Confusion and the need for strengthening the foundation….
This past week ‘The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life‘ published the results of a survey on the ‘U.S. Religious Landscape.’ The results illustate some of the reasons why Western Evangelical Christianity is in such a state of decline.
Let me share some of those statistics, then make a comment on their meaning and conclude by talking about some of the things Lamb of God intends for the fall (There is a connection).
I mentioned a few posts ago that I had been praying and seeking to gain an understanding of where we as a congregation should be going in the future(read the May 29th post on Black Dwarf). Out of that effort came a set of ideas which I have presented to the elders and will make public at our upcoming Community Meeting on Monday, July 7th. This meeting will not cover everything that I believe God has been showing me. The presentation of all those items will come at a later Community Meeting in the Fall.
The material from the Pew Forum’s survey only emphasizes how profoundly in trouble the Western church is and why we need to take seriously the issues which are revealed by this study. The vision, which I believe God has given for the future will no doubt be modified and adapted per the needs, availablity, resources and the on-going promptings of the Holy Spirit. However I do have strong convictions about these matters!
Back to the Pew Forum numbers. First, over 30% of self-described Evangelicals attend church rarely, i.e. 1 time per year or less. Its pretty tough to be engaged if the team doesn’t even show up. So, its fair to say that there is a huge man power shortage in the church. But even more fundamentally - How in the world is there to be any hope of community if professing Christians are this disengaged from one another? Of those who do show up, less than 20% are under the age of 30. Its safe therefore to say that we have a ‘youth’ crisis in the church (i.e. in about 10 to 15 years if nothing changes you are going to see church closures that will be staggering). We are still talking about who not there, but just as troubling is what people who actually are connected are saying they believe.
But let us proceed a bit further. Consider the moral framework of the U.S. Evangelical. 33% say that favor a prochoice position on abortion. That is truly astonishing. After 30 years of teaching, preaching, and throughly exegeting with great passion and clarity the incompatibility of abortion with the Scriptures, still this large a number of professing Evangelical Christians are unconvinced. While there are certainly difference on how we ought to approach what we do about abortion, is it really true that this many Christians believe that woman should have the right to choose to take innocent life?
Consider the issue of homosexuality. While I could go on and on about the Church’s failure to provide sophisticated, long term treatment options to the person suffering with unwanted homsexual prediliction, do we really have 1/4 of Evangelicals convinced that homosexual behavior is compatible with Chrisitan tradition? If that is in fact accurate, then we had better prepare ourselves for the end of tradition marriage between one man and one woman, because the bell is tolling. We know that homosexual liberationists have dedicated themselves with a passion to compelling the culture to accept homosexuality as equivelent and perfectly normal. Apparently they have successfully persuaded 25% of those who claim to look to the Bible as their final authority in all matters of faith and practice.
Let’s take on what is obstensibly the central core of the Christian faith - the Person and the Work of Jesus Christ. The Bible seems to declare this Jesus to be the Savior of the entire world, and the final and ultimate judge of all humanity. Jesus boldly proclaimed - ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (John 14:6) Christians didn’t make this up. These are proported to be the actual words of Jesus. Well, are they? Apparently over 50% of professing, self-described Evangelicals don’t think so. Those are the numbers (53%). Could the reason be any more obvious as to why so few people are being won to Christ? If this many so-called Evangelicals believe in the Oprah version of ‘all roads lead to rome’ spirituality, what chance does any lost person have of ever hearing a credible witness to the uniqueness of Jesus? The seekers only hope might be if he or she happens to run into Christians from the third world who happen to be in the U.S.
If your reading this and your under say, 30 you might be thinking ‘Gee this guy sounds like some old right-wing type.’ Let me say that I do believe that many Christians have been co-opted by political maniputation coming out of Conservatism, talk radio and opportunistic Republicans seeking to win political loyalty from a huge voting block. We have needed more reflection, and studied consideration of how we ought to posture ourselves in the public square regarding moral issues which have political implications. I actually favor the creation of a new political party. I would love to see a politcal party which had a more progressive attitude about poverty, the enviroment and a strong prolife position from the cradle to the grave. I also think we Christians should be much more cautious about supporting wars of aggression. Is there a place for the prosecution of a ‘Just War’? My answer to that is ‘yes’ (In my opinion WWII is the classic example). At the same time I’m not sure that Iraq rises to the level of a “Just War.’ What I’m really saying is this - No one should think they own us. Not the Republicans, not the Democrats.
Anyway, back to my main point here, and let me endeavor to make it. Christianity is unraveling before our eyes. And read very carefully - it is an internal problem of the co-opted Christian heart and mind. Materialism lulled us into a stupor, and relentless dumbing down of Christian teaching have turned Christianity into a lightweight, self-help religious sub-culture. The consequences of that are terrifying. The next generation (you know that 17% under thirty) is defenseless against the slide away from a distinctively Christian world and life view.
Let me say something about myself, that anyone who really knows me knows - I am not an intellectual. I am not seeking to make a case for turning the church into some theological snooty club. I want to be part of a church that is filled with passion for Jesus, full of sincere affection for him, and overflowing with the joy of friendship with God. I love celebratory, demonstrative, whole-hearted worship and I want it to be the norm at Lamb. But Jesus made it plain - Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. (John 4:23) That means that Father is looking for worshippers who are both charismatic and substantive. Those who worship the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit and the Truth which God reveals in His Word. Its not one or the other. It is both! Right now we have large numbers, and I mean large, who simply do not possess the necessary tools to discern a distinctively Christian world and life view. They cannot discern theologically, because so many Christians have incredibly childish understanding of the scriptures. They also cannot discern morally, because the lack a coherent undertanding of Biblical law, and its usefulness to Christians in helping them to have the tools to discern godly principals. It seems to me that Christians have such a throughly twisted understanding of what the grace of God means that it has now come to include the notion you can do pretty much anything you want because like the ubiquitious bumper sticker says ‘Smile, God hearts me.’
This also leads to dominance of theologies like ‘Word of Faith‘ (A distorted understanding of faith, often leading to ridiculous postions on healing), and the Prosperity Gospel (a distorted understanding of the relationship between giving and receiving ‘blessing’ from God in the form of financial prosperity). There are huge numbers of Christians (particularly in the Western Church) who embrace elements of these harmful views. These ‘theologies’ live and continue to live because of the ignorance, and superficial understanding that Christians have of the Word. The antidote to this is not to get yourself with the right ‘teacher’, but instead to take advantage of what is available to anyone who can read, and to acquire the tools necessary to be able to ‘rightly divide the word of truth.’
Ignorance among Christians leads to more than just bad theology. It also leads to conflict and division because Christians will judge and condemn one another based on poor understanding of the Word. The capacity to deal gently with one another and to know the difference between a minor issue and a major one comes out of theological balance. There are times to draw a line in the sand, particularly when core truth is being twisted. But in my experience that is a rare thing among Christians. People get off in wrong directions, but generally speaking it is rarely worth fighting over.
What is totally unacceptable and dangerous is relying upon ‘impressions’ as a means of discerning the truth of a matter. When it comes to our brothers and sisters we simply cannot accept ‘impressionistic’ spirituality. I ‘feel’ this or I ’sense’ that. Even worse is when flawed human beings tack onto their impressions ‘the Lord told me this or that.’ Please, give me a break. If we think something is off with a brother or a sister - pray for them and find a time to sit down and in love speak the truth. We should share our concerns with one another with humility and the readiness to back off and consider that maybe I’m not seeing things clearly. Isn’t the peace of the church valuable?
Okay, a few more words. Beginning in September we will dedicate one Saturday a month to what I would call ‘precept on precept’ teaching. We are going to take on some of the most important books written in the last 20 years and use them to help deepen our understanding as a church of ‘core’ Christianity. We will begin with Charles Colson’s ‘The Faith’. This is a concise and wonderfully written book on Orthodoxy. If you can’t define what that word means relative to Christianity then suffice it to say you need to be in this course. We will make the book available a month in advance and expect everyone who comes to read it and be ready to dig into on our Saturday morning teaching time. For the next few years, basically September to June we are going to work hard on deepening our theological substance as a church. After Colson’s book there will be others and my sincere hope is that God will use this to strengthen the foundations of Lamb as well as preparing leaders who will carry Lamb into its next 20 years.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I recently read a discussion of the question in the Pew survey about whether people can be saved if they believe in another religion. Apparently the question as it was asked could be open to a number of interpretations, and the survey didn’t clarify what the answerer was thinking. For example, some people in denominations consider those in another denomination to be “of a different religion.” So in answering that yes they could be saved, it might have been a Baptist saying that a Presbyterian was following the Lord. Since we have no way of knowing if that was how the question was understood, we will have to wait for further studies. I suspect though that the exclusivity claims of Christianity though are not popular–it’s just that this study may not supply the proof.