Evangelism

Thoughts on “A Church for People Who Don’t Like Church”

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Why Church?A couple days ago, I posted "A Church for People Who Don't Like Church" about a local church who boasted such a thing on their huge sign. Many of you posted some excellent responses to the question of what makes people not like church.

Today, I'd like to discuss the three lacks I see as being deal-breakers for most people, Christian or not. Sure, more lacks exist than these three, but I think any church that overcomes these will be 90 percent on target.

3. The church accentuates the inconsequential while downplaying the essential.

    I was once a part of a church that deemed repaving the parking lot more important than world missions. True, if a church's parking lot resembles the Grand Canyon, visitors might be a little turned off, but it's the priorities of the heart that come through. Even unperceptive people can tell when something big's out of whack. And though we occasionally give unbelievers no credit for discerning the deeper waters of your Christian heart or mine, folks are less stupid than we believe.

    If we gush over our church's beautiful sanctuary, but ignore visitors, we choose the inconsequential over the essential. If an elder goes on and on about how important tithing is, while the discipleship program at the church is non-existent, then we've got our priorities screwed up.

    I don't know about you, but I suspect that most people who walk into a church have their senses on full alert. They're scanning and evaluating every single second of their time in a church. To make matters worse, our inherent American skepticism only enhances the full bore analysis of everything a church does. Visitors, Christian or not, can see through the veneer we've been cluelessly polishing for years.

    Some people get overwrought about those churches that play up the kind of coffee they serve out in the lobby. If a church wants to whisper something positive about the quality of their coffee that's fine so long as they shout the Gospel from the rooftops. Sometimes it seems—at least to me—that the gushing over the free-trade, rainforest-preserving coffee is given greater honor than Jesus Christ.

    An obvious example, perhaps. But what inconsequential things do our churches trumpet while they totally ignore the essential heart of Jesus?

    Personally, I think every aspect of what a church is and does should be held up to scrutiny. Accentuate what is permanent and lasting and downplay everything else. Don't keep stumbling around in the old status quo. If our churches aren't making a difference in the lives of their congregants or are failing to impact the community around them, then a real gut check is needed.

    Put it all on the table and shine the light of Christ in it. The gold will always clarify if we do so. Then let's put it on display. 

2. The church's people are cold, self-absorbed, or immature.

    I don't care how impenetrable or crusty a person might be, she'll warm to people who are loving and genuine. But more than one impenetrable or crusty person has turned his back on the Church, never to return, because he encountered disagreeable Christians.

    Listen, we're the aroma of Christ. Put a fresh-from-the-oven cherry pie out on the table or fire up a carafe of hazelnut-infused coffee and watch how that luscious aroma sets mouths a-watering. How much more will people who are saturated with the perfume of Jesus attract others! But if we're a people of hope and joy, why is it that so many people are turned off by Christians? Is it because we're sending the opposite message? Do we smell bad?

    While some people flow in the gift of hospitality, others can learn it. Seriously, you can teach people to be more friendly and caring. We can be more considerate. Having a little consideration head our direction couldn't hurt, either. Contrary to popular belief, you can't kill someone with kindness. In fact, I would guess that most people are dying for a little love to come their way.

    I've lost track of how many times I've walked into a church and feigned ignorance of all things "Christian" in order to get a visitor's-eye-view of what interactions come my way. Nothing hurts more than to walk into the most widely known church in this country and walk out an hour later without a single human being saying anything to me. Not one word. 

    Who we are as genuine, caring people makes an impact. If the Church of Jesus Christ can't out-love a sewing circle, softball team, or motorcycle club, then perhaps we should stop asking why people are choosing to spend their time elsewhere.

1. The church lacks the transcendence of the Father, the fullness of the person of the Son, and the immanence of the Holy Spirit.

    My wife and I discussed this concept of "A Church for People Who Don't Like Church" and came to the same conclusion that nothing—absolutely not one thing—can substitute for people encountering the Godhead in our meetings. Why would anyone darken the doorway of a church that has never seen the Holy Spirit dwell there in power?

    Being a charismatic disqualifies me in the eyes of some people from being able to speak about the brooding of the Spirit in our church meetings. They automatically assume I'm some tongue-speaking nutjob jumping pews with a cobra in one hand and a cottonmouth in the other. But I've been in meetings—too few if you ask me—where the Spirit was so thick in the room it was like swimming through oil. For all our talk of being a New Testament Church, I can't read the Scriptures and see any other kind of church than the one where God shows up and shakes everyone. Folks, that should be a normative experience for us! Too many of our churches resemble the Sahara instead of India at the height of the monsoon season. We've satisfied ourselves with a drizzle when the floodgates of heaven are poised to rain down on us! 

    People are dying to know Jesus as a real person. Our churches in this country are doing a massive disservice to each person who steps inside their building if they fail to present Jesus in His fullness. Yet how often do we shy away from this aspect of the Lord or that so as not to offend people with the truth of who Jesus was and is?

    The cross may offend, but we're not getting enough people to that point because we've not made enough of the attractive person of Christ. Of course people don't want to die at the foot of the cross if we've never given them a reason to be so in love with Jesus that taking up the cross becomes a small burden to bear. Every man, woman, and child on this planet is dying for Jesus. I'm convinced that even the most heinous person to walk this sod has some hunger for the reality of Christ in his or her life. Our problem is that we've not preached Christ enough to meet that need. We can't be shrinking back from the truth about this Person we claim we love enough to die for.

    Nor can we preach a small God who only exists to satisfy our relentless cry for self-aggrandizement. The folly of most megachurches consists of tossing out the Father's transcendence and otherness in favor of the celestial grandfather monstrosity so many are selling. The Orthodox churches understand this; I suppose that's one of the reasons that so many megachurch burnouts find Orthodoxy attractive. What else explains the rapid growth of Orthodox Churches in the last five years? If God is not transcendent, then we're worshiping the wrong God. I suspect that many people are, having been sold on easy believism and "God, our buddy" shenanigans.

    Let's face it, we'd be packing our churches if we approached this correctly. As Leonard Ravenhill was fond of saying, "You never have to advertise a fire." Show me a church that upholds the transcendence of the Father, the fullness of the person of Jesus Christ, and is so filled with the immanent presence of the Holy Spirit that people can hardly walk into the sanctuary, and I'll show you a church people will be dying to get into. Even if they ultimately reject what they've experienced, they'll never be able to say they failed to encounter God in a Christian church.

Those are my three.

If these have struck a chord with you, leave a comment and tell me what you think. Better yet, leave a comment and let me know how you can employ these three in your own church.

Have a great weekend. 

Ravenhill Returns

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One of the most perplexing parts of the Bible occurs whenever we have people wondering whether a deceased prophet has "returned" in the spirit of a new prophet. Consider this passage:

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they told him, "John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets."
—Mark 8:27-28 ESV

Today, some highly confused people use this to endorse reincarnation, but the reality of what is said above is reflected in another passage:

And he [John the Baptist] will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared."
—Luke 1:16-17 ESV

John wasn't Elijah, but he preached by the same powerful Spirit that compelled Elijah. 

Leonard Ravenhill was one of my favorite preachers, but he passed on to glory a few years back. I haven't encountered anyone who can preach in the spirit of Ravenhill—that is until recently.

If you haven't heard the blistering message delivered by Paul Washer at an SBC youth rally, then you haven't heard one of the most pyrotechnic sermons since Ravenhill departed this sphere. Washer even mentions Ravenhill mid-sermon, so you know he's done his homework listening to that great saint. 

I heartily encourage you to listen to Washer's sermon by any of the means possible at the SermonAudio.com site. Several bloggers have linked to Washer's message, and I thank them all. I think every Christian in America needs to hear this one, myself included. It's an hour spent you won't regret.

No, Leonard Ravenhill hasn't come back. But it's good to see that men who minister in the same spirit and power as he did still exist. 

The Antiwitness

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Wolf in Sheep's ClothingI once heard about an outreach that a popular campus ministry used to do during Spring Break. They'd go down to beaches and evangelize the collegians reveling in that yearly bacchanal. For a week, it was God's work for those young people sharing their faith in Christ. They'd hand out tracts, pray with folks, and for those few who did make a commitment to Christ, try to point them in the right direction for the few days the ministry ran.

We've all heard of (or participated in) short-term mission trips like this, whether in-country or out. Usually, it's a spiritual high for the participants that may just last a lifetime, or result in the kind of life-altering event that leads someone to go on to long-term missions work.

But then you start hearing the horror stories and you start to wonder.

I knew someone who used to do that Spring Break ministry, but who encountered something he never thought would be the fruit of that labor.

After several years of participation, he ran across a past convert from an earlier Spring Break outreach (I'll call that convert "Stu".) My friend encountered Stu back on the beach and asked him how his walk with the Lord was going since Stu's conversion the previous spring. Stu shared the following:

    1. He was glad to be a Christian now because his guilt was gone.

    2. He'd hung out a church for a little bit, but it didn't take, so he stopped going.

    3. The drinking had stopped for a little while, but now he didn't feel so bad about getting hammered all the time because he was forgiven.

    4. Same for the promiscuity. Stopped for a while, but a party's a party, right?

    5. He still had the Bible he'd received, but he never really read it.

    6. When asked what he believed, he heartily told everyone he was a Christian and proud of it.

Whatever we think about Stu's "conversion," one truth remains: he's doing more damage now than if he'd never encountered those eager Christian collegians on the shores of Spring Break.

Stu's become something worse than unregenerate; he's now an antiwitness.

Antiwitnesses are those poor souls who taste the goodness of Christ, but are never encouraged to grow deeper in Christ. They tend to comprehend just enough of the Gospel to be able to enunciate a few Christian truths, but they've ultimately been inoculated against any deeper life. They live exactly like the world—or worse—but continue to cling to some idea that they are real Christians.

The true devastation wrought by antiwitnesses comes through their ability to witness to their supposed conversion while acting out every conceivable witness against that reality. Theirs is the unique dysfunction of being the lone "Christian" many people know, but they project a halo so tarnished that most people are forever put off Christianity after encountering them. 

Male antiwitnesses soon learn they can use their newfound spirituality as leverage to bed even more impressionable young things than before. Said young things wind up with the impression that all Christians are hyprocrites in the wake of a tryst that lasts for a week before the antiwitness moves on to another conquest. I've heard so many of these accounts over the years I've lost track.

What creates an antiwitness?

While many will say that we Christians aren't nearly as zealous for evangelism as we once were, we must look beyond the shallowness of numbers. Too many times we think about the "spiritual brownie points" we get from being "soulwinners," but we fail to take into account the consequences of our discipleship deficiencies.

At its core, Christianity is a relational, community faith. But as self-actualized Americans who have lived under the shadow of rugged individualism and bootstrapping, we tend to forget that discipleship is not handing someone a Bible and pointing them to a church with a hearty "Go get 'em, Tiger!" pat on the back. Many religions are like that, but Christ did not come to establish a loose affiliation of believing loners.

Over at Paradoxology, a blog I recommend for the tough questions Chris Monroe asks, he wonders about the validity of door-to-door evangelism. Sadly, I have to question that evangelistic method in light of our tendency toward spawning antiwitnesses. Not because it doesn't reap rewards, but because we too often forget that we have a relational responsibility to people we evangelize. Selling ourselves as friendly people who care about someone's eternal state is only effective if that's what we truly believe.

We should ever go into every evangelistic situation with the understanding that we're personally responsible to pour our own lives into the lives of whatever converts we make by the grace of God. What message are we inadvertently sending to a new convert if we bail the second they say, "I believe"? We tend to want to make converts, but the actual interpersonal discipling that happens afterward becomes some other church's, pastor's, or discipler's responsibility.

I've seen or heard of too many people left to their own devices after a supposed conversion and more often than not those abandoned folks turn into antiwitnesses. We may think they're in God's care and protection, but the truth is that we left them to be sifted by Satan. God gave them to us and we tossed them aside to get torn apart by the Enemy.

Satan loves it when we go for numbers and not for depth of discipleship. He'll gladly take those folks and syncretize whatever primitive Christian belief system they received with the best he has to offer them. Sadly, one of his protegés, like Stu, has a half-baked experience that vaccinates everyone he meets against the real Gospel. We can work for years to make five disciples, but a guy like Stu can make a thousand naysayers in his travels.

I fully realize that we can't ensure genuine discipleship in people. But our "instant discipleship" ideas heightened by the general impatience we have with true relationship and real spiritual growth only make our evangelistic efforts fruitless, no matter how many notches we may claim to have in our soulwinner belt.

Having visited a self-described "soulwinning church" that baptized enormous numbers of people it picked up off the street, I was left with a curious question. Why was it that those being baptized were primarily black and Hispanic, but the church itself was whiter than a warehouse of marshmallows? What happened to all those people the church picked up off the streets and evangelized, resulting in the stream of baptizees I witnessed? I suspect they were never heard from again. That well-known church was probably making five antiwitnesses to every one real disciple.

Honestly, I don't think any of us should be sharing the Gospel with anyone unless we're also willing to be the ones doing the follow-up. Our problem is that this asks for a great deal of time and effort. I also suspect it's the main reason that the American Church isn't growing. We do lip service to evangelism, and either avoid it altogether because we know the cost to us is great, or we do the kind of "just add water" evangelism that makes nothing but antiwitnesses.

But it's not just the underdeveloped converts that can become antiwitnesses. Sometimes, the "overdeveloped" disciples that are impressed with their own righteous, the Superspiritual as I've called them, can be antiwitnesses.

Catez Stevens of Allthings2all tells of her pre-Christian days an her encounter with this second kind of antiwitness. Her cautionary true tale of The Merciful Stripper shows that  we can be antiwitnesses when we overspiritualize things and miss the true heart of Christ's Gospel. Please read her story; I promise you that, sadly, it's not unique.

Laziness on our part only makes for an antiwitness. In the end, if we are to make real disciples, we need to love people—and not just mouth loving platitudes, either. We've got to look at every person not as a notch in our soulwinning belt but as someone for whom Christ died and whom He calls us to partner with so they grow deeply and radically in love with Him. That requires time.

More than that, it requires that we die to self so that someone else might live.