Friday, December 01, 2006
Faith For Grown-Ups
Jollyblogger starts with the well worn statistic that most Christian conversions happen to those in their teens and goes some wonderful places in a couple of posts he did a while back. In the first post he looks at how the conversion we most frequently offer is "otherworldy" and therefore of little interest to adults as they are so thoroughly entrenched in this world. He also presses this point to look at the affect of the gospel on socieites, and he expands on that point in the second post.
Which brings me to my second point. Why do we sell this less than total gospel? Why is our message so incomplete? There are probably as many answers to that query as there are people enagaged in spreading the gospel. That said, I think we need to adjust our vocabulary a bit and things will begin to fall in line. We are not here to "build up the church" for that may be part of the problem, we are here to spread the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are not here to "bring salvation to every man, woman and child" for that may be part of the problem. We are here "to make disciples of all..."
We need to stop asking people to come in the front door and stand in the entry hall, we need to ask them to jump in with both feet. The water's warm, the fellowship lively, the mission wonderful.
Related Tags: transformation, totality, gospel, adult, youth, conversion, salvation
When Jesus spoke of heaven, His main concern was not in telling His people how they could leave this earth for heaven. Rather His main concern was in bringing heaven down to earth for the sake of His people and showing His people how to take the kingdom of heaven throughout the whole earth.Somehow in these posts, I think David has managed to encapsulate most of the problems with the church today and state the entirety of the gospel message, a message we so often only hear part of. I also think he has shown real wisdom in the realization that the teen statistic reveals that we do not evangelize based on the whole of the gospel.
I want to try and summarize David's points in a few bullets
- The gospel as currently presented deals mostly with the inner life and the after-life and is therefore unattractive to adults who are mostly consumed with this life.
- The gospel is; however, very concerned with this immediate outer life and the failure of adults to respond to it is because we fail present that immediate outer concern.
- This means the gospel is not just a gospel of salvation, but a gospel of transformation.
- That transformation is current, immediate
- That transformation is to the individual, the family, the church, and society in general
In the second post David explores the idea that the gospel is transformative of society and defends it in the face of anticipated charges that that is taking things too far. There is so much here that is is difficult to know where to begin, but I want to limit myself to two comments.
First, to argue that the gospel extends only to individuals is a stance I am not sure many take. The question, at least to my mind is not "Is the gospel tranformative to society?", but "HOW is the gospel transformative to society?" David, I think, points this out when he says:
With this I am not advocating any of the common versions of Christian triumphalism which seek to bring the kingdom in through social and political means. The kingdom comes as the gospel spreads. It's just that I think that as the gospel spreads, this gospel of the kingdom will inevitably have many salutary effects in the here and now.I'd state it this way, the gospel must be tranformative of societies as it is tranformative of individuals, or the individuals are not truly transformed. This means our focus is still on the individual, but our vision for them extends beyond mere salvation to genuine transformation, through which society will be itself transformed.
Which brings me to my second point. Why do we sell this less than total gospel? Why is our message so incomplete? There are probably as many answers to that query as there are people enagaged in spreading the gospel. That said, I think we need to adjust our vocabulary a bit and things will begin to fall in line. We are not here to "build up the church" for that may be part of the problem, we are here to spread the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are not here to "bring salvation to every man, woman and child" for that may be part of the problem. We are here "to make disciples of all..."
We need to stop asking people to come in the front door and stand in the entry hall, we need to ask them to jump in with both feet. The water's warm, the fellowship lively, the mission wonderful.
Related Tags: transformation, totality, gospel, adult, youth, conversion, salvation
