Theology for the Masses

Having surveyed the story of God in the Bible, I began to work towards a definition of the gospel. Starting in the Old Testament and moving into the New Testament, I looked at how the Gospels and Acts looked at the gospel. Then we moved into Paul and how he looked at the gospel. Having done that and really tried to expound what I mean by the gospel, I want to conclude this series with a final post that simplifies the gospel definition and speak to the response of faith and repentance to the gospel. Hopefully this series has been helpful to those who have read it because it has been helpful to me in trying to re-articulate the gospel in light of my paradigm shift away from so much of the traditional Protestant justification = forgiveness of sin = gospel. Reading the story of Jesus by Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, and John has really altered the way I read the New Testament as a whole. Reading the story of Jesus against the backdrop of the story of Israel has changed how I read the Bible as a whole, God’s story of creation and redemption. continue reading…

Today’s discussion began with a restatement of the problem :: Evangelism is very important, but none of us evangelize.

We then took a look at the following videos:

1. Bullhorn Guy

2. Bullwhip Guy Video

Impressions of the the Bullhorn Guy Video:

Rob Bell’s bullhorn guy was attacking a method of evangelism that seeks to publically condemn the sins of passers-by by declaring them all sinners and “sending them to Hell.”  Instead, Bell advocates that we employ “love without an agenda.”  How do we go about doing this?  We listen to them, we meet their needs, and we invite them into the best life possible.  He says that “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  This is the capstone of Bell’s attack against the street prophet.  We cannot go about treating people at notches on our evangelism belt – but treat them as images of God, actual and whole.  You can’t scare a person into loving something.  Allegiance born out of fear will be broken the second that fear is alleviated.

  Impressions of the Bullwhip Guy Video:

The Bullwhip Guy Video (BuWiG for short) took issue with Bell’s approach.  Through the example of Jesus clearing the temple, He critiques the notion that God is simply loving and accepting of all.  Instead, there are objective moral truths that we are called to convey – the chief of which is that Almighty God is angry with our sin and will judge us accordingly.  This is a very real and dangerous predicament – and we should not hide this aspect of our worldview – because in terms of people’s eternal condition – it is the most important.  Buwig draws primarily off of Jesus and the cleansing of the temple, but he also has the proclaiming John the Baptist and the brash and harsh criticisms of the Old Testament prophets in mind.  He pleads with us to keep 2nd Timothy 4:3 in mind and not to just tickle people’s ears with what they want to hear.  We cannot turn away from the truth.

Buyers and Sellers Are Driven Out of the Temple, a woodcut by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) as found in theDoré Bible

Synthesis:

Both Bell and Buwig have points.  When we share the gospel with someone, we need to approach them as people first and never as checkmarks.  We need to find ways to love them without an agenda, to meet their needs, and to invite them into the best life possible.  However, we can’t be shy about our motivations.  Under our worldview, if you don’t accept Christ, you accept Hell.  We can’t bandy around this point.  A dimension of our love must entail a corrective element.  Each view’s strength was its weakness – We must love, meet needs, and invite, but we can’t hide other aspects of the truth.  In sum, we must find a way to blend these two approaches.  We must find a way to present the truth in the best way possible for those who are lost.  This will require a great deal of effort and will move us out of that cliché of clichés, our comfort zones.

So… What is this thing we call the Gospel?

Let me restate what I presented earlier in the week about the context of the “gospel” in antiquity:

The word gospel comes from the Greek word euangelion, which merely means “good news.”  But how was the word treated in Antiquity, during the time of Jesus? After all, Christians did not create the word from scratch, but modified it for their ends.

For Rome, the Gospel was part and parcel of the Pax Romana. Military victories or births of the new Caesars were announced across the Empire as evidences that Rome’s Kingdom reigns, or that it had come to this area of the world. Rome called its worldview the Pax Romana, and it was ‘good news’ because Rome graciously allowed you to participate in their peace and prosperity in exchange for your willingness to confess Caesar as Lord (and pay taxes. And don’t start trouble).  It is therefore a fundamentally political term in the time of Jesus and Paul.

When the New Testament writers used the word ‘gospel’, then, they were co-opting it from Rome. They claimed that God, not Rome was reigning – that God’s Kingdom was coming to Earth, and that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord. For the early Christians, the ‘Gospel’ of Jesus Christ was at least that God offers humanity an alternative worldview – one in which he is reclaiming the world from Sin and Death, and one into which he invites all of humanity.

Therefore, we need to view the gospel as the proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in quasi-political terms.  Paul describes us as participating/partnering/sharing/contributing in the Gospel.  Upon participation in the good news will entail a new set of rights and responsibilities coupled with a new community.  How do we enter/participate in such a thing?  What, then, is conversion?

Stay tuned for next week, were we take a fresh look at conversion in light of our new understanding of the good news of Jesus

Right now, JR and I are leading Sunday School at Parkade Baptist.  We are doing a series on Evangelism.  Each week, we are posting recaps over at the Parkade’s CYP blog.  I wanna reproduce them here as a series.   As evangelicals, the notion of evangelism is very important to us.  Therefore it is paramount that we can do it effectively.  However, doing so might challenge the ways we have thought about this term in the past.  I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

We had a great time this morning discussing our previous experiences with evangelism.  Here are some of the things we worked though.  (Remember, we were asking about people’s experiences with evangelism in the past, not necessarily how they thought evangelism should work in a best case.)scenario.

1.  What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Evangelism’?  How does it make you feel?

There were a variety of answers here.  Answers ranged anywhere from memories of community revivals and Power Team visits to “street prophets” handing out tracts.  Several people remember evangelists trying to convert them on the street.  Others (both people who had been servers and who know servers) said that Sunday afternoons were the worst time to wait tables.  Not only were the tips lousy, but every so often, someone would slip you one of those Bible tracts disguised as legal tender.  Ah, that brings us to Bible tracts.  Not one of us were too thrilled at the prospect of giving or receiving tracts – they have left a bad taste in our collective mouths.  Additionally, we all have felt pressure not to “flirt to convert,” but to become friends with unbelievers for the sole sake of converting them.

Part of a Bible Tract from Chick Tracts.

Overall, we felt like in order to evangelize we had to be salesmen selling a product.  Often we felt like our “sales calls” were to be cold calls, instead of earning the right to present our product to them.  Hence, most of our emotions and memories of evangelism in our pasts had negative connotations.

Why was this the case?  Well, these methods just seem… impersonal. How can I blindly approach someone and ask them to make such an identify-altering decision without any kind of shared worldview or, most importantly, any kind of relationship.

2. Is Evangelism important?  How often would you say you ‘Evangelize’?  Why is this the case?

Of course, we thought evangelism was important.  How could we not?  After all, as one of our Bible professors used to say, “Every day people are dying and going to Hell.”  Hard to argue with that one.  However, despite the shared value placed on this thing we call evangelism, no one said they really ever evangelized.  Sure, some of us were sure to be extra nice and extra courteous to people, but we thought that did not lead a single soul away from the path of destruction.

We felt at ease with living our lives as an example, but uncomfortable with evangelizing (see question 3) because if we do it wrong, the consequences are severe and we just did not know how to do it right.

3. Traditionally, what have been the most utilized methods of Evangelism? and 4. Discuss the process of Evangelism these methods employ.  That is, what is – from start to finish – the best-case encounter with someone who does not already know the Gospel?

A common sight on the University of Missouri Campus, Brother Jed, gently proclaiming the love of Jesus.

• Tracts
• Regular old relationships
• missionary friendships
• revivals (Power Team, etc)
• Sales
• Confrontational Evangelism (example, Brother Jed, see pic at the right)
• Inviting Non-Christians to:
  • Revivals
  • Power Team showings
  • “Christian” movies such as the Passion of the Christ or Fireproof

All of these things were ways to get people to walking someone down the “Roman Road” at which point we go and find another one to reach out to, having successfully added one more soul to the rolls of heaven.

At this point, we are reminded of the first line of the hymn, Each  One, Reach One, which encapsulates the this process:

Each one can reach one; As we follow after Christ we all can lead one;

5. What term should Christians use for persons who are not citizens of God’s Kingdom?

We had a hard time with this one.  Here are some that we came up with:

• pre-christians  – this describes those that will eventually become Christians.  They are already on the path that will lead them to Christ, they just need help down the path.
• seeker / explorers – these are terms coined by Willow Creek.  Explorer is replacing the term seeker.
• non-christian / non-believer  - If we are X and they are not X, then they must be non-X, no?
• the lost – This is pretty biblical, right?  It is how we translate τό ἀπολωλός in Luke 19:10, right?  They are who Jesus came to find.
• heathens – This describes their sinful behavior of which they need convicting.  Why not be accurate in our terms?  Why should we be bashful with the truth?

All of these terms are accurate to an extent.  However, that does not mean they are not without their problems.  A lot of these terms are offensive and overtly negative.  How well do you respond to negative terms foisted upon you?    How one refers to people in private tells a lot about how you really view them compared to how you treat them and speak of them in public.  Certainly those that we call unbelievers believe in something right?  How open am I gonna be to what a person wants to communicate to me if they say I am lost?  I seem to be doing just fine.  If I call you a pre-Christian, that assumes that they are going to eventually become a Christian.

We struggled to find a non-pejorative term that wasn’t watered down.  We could not agree on one term that fully encapsulated the person who is outside the kingdom of God.

Final Thoughts

We have a serious problem.  We recognize the need of evangelism.  We desperately want to lead people into the Kingdom of God. But we don’t ever do evangelism.

However we have not had a good experience with current evangelism methods.  They just aren’t working.  There is no real relationship there; people become items on a checklist, not fellow imagines dei who desperately need a restored relationship with their creator.

What is needed is a way of viewing and practicing evangelism that is effective and that treats people as more than mere numbers.  This is what we will be looking at in the coming weeks.  It will require looking at the subject in a completely new way, so stay patient and stay tuned!

Something I typed up a few months ago and forgot to post. Enjoy:

While perusing a Southern Baptist weekly  newspaper, I noticed an article praising a pack of SBCers in South Dakota for their gospel witness to the motorcyclists attending the annual Sturgis bike rally.

The article applauded the group, not for its strong testimony accomplished through service and Christ-likeness, but for establishing their witness by dangling a free Harley Davidson before the bikers.

The group spent the entire year accruing enough funds to procure a brand new Harley to give away at the rally. Their deal: if you listen to our 3 minute gospel presentation, we will permit you to place your name in this drawing for the free motorbike.

Apparently, over 2,000 bikers heard their propaganda, and supposedly some 700 of them “professed faith” (who knows how many of these professions were made by sober people).
Is this what our gospel has been reduced to? A 3 minute presentation propped up by a symbol of American materialism? Have we really cheapened our gospel that much?

No longer is Jesus attractive by merit of His cross and resurrection, we must now try to sell him to unbelievers. No longer does the grace of God stand on its own, it must now be buttressed by Harley Davidson. No longer does Christianity speak against the trends of this world, but now we join in on the trends for our gospel to have relevance. No longer must one understand the narrative of salvation history in order to comprehend the cross, she merely needs to accept a gospel which can be proclaimed in the time it takes to pop popcorn in a microwave.

It took God a few thousand pages to proclaim his great message of salvation and we think we can reduce it to 3 minutes! Our cheap grace, shallow, manipulative gospel has produced generations of cheap grace, shallow, manipulative Christians. A cheap grace gospel is no gospel at all, and it is certainly not a gospel that should praised in a Christian newspaper. The goodness of God, not Harley Davidson, leads people to repentance.

**I think I’m particularly frustrated by this stupidity this week because the sermon I heard on Sunday was a ‘Salvation’ message with no cross, no resurrection, and no involvment of the intellect.