A Stone Has Cried Out
March 11, 2009
I encourage everyone who breathes to read an article that was published yesterday in The Christian Science Monitor titled The coming evangelical collapse, by Michael Spencer. It is powerfully important, and worthy of some sort of response even if you disagree. For a sampling, consider these excerpts from Spencer’s essay:
This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.
The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.
We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.
The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.
Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, “Christianity loves a crumbling empire.” We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.
Please Click Here to read the full article. Then please, pass it around. I truly believe most if not all of Mr. Spencer’s essay to be a word from God. You be the judge…
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Spencer’s essay is on target with its assessment of the state of evangelicalism today and how things look for its future. When all is said and done, our Christian community has no one to blame for this but ourselves. We have become more known for what—and who—we hate than for loving the sinner (and each other—all redeemed sinners—for that matter). Like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, we worry about how clean the outside of the cup is and neglect the rotting insides.
Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed to be part of congregations of many different denominations: Independent Baptist, Southern Baptist, Catholic, Church of Christ, Methodist, and now Anglican. Each of them have loved the Lord and have thought they were doing what was right, at the same time they have criticized other Christian denominations, and other churches within their own denominations, over worship style preferences, dress styles, and a variety of other non-scripture-based issues. How must someone outside of the church look on such pettiness? And how much does this dilute our real purpose: to know Christ and make Him (not our traditions) known.
We in America have lost sight of being the body of Christ, each piece with its own functions, gifts, and importance. We have walled ourselves off from a hurting world behind extravagant buildings that are sometimes rightly compared to country clubs. We have forgotten that Jesus said true religion was to take care of widows and orphans.
As Christians, we should be a shining city on a hill and the first place that hurting people go for healing. Instead, too often, we have denied our own hurts, sins, deficiencies (in order to maintain the “prettiness” of the outside of our cups), and those failures have remained all too apparent to the world at large that calls this behavior like it is: hypocrisy.
All of that said, I agree with Spencer’s assertions that there is reason for hope. Now more than ever, we’re seeing congregations reaching across congregational and denominational lines to study the Word together and to minister together. Our Anglican fellowship is teamed up with a Baptist church and a nondenominational Christian church to reach out to a government-assisted housing complex in our neighborhood with a food pantry, a clothes closet, tutoring for the kids, free piano lessons onsite, and now we’re looking to expand into prayer ministry and Bible study groups within the apartment that has been given to us there.
The ladies Bible study group that a friend of mine holds at her home has grown from being a group of Methodist ladies to including many other backgrounds including Anglican, Assemblies of God, Catholic, Baptist, and nondenominational. All of us ladies have one thing in common: We love the Lord and want to know him better through His Word.
While none of us wants to be persecuted, the Bible has many examples of the ways that God allows persecution to scatter his disciples, to increase dependency on Him, and to refine His church.
Absolutely, as the body of Christ, we have to know Him, His word, and the power and indwelling of His Holy Spirit. Without that, the church is just another building or exclusive social club. I think that’s probably as repugnant to God as it is to the rest of the world.