THIS IS A FOOTBALL Sharing the Faith Today It will change your life! My wife, Luanne, and I were in the San Francisco airport awaiting our flight, and it was time for a late breakfast. Next to us at the restaurant table were two 20 somethings totally absorbed in their Apple I-Pads. Curious, I asked one of the young guys, Do you like it? Well, the flood gates opened! This is great. It will change your life. Let me show you what you can do. Your emails will appear here, movies here, all your Word documents here... We soon found out in our twenty-minute conversation that both young men were in sales for Home and Garden TV and the Food Channel, and that they were visiting clients on the West Coast. Both men graduates of southern universities, these sales executives were now selling us on the value of the Apple I-Pads. They were enthused, happy and convinced that I- Pads were the answer to almost any question, any problem we had! I learned from these enthusiastic and eager evangelists for technology. It will change your life. With that remark, those fellows reminded me that humans can share their passion, and by words be an example of almost anything to others. And this has haunted me! Am I as enthusiastic about sharing my faith in Jesus as these I-Pad carrying Yuppies were about sharing their technology story? Would I be willing to boldly express the good news of Jesus Christ as these fellows were expressing the good news of an apple gadget? Here are three books and a journal article for reflection on the evangelical task before us as Christians in the early years of the 21 st century: We are Here Now: A new Missional Era by Patrick Keifert (Allelon Publishing 2006) The Present Future: Six Questions for the Church by Reggie McNeal (Jossey Bass: 2003) Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism by Martha Grace Reese (Chalice Press: 2008) Exploding the Myth of the Boat by Mark A. Granquist (Lutheran Forum: Winter 2010) pp.15 17. In many ways, the apostolic work of Christian evangelism in North America today reminds me of the old Vince Lombardi story. The legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers had just suffered a football defeat and was now meeting with his players in the locker room post game. He is alleged to have carried in a football, and lifting it up for all to see, said, Gentleman, it is now important that we go back to basics. This is a football. 1
Our authors, Keifert, McNeal and Reese, would have the Christian community in these early years of the Third Millennium return to the great traditional spiritual disciplines. The church, they all declare, must focus on the basics: Scripture study, prayer, worship and acts of charity and justice. Thus we are called as Christians to go back to basics. Reggie McNeal is perhaps the most provocative in The Present Future as he takes on the stagnation and decline modern American Christian Protestantism. For a decade he served on the denominational staff of the Southern Baptists. He speaks throughout the country on Christian Evangelism. My cousin, who serves as treasurer of the East Central Synod of Wisconsin, attended a presentation of his at their 2010 Assembly. He told me, It was the best speech he had ever heard. McNeal reminds us that the modern church has lost its sense of mission. Church leaders, by and large, he tells are not interested in a relationship with Jesus. They are interested in church survival. McNeal says that the church is not a spiritual center at all. And spirituality would even frighten church leaders since they would be ridiculed by the community if they were too religious. Church leaders are demoralized today, he says, because they are not relevant to the centers of life in our modern community. The army of God has demoralized leaders. (McNeal p.23) McNeal has a fascinating discussion on modernism and post-modernism. Almost directly speaking to Lutherans, he says, The result of the modern church s form of spirituality is a North American church that is largely on a head trip. (p. 55) And then this statement, We have a church in North America that is more secular than the culture. (p. 59) Indeed, he tells us that most of the church, as we know it, is not going to survive much longer. Indeed, it is already largely dead. And, he says, that is a very good thing! And as church leaders, the absolute wrong thing for us to do in this time of church culture decline is try to shore up the decaying church culture. I told you he was provocative! So what is the answer? McNeal, Kiefert and Reese give their own takes on solutions. While they are not identical, all agree that for the modern church to thrive, it must be faithful to our core mission and our core purpose. And much of what we now call church will have to undergo death and resurrection. So, for the church, it is back to the basics. The Christian basics are prayer, fasting, conversation and struggle, study and reflection. (Kiefert, p.43) Patrick Kiefert is professor in systematic theology at Luther Seminary. I first became acquainted with his work when I read his book, Welcoming the Stranger, fifteen years ago. Now a church consultant and President of Church Innovations Institute, Kiefert is active in work with congregations seeking God s vision for their futures. And it is here, in his discussion of vision, that Kiefert was most illuminating for me. Kiefert rejects the idea that somehow our vision for a congregation should prevail. The visioning process, Borrowed from often outdated models of business visioning and planning, 2
born in modernity and reflecting its profound control of the imagination of the church in Christendom, imagine a relatively small group of people casting a vision and getting the rest to own it or buy in to their vision. Or others, in marked contrast to this utilitarian top-down approach to visioning, propose an egalitarian, bottom-up approach in which all persons are invited to express their vision for the local church and together create a share communal vision. In both the utilitarian top-down and the expressivity bottom-up approaches, the convictions are that the future is in our hands (either the top or the bottom) and that it is a matter of the future alone, the one we imagine and envision. We are the chief actors. We have no need of the past; indeed tradition in these models is usually ignored or even denigrated as the problem to be overcome. (Keifert, pp.67-68) Instead, Keifert calls the church to ask the questions of vision much differently. God is to be the center of our strategic planning. We are called to be the church of God and to reject our own vision and instead lean into God s vision for this place and this time. What is God calling us to do? What is God up to in this community? What is the useable future in our past? What part of God s mission in this community is God calling us to do? (Keifert, p.43) In our Synod, I am asked on occasion what is your vision for the future? Bishop, tell me, they say, Where do you see us going as a church body? What do you think should happen to us as a Synod in the next six years? While good intentioned, the questions are all wrong. Indeed, when I have answered these questions, I have felt uncomfortable. Keifert reminds me why. Questions like this seem to be born of a human-centered world view where we are the only actors in this drama. As a Synod, we should be asking instead, Where is God leading us? What are we called by God to accomplish in this Synod, this corner of the Kingdom? What can God do in us to renew this Synod and our eighty-five congregations? How can we learn to walk together as a church as God calls? We will not find out these important answers by taking surveys of our members asking What do you want the Synod to do for you? What services do you want from the Synod? What do you think should be changed? These might be important questions to reflect upon, but our mission from God as the Northern Great Lakes Synod is for us to discern together God s vision, God s call. We can, in humility, learn this from the study of God s Word, from prayer, conversation and fellowship with God s people. I am convinced that Lutheran evangelism is not an oxymoron. Evangelism is possible and it is in our history as a church body. Mark Granquist is an Associate Professor of Church History at Luther Seminary, and in his winter 2010 article in the Lutheran Forum, reminds us that immigration from Europe was not the only reason the Lutheran community in the United States grew. It is important to note that American Lutheranism more than doubled in membership after 1920, after the era of mass immigration came to an end. Granquist tells us that only 29% of Norwegian immigrants, 17% of Swedish and 9% of Danish immigrants actually became members of Lutheran congregations in the United States even after significant evangelism efforts. Many of the Lutheran pastors who came to North America were trained as 3
missionaries, saw this continent as a huge mission field, and always assumed that the immigrants they served needed to be, in this sense, evangelized. (Granquist, p.16) In the generations after 1930, even when the immigrants from Lutheran Europe were no longer coming to our shores, the Lutheran Church in America grew tremendously. By 1935 there were about 3.5 million American Lutherans, a figure that nearly jumped to eight million American Lutherans by 1960. This figure of eight million American Lutherans remained stagnant through the end of the twentieth century, and has declined since then; in terms of the total U.S. population, the market share of American Lutheranism has declined by nearly 40% in the last fifty years. Thus, the American Lutheran situation! So what happened to us as a church? Why is evangelism no longer a central issue in our Lutheran church life? To Granquist, the loss of a culture of evangelism can be attributed to the attempt to make the Christian church relevant to the social problems of the day. An entire new generation of pastors and of systems of seminary education seems to have downplayed traditional evangelism in favor of a social gospel. Second, there was a gradual decline in the support of national denominational structures for evangelism. He seems to think that the churches were distracted from evangelism during the years of restructuring, as Lutheran denominations merged (outside of the churches in the old Synodical conference) and then merged again from 1960 to 1988. Added to that, the cost of church planting exploded in the last forty years, reducing the number of mission starts. Finally, he says, the most troubling, is the seeming loss of the idea that evangelism efforts were even appropriate---the loss of Lutheran confidence in the proclamation of the gospel to others. In an increasingly pluralistic America, with its huge variety of different religious groups, it seems that some Lutherans had come to the conclusion that it was not appropriate to attempt to make new Christians out of those populations. And then, paraphrasing comments that Martha Grace Reese and Reggie McNeal made in their books, Granquist asks, Did American Lutherans lose their core message? (Granquist, p.17) We can be an evangelical church again. Professor Granquist calls the people of the Church to look to our own past, and to models of evangelism that have worked in our history! Martha Grace Reese is a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) pastor who was commissioned by the Lilly Foundation to interview 1,200 persons in growing congregations in mainline church bodies across the United States. Her Mainline Evangelism Study, and a series of books based on that study, are the result of this project. This study showed that there are many very successful mainline protestant congregations in the U.S., and that they had many similar characteristics even as they stretched across the denominational, racial, and social-political spectrums. In common, growing churches, according to Reese, had pastors and members who were able to talk clearly about who Jesus is in their lives. Growing churches had members who could speak to 4
the question, What difference does being a Christian make in your own life? Mainline congregations that are growing talk about and are able to clearly express a positive answer to this question, does it matter that other people are Christians? We in the mainline churches are supposed to be such clear, logical thinkers, but our thinking is fuzzy in this area. This fuzziness affects our evangelism. This is a critically important question that we should not gloss over. What do you believe? Why? (Reese, p.19) To make this point, Reese quotes from an interview with a pastor who says, I STILL can t believe---how the liberal church that knows so much about God s grace doesn t understand the power of what it has to share. And they don t share it. (Reese, p.17) So why is it that we are having such trouble talking about this faith that has been handed down to us? Why is that we have, as churches, stressed talking about God so little? Reese tells us what most of us are thinking about evangelism and evangelists. The typical barrier for people raised in mainline congregations is that we are foggy on why it matters that anyone be Christian. Most mainline Christians have little fear of Hell, but a horror of being embarrassed or looking obnoxious! Dismantling the barriers for most mainline Christians involves serious thinking, talking and praying about our relationship with Christ. If we are going to share faith, we need to know why we think it matters that we, or anyone else, are Christian. (Reese, p. 96) What also is helpful in Martha Grace Reese s Unbinding the Gospel are her thoughtful questions for small group discussion, and her 40-day prayer journal which makes this book a useful tool for congregational life. So what have we learned? What good is all this analysis? We can be so overwhelmed by the issues that we have the paralysis of analysis. What does any of this mean? What difference does any of this make? Here are a few practical and, I think, powerful ideas that Keifert, McNeal, Granquist and Reese have placed in our hands with these books: 1. Claim the truth! Evangelism and growth for our churches is very possible. Decline, while our immediate past does not have to be our destiny. Indeed, life, joy and growth are God s preferred future for us! (Keifert and Granquist) 2. Recognize the reality that ministry is more than just service to the local congregation. A priesthood to the world is the calling of all the baptized. This will be unsettling: Your church budget may shrink. Your church calendar may get less crowded. You may not have as many meetings. You will lose control of the church ministry. You are going to be challenged to quit gauging their spiritual maturity by how much they support the church. (McNeal, p. 48) 5
3. Dump the idea that our congregation is a family! Families are closed systems that are often dysfunctional and are centered on themselves. Families are hierarchical and mired in tradition. The mission of the family is not to grow. The mission of the church is to grow and welcome all people. (Keifert, p. 143-144) 4. Explore community needs and get out there into the mission field wherein your congregations and its people live. Many churches are beginning to insist that each Sunday School class or small group should have a local missions project. (McNeal, p. 62-63) 5. Focus on the congregational leaders. The public leaders of the congregation must be centered on the spiritual practices. Leaders in our churches need to be examples of prayer, scripture study, prayer and charity. (Kiefert) 6. Scripture study and prayer needs to be a part of every group that meets in the church and in its ministry. Scripture study could focus on these missional questions about the texts, What is God doing here? How is God calling, gathering, centering, and sending us into God s mission? (Keifert, p. 125) Talk about prayer, teach prayer, go to prayer conferences, spend money to send people to prayer events, learn about prayer from many sources, and take prayer seriously. Get a prayer partner. Use a prayer journal. Be very intentional and develop your own prayer life. Half of the time spent in every meeting in the church could (should) be in prayer. (Reese) 7. Ask this question often and loudly and to everybody. Where do you see Jesus bustin out? (McNeal, p. 74) Our people need to reflect upon and to answer this question again and again. 8. Help our people (and us) fall in love with Jesus again. (McNeal and Reese) Do our sermons, our Bible studies, our devotional times in church meetings center on the one who became flesh and dwells with us? Do we ever seriously talk in detail about this Jesus? McNeal tells us, I am convinced that most expressions of the institutional church in America will not survive the emerging world. If that sounds threatening to you, then you may be more in love with the church than you are with Jesus. You need to take this up with him. (McNeal, p.145) 9. Have outsiders look critically at your worship services. I also recommend to church leaders that they rent some non-church people unfamiliar with the church to visit for two to four weeks, then debrief their experience. What impressions did they form? Did people speak to them? Did the service make sense? Did they encounter God? Were they inspired, 6
challenged, and uplifted? What do they think the church is most interested in? Would they recommend the church to their friends? (McNeal, p. 103) 10. Celebrate growth. About sixty percent of all new members in a church get there because a lay person invited them to church. (Reese) Talk about bringing new people to church in the worship service announcements, the newsletter, pray in worship for growth. Expect excellent results. Then celebrate when God brings you new people. To be spiritually prepared a church must be willing to turn the hoped-for future into intentional initiatives, activities, and processes. (McNeal, p. 110) 11. Seminary education must change to put evangelism at the top of priority for theological education. Seminary training was birthed to service the wordsmith-educator function. It has focused on biblical education with a few practical courses thrown in to help students prepare for priestly functions (administering sacraments) and shepherding aspects of ministry (pastoral care, psychology and so on). In recent decades, some courses targeting church administration and leadership have been added. (McNeal, p. 128) Seminaries, as we know them, may need to be radically modified or, perhaps, even cease to exist. These centers of theological education could be replaced by small groups of students surrounded by a professor or two in the midst of a thriving congregation. 12. Push the Bishop to make evangelism a priority! Does the Bishop encourage evangelism across the churches, push experimentation, and make allowances for failure? Put evangelism significantly into the budget of the judicatory and ask the question of the pastors serving under call in Synod congregations: How many adult baptisms has your congregation had this year? (Reese) Keep the bishop s feet to the fire on this one! 13. Get help. Meet with other church leaders from other congregations, especially ones in your community from other Christian denominations. Find a church that is already growing and spend time learning from them. Seek advice from denominational leaders. Read books. (Reese) 14. Pray for guidance. So it is back to basics! This is a football. This is evangelism. We have the Good News. Now we are called by God to share the joy, the hope and the power of God! Thomas A. Skrenes January 2011 7