Great Falls, VA – A couple of weeks ago, I spent a week-end afternoon with a small group of twenty-somethings. I raised this whole question of what it takes to reach a generation of pagan Americans. Once you recognize that most Americans have no spiritual moorings, you realize the “Come & See” strategies of most churches are not going to work. The multitudes of the pagan majority aren’t coming. They can’t imagine why anyone would waste a great Sunday morning on something as antiquated and irrelevant as a “worship service.” So what are we to do?
Someone immediately waved the red flag of fanaticism. “Well, we certainly can’t go out there with the good news that they’re going to Hell. We can’t run down the list of all the things they can and can’t do in order to be a Christian!”
I could only sigh. Can we all agree that, in all honesty, that old cliché’ is just a straw man? In my long years of working with local churches and outreach strategies, I can recall only three individuals who might have conceivably fit that worn out stereotype. Sure, maybe one in a thousand Christians might assault an unbeliever with the threat of Hell and a list of spiritual do’s and don’ts! But if I’m right, most secular Americans have never met a Christian who behaves that way! to the contrary, far more American Christians are guilty of a different offense: never bringing up the Gospel at all. If only 30% of people here in the very secular DC area are actually Christians, that still means that 1 of every 3 people a bureaucrat meets here is a Christian. At least in my urban area, most people actually know quite a few Christians, but I would daresay many, many secular men and women in this area doubt that they know any Christians at all.
So please understand that I’m not even slightly worried about launching a vast tide of Christian evangelists who angrily warn neighbors they’re facing damnation and unfurl the flag of “Thou shalt nots.” No, it wouldn’t work, but it’s not going to happen. What I’m proposing is a generation of Christians who talk about their own personal lives the way other friends and co-workers talk about theirs. You don’t have to summon the fires of Hell and the demands of the Ten Commandments to share one detail from your spiritual life with an acquaintance or class mate.
For instance, smile and nod as your acquaintance talks about a riotous Friday evening of getting drunk and watching some gross-out movie about randy single people. Then mention that you played tennis or went fishing on Saturday, but the best thing that happened was in worship on Sunday. Then share something wonderful that happened at your church.
Ask questions about the plot when your friend summarizes what has happened so far in the best-selling novel she’s reading. After talking about that book for a while, mention that the most interesting thing you’ve read in the last few days is a particular section in the Bible. Then take a few moments to share something interesting from God’s Word.
Listen with interest as your co-worker shares the details of living with her boyfriend without the benefit of marriage. If it’s good news, you smile and nod. If it’s bad news, you sympathize. Then you confess with a slight smile, I thank God for my husband every day. I’m so glad I got him to say “I do,” because now I know he can’t get away!”
If lost people are not inclined to visit churches, then followers of Jesus will have to win them first and invite them later. But herein lies yet another problem of this pagan age: a vast and shocking number of Christians aren’t reading their Bibles. Hence, when opportunities come up to talk about what Christ is doing in our lives, quite often we have nothing to say. We haven’t thought about our faith. We haven’t read anything. We haven’t given God a chance to speak. So the great spiritual battlefields across the USA are littered with pagans who don’t know Jesus and saints who don’t know the Word of God.
We have to get the people of God back into the Word of God. Imagine a division of Marines rushing onto a battlefield with weapons they’ve never fired or even trained with. Of course, that would never happen. The Marines are better than that. So why are the people of God landing on battlefields with untried Bibles? We have to do better. Whether we want to admit it or not, the USS America is going down. Too often, the Church is still busy reorganizing deck chairs.
Selah!
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