might just change your life.
Trapped in an “Ism”
Evangelicalism is an “ism.” That is, it is a movement with overarching principles and a whole set of assumptions embraced by those on the inside. Many of the assumptions Evangelicals embrace are philosophical, and not theological in nature, and most are on the level of worldview: that is, these are concepts we embrace, assuming them to be true, while rarely acknowledging or analyzing them. These assumptions go unchallenged largely because we mostly don’t realize they are there. Nevertheless, the consequences of the assumptions we hold have profound effects. We do the things we do because that’s what we assume “normal, biblical church life” is. The rest of this paper is devoted to analyzing three of the foundational assumptions of evangelicalism. Then we will draw some conclusions and make some suggestions for change.
Assumption: We Were Meant For the Middle
The evangelical church as we know it isn’t explained in the pages of Scripture. Its roots go back to the third century of Christian influence in the Roman Empire. In this historical setting we see the seeds of the modern church.
The first three centuries of the people of God after the Resurrection are a record of amazing numerical growth. Some say as much as thirty percent of the entire Roman Empire embraced the gospel during that time. All this happened through a decentralized, organic movement whose chief feature, in the government’s eyes, was that it was an illegal threat to national security. As such, Christians were subject to harsh persecution which included imprisonment, forced labor, the confiscation of property and even death. Still, the Church grew exponentially as it was persecuted.
Roman emperor Constantine then embraced Christ and issued the Edict of Milan in 313, officially reversing Rome’s position on Christianity. His edict says he did it so that public order may be restored and the continuance of the Divine favor may "preserve and prosper our successes together with the good of the state."
In one official act the Church is transformed from outlaws to key players in both national security and social stability.
The Church was moved politically from the margins to the center of culture. Legitimate members of a religious society have certain hallmarks, the chief of which are professional priests, geographical locations for worship and an expectation of favorable treatment by the host government. The rapid and sustained decline of numerical growth as a percentage of the population, coupled with an official chasm between professional clergy and an increasingly inert laity, have characterized the Church ever since.
Ever since the movement on the margins known as Christianity found a legislated home in the center of Western culture, it embraced the inevitable calcification that is inherent in the word “religion.”
The history of Western civilization is simply not coherent without an understanding of the wrestling match between politics and religion. Western history for the last eighteen centuries even has a name for this culture that has been dominated by Christian religious systems: it is "Christendom".
In Christendom the Church expects and demands a place at the center of the culture—which means a voice at the table in shaping, directing and maintaining that culture. This doesn’t mean that everything and everyone in the culture operates within the parameters of biblical Christianity; it simply means that the Church expects that it should, even if there is scant evidence that it ever actually happened in that or any other nation’s history. What it means is this: the Church ultimately must become willing to dedicate whatever resources necessary to “restore” its culture to that mythical golden ideal.
The embracing of the Christendom ideal of a Christian nation (or establishing it as such) necessitates a culture war. The forces or groups within that nation moving the culture from that ideal, in the eyes of religious leaders, are enemies both of the Church and of the State. It is therefore the Church’s patriotic and religious duty to identify, expose and oppose such groups. It also follows that the Church assumes the right and obligation to call each and every citizen, public structure and private business to publicly declare their stand on these “litmus test” issues. Ever wonder why abortion attained “litmus test” status? Now you know. This is how and why the culture war is waged.
The Cost of War
The folly in this is that the Church is the only entity that plays by these rules. This means two things. First, it means that we are seen primarily as a contrarian political group obsessed with behavior modification. Second, and far more tragic, the Church allows itself to be broadly characterized by what and whom we are against.
Go stand in the place of Joe Unchurched for a second. He sees the Church fighting the culture wars and how it has demonized its opponents; at the same time he reads a church sign or a tract that says, “God loves you and so do we!” This cognitive dissonance we have created is why he believes our public persona rather than our printed propaganda. The percentage of our nation’s population becoming followers of Christ has been in steady decline for decades. Our cultural moral slide is the same. We are obviously lousy politicians and not so terrific at attracting people so they can hear our clarifications on Sunday mornings.
Should we continue doing what we have been doing, expecting a greater effort to yield different results? Let’s be perfectly clear: when the Church emphasizes moral issues in the public square, expecting unredeemed people and political systems to live by biblical standards, that is not a prophetic voice. It is a political platform and a fool’s errand.
Re-read those last two sentences and compare them to John 13:34-35. Here’s a public identity proposed by a guy who was given every opportunity to enter the culture wars but who adamantly refused to engage. Why was it that Jesus chose to call Himself “The Son of Man” rather than “The Messiah/Christ”? He steered clear of political/cultural assumptions and chose to define Himself differently. Evangelicalism has taken the “Messiah” option as its primary cultural position and those who might otherwise respond to a cup of cold water rather than a conservative voter’s guide are the ones paying the price.
Our group (evangelicalism) has publicly campaigned to be re-inserted into the center of its culture. We expect and demand to have a voice at the political table and have vigorously engaged in culture wars to maintain our “rights,” but at what cost?
Assumption: Church is a Place and a Thing
We are people embedded in a culture and that culture is embedded in us. Our perspective is always skewed by the weird things we as a group think are normal. These are the elements poured into the mold that makes the glasses we wear when we want to make sense of something. They are the very glasses we wear that bring our world into focus.
As an example, think of how we generally do church. The vast majority of US citizens would understand the question, “Do you go to church?” However they may or may not answer, that same percentage will likely envision a congregation at a specific address on a certain day of the week. Headlining those congregations are professionals who lead us and manage programs designed to meet our needs. Christians come together on Sundays because that’s what Christians do.
So when a teacher where people go to church turns to John chapter one, he puts on his cultural glasses and explains it accordingly: people go to church; Andrew brings his brother, Simon, to meet Jesus. This is obviously an analogy for church members to bring their unchurched acquaintances to church where they, too, can meet Jesus.
“Normal” church life in North America is centripetal. “Normal” for evangelicalism is attracting people from their spheres of influence to a central location where they can learn the art of spiritual inertia. Sitting quietly and listening passively are in the center of evangelicalism’s definition of “church.”
Ask that same question to one of those pre-Edict of Milan followers of Christ. “Do you go to church?” would make no sense whatsoever. “Church isn’t a location,” he might explain. “It is the people, wherever we are.”
Andrew and Simon in John’s gospel might look different through his glasses. Here, he sees a picture of a person receiving truth, then going out and sharing it with someone already within his sphere of influence. To him, the message is one of being a carrier of good news, not a link between a consumer and a provider.
For him, the Church is centrifugal. Coming together is important. However, the force at the center isn’t magnetic—it is dynamic. It doesn’t attract and hold; it propels and directs. There can be no inertia when one’s definition of “church” is how I and my friends are living on the front lines.
Giving Up Control
One of the strongest factors in the centripetal ministry assumption is also one of its greatest contrasts with early Christianity. When we gather together as an institution, we expect a controlled environment. On Sunday mornings we have an order of service from which we rarely stray. Our business meetings follow Robert’s Rules of Order. Even in our centralized outreaches, they have an element of control to them that would baffle an early follower of Jesus.
Consider a typical community “outreach” employed by many churches in my area. It is a youth basketball league known as “Upward.” The basic format is this: church families invite unchurched friends to enroll their kids in the league, which typically plays their games in the fellowship hall of the local church building. Volunteer coaches stop the activities somewhere every time they meet so that someone can deliver prepared remarks as a “testimony.” Children are encouraged to “accept Jesus.”
Our assumption toward attracting people into our environment is so strong, most see nothing remotely negative about a program such as church basketball. What it requires on the part of unredeemed participants and their parents is to behave as if they are already redeemed. It places a priority on behavior and keeps the church organization in control.
What might happen if youth basketball went centrifugal instead? What if local churches refused to duplicate what is already offered outside its doors? What if followers of Jesus were encouraged to coach in a city league where religious behavior is not required? Might more unredeemed families see a stark contrast between darkness and light in that uncontrolled environment?
Assumption: The Consumer Is King
Recently a large evangelical church in the Pacific Northwest issued a cease and desist order to another church using the same name but a neighboring state. Their lawyers stated how the offending church was damaging the brand of the larger group. We spend so much energy developing and maintaining the unique “brand” of the local church. It’s a necessary marketing tool if small churches are going to compete with the dozens of identical fellowships in their area.
But what really happens when we name our fellowships?
No matter how different the worship style, preaching style, or ministry offerings, once a fellowship adopts a name, a damaging dynamic comes into play. We become our own worst enemy.
Our sense of identity shifts from the people of God in dynamic motion, already strategically placed in ministry throughout the community. We become a passive group looking to professionals to do the bulk of ministry in a centralized place on a certain day of the week. We become inwardly focused when the name goes up, unconsciously assuming that ministry is “good” or “bad” based on how it affects me and my family when we gather.
Church leaders are caught in a powerless position. We create ministries to attract attenders and to maintain our hold on them as they morph into members. We know that certain ministries are necessary to achieve this, so we offer good worship and relevant preaching along with youth and children’s ministries.
We get people in the door on Sundays by appealing to their consumer instincts. Then we pointedly expose consumerism from the pulpit. We draw people out of their spheres of influence, subtly persuading them to trade their priesthood for a membership card where they can sit and watch. The more people come to the central meeting place, the more they are considered for leadership. Then to those who have demonstrated commitment to the meetings, we announce that God wants us to win our neighbors and co-workers. All of these conflicting messages create what is known as “cognitive dissonance,” that inner struggle which often leads to paralysis of action.
Most evangelical pastors struggle to find a transformational discipleship curriculum. Our problem is not in the plethora of programs and methodologies on the market; our problem is drawing people as consumers, keeping them through appealing to their consumer instincts, and then expecting something altogether different to emerge in the process.
What It Might Look Like on the Other Side
One of the traps in a paper like this is the impression it may leave in the minds of people still on the inside of Evangelicalism. It may sound terribly negative and angry; the contrasts may seem dull and unimportant. Be that as it may, it is necessary to summarize the contrasts so that a path to the new way of thinking and living becomes clear.
The list of evangelicalism’s woes is long and varied. It is essential to list enough of them to establish the concept that this movement has run out of gas in our day. Evangelicals are not inherently evil or stupid. I am not a whiner who couldn’t stand the heat, so he got out of the kitchen and now campaigns that all cooks are communists. I love Jesus and His people. However, it is my position that the movement we know as Evangelicalism is culturally bankrupt: it got into a bad marriage with its culture and it’s too late for divorce. And the stakes are sufficiently high to warrant sober consideration of abandoning the vehicle so we can finish the journey.
Adequate change of our present method of ministry is not feasible. Besides, a wholesale change is needed to jolt the Church away from simply importing our old assumptions into the new thing. If a person is a bad driver, then switching from Toyota to Chrysler will not solve the problem. When a new mode of transportation becomes your standard, you adopt new rules.
It’s time for a new Reformation.
Reformed Relationships
First and foremost, followers of Jesus are travelers in a foreign land. We have no claims on our culture. We are here as a missionaries in the finest sense of the word. That mission is to show people the way to new life as citizens of the other Kingdom.
Missional self-awareness must be based in our once-alien-from-God status, and must remain as we live among aliens and show them the path to citizenship. Those who expect to view their culture from the center, with a hand on the joystick, can’t help but see aliens (both spiritual and political) as interlopers threatening the citizens and the lifestyle they protect. Rather than seeing ourselves as living people walking around with dead people, and gladly offering them the cure to deadness, the church corporately tends to adopt the stance that the dead people around us are flesh-eating zombies who are to be resisted and/or avoided.
If it is true that Jesus was sent to incarnate (John 1:14), and in the process showed those around Him the full extent of love through an act of sacrificial service (John 13:1), and we are sent by Jesus to incarnate (John 20:21), then it follows that we must employ the same lifestyle. What that means to those around us is that they are not seen as “contacts” or ministry projects, but as real people who are loved and cared for simply because they are who they are.
This concept elevates relationships and acts of love and care within them to a new level. It means that every follower of Jesus already has a mission field in the form of family, co-workers or fellow students and the people we regularly see in social settings. It also means that as their missionary, I had better hurry up and discover a kingdom skill set. This is the doorway to a new passion for true discipleship and to the energizing of the priesthood of the believer.
Reformed Fellowship
The re-energizing of the priesthood of the believer also means that priority time must be given to those newly-discovered ministry opportunities and growing relationships.
Incarnational living simply takes time. It means that I choose to live intentionally as salt and light in front of and amongst my mission field. In order to do that, I will move away from the security of a controlled environment in the evangelical subculture to embrace life in the wild as my primary identity. This is where we were designed to be.
Living on the edge of the desert, we discover a path to a pool of living water in the center of a hidden oasis. We respond to the call and retreat to the living water. But we return to the edge of the desert because that’s where we were meant to live amongst our people.
What we must understand is that the gift is not just the pool—it also the path. Our calling and privilege is to guide others—who have no hope of refreshing and who literally have no prayer—to the pool of living water down the hidden path. There is no room to live on the water’s edge. It was never designed for that. We are to live on the desert’s edge as examples to a dying, dehydrated people of what divine hydration looks like and how it allows the hydrated to live a different kind of life out in the heat. With this posture we can live in the heat amongst a parched people, knowing that the path is never too far away and that we are never to go to the pool alone.
Reformed Priorities
Australian theologian and missional provocateur Alan Hirsch once wrote, “It's not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world.” The top priority of heaven is the missio dei. God will not rest until all of creation is redeemed. That must be our highest priority.
Reformed Identity
The new Reformation means seeing relationships with new intensity. That’s because in this formation we identify “church” as people and not institution. If I and my fellow followers of Jesus are truly the Church, then this allows for new definitions of ministry and field of service. First, this means that ministry happens (or can happen!) wherever the priests are. This means that there is little for vocational, professional clergy to do.
Second, it means that ministry happens largely in uncontrolled environments. As a missionary I routinely advised people not to pray for my safety. The light shines the brightest and opportunities are the greatest when the pressure’s on.
Let’s dislodge the notion that our defining act of church membership is “going to church.” That means our Sunday morning services must change radically or go away entirely as we have known them. Let’s build dynamic motion and address our common spiritual inertia. The best way to do that is wean us off of the expectation that our specially-trained professionals will do the heavy lifting for us. Losing a professional priesthood would certainly open the door for the priesthood of the believer, wouldn’t it? Let’s focus on the sending out, not the gathering in.
The average congregation simply couldn’t change this radically and still retain its identity. This is precisely why I advocate for groups of Jesus-followers to meet regularly in unnamed fellowships where leaders lead because of spiritual gifting and the content of their lives. The only way in our present culture to break the back of consumerism is to act in such a way that is counter-consumer. It means a wholesale retreat from our current church paradigm.
We have too much to lose. The question with which we must grapple is then this: is our identity more important than the outcome? Evangelicalism caters to our culture-based self-interest rather than a biblically-based self-sacrifice.
America’s current election cycle reminds us how frustrating it is to simply shuffle the deck and get a new set of leaders, when it is the system itself that needs radical reform. It’s illogical to assume that a politician using that broken system to maintain enough political capital to run for office and to ascend to a higher level of authority and influence within that system would then be capable of or even remotely interested in changing the very dynamics that brought and maintain his current position. True change rarely comes from within. Why didn’t Jesus populate His inner circle from within the religious/political leadership of His day?
The point I have tried to make regarding Evangelicalism is that it is a cultural phenomenon as much as it is a biblical movement. It is the cultural dimension to which I object. However, because it is so ingrained in our culture, it is so hard to distance oneself from.
I am learning the loneliness of this distance and the route I have chosen to walk. I hope that the doors I open are enough to allow others entrance into a new day of impact in our land, the dawning of a new Reformation. But even if I walk with few by my side, I am convinced that I have chosen the right path.
