christian mugging (aka bait-and-switch: the struggle for relevance {aka the dangers of an evangelism program at your church})

Many people feel {or come across to others} just like the person in the video whenever they invite someone to church--not to mention share their faith.  The focus of this post is on the evangelism side of the issue.  Perhaps at a later point I will do something on extracted Christian living, if there is such a thing.

I was recently reminded just how hard/scary evangelism can be.  I was at a large mall in the D.C. area to do some intentional evangelism.  I was not the team leader; but was bringing a group with me to work with a group that regularly evangelized at this mall [they used EE].  Although I have taken many seminary classes in evangelism and missions, gone on numerous mission trips, shared the gospel with many many people from all walks of life and religions, and have even done those "crazy" and "radical" things like open air street preaching, the hardest part for me is walking up to a complete stranger and starting a conversation [particularly one wherein I will either be asking them about heaven and hell within 30 seconds, or announcing some completely ridiculous reason as a pretext for our "random" conversation].  Once I am in the conversation and we are deep in discussion, I am high as a kite.  But after all these years and all these hours of training and experience that initial fear remains.  Fortunately, I was working with a partner who was at ease overcoming the awkward [albeit through the interjection of his own special awkwardness-more about this in another post] introductory moment.  So I piggy backed with him and had a great time.  I was able to talk with several postmodern Muslims from Pakistan and Somalia and a postmodern Catholic from Bolivia.  We made some good progress in their understanding of the gospel, so the night was a success in those terms.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting a stellar missional, cultural thinker, Derek Webster{he is linked in my blog list-go check it out}.  I listened to him for a day, picked his brain on a number of occasions, and have thought about it all ever since.  He discussed the postmodern culture of Europe.  One problem he notes in evangelism, a problem to which the postmodern mind reacts and rejects, is the bait-and-switch.  This tactic exhibits itself in people who build relationship which are artificial in their nature and are instantly turned for proselytizing.  The moment someone doesn't convert, then the relationship is over.  I remember going out with the seminary evangelism team to the hood.  My partner went up to a group of thugs and started with some kind of "you have a Jesus shaped hole in your heart."  As part of his pitch, he promised them that he wasn't like other Christians who were there just to win people and then would leave.  The sad truth is it was his first and last trip to any hood, much less that one.  He ran it, shot off, and ran out.  He fulfilled his duty; he has a war story; he is finished.  Those people are no closer to the gospel as a result of his drive by shooting.  I am sure that there are many stories like this where people go back to their home church and talk about how resistant folks are to the gospel, when in reality they just don't like suburban Christians who are too clean to actually live in this world. The other kind of bait-and-switch is the cheesy segue and shameless analogy.  Are you really doing surveys as you knock on doors?  Is the blood of Jesus really like paint?  I think you get the point....  Someone who is dead in sin and hardened philosophically to the gospel is not going to be won by some quick shot across the bow.  The key to them understanding the gospel is not to be found in some pathetic analogy wherein you take whatever {and I do mean WHATEVER} they just said and bending it back around to whatever it was your were going to say anyway.

After chewing on Websters insights for a few days, I jotted down the following statement {probably during one of the boring sessions}

Evangelism exists because missional living does not.  That is to say, Evangelism--as a system or pitch--exists because missional living--living the daily life of a follower of Jesus--does not exist.  Since missional living does not exist, we live with the reality of vast lostness living in close proximity to the church.  The result is that there is now a need for those who are on a church campus to go off campus to proclaim what they believe.  They must proclaim since they are not living it out visibly before the world.  There is a disconnect between their life and their message.  This makes the message appear as a shameless ploy to try to fix the shortcoming of not living out the faith in and before the world. 

To put all this another way, it is necessary for us to evangelize because we are not truly living in the world in a way in which we can, from the ethos of our lives, genuinely tell them the gospel with any real conviction.  It is easier to "mug" them, and then blame them for the hardness of their hearts.  Perhaps some introspection would do us some good here?  God did not divorce his message from his messenger.  He put the gospel, and divinity itself, into terms that we could understand: the person of Jesus.  Jesus lived among us and put the gospel into a context.  To be honest, the people who address their distance with the world through active evangelism are the minority.  The majority try to close this gap through the voting box!

Here is a short list of the dangers of evangelism {evangelism that is divorced from contextual involvement in the world}:

• we start checking boxes {if we are even willing to check that box}

Evangelism becomes something of legalism.  It is merely an action which we perform.  It becomes a passionless sales pitch.  It doesn't matter if it is coherent or relevant to our hearer so long as we get through the pitch.

• we adopt a one size fits all mentality

Similar to the last one.  If we just HAVE to get through our acronym or survey or whatever, then there is never any need to think creatively about people as unique groups or as unique individuals.  Remember, the last thing in the world a Buddhist wants is eternal life....  Hindus and cultural Catholics are happy to "receive Jesus" though that means different things to both of those groups and it doesn't mean to either of them what we intended to say.  The gospel presentation of Peter in Acts 2 and Stephen is much different from Paul at the Areopagus.  Luke's presentation of the life of Jesus is vastly different from John's portrayal. 

• The gospel looses relevance {and we never blame ourselves}

Since the gospel is a placard and not a way of life {in this system} it comes off as headhunting.  Since the gospel is not given a face {ours} it will not be understood as it originally was {when it was Jesus' "face" on it} and the gospel will be viewed through the skewed lenses of postmodernism, Republican vs. Democrat, North vs south, black vs white, rich vs poor kind of dichotomies.   Do we really want to accept our portrayal by the media of who and what we are?  If you don't, then you better be willing to put a face and a life on the gospel {but count the cost, for you might loose your life!}  We present the gospel in such a trite scratch-and-sniff way, with no demonstration, that people are predisposed not to believe.  They appear to be "hardened."  {I am not trying to rub you reformed guys the wrong way, but I would rather work positively with God than for him to work in spite of me}  It is easier to pray for hardened peoples than to get involved in the messy, not to mention dangerous, business of living the gospel.

• we live extracted lives

More on this in a later post.

• the gospel has no natural context in our lives

The gospel turns into something that is merely believed and taught rather than something to believed and followed as well.  Thinking back to that guy in the hood {or any other lost person for that matter}, he had no means of connection with what my partner was saying.  My partner was only making a blitz through a part of town he knew nothing about.  The reason his presentation appeared to be artificial and empty is because it was.  There was no natural flow or context whatsoever.

• either we are in "evangelism mode" or "personal time mode"

There is a secularization of even our Christian life.  Either we are focused on presenting the gospel {by that I mean the acronym which we like best of have memorized} that we cannot really talk and listen to people, or we are in our normal mode where we walk about with an independent, segregated life with no real connection to people. 

• we develop relationships and conversations which are merely "bait-and-switch"

We only make friends to share the gospel.  When they don't appear to accept our trite representation of the truth, we leave them behind.  This has all the romantic appeal of someone who is looking for love only to be continually wooed by a series of one night stands.  When we bait-and-switch we are not really listening to the other person.  Typically I am with someone else when I share the gospel.  I am amazed and shocked by some of the things my partners will say.  It has no real relevance, correspondence, or or even contradiction to what the witnessee just said.  It is simply point 2.a.II of whatever method they are using.  They don't care if the other person is really saying or hearing and thus no real communication takes place.  The witnessee will raise a valid concern or question, and the person will say "well this is why..." and they will start right back wherever they were before they were interrupted.  Recently at the mall, my partner had cornered a man from Pakistan, Salmon.  When I arrived, Salmon was firmly and verbally resisting everything my partner was saying.  Finally Salmon tried to use an analogy to help my partner understand how obnoxious he was being.  He said "I like Lost.  And if I go around and only talk about Lost then everyone will be annoyed with me and won't want to hear anything about it."  To this my friend replied, "Well, lost has a lot of Christian ideas, just like C.S. Lewis' books..."  My friend was throwing out ideas and labels as thought Salmon would mystically be brought closer to cross by only hearing the word "Christian" adjective, verb, and noun forms enough times.  Needless to say, no real communication was taking place, and my friend was only putting a cheap face on the gospel.  {I will tell you how we resolved this situation in another post}

Before anyone gets up in arms and thinks I am saying that there should not be proclamation, you are wrong.  I am not saying this at all.  But there must at least be equal parts of proclamation and demonstration.  If we aren't living in the world, we have no right to speak to the world.  After all, Jesus was the one who set the model of living in the world and proclaiming the kingdom.  I am not recommending the removal of evangelism as a plan, per se, only the addition of living with intentionality in the world and loving its people the way God does.  We do need to face the facts.  Few people actually evangelize even with a method.  The problem is that they are scared and it feels weird to go talk to someone they don't know {perhaps the first step is to become involved in people's lives}.  And for the few who do evangelize, very few people listen with any real interest.  Part of this is that they are dead in sin.  But a large part of it is because in their mind there is no reason we should be talking to them.  We are complete strangers and we just walked over and are getting all in their business.  Even believers react to this methodology.  When I go out, I think it is very odd when someone just walks up to me.  I am more at ease when they are obviously there to tell me/sell me something because that always answers my first question: why?  But when someone walks across the mall straight to me and starts making small talk and asking me questions, my street smarts kick in and I am automatically suspicious, defensive, on guard.  As a result, I am not really listening as I am trying to discern their real motives.  Usually, I get to the "I need to go" long before they have time to get it all out.  Sound familiar?  If it doesn't maybe you have never been "befriended" by someone who, to your joy, invites you over for dinner only to find out that it is an Amway party...  Get the picture?

I am not advocating less proclamation, only more honest incarnation.

language and context

This is for those who think contextualization is bad....

missional living vs. evangelism

I have yanked these videos from various missional blogs.  Most of my evangelism experience to date has been with atheists, post-moderns, agnostics, "cultists," neo-pagans, and adherents of far eastern religions.  For some time now I have been studying evangelism as it relates to the Arab Muslim worldview.  I am amazed how many parallels there are between how one should reach a postmodern and how one should reach a Muslim.  One of the biggest keys has to do with building genuine relationships and not just "mugging" them.  Here is a collection of videos relating to the topic.  Some are from other voices on how to do evangelism.  Some are videos from our own side which poke fun at how we do things.  Enjoy!

The post modern perspective:

Christians Trying to Convert Non-Christians from Rethink Mission on Vimeo.

From the Navajo perspective:


How we come across part 1:


How we come across part 2:


How we come across part 3:


Just for free:

bait and switch

I found this video over at missionary confidential

when message and medium colide try on a little contextualization for size

Look at the dichotomy above.  I tend to agree with the message of corduroy girl on the right.  Nevertheless, I find myself laughing with holier-than-thou denim man on the left.  A few things strike me about this photo:

1. This is the way the world views us.  Odd, outdated and out of place.  Willing to fight but not to love.  Preaching at people rather than talking with them.  Part of a different community.

2.  We some times let method get in the way of message.  I remember going to NYC for a mission trip and passing a man who was in the median of the highway holding up a "Jn 3:16" sign.  He had the right message, but how many people's lives were changed by the sign.  Could he have been more effective with the same (well, flesh it out some first) message but in a different format.  One time I went to a pagan pride fest.  There were hundreds of Christian (presumably) protesters.  You learned a few things from their signs: they were angry these people were here, they wanted them to go, they thought these people were wrong, and they were angry with them.  Since I brought no sign, they let me through the front door.  I talked with many people face to face about real life issues and how to answer them.  I was able to present the gospel with several participants.  Who was more effective?  Who was heard?  In spite of all of their shouting, the protesters were ignored.  They did manage to accomplish one thing, they made "Christianity" look ugly, hateful, and dumb.

3. She is in corduroy....  There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but she looks odd to the world.  Do you think she would be received differently if she were to put the sign down, dress in a culturally normative way, get involved in peoples' lives, and spread the gospel?  My glowing description of this alternative betrays my own thoughts on the topic.

4.  Probably no one was changed in the slightest by the sign.  I doubt any gay in America wonders what evangelicals think about their lifestyle.  All gays know that we disprove and think that they are in sin.  They are probably even familiar with the fact that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin.  So what is her purpose?  What is she accomplishing?  I can't imagine any gay walking by, seeing the sign, and deciding that it is time to change.

We have to stop tract bombing, Christian mugging and protest evangelism.  They are going to get us exactly where they have always have: nowhere!

Extraction

I have finished the series on extraction.  You can click the links to read them in order.

Christian Mugging

A personal journey of feeling out of place

What Independent Baptists and Muslims have in Common

Closer to Home

The History of Revelation

Water Balloon Evangelism

water balloon evangelism

Sadly, I know people in real life who are like Mr shorty-shorts in the video.  Whats worse, is that many of us come across like this to the world without even knowing it.

This will probably be my last post in the extraction series.  I am tired of writing on it.  It only ticks me off to think about how out of touch we are with reality.  And, I am sure you are tired of reading about it.

I was walking through the parking lot on my way to get groceries and saw that there was a Starbucks inside Krogers.  My initial reaction was one of disgust, "what are they going to put them in next?!"  The more I think about it, it is clear that they have the right idea.  I personally am not big coffee drinker.  I have only been to a coffee shop one time.  If they are going to get me to try a cup of coffee, it is not going to be by making me drive out of my way, and going somewhere I would never naturally go.  They would have to put it in the normal pattern of my everyday life in order to get me to try it.  This is exactly what they have done.

I think part of the problem with most churches (and why they aren't growing) is because they are extracted from the normal patters of people's everyday lives.  Unless it is Christmas or Easter, or someone is getting married or dying, church just isn't the place where people go.  The people in church aren't the group of people with whom they normally associate.  People are interested in Jesus; they just aren't willing to go to church to find out about him. After 9-11, when you wanted to know more about Islam, did you go to mosque or read a book?  Most people read books rather than visited with Muslims face to face because we want the leisure or reading over the pressure of what we view to be an immanent hard sell.  Do you think our post/pre christian culture views us differently?

This is the problem which both the contemporary church--which is typically only a hip traditional church--and the traditional church have in common.  Both models expect people to "come and see."  The traditional church expects people to come because they operate under the cultural presupposition that it is Sunday and people will come to church.  The contemporary church expects people to come because they are so much cooler than traditional church.  To an unregenerate mind, neither is attractive.  The unregenerate would rather be elsewhere than church on Sunday, and if they are going to pick a place based on vibe, the church cannot compete with "vanity fair."

We need to model what Jesus modeled: Incarnation.  Evangelism is not so much of an event as it is a process.  We need to quit giving flip answers so we can move on to point 3 in our outline.  Rather, we need to take the long sell and model christian life and theology for them.  If we can't.won't do that, we need to just pack it up.

It is said that we shape the building and then the building shapes us.  I am not against buildings, but in spite of our affirmations to the contrary, when we think of church, too often, we are really thinking about buildings and programs.  The post/pre christian culture needs Jesus brought to them.  If we quit thinking buildings then we will no longer be limited by geography and environment.  Why don't we take Jesus to the pub?  The sports team?  The work place?  Our street? Because we do ministry at our church building...  we are probably too busy there to ever think about these other places.  After all, that would just put our work in competition with our home church, and we don't want to trump on their turf.

We need to be mindful of which kingdom we are supposed to be building.

like a sore thumb: the history of revelation

This has nothing to do with end times.  Rather, it concerns the history of God revealing himself to man and the missiological implications which we can draw today.  

There are several key passages {Heb 1:1-2, Rom 1:18-30, Jn 1:1, 14; 17:18, Matt 21:33-41} relating to the history of revelation.  What is the process, historically and chronologically wherein God revealed himself to man.  Jesus alludes to this process in the parable of the tenants in Matt 21.  A land lord lets out his property.  He sends various representatives, whom the tenants kill.  Finally he sends his Son, thinking that they will not kill him-they do. 

Adam and Eve walked with God and they certainly taught their children about this after the fall.  In the days of Noah, there was a brief point during which the entire world {Noah and his family} knew God.  Think about being Abram, a probable moon worshiper.  For our purposes here we are going to use Abram as an “everyman.”  What is true for Abram and what followed him is also true, in whole or in part, for every man today.  The revelation of God has gone through several phases: Nature, Law, Prophets, Jesus, Body of Christ. 

If you lived between Babel and Abram’s day you would probably be looking to nature.  Scripture is clear, that God reveals himself through nature:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Ps 19:1

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  Rom 1:19-20

What does man do with God's revelation?  He spurns it.  Romans goes on to say that man traded worshiping the creator with worshiping the creation.  This is true historically.  In the days of Noah, his family knew the one true God.  How did they trade the worship of the living God for Idolatry?  In spite of God declaring himself to them through nature, they misunderstood and twisted revelation.

God rectified this through choosing a people and calling them out through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Primarily he revealed himself through the law.  As if the tenants misunderstood their landlord (Matt 21), he sent them another person to explain his terms.  They killed him as well.

What did the Jews do with the law?  It didn't take long for them to break it.  In fact, they were busy making and worshiping an idol while God was revealing the law to Moses! 

The story which continues through the rest of the Old Testament, is one in which they are constantly breaking God's law.  Judges describes their continued cycle of breaking the law, God's judgment, oppression, repentance, and restoration.  Not having learned their lesson, they repeat this cycle over and over again. 

This leads to the next phase of revelation: the prophets.  Hebrews 1:1 reads that in many times and in many ways God spoke to man by the prophets.  The landlord from Matthew continued to send emissaries to reason with the tenants.  So God did with man.  He sent prophets who transmitted His messages to His people.  They called the people back to God and rebuked them from the law.  They demonstrated the ways in which they had forsaken God and broken his law.  One would think that man would eventually wake up and heed what God was saying to them.  Yet they persisted.  They punished, imprisoned, and even killed the prophets.  Rather than believing and turning to God in repentance, they continued in their ways.  Just like the man in Romans 1, they continued to reject what they knew was true till they were turned over to their own darkness.  Finally, God caused his people to be taken into captivity, the temple to be destroyed, and the land to be inhabited by another.  The land represented his blessing and providence and the temple represented his presence.  He had removed his blessing and presence from them.

But, in love, he did not leave them to their own devices.  He further revealed himself through his son.  The landlord sent his son to the tenants thinking that they would surely respect his son.  Hebrews 1:2 says that in these last days he has revealed himself though his Son who is the heir of all things.  Through these phases of revelation, the message has been clarified at each point.  In this phase God sent his revelation in the form of a person.  When God chose to reveal himself to man, he put a face on it.  He spoke our language.  He understood our culture.  John 1:1 says that in the beginning was the word.  The Greek word is logos.  This word has a broader usage in the Greek world than the way John used it (and John is bridging the gap between the common Greek understanding of logos and his theological understanding of logos).  Plato used this concept and called it "forms."  These forms were eternal and transcend the created order.  These forms consist of ideas such as justice, love, beauty, and truth.  Philosophers always assumed that the logos was eternal.  John said nothing new.  His next phrase was a little more controversial, "and the logos was with God."  Many philosophers had joined the idea of an eternal logos and an eternal divinity.  Augustine actually agreed with Plato (though he comes after the days of Jn 1:1...), to an extent, in that he also affirmed that justice, truth, and beauty were all eternal.  Augustine, however, believed that they were eternal and unchanging because they were in the mind of God and God is eternal and unchanging.  John's final statement was revolutionary, "and the logos was God."  This was something that the philosophers had never thought before.  Why are truth and love eternal and unchanging?  Because God is love and truth and he is eternal and unchanging.  But logos is still very much a philosophical principle at this point.  We are at the point in the history of revelation that God is ready to roll out the next clarification and he is sending the logos himself.  But God is spirit, and we, since we misunderstood nature, the law, and even the prophets who explained the law, it was necessary for God to reveal himself in a way that could not be misunderstood [aka not in some kind of ball of ethereal philosophical logosness.]. 

"And the word became flesh and dwelt among us." 

This is the principle of incarnation.  God revealed himself in a form which was 100% human.  Our senses had become dulled (we were turned over to a reprobate mind-Romans 1) and so he came in a way which we could understand.  He spoke the local language.  You could have heard him talk and known where he was from.  He taught in local forms.  He wore local clothes; you could have looked at what he was wearing and known where he was from.  He attended the local parties, participated in their cultural festivals.  He was in every way human.  More than that, he was in every way Jewish.  All of this should be instructive to us for our stance towards culture.  There were many areas of culture which Jesus assumed.  Many of these areas do not fit our local taboos and thus we gloss over them.  For instance, the church, primarily in the South, is highly political.  They seem to overlook that Jesus stepped into an extremely corrupt political environment and said precious little concerning it.  To my KJV only brethren, in Jesus' day, there were several texts available...  he did not pick which text was best, and sometimes he just paraphrased or told stories.  Jesus was comfortable with many aspects of culture in ways which would make us uncomfortable (at the same time, he prophetically rebuked certain aspects of culture). 

Back to the story... In the parable of the landlord of the vineyard, he decides that the way to convince the tenants of his intentions is to send his son.  What do they do?  What did the Jews do?  They disbelieved; they killed him.  There is one more phase of revelation: us.  When we look at revelation historically we should expect a similar reception. Jesus says this to his followers.  He tells them that the should rejoice in the face of suffering and persecution because their fathers before them were treated in kind (Matt 5:11-12).

The next step of the story is simply you.  How did God reveal himself ultimately to man?  He put a human (Jewish) face on it.  How does God want to reach the dying world?  Airdrop Bibles and tracts?  Nope.  He sends you.  John 17:18 says that as he has been sent by his father, that he sends his followers.  He repeats this again in 20:21 "as the father sent me, even so I am sending you."  Paul affirms this message.  He says that God is reconciling all things to himself through Christ {2 Cor 5:19}.  Furthermore, we are ambassadors and God is now making his appeal through us {5:20}.  In the same way in which God did not send the logos in the form of a spirit or philosophical concept to us but put it in flesh, so also today he does not send his message through some kind of impersonal syllogism, drive by evangelism, and spiritual "scratch and sniffs" {aka tracts.}.  He wants us to be incarnational {and for the purpose of this article, not extractional}.  We know this because Paul admonishes us to follow Christ in this regard {Phil 2:5-8}.  A lot of people get messed up over "God emptied" himself.  This is because they do not understand the incarnation.  This is not emptying in the sense of loosing part of himself.  Rather it is a pouring into.  He simply poured himself into a human form and modeled the incarnation.  So to, we are to pour ourselves out-not that we are not human-and into the form of a servant following their master all the way to the cross.

like a sore thumb: closer to home

So the examples from the last post were definitely soft targets.  It should be blatantly obvious to everyone just how out of touch these methods are.  So, lets get a little closer to home.

Exhibit A
It could be the First Baptist Church of anywhere.  It is a midsized church of around 600.  The church has been in a plateau for many years.  They recently hired some new staff to try to help the church grow.  Part of this plan included updating the music.  The low grade worship war, or rumble, had been decided in favor of modernizing.  After all, if they were to reach the boomers, they would need to have better music.  They have given their website a face-lift, and are even trying to connect on facebook and twitter.  They brought in a younger worship leader and Pastor.  They are using projectors and movie clips.  They don't talk about hell, tithing, lordship.  Instead, they talk about sex, finances, and other American dream feel good topics.  They can see that they have updated their church from its former days of traditionalism. The church appears to be growing so everyone is happy.  If they were to look behind the curtains, however, they would see that the growth was not from the church impacting lostness, rather they were receiving disgruntled people from other churches.  If they were to take an honest look, they would see that in spite of their new marketing strategies that they were essentially reaching the same people: people who are already inclined to come to church and who, typically, already share a cultural Christian worldview.  They trade missional living for church growth; the lost are still lost, but at least their church is bigger.  They have made the basic mistake that many churches make.  While they rightly critique the traditional church, they make the same basic error.  They say that the church of the 50's is stuck in the cultural presuppositions of the 50's, that people will come to church.  That is true.  It was assumed, especially in the south, that on Sunday everyone was in church.  The problem with many "contemporary" churches is that they make the same mistake.  They assume that if they are simply more modern or more entertaining that people who don't care about God will somehow fell compelled to show up.  I have never found a church that good.  The problem is even deeper than drawing the lost world.  The problem extends to trying to draw believers.  Churches don't realize the extracted christian sub culture which they espouse and how phony it feels to anyone, believer or not, living in the real world.  Just think about christian music.  Personally, I own and listen to secular music more than christian.  All of the knock off bands are just that, knock offs.  Don't even start me on christian movies....  But I digress.  The point remains, take away all technological trappings and the traditional and contemporary church are essentially the same in mindset: the world will "come and see".  "Go and tell" in these camps is equated with an invitation to church.

Exhibit B
Bob is a young man who recently became a Christian.  He comes from a lower income family in a rough neighborhood.  He decides to go to the closest church which happens to be First Baptist of Exhibit A.  Exhibit A church is across the highway in the nicer part of town, mostly upper middle class.  Bob is instructed that he should not attempt to win some of his friends till he has more knowledge and training.  He begins coming to Sunday School, morning worship, and the evening service on Sundays.  There is a Monday night football group with some of the guys from church.  Bob's friends, who are a little rougher than he is are never interested in coming to church, though he invites them to many events.  For some reason, guys who are sleeping around with many women don't think they have something to learn from a Pastor about sex.  They don't want to hang out on Mondays, because they were told there would be no alcohol there--it is a Baptist church after all.  Bob also goes to church on Wednesday nights, because that is small group Bible study, and Friday nights, because that is Singles group.  He picks up extra hours at work on Tuesday nights and on his only remaining night left, the night he and his friends used to hang out at the local bar, he just stays home since his new group of friends are advising him to make wiser choices with whom he associates.  He no longer has any real connection to anyone in his old world.  His life has been transformed, but all they see is that he is no longer there.  Bob is interested in getting married, but is meeting lots of resistance at church since most of the available women are wary about his rough past.  Some of them are just "too good" for him.  He can't choose a girl from his past since he is looking for something else now.  He finds him self to be rather lonely.  One of his church friends offers him a better job.  Bob takes it.  He is now removed from the final network from his past.  His old friends just thing he is self righteous and used religion to get out of the hood to a better life in the burbs.  He no longer talks like he used to, he no longer lives where he used to, and since he has a nicer job, he doesn't even dress like he used to.  He is a carbon copy of the middle class southern American Christian sub culture.

Can he go back and reach his buddies for Christ?  Could he just invite them to church?

like a sore thumb: what independent baptists and muslims have in common

The idea of extraction has only recently hit my radar screen although I have lived under the system for many years.  Here are two obvious examples of extraction.

Part of the problem with missions to north Africa and the Middle East is that the movement, historically at least, has never become indigenous.  It is always driven by and presented as an outsider, westerner, counter cultural, crusader-esque political movement.  Extraction in this context takes place in a number of ways, many of them are well intentioned.

• Sometimes this looks like a rescue operation.  Salim becomes a christian and undergoes persecution {more often because of our missteps than his own}.  Our responses: fully believing that the American dream is synonymous with the gospel, we reject the notion that this persecution is legitimate or can be used for the kingdom.  We just want it to stop.  We look for ways to bring him out of the country.  How does this look to the locals?  Christianity is a western religion.  Missionaries are the religious wing of the CIA.  The CIA topples your government and then the missionaries brainwash women, children, and other outcasts.  To become Christian is to become American/western.  To become Christian is to forsake family, tribe, nation, and heritage.  Just look at Salim.  He became a Christian with those white missionaries, and now he has left for America-traitor.  
• Sometimes extraction looks like prejudice.  Are Arab believers reaching the Muslim majority at home?  not typically.  Christians have been severely persecuted and discriminated against.  Proselytizing Muslims is a big no no, one that will get you imprisoned or worse.  So one day Ahmed becomes a believer.  What are his options?  There is the expat oilfield workers church.  This would be a certain death sentence.  Need plan B: the Arab believers church.  These are people who have "grown up" as Christians and come from a Christian background.  It is almost as much an political and ethnic grouping as it is a religious one.  Look at their state ID and it says "Christian."  This looks like a better plan to Ahmed.  He goes there, amid their cautious and skeptical glances.  What must he do?  He must take a christian name and get rid of his "Muslim" name.  He must shave his beard and maybe get the traditional cross tattoo on the inside of his wrist.  He can no longer wear any traditional Islamic clothes.  What do you think the reaction of Ahmed's father will be when he says "abuni, I am no longer a Muslim.  I am a Christian.  I have changed my name to Matthias."  His father will probably beat him, kick him out of the house, that is if he does not turn him over to the authorities for reeducation or to be placed in a mental hospital till his "illness" is over.  He is ostracized from family and friends {the family clan is the basis of every aspect of life in the Arab world: job, marriage, protection, everything.}  Because he is blacklisted, he looses his job.  His wife, who is not yet a believer, is careful not to tell her parents about Ahmed, ops, I mean Matthias' conversion lest they force a divorce and he loose his family.  The landlord has kicked him out of his flat.  Completely wasted and ruined, he goes back to the church.  What is their response?  They just might be willing to take him in and help for a while.  But as soon as the authorities catch wind of what has happened they will turn him out on his own.  They don't want any more persecution and certainly not on behalf of one who used to be a Muslim.  If he is jailed, they cannot/will not help.  What are his options?  One, Christian or Muslim will give him a real job or a place to live.  If he is single, none of the Christians will allow him to marry his daughter since his State ID will always say "Muslim" and their children will technically be Muslim too, even though they are really believers.  Should he leave the country?  What other option does he have?  He has successfully been extracted from culture, and family, and economics, and every other area of life since he was forced out of his family and natural network.  The saddest part of all is that the gospel will not flow back through his former circle of family and friends.  How would this situation have been different if he had continued to be a part of his culture?  What if He had kept his birth name and traditional dress?  What if he hadn't presented his new beliefs in such a caustic, disrespectful way to his father?  Persecution in these contexts is inevitable.  Had he not been extracted from his context the persecution may not have been as severe and might not have come till later.  But the main point is that if he had not been extracted, he would have been able to advance the gospel through his circle.  Extracted, he was merely a victim to himself, and a liability to everyone else.  {the truth of the matter, is that the Arab church is just as culturally and politically extracted as he was.  That is, they were not actually living in the normal context for their part of the world.}
  

So how on earth are independent baptists at all like that?

There is a church I grew up in that fits the following description:  They were KJV only.  The women wore long dresses, had long hair, and typically, no make up.  Female dress was, according to the pastor, to be "Lots, Loose, Long, and Ladylike." The men were expected to have short hair, no earrings or tattoos.  Beards were permissible; shorts were frowned upon.  There was no mixed swimming and even no youth group.  Tv was heavily discouraged and heavily preached against.  Dating was not allowed.  Secular music was condemned as was praise and worship and any other contemporary music.  Contemporary music for them was the Gaithers and Steve Green--yes they were just that far out of touch.  College was discouraged.  BJU was too liberal for most {yes I said liberal!} and PCC was even to liberal for some.  When I went to SEBTS, many in the church broke fellowship with me {cause we all know how liberal Paige Patterson is...}.  All of this was done in the name of "holiness."  Their view was that everything in the world was evil intrinsically.  There were not any elements of culture which were neutral.  Church was viewed as the safe place, safe from all the evils and contaminants of the world.  There essentially wasn't any outreach into the community.  Some people, of their own initiative, actually did share the gospel.  But for too many of them, sharing the gospel was translated into some kind of denouncement of the evil of culture through the explanation of our "high standards" to some poor lost person who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.  There was a testimony hour where people could share what God was doing in their lives or share a witnessing story, etc.  Here are some of the examples {there are many stories which were genuine, these are just some which illustrate their extracted point of view}:    

• One lady talked about an encounter with a young woman in wall-mart.  Allegedly, this young lady wasn't properly dressed {remember proper for these folks meant no holes in the elbows or knees...}.  The woman took great joy in telling us how she explained modesty to this young lady.  This was her taking a stand for "truth."  
• More stories than I can count about political discussions, elections, candidates, etc, being proclaimed as "truth."
• There were many a successful "stand for Christ" when objectionable music was played at a restaurant.  The suffering saint would walk up to the manager to lodge a complaint about the music.  The manager would turn the music off.  Evil has now been averted...
• On one occasion, one of my neighbors, a teenage girl who was lost, actually came with us.  Her skirt was a little to short {we all know how defrauding knees can be}.  You would have thought she carried a plague.  Everyone avoided her; no one spoke to her.  She was LOST!  But that was just too bad for her.  

Ministry in this church centered around providing a safe place for like minded families to fellowship.  They were more than happy for outsiders to come, so long as they would clean up enough first.  The preaching centered around 5 or so topics {KJV only, No TV, Music, Modesty, Faith from Heb 11}.  These were on a continual loop with only a rare deviation to discuss discipline or divorce or creation or something like that.  All of these sermons were topical in nature, and, if you haven't guessed, proof-texted with scripture taken grossly out of context   Needless to say, whenever we went to evangelize those poor sinners out there, we were viewed with much suspicion and the Kingdom was rarely served. 

These two examples are very obvious.  No one reading this is thinking "yes, that is the way it ought to be!"  But in the next post, I will bring this closer to home and try to add some definition to extraction.

In the mean time, koolaid anyone?

like a sore thumb: a personal journey of feeling out of place...

Ever felt out of place in church?  I feel that way every Sunday these days.  I tell people who are unfamiliar with this feeling to go and visit a mosque or synagogue.  They speak a different language, know when to stand and sit, etc; and you are left there playing catch up.  I remember one visit to a synagogue distinctly.  I was taking a world religions class which was the pretext for the visit.  It turned out that there was a bar-mitzvah that night.  I was unaware what the proper protocol was concerning invitations and such.  It appeared to be an open event.  So, we went on in and sat in the back.  I had taken a few semesters of Hebrew and was trying to follow along as best I could.  In spite of my efforts, I was a line or two behind everything that was happening.  All of a sudden everyone stood up and turned and faced me and my wife.  I just knew that we were moments away from making the evening news.  I felt the heat rising to my head as I frantically read to see if I could make sense of what would certainly be a stoning.  For those who are not familiar, Jews move their body in various ways to illustrate what they are reading and saying.  Words that speak of contrition merit a forward bow of the audience.  My pulse slowed back down as I finally caught up to what everyone was doing.  They were singing something about turning to face the new morning light.  Their bodies followed their words.  We now see the humor in this event.

I have pondered, by the hour, why I feel out of place in church.  There are two churches that I felt at home in.  Both were churches I attended from childhood through college.  But even when I went back to these after having left them, I still felt oddly out of place.  The reasons I feel out of place have absolutely nothing to do with a language barrier or not knowing what is going on in the meeting.  I grew up in a Christian family and have been in church as long as I can remember.  I know that a small part of my feelings are due to the fact that I am headed overseas.  But this doesn't explain why from when I left for college till now I have felt foreign to church. That is to say, my feelings predate my involvement in overseas affairs.  I felt this way even when I served on staff with three different churches.  The feeling was even greater when I moved back to my home town and started looking for a "home" church again. 

I think I am beginning to figure it out.  The basic idea is this: the modern church is not situated in such a way that it is in the natural daily context of its constituents.  That is to say, the church, as we know it, geographically, socially, and even culturally exists in an artificial relationship both with the people who attend and the watching world.  Don't misunderstand me.  I am not equivocating artificial and fake, rather, I am juxtaposing artificial verses natural. 

If the church is truly artificial to its ethno-politico-religio-socio context, this explains why so much energy is spent trying to convince and attract the surrounding community to come and see and why so few people are in fact coming and seeing.  So if this fact is true, then why did I feel at home at those two childhood churches?  Also, why did I later feel out of place at the same churches I once considered home?  The truth is, those churches were always artificial.  They only felt like home initially because that was the only world I knew.  My whole context of growing up revolved around my parents.  When I left home, that changed.  Home itself-the house I grew up in-never felt like home again.  When I came back to those churches as an adult, and now an outsider, I experienced just how out of context these churches actually were.  They were like any other church I had visited in those years away.

I am using this post to start a short series on extraction methodology.  I will explain this more in those posts, but it should suffice to say that extraction methodology is doing church, ministry, evangelism, or missions in such a way that it is not in the context of the target people.  This is having devastating effects on the younger generations.  Ed Stetzer says:

70 percent of young adults (who attended regularly for at least one year in high school) ages 23-30 stopped attending church regularly for at least a year between ages 18-22.

It is not just me.  The question to all of this is, "why?"  What are the causes?  I am sure that part of the reason many kids never come back to church is because many of them are not in fact believers.  They grew up as cultural Christians and no one ever noticed till they never showed up again or until they did show up in some poll demonstrating how heretical the younger generation is.  I think the issue of conversion plays a larger part than anyone realizes, or, perhaps, is willing to admit.  But rather than asking the "why not?" question, "why don't kids come back to church?" or "why aren't the unchurched coming to our hip and trendy services?" it is better to ask "why would they think about coming in the first place?"  

That last question is one that hit me the other day as I was visiting a church.  I thought "why would I ever go here?"  Don't get me wrong, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the church.  They didn't teach heresy.  There was an acceptable amount of love and fellowship.  I realized however, that it was completely outside any natural element of my daily life.  This was a piece of ground in my city where I never travel at any other point in my week.  It is a group of people I have no other interaction with at any other point in my week.  The teaching, while sound, was geared to a new believer audience, even though everyone in the audience has been believers longer than I have been living.  There is no natural context for this church whatsoever.  Granted, I could go there and make friends and take part in the fellowship.  But these relationships would be artificial in the sense that they were made purely on the basis that I was now making myself artificially part of some group.  Remember, artificial does not mean superficial or phony, rather, it is juxtaposed to natural. 

This series is not another "down with traditional church" rant.  Repairing the problem is not just a matter of getting rid of church buildings but goes much deeper into our understanding-or lack thereof-of culture and context.  

Some things to look forward to:

• How ministry to Muslims and Independent Baptist types are the same
• Evangelism comes across as mugging because we have left the world and now must invade it.  God doesn't invade the world; He is already at work.  He made it; it is already his.
• The only reason we are having to find were God is working and get involved is because we have moved out to our safe enclaves.
• Natural groupings and meetings-lessons we can learn from work overseas.
• Jesus is Lord; Context is King: not just a hermeneutical quip. 
• When the father revealed his Logos to us, he put a face on it so we could understand it.  God's strategy hasn't changed.
• What contemporary church and traditional church have in common and why they their struggle to be relevant is useless.
  

Christian Mugging

I have some forthcomming thoughts on "Christian mugging." Here are two skits to get you thinking.