One Moment in Time—and Beyond

I believe it was an International Bible Society study that showed that nearly all people who become Christians do so by age nineteen. That figure stunned me at the time. We've got to get people young, folks. That's why bringing young people to Christ is so astonishingly important.

But another figure hidden in that survey speaks just as loudly. If the average American today lives to at least eighty, the IBS survey also tells us that the person who comes to Christ at age nineteen will spend sixty years or more in discipleship.

Think about that figure—sixty years of following Christ after conversion. Real life sliced and diced

The image at right puts this in perspective. The slice of pie that comprises a person's pagan life before Christ consumes about a quarter of life. Following after Christ takes up three-quarters. The moment of conversion, though crucial, is but a mere slice.

Yet you would think that conversion, that one moment in time, is all there is to the Christian life. Given how we Evangelicals devote so much time, energy, and angst to conversion, you'd think that the sixty years afterward are a drop in the bucket. In the Godblogosphere, the handwringing over conversion (and the theology behind it) weights it even more. Discipleship may seem an afterthought.

I'm saddened when I get e-mails from folks saying all their church ever talks about is getting people saved. Don't get me wrong; it's excellent that churches preach the salvation message. But most of the people in the church are already saved, so what help do they get in actually living out their conversion if they hear the same salvation message over and over again?

The Bible says this:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
—John 17:3 ESV
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV

I didn't know my wife the first time I met her. In many ways, I still didn't know her even on our honeymoon. Learning who she is will take me the rest of my life because the depth of her personhood will only be revealed in time.

The same goes for Jesus Christ. Most of us have barely scratched the surface of what it means to know Him. Yet the Bible says that knowing Him IS eternal life! It's not escaping hell, it's knowing the person of Jesus Christ. Deep calls to deep. If Jesus Christ and a hundred Jesus impersonators were put into a lineup, would we be able to pick the real Jesus out of the crowd of imposters? Think hard about that question.

Likewise, our conversion to Christ does not end our growth as Christians. Too often, though, our churches act like they have no more to tell us once we say yes to the Lord. "Just don't do bad things now" is the extent of the post-conversion advice.

But the Bible says that we're supposed to be changing from one degree of glory into another, a process that will take our entire lives. That is if we surrender to that process of Christ making Himself in us. For it's His glory that shapes us over those sixty years.

Too often, our discipleship is self-centered. Life becomes nothing more than the avoidance of pain and the accumulation of comfort. But we can't walk the narrow path staring into our navels; we'll wind up in a ditch.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
—Ephesians 2:10 ESV
And as you go, proclaim, saying, "The kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. You have received freely, freely give.
—Matthew 10:7-8 MKJV
For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall reward each one according to his works.
—Matthew 16:27 MKJV

If you're a Christian, you're a new creation. And what were you created for? Good works in Christ. The real disciple of Jesus Christ spends his or her sixty years after conversion walking out a discipleship that is other-centric. It's centered on the Lord and on the ones who are dying around us. Yes, we can read great treatises on theology, accumulate vast libraries of Christian thought, attend Christian conferences one after the other, but if we're not freely giving away what we freely received, then we'll spend sixty years wasting God's mercy. Instead, we must be focused on others to ensure that the reward we have in heaven is great.

We all know "Away in the Manger." There's not a three-year-old out there that doesn't learn this Christmas carol first. As a result, few think of it in terms of theological depth. The final stanza says it all:

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray;
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,
And fit us for Heaven to live with Thee there.

Our sixty years of discipleship is meant for one thing: to fit us for Heaven to live with Christ eternally. What you and I are doing right now in this moment of time is shaping our eternity. Don't be deceived. Following Christ was never intended as fire insurance. Instead, it's meant to remake citizens of Earth into citizens of Heaven.

Are we giving away our life here so we can take on new life? Can we with all certainty pick Jesus out of the lineup? He may not look like an itinerant rabbi, but the homeless man drunk outside our office building. How then will we know Him unless we do the good works that encounter Him? Are we spending all our time looking at our conversion when we should be focused on our inheritance?

Sixty years is at once quite long, yet so very short in the eyes of eternity. In truth, our lives are not so much like a pie chart, but a never-ending timeline that began a breath ago. In a flash comes conversion, but then we live out the eternal consequences of our discipleship.

It's about learning to be a disciple, giving away freely what we were freely given: love, mercy, and grace. Let's not waste our sixty years.

What the American Church Is Doing Right, Part 1

Thumbs Up! The last couple weeks here have seen some heavy posts discussing problems in the American Church. Cerulean Sanctum exists to discuss these issues and find thoughtful solutions. Because of the founding idea behind the blog, the tendency is toward a non-stop stream of what the Church here is doing wrong. And though my hope is to find practical ways to improve on problems or to raise issues that perpetually fly under everyone’s radar so they can receive attention, my intention is not to be a critic for criticism’s sake. I am, first of all, a Christian. My hope is that we can always do better.

At the start of this week, I’d like to take a couple posts to highlight what the Church in North America is doing right. As always, readers, feel free to comment because I would like to know what you think about this, too.

Today, I start with my first three:

1. Rediscovering the sacred

Earlier this year, I blogged on Unshackling the American Church, and one of the posts in that series featured a call to re-explore sacramental living. I firmly believe that many voices in the Church are beginning to understand that Consumerism has replaced Christianity as the national religion of the United States. The poverty of Consumerism is its devaluing of all things sacred in an attempt to displace the sacramental with temporal pleasures.

But God did not make Man to always be wanting more of the material, but more of Him and what He values. If anything positive comes out of postmodernism, it’s an awareness that we’ve gone too far in our pursuit of the perishable. Modernism, especially as it intersected industrialization, set us up for an abolishing of the transcendent. Science explains it all, industrialization can manufacture it all, and technology becomes the acolyte that descends from those twin towers with the answer to our every problem—now on sale at WalMart for only $299.95.

Man is not so simpleminded, nor so spiritually bankrupt. I believe that many Christians, who through their own ignorance bought the lie, are coming back around to the greater truth: Consumerism cannot answer the deeper cravings of the heart. Structures within American Christianity that in the past catered to consumerist tendencies will find it harder to maintain their grasp on people who are fed up with trendiness, trinkets, and milk. Already, I see a backlash against megachurchianity as more Christians realize there is no “there” there.

I witnessed this implosion firsthand at the church I attended for many years. Interestingly, if the list of 50 Most Influential Churches is to be believed, the numerical freefall of that church in the list in just one year says most of what one needs to know. And I predict that any of the churches in that list are fair game. As more people wake up to the shallow messages preached in many of those churches, realizing that they’ve strayed away from the sacred and into tawdry dog and pony shows, we’ll see change.

One of the changes I’ve seen already is an explosion of burned-out Evangelicals who are leaving megachurches and non-denominational churches for more traditional churches better rooted in a history of appreciation for the sacred. Everywhere I turn in the last year, I’m seeing signs that the Orthodox Church is gathering in these disaffected believers. Why? Because they never gave the boot to the otherness of God and the wholesomeness of simple living. For those not going the Orthodox route, new monastic communities that are wholly Protestant are springing up everywhere, attracting the children of Baby Boomers, kids raised in consumerist church environments who longed for what those churches could not provide: a sense of the sacramental nature of life serving a transcendent God who values the lasting.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a built-in suspicion of reactive movements. The pendulum that is the Church in this country flirts with one extreme or the other as it seeks truth in the middle. I don’t believe that monasticism or a flight to Orthodoxy are the answers, but they’re the evidence of a need to go back to that sacred middle.

I think it’s good that more people are questioning the lack of sacredness in American Church life. Baby Boomers embraced a consumerist vision for church and their children are rejecting it. Sometimes the children ARE smarter than their parents.

2. Catching the green wave

A greater appreciation for the Creation signals another healthy trend in American Christianity. For too long a “it’s all gonna burn” mentality dominated Evangelical thought, in dire opposition to God’s original call to steward what He gave us. But the backlash has begun.

This is a good thing in every way. Readers here know that I fully support more responsible use of natural resources and a return to agrarian ideals. The expediency of thinking we’re going to be raptured out of here any day, so who cares if we ransack the world God gave us, is a devilish product that caters to greed more than proper stewardship.

Christians should be the ones leading the environmental cause. But even the recent past has given us scares from some Christian sources who insist that a green mentality is at odds with Christianity and will result in us spending more time planning for Arbor Day than Easter Sunday.

Christians are now seeing through that false dichotomy. Many understand that dropping out of Consumerism, favoring simpler lifestyles less dependent on things (and the waste they generate), and carefully tending the world God gave us proves the Gospel rather than detracts from it

3. Courageously facing the truth about the itself

Just in the last six months I’ve witnessed some real soul-searching by Christian leaders. More legitimate voices are questioning some of the entrapments of modernism that have crept into the Church. Godbloggers are writing more posts saying that perhaps the Gospel really is about loving God and loving our neighbor. More Christians are willing to say they were wrong in the past about some issues.

I believe this soul-searching by the American Church is a good start. I’m not a proponent of Emergent, but the flaws in our system that Emergent pointed out are getting some attention, instead of the usual arrogant brush-off. Churches are starting to wise-up to past sins. They’re questioning if some programming is more culturally-rooted than Christ-rooted. They’re pondering deep issues:

Maybe we aren’t as outward-focused as we say we are.
Maybe our community life isn’t all that fulfilling.
Maybe we have become self-centered.
Maybe we have acted like Americans first and followers of Christ second.
Maybe the megachurch model is deeply flawed.
Maybe we really are just shuffling around our congregants.
Maybe our discipleship programs are trite.
Maybe we have made Christianity too rational and need to recover an emotional connection to God.
Maybe the American Church is the new Laodicea and the Third World Churches are right.

All these are steps in the right direction. By acknowledging our own concessions to something less than the full Gospel, we’re willing to jettison the cultural entrapments we’ve falsely held up as Christian. I believe more people are dissatisfied with what we’ve built into the institution of the Church that never should have been incorporated.

Those are the first three. I’ll have three more things the American Church is doing right in my next post.