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The Changing Church
August 31, 2005

Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized

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There’s been a lot of talk in the Christian blogosphere about change lately. I’ve read all sides on the issue and what I come away with disappoints me.

Let me tell you why.

First, I want to talk about a crook. He’s the greatest crook I’ve ever known. He so excels at what he does that he has the admiration of all his peers. When it comes to jewels, he knows his stuff. His name is George Crook, and he’s a gemologist.

What did you think as you read that paragraph? Did you know that I was talking about a person with the surname Crook (and yes, if I’d capitalized it, you would have figured it out right away, but imagine we were conversing face-to-face. It’s called “suspension of disbelief,” okay?) The jewel reference made that even more confusing. Just what are we talking about when we talk about “crook/Crook”?

Here is the problem with talking about change as being a good thing or a bad thing in our churches—the common talking point is not the same. So when we start spouting off about change being bad or good, we have to know exactly what is sacrosanct within a changing world and what is not. The cycle of changeUnfortunately, we rarely get to that common speaking point before the fur starts flying.

At stake is this fundamental issue: The Gospel cannot be changed; the methods we use to present the Gospel can be.

The problem comes when Christians start confusing methodology with the Gospel itself. Critics of those who attempt to change the methodology almost always paint them as changing the Gospel, too. In all fairness to those critics, they’re often correct in their charge because some overzealous crusaders sometimes do corrupt the Gospel in their attempts to try new methodology. But the critics do not escape criticism themselves; in their effort to not only preserve the Gospel but preserve methodology, they face becoming anachronisms that do not so much resemble countercultural Christianity fighting off the waves of perverts of truth, but calcified creatures of antiquity that have nothing to say to a culture that bypassed them long ago.

Now before the critics on both sides start painting me as just the kind of person they love to hate, let me provide a few examples of how change must occur lest the Church be left behind. (And no, that’s not a Tim LaHaye reference….)

A quick reading of the book of Acts shows that the Gospel went out both to large groups of people (the Pentecost message of Peter and Paul’s preachings on his missionary journeys) and also to individuals and families (the Ethiopian eunuch and the household of Cornelius.) Over time, though, the course of preaching narrowed and fewer examples of large public expositions of the Gospel occurred until the 18th century when George Whitefield stumped through America.

Evangelicals worth their salt recognize the greatness of Whitefield. He’s entered the pantheon of preaching giants. However, this was not his title in his day. “Showman” and “Peddler of divinity” more likely were heard from the lips of Whitefield’s contemporaries because of his use of marketing materials, advance advertising campaigns, and even go-ahead scouts who would stump for his tent revivals. He was an agent of change, not only did he favor preaching extemporaneously in a day when sermons were meticulously scripted, but he moved away from preaching in churches to small congregations to that of huge throngs of people (20,000 attended his last appearance in Boston—a city of 17,000 at the time.) He got those crowds through marketing—also a change of methodology. Anyone accusing today’s churches of being too beholden to marketing has to realize that no one marketed more heavily than Whitefield, and he’s as close to an Evangelical “saint” as exists today. The fact that he was excoriated for his techniques at the time seems to have slipped collective memory.

But Whitefield’s group preaching to thousands did not catch on in pre-19th century America. The Second Great Awakening saw the trend going to Methodist circuit riders, stalwart men who usually preached the Gospel to an isolated household or two as they toiled along the dirt paths between settlements in early America. No one can argue with their success; America was largely Methodist by the time of the Civil War. Their technique was also a change. The preaching of the Gospel came to the people rather than the people going to hear the Gospel in a church. Whitefield had explored this change, too, but the circuit riders took it to a new extreme.

Now Pyromaniac Phil will probably publicly hang me for my next contention, but let me go there anyway.

The Industrial Revolution swept all of that away. Rural America became urban America. The change happened in England first, though, and I believe that unless that cultural and societal change had not been accommodated, “The Prince of Preachers” may never have become anything other than “The Town Crier of Preachers.” For if it had not been for the flight from the scattered rural regions to the urban, we would have never seen a Spurgeon or a Moody. Their particular style of preaching was a response to the societal changes that drew thousands of city-dwellers into massive churches designed to hold them in the sway of such powerful preaching. We may have never heard of Spurgeon or Moody had social upheaval not swept away the circuit riders. Had either of those great preachers been one of those riders, their names would be lost to history.

Moody and Spurgeon set the stage for crusade ministries like Billy Sunday’s and Billy Graham’s. There is no disputing that in their day crusades were effective. But in their day and cultural milieu ALL of the preaching methodologies and scenarios I’ve mentioned had their power and prominence. That they changed and died out with time (and will probably be resurrected in later times) is inarguable. Even today, the crusade ministry will probably not be effective any longer in America. Why? Because, again, society has changed. Today, the unsaved are demanding a more personal approach to receiving the Gospel and the ministry that follows than being one in several thousand at a crusade (and for all who would argue that megachurches disprove this theory, I contend that most megachurches are catering to those who already consider themselves Christians, considering how readily megachurches cannibalize smaller congregations. If they were effective in reaching the lost, then we would see dramatic increases in those claiming to be Christians—but the figures are not there.) The Church must respond to that change. Perhaps the circuit rider approach would work again in a new, modern context. God knows.

All I am trying to say here is that methodology changed in presenting the Gospel. We can argue that those who want to change methodology may be compromising the Gospel in their attempts to do so, but we must be exceedingly careful in those charges. Remember, Whitefield won out over his critics.

Now as for those who contend that the Gospel itself must change to meet societal changes, I say, Halt right there, buster! The Gospel message never has to change. And when you attempt to modify it to fit cultural conventions, you fall into heresy. Dumbing it down or mixing it with whatever syncretistic addition you want to add will get you cultural converts, but not converts to Jesus Christ.

Change is NOT bad, so long as you are changing for the right reasons, are guiding by the Lord, and you keep the power of the true Gospel intact. But do not let your methodology take you into sin!

For those on the other side, just because someone’s done it a certain way for two hundred years does not mean that it still applies. You are right; the Gospel never changes. But methodology just might. I’ve pointed out here how the greatest preachers of their times changed their methods to adapt to cultural change or were the very products of that change. Jesus preached to an agrarian society. We are so far removed from being agrarian in America 2005 that it’s not funny. That must change methodology. But it does not change the Gospel.

Before I close, I want to say one thing: The Holy Spirit trumps culture. Give me an Nigerian farmer who locked himself up in his prayer closet for three years and is filled with the Holy Spirit and I’m telling you that he could come to the United States and have a profound ministry. He may know nothing about American culture, but nonetheless, he could touch thousands.

We overemphasize our cultural trappings. Some things are hard to escape, but others are societal issues that pale in the light of Christ and we need to stop letting them have so much power over how we do things.

All sides on this have good points and bad points. Like I have said many times before, the Holy Spirit gives discernment and we need to lean on Him far more than we are doing. That goes for all sides in this battle. We have to think with the minds God gave us and listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit amidst the din of our daily existence. But most of all, we’ve got to stop being knee-jerk and expedient.

It’s how we as the Church of Jesus Christ handle change when God gives it to us that makes it work for good or for evil.

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The Little Things: Homes & Churches That Say, “Keep Out!”
August 30, 2005

Posted by Dan Edelen in : Church Issues, Community, Godly Character, Hospitality, Love

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Michael did particularly well in the Internet boom. He and Linda bought a large home as a result of that success. But that home was never just theirs alone; that home belonged to their church—and to anyone else who wanted to drop by. And there was always someone dropping by.

My wife and I had the pleasure of hanging out at Michael and Linda’s place. We witnessed some baptisms in their pool, ate several dinners there, and I weekly practiced our worship music in their basement. Magnifying GlassWhen they learned we would be moving away, Michael and Linda sent us off by taking their time to make us Cincinnati-style chili from scratch. Nice touch.

Michael and Linda are the epitome of hospitality. Their home is open to anyone because they understand that God has a heart for sojourners and those who need a place to lay their heads. Michael and Linda are our inspiration.

It doesn’t take a protracted examination of our American society to see that we have fostered a culture of desert islands upon which a family here and a single there and an elderly couple over there float in the same social ocean, but have virtually no real contact. With civilization itself based on a foundation of strong social ties, we seem to be heading for a collapse of that civilization if we do not restore the broken-down relational machinery God built into us.

Last year, as I was trying to understand the whole Emergent thing, I picked up a book by Joe Myers called A Search to Belong. This book was getting great press within Emergent ranks, so I read it and promptly felt my stomach sink. One particular passage flat-out made me seethe. Myers insisted that it was too much for some people to enter another person’s home and that we should not expect people to want to do this.

Now I’m no expert on sociology, but the bigger question has to be, What happened to hospitality that we’ve bred people who suffer fits of anxiety should they have to come to someone else’s house?

Church, what happened to hospitality?

Do we no longer practice it because

I wonder if the problem stems from this passage:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
—1 Peter 4:8-9 ESV

Maybe we are trapped in that sinful no man’s land where if we did practice hospitality, we’d grumble about it—grumbling’s a sin, right? Better to not grumble by not having anything to do with hospitality and then everything’s okay. Who can say?

I remember my parents entertaining people at our family home all the time. They went to other people’s houses all the time. But as I look around, I get the discouraging sense that this idea is passing away with that generation. I hope that isn’t the case, but it’s what I see.

You would hope that the Church would do a better job of this, but I find that hospitality is as commonly practiced by people who don’t know the Lord as those who do. I’m just as likely to hear of someone who acts like the devil’s compadre but who lets his buddies crash at his place as much as I hear that Christians welcome even their own kind into their homes.

And what is the point of having greeters at a Church? They have greeters at Wal-Mart, but that doesn’t make me feel loved by Sam Walton’s megacorporation. Sure, it feels nice to have someone shake your hand, but if it goes no further than that, what’s the point? Too often the onus is on people visiting a church to reach out to the church members rather than it being the other way around. Shouldn’t we be the ones to note the visitors—or in our own fractured relational world within our churches can we not tell the regulars from the visitors? And if you consider Myer’s comment, if folks get a nervous tic thinking about going into someone else’s home, what does it mean for them to go into their church—and then have to be the one who makes small talk?

Even before we met Michael and Linda, my wife and I decided that we would be the ones who sought to bring people together and show others hospitality. We’ve tried very hard at this, but the results have been middling. As much as we want to be hospitable, we sometimes wonder if people want to receive that hospitality. Perhaps Joe Myers is right. We may have reached a place where being in another’s home is too much of a freak-out for too many people. Maybe the failure of people to practice hospitality has spawned a generation unable to not only practice it, but receive it as well.

But we will not stop being hospitable.

As for our churches, we should identify the people who are blessed with the gift of hospitality and underwrite them. Huh, you say? Well, what if we designated church funds for use by the most hospitable people in our churches to locate the new people every Sunday, then offer to take them out to a local restaurant for lunch after the meeting? The church could pick up the visitor’s tab. Those same hospitable people could have visitors over to their own home later (regardless of what Myers says.) Wouldn’t that be more effective to reaching out to others than what we are doing now? If the Church is not overflowing with the grace that pours out through hospitality, then where will people see it practiced?

What if the hospitality of early Christians was one of the very things that set them off from the people around them, the practice of hospitality being the very aroma of heaven to the lost and perishing?

Do we really believe this verse?

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
—Hebrews 13:2 ESV

Or don’t we? How many individual and corporate blessings have we missed because we failed to be hospitable in our homes and churches?

Remember, we are awaiting a heavenly dinner party called “The Marriage Supper of the Lamb.” If we’re not emulating that idea this side of heaven, will we appreciate that Supper when we finally sit down for it?

Some things you can do to practice hospitality:

At home

At church

If we worked harder at this little thing, I believe we would go a long way to strengthening families, couples, singles, churches, and neighborhoods for the Lord.

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The Little Things: Homes & Churches That Say, “Keep Out!”

Posted by Dan Edelen in : Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Evangelism, Hospitality, Judgmentalism, Love, Relevance

Feedback : 9 comments

Michael did particularly well in the Internet boom. He and Linda bought a large home as a result of that success. But that home was never just theirs alone; that home belonged to their church—and to anyone else who wanted to drop by. And there was always someone dropping by.

My wife and I had the pleasure of hanging out at Michael and Linda's place. We witnessed some baptisms in their pool, ate several dinners there, and I weekly practiced our worship music in their basement. Magnifying GlassWhen they learned we would be moving away, Michael and Linda sent us off by taking their time to make us Cincinnati-style chili from scratch. Nice touch.

Michael and Linda are the epitome of hospitality. Their home is open to anyone because they understand that God has a heart for sojourners and those who need a place to lay their heads. Michael and Linda are our inspiration.

It doesn't take a protracted examination of our American society to see that we have fostered a culture of desert islands upon which a family here and a single there and an elderly couple over there float in the same social ocean, but have virtually no real contact. With civilization itself based on a foundation of strong social ties, we seem to be heading for a collapse of that civilization if we do not restore the broken-down relational machinery God built into us.

Last year, as I was trying to understand the whole Emergent thing, I picked up a book by Joe Myers called A Search to Belong. This book was getting great press within Emergent ranks, so I read it and promptly felt my stomach sink. One particular passage flat-out made me seethe. Myers insisted that it was too much for some people to enter another person's home and that we should not expect people to want to do this.

Now I'm no expert on sociology, but the bigger question has to be, What happened to hospitality that we've bred people who suffer fits of anxiety should they have to come to someone else's house?

Church, what happened to hospitality?

Do we no longer practice it because

I wonder if the problem stems from this passage:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
—1 Peter 4:8-9 ESV

Maybe we are trapped in that sinful no man's land where if we did practice hospitality, we'd grumble about it—grumbling's a sin, right? Better to not grumble by not having anything to do with hospitality and then everything's okay. Who can say?

I remember my parents entertaining people at our family home all the time. They went to other people's houses all the time. But as I look around, I get the discouraging sense that this idea is passing away with that generation. I hope that isn't the case, but it's what I see.

You would hope that the Church would do a better job of this, but I find that hospitality is as commonly practiced by people who don't know the Lord as those who do. I'm just as likely to hear of someone who acts like the devil's compadre but who lets his buddies crash at his place as much as I hear that Christians welcome even their own kind into their homes.

And what is the point of having greeters at a Church? They have greeters at Wal-Mart, but that doesn't make me feel loved by Sam Walton's megacorporation. Sure, it feels nice to have someone shake your hand, but if it goes no further than that, what's the point? Too often the onus is on people visiting a church to reach out to the church members rather than it being the other way around. Shouldn't we be the ones to note the visitors—or in our own fractured relational world within our churches can we not tell the regulars from the visitors? And if you consider Myer's comment, if folks get a nervous tic thinking about going into someone else's home, what does it mean for them to go into their church—and then have to be the one who makes small talk?

Even before we met Michael and Linda, my wife and I decided that we would be the ones who sought to bring people together and show others hospitality. We've tried very hard at this, but the results have been middling. As much as we want to be hospitable, we sometimes wonder if people want to receive that hospitality. Perhaps Joe Myers is right. We may have reached a place where being in another's home is too much of a freak-out for too many people. Maybe the failure of people to practice hospitality has spawned a generation unable to not only practice it, but receive it as well.

But we will not stop being hospitable.

As for our churches, we should identify the people who are blessed with the gift of hospitality and underwrite them. Huh, you say? Well, what if we designated church funds for use by the most hospitable people in our churches to locate the new people every Sunday, then offer to take them out to a local restaurant for lunch after the meeting? The church could pick up the visitor's tab. Those same hospitable people could have visitors over to their own home later (regardless of what Myers says.) Wouldn't that be more effective to reaching out to others than what we are doing now? If the Church is not overflowing with the grace that pours out through hospitality, then where will people see it practiced?

What if the hospitality of early Christians was one of the very things that set them off from the people around them, the practice of hospitality being the very aroma of heaven to the lost and perishing?

Do we really believe this verse?

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
—Hebrews 13:2 ESV

Or don't we? How many individual and corporate blessings have we missed because we failed to be hospitable in our homes and churches?

Remember, we are awaiting a heavenly dinner party called "The Marriage Supper of the Lamb." If we're not emulating that idea this side of heaven, will we appreciate that Supper when we finally sit down for it?

Some things you can do to practice hospitality:

At home

At church

If we worked harder at this little thing, I believe we would go a long way to strengthening families, couples, singles, churches, and neighborhoods for the Lord.

Tags: Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Evangelism, Hospitality, Judgmentalism, Love, Relevance

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The Little Things: Ingrates
August 28, 2005

Posted by Dan Edelen in : Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Godly Character, Maturity

Feedback : 4 comments

Magnifying glassThere's a medium-sized river birch tree in our backyard with a lovely shape and exotic, silvery bark that gleams in the sun. This year, the bark is hard to miss because the tree is leafless, stone dead.

This same time last year all the leaves turned yellow and fell off long before all the other trees on our property surrendered theirs up. Spring came and nothing green appeared on our tree with the metallic-looking bark. A few weeks ago, that bark split and startled me with a bizarre revelation: some plant had grown up under the birch's bark, encircled the delicate living part of the trunk, and strangled the life out of the tree.

I know of parasitic plants from the tropics that will girdle a tree, but I'm at a loss to explain this.

However, I'm not at a loss to explain what strangles the life out of Christians in America. In our materially wealthy country, more than one Christian walk has been girdled by thanklessness.

I'm not going to win any friends by saying this, but I'm going to say it right off—many people in America are ingrates, and that goes for American Christians, too.

Yes, we are the country famed for our one day a year in which we are thankful. Increasingly, I hear that day referred to as "Turkey Day" and not "Thanksgiving Day." One year, the well-known retail computer company I worked for jumped the Christmas stuff grab by opening for a half day on Thanksgiving Day. I still can't get over that one.

Regardless of whether or not there's a holiday set aside for Americans to give thanks, we live as ungrateful wretches most of the year. I believe that part of this is due to the fact we have so much money that we never have to truly rely on God for our daily existence.

For a few people, though, life is marked by losing rather than accumulating. My wife and I have been married for nine years and through much of that time we have been assaulted by loss. We take refuge in something and find it taken away as soon as we acknowledge how much it has helped us. Blink and it's gone.

What this has taught me is that the Lord alone is our daily portion. But it was only through loss that I learned this. Oh sure, if pressed plenty of people say they're thankful, but it's lip service. Take too many things away and they'll gripe like there's no tomorrow.

The other part of being thankless is that the blinders go on. We stop noticing how we are provided for by God. We stop noticing that other people are desperately lacking in the basics. Meanwhile, we moan because our kid got shut out of the exclusive Montessori school that all the VIPs send their kids to. We cry about the fact that we don't have the latest electronic gadget while the couple sitting next to us in church is facing foreclosure on their home because they cannot pay for their medical bills after a prolonged—and expensive—illness struck unexpectedly.

Thankful people, on the other hand, have their eyes made wide by God. They see what God has provided in the natural world and give thanks for it. "Isn't that butterfly gorgeous! Wow, look at the spiral web of that garden spider. Isn't God's world amazing?" They see other people's needs and they meet them. "I hear the Yoders' crops got burned up in this drought, hon. Let's call the electric company and offer to pay their utility bills for the rest of the year." They see hurt and they bring joy into the pain. "That old widow lady who lives alone, Mrs. Samms, had a stroke. Let's go to the hospital and sit with her for a few hours."

The ingrate says, "Look at what I have accomplished by my own effort! Look at all the things I have!" The thankful person says, "God, all I have is yours, even the hours of the day, and I am only the steward of your good provision."

We know about the root of bitterness from the Scripture. But I also wonder if there is not a root of ungratefulness that strangles just as well. Perhaps the two are the same wicked plant.

When we are filled with thanklessness, we

In short, ingrates cannot know Christ, no matter how much they protest that they do.

The lesson of thankfulness is one I learned through suffering and fear of loss. I always thought I was thankful, but it wasn't until I understood that I could actually lose everything that I made every prayer I prayed afterwards begin with, "Lord, how thankful I am to You…." This is how I've taught my son to pray, too. Sadly, he does not get too many opportunities to have this truth reinforced by others around him. He once wanted to know why we are the only family that prays for our meals when we eat out in public. That's an especially difficult question to answer when you live in what many consider the very heart of "Jesusland."

There are times I believe that thanklessness is the number one reason that the Church in America has reached a plateau and can go no further. I believe that living in ungratefulness has stymied more blessings than nearly any other failure we can bring down upon our heads. Thanklessness is the very act of robbing God, and God does not suffer thieves who want to plunder what is rightfully His—even when they pretend to come in His name.

Thankfulness may indeed be a little thing, but the lack of it can choke the life out of us.

Tags: Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Godly Character, Maturity

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