The Archie Bunker Effect; or, The Main Mistake Christians Make when Engaging with the World

I grew up watching All in the Family. (Yes, I'm that old.)

All in the Family was an American sitcom that aired in the 1970s. It revolved around the Bunker family: Archie, the loudmouthed, bigoted father; Edith, his dimwitted but goodhearted wife; Gloria, his married daughter; and Michael, Gloria's opinionated, liberal husband. Michael and Gloria lived with Archie and Edith because Michael was in college and unemployed. In the close quarters, Archie and Michael frequently squared off regarding controversial political and social topics.

That was the point of the show. All in the Family was the liberal Norman Lear's vehicle for propagating his views. While Michael was mocked as "Meathead" by Archie, he was actually the mouthpiece for Lear's progressive social and political views. The staging and the dialogue were brilliant. Archie would usually "win" his arguments, but only because he was so stubborn that he would come up with ridiculous rationalizations that no one but he could possibly find convincing. Michael would give up in frustration over Archie's obtuseness, only to fight again another day.

Feed My Sheep

There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

--CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

Jesus' charge to Peter, recalling him to ministry when Peter seems to have been bent on returning to his life of fishing, was to feed his sheep. It was a crucial moment - Peter seems to have been on the verge of throwing in the towel on the idea of ministry, having failed so badly in denying Jesus. Jesus repeatedly asks Peter if he loves him; Peter keeps insisting that he does. And Jesus' response to him is "Feed my lambs," "Tend my sheep," "Feed my sheep."

It's not enough to say that you love me, Peter. I'm not finished with you. I have a job for you to do. I need you to take care of my sheep.

Jesus' words hearken back to John 10, where he proclaims that he is the good shepherd. He talks about his sheep knowing his voice, and about laying down his life for his sheep. What he doesn't talk about in either John 10 or John 21 is breeding sheep. He doesn't talk about using sheep to get more sheep. He doesn't talk about expanding the flock. He does talk about bringing in the "other sheep that are not of this fold" - presumably, in historical context, those Gentiles who would trust in him. But his focus, especially when talking to Peter, is on care for the sheep.

There was nothing romantic, in Jesus' day, about caring for sheep. Nothing glamorous. It was a dirty, unskilled job that left one ceremonially unclean all the time. It was a humble occupation.

Caring for God's people - which is what Jesus was charging Peter with doing - is still a humble occupation. It's messy and difficult and frustrating, and it's unsurprising that so many pastors strain against it. We're told that the most effective form of church leadership is not to be a shepherd, but rather a rancher. This accords well with the American idea that bigger is always better, that the only alternative to growth is stagnation, and with the romantic idea of the cowboy on the lone prairie. It just doesn't accord all that well with Scripture, especially with Jesus' charge to Peter.

What I most object to about the rancher model is not that things like hospital ministry and counseling can be done by people other than the pastor, or that people's gifts should be encouraged so that the body ministers to the body. These things I strongly agree with. What I object to is the focus of ministry leadership being continually outward. 

If you want to get needs met by the church world today, the best place you can possibly be is outside it. Be a prospect, not one of the faithful. The faithful are there to bring more people in, not to have their own needs met. That's the way it is, out on the ranch.

Somehow, that doesn't match what Jesus said about the world recognizing us as being his disciples because we love one another. Or what Acts says about the early believers providing for one another's needs, not as an outreach effort to those on the outside, but out of mutual love. And it doesn't match Jesus' simple command to Peter:

Feed my sheep.



If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Relational Ministry is Not a Strategy

Scot McKnight writes a good summary/review of Andrew Root's book The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves.

I think that to the extent that emerging and missional models of ministry failed and are failing, it is due precisely to leaders wanting a relational strategy rather than relationships with others for their own sake. It comes down to the same personal kingdom building (not Jesus' Kingdom building) that they think they're rejecting from the old Evangelical models.

Jamal Jivanjee on Missional Confusion

Jamal Jivanjee has a great post on the Illuminate blog--not new, but I just stumbled onto it--called Missional Confusion & the Amway Gospel.  Really great stuff.  Here's a sample:

The evangelical system has become a glorified ‘pyramid’ scheme. Like the soap, we are taught to tell people about this amazing man named Jesus Christ who loves us and died for us. We tell the world that He is the living bread. We tell people that the water He gives will satisfy. We tell people that he comes to give us abundant life, etc… then, shortly after a person is interested in this Christ and says yes, the focus changes. Instead of discovering and experiencing the depths and beauty of this glorious man, we are quickly taught that there are things we must ‘do’ to get more and train more Christ ‘distributors’.

Jivanjee also discusses the different parts of the body and how that factors in to going about the real mission of Christ in this world--very much like what I share in What's Wrong with Outreach. 

Excellent stuff. Check it out.

If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

David Fitch and Confessions of a Missional Pastor

David Fitch writes an interesting piece called Confessions of a Missional Pastor. I appreciate his honesty in describing how difficult it is to attain a missional ideal. My own observation is that it is much more difficult to attain a missional ideal than it is to rail against "the institutional church." (This is no swipe against David; it's just an observation borne of seeing that sort of thing in many circumstances.) To generalize, it's much harder to attain any sort of ideal than it is to rail against the perceived reason for falling short.

Let's be blunt. The failures of the church are not the Pope's fault.
They are not Luther's fault.
They are not Calvin's fault.
They are not Wesley's fault.
They are not Edwards's fault.
They are not Finney's fault.
They are not liberalism's fault.
They are not Evangelicalism's fault.
They are not Modernism's fault.
They are not Postmodernism's fault.
They are not megachurches's fault.
They are not the United States's fault.
They are not those-other-kinds-of-Christians's fault.

They are the fault of human nature. Fallen nature. Sin nature. What we say we believe in, what most of us acknowledge that we have not fully overcome, but then think we can overcome by breaking away from some organization and "starting fresh."

The failure is not in the organization. The failure is in the fact that all organizations are populated by people. The small organization that one forms when "starting fresh" is still populated by people, and sooner or later, it will be beset by the same problems that beset larger organizations.

I think the goals that David sets out are noble. I think I agree with just about all of them. I hope he understands that these struggles are simply the result of working with, and being, people. Because the alternative is to get disenchanted, leave, go somewhere else with another smaller group, and "start fresh." And perhaps, never accomplish anything at all.

The Death of Worship as Evangelism?

Just read a killer article: Sally Morgenthaler's "Worship as Evangelism," in the Next-Wave e-zine. Not all I agree with: the extended quote of an unchurched journalist lampooning a contemporary worship service, and the all-too-familiar accusation that we're all just looking for "an excuse not to do the hard work of real outreach" (evidently only extroverts are real Christians). But there is compelling stuff there:

• a survey of what has been going on in the last 20 years with the seeker-sensitive/worship-driven model of church growth;
• the irrefutable stats that show us that "For all the money, time, and effort we've spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers";
• the fact that churches that think they're reaching the unchurched are finding that only a tiny percentage of their congregations are actually from an unchurched background.

The seeker-sensitive movement had it right that if someone is going to visit your church, it will likely be on a Sunday morning (although that isn't really all that exclusively true, it seems to me). But that has very little to do with reaching people who never visit a church at all, who don't think that church is relevant to their lives. Frankly, there is nothing in Scripture that remotely suggests that the gatherings of believers is a primary evangelism opportunity, or that we should structure our services in order to be evangelistic. The closest you can get is Paul using the synagogue service to introduce Jewish worshipers to Jesus the Messiah. But he was bringing that in from the outside, and the inevitable result was getting expelled from the synagogue, and worse. So that's not really a model for churches to follow. The gathering of believers together was for an entirely different purpose: to strengthen, unify, build up, teach, and equip believers to live out their faith in the larger world when they were not gathered together.

I'm the last person to pretend to have the answers regarding evangelism and church growth. But it seems to me that real evangelism happens almost exclusively outside the church walls, by people who are especially gifted for that type of ministry, and also by people who are really excited about their own Christian lives, about what God is doing in them. People will naturally share what they're genuinely excited about. It can't be hyped into people, and it can't be guilted into them either. It has to be a God-thing, and we need to be seeking God to restore and rejuvenate that excitement. Because if it's not working for us, why would we invite anyone else to try it?

If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Earl Creps on Missional Fatigue

There's an interesting post from Earl Creps regarding people who once attended missional congregations and then left for more traditional church environments. Since Creps has identified largely with the emergent and missional foci, and is about to plant a church on the UC Berkeley campus, it would have been easy for him to dismiss these people as simply unwilling to pursue the real mission of the church. But he doesn't do that. Both the post and the ensuing discussion are worthy of a serious read.

Also, Creps writes about some positive experiences he had in doing some workshops for the Southern Baptist Convention. Since I've got some SBC friends out there through this blog, I thought my AG and SBC friends might enjoy reading this. One good quote here:

Southern Baptists are as confused as we are: comparing notes on our annual meetings, districts, and autonomous churches, I discovered that the AoG and the SBC have some things in common. We are both trying to sort out how to amplify the efforts of thousands of independent churches through concerted action. It's a jungle out there.

I'm writing this blog because those of us within denominations easily fall prey to the idea that our organization is just the worst thing out there. We have so many problems and so many critics that some days negative thinking can become almost an obsession. Talking honestly with anyone from another group is a wonderful antidote to organizational anxiety. We really do share the same challenges.

Good stuff.

 

If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

 

The Ghettoization of American Evangelicalism

Just adding collapsible post functionality and a pull quote. No new content. First line is a pull quote.
We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. Scot McKnight passes on a letter he's received in his most recent Letters to Emerging Christians segment. The complaint of the letter-writer essentially involves the fact that being an "evangelical" has become too identified with a particular brand of conservative American politics. A few quotes:

• Conservative Christians [frequently] conflate Christianity with American patriotism and/or the Republican party. One commentator says Jim Wallis can’t call himself an Evangelical because he’s a “left- leaning socialist” who made a speech on the Democrats’ weekly radio address!
• Dobson & company, attacking a member of the NAE for daring to suggest that global warming might actually be a problem.
• I read the quote from D. James Kennedy, a pastor and seminary leader in Florida: “The publication and promulgation of the 1599 Geneva Bible will help restore America’s rich Christian heritage and reclaim the culture for Christ.” What!? A 1599 Bible which, incidentally, comes with a middle-English glossary to help you understand what the heck they were saying, is the answer that will reclaim the culture for Christ???

Now, I've long been conservative in terms of my politics, although I am beginning to wonder... But regardless of one's political stripe, it should be deeply troubling that the Christian faith is so identified with a particular political position, especially on issues regarding which the Bible either doesn't speak or quite arguably speaks in the opposite direction. It should be disturbing that the mandate of the Church seems not to be to make disciples of all nations, but rather to "restore America’s rich Christian heritage."

And then I read Dan Kimball's excellent post, "Hope, depression, hope." He cites a sociologist and student of church growth and leadership:

He shared that the reason church statistics regarding attendance may be staying around the same level is because those in the churches are living longer. There are now a ton of old churches with elderly folks living longer which keeps that statistic up. He also shared how the already Christians in churches who have babies also keeps the percentage leveled out.

What isn't happening however, is the growth of the church from people outside the church coming in. We aren't keeping up on the population growth at large. I was reading that the church has leveled out in attendance over the past 15 years but at the same time our national population has grown by around 50 million people. So we can celebrate that churches are remaining relatively the same attendance-wise, but now there are more than 50 million people who aren't part of the church.

I don't think it's a great leap of logic to see these two issues as being related. We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. We've essentially said, "You can't join our club unless you're willing to subscribe to all twenty-six points of our worldview." And then we wonder why our churches stagnate, growing, if at all, through transfers from other churches. We are relevant only to one another. Welcome to the Christian ghetto.

Can't we see the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, who "resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2)? Paul wasn't a "culture warrior" in the modern sense. His aim was not to "take a stand" and then have his already-convinced buddies pat him on the back for not backing down. His aim was to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Period.

The tension between the standards of the already-converted and the imperative of reaching the larger culture is nothing new. Jesus was accused of being "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners'" (Luke 7:34; cf. Matt. 11:19). Peter became the first to take the gospel to a Gentile audience. What was the response from the Christian community? "So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, 'You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them'" (Acts 11:2-3). Peter himself compromised his own principles and broke off fellowship with Gentile believers in order to satisfy "the circumcision group"; he had to be publicly rebuked by Paul because his "hypocrisy" had infected even Barnabas (Gal. 2:12-13). The pressure to conform to so-called "higher standards"--even at the cost of ostracizing some for whom Christ died--is intense.

Kimball continues with words that should be of particular interest to some who regularly read this blog, "It will be horribly sad if in 30 years or 40 years the church of America is a tiny thing, and we are still fighting each other about whether one is a Calvinist or Arminian or whether you preach verse by verse or preach topically etc." Obviously, I think divine election is a worthwhile thing to discuss, but it must be kept in its proper place. There's a lost and dying world out there. We have answers, but we're fading into irrelevance. We're squabbling with one another instead of trying to reach that world. We're telling people that they must oppose abortion and homosexuality, that they must support Israel and capitalism and lower taxes, that we must win the War on Terror and support our president, oppose the environmentalist wackos, and stand up for God and Country. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that these are all noble and worthy goals. I just have one question.

Where did the gospel go?



If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

All You Need Is Love

The Beatles said "All you need is love," and then they broke up.
--Larry Norman

There is a very interesting paradox in the New Testament. One one hand, you see rapid growth of the church and the dogged evangelistic determination of the Apostle Paul. On the other, there is virtually no practical instruction on how to do evangelism. What are we to make of the clear imperative, articulated in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), to win the lost, combined with the lack of direction within the Epistles on ways in which to accomplish this?

It is sometimes suggested that in the early church, this wasn't a problem--that the early Christian believers were filled with a fervor that most of us no longer have, that if we could just regain this excitement and enthusiasm, we would spontaneously share our faith with others as well. There was no instruction because no instruction was needed. It seems incomprehensible to me, however, that out of all the problems and heresies that the New Testament epistles were written to combat, nobody seems to have had a problem with a failure to share their faith. Whatever the reason is that the New Testament doesn't really address how to evangelize in a practical way, it isn't that all the New Testament believers were already doing it too well to need any assistance.

What the epistles do give us is clear instruction on how to live and how to relate to one another. The Apostle Paul discusses his own missionary endeavors quite freely, but what he encourages his readers in is the living of life in a godly manner. He deals with various churches on social and economic divisions, as well as those based on competing claims to follow different teachers, marriage and family relationships, slavery, differing convictions regarding disputable matters, lawsuits, sexual immorality, deceit, and many other practical matters. Paul's primary concern for the believers in the churches he writes to is that they live godly lives that reflect Jesus' command to love God and to love others--that their lives will bring glory, and not shame, to God. When he writes, "Do the work of an evangelist" (2 Tim. 4:5) he is writing specifically to Timothy, not to believers in general.

What I am suggesting here is a difference between evangelism and being a witness. "Being a witness" is much larger and much more life-encompassing than what we generally term "witnessing."The command to "go and make disciples" was given not generally, but to the eleven disciples remaining after Jesus' resurrection (Matt. 28:16-20). Interestingly, even the Apostle Paul stated that he was called to "preach the gospel" (εὐαγγελίζεσθαι, related to the English "evangelize," 1 Cor 1:14-17) rather than to baptize, even though baptism had been part of the Great Commission. But Paul's primary concern for the people of God was that they would show the love of God to one another and to outsiders (e.g. Rom 13:10), and that they would conduct themselves in a manner that would bring credit and not shame to the name of Christ (e.g., 1 Cor 6:5-6). In this, he is giving practical content to Jesus' command to "be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). "Being a witness" is much larger and much more life-encompassing than what we generally term "witnessing." It is living a life that itself witnesses to the reality of God's presence within us. It is only by doing so that we gain a hearing for the gospel among those who haven't followed Jesus yet.

I think that is what our brothers who advocate "missional living" are trying to tell us. Rather than alienating people with a premature imperative to "turn or burn," we need to live out God's love for us in practical ways, both toward one another and toward the world at large. Certain people have a specific gift of evangelism--the ability to reach people, often people they don't know, with the Gospel. The rest of us have often been made to feel guilty because we're not that type of person. "If I can do it, anyone can do it," the extrovert on the platform tells us. But what God tells us is to be a witness for Him.

We are all called to live lives of love and godliness; that in itself should provoke curiosity about the difference in our lives. The world likes to talk and sing about love; but it rings hollow--it's an emotion with little commitment. A real expression of love will be a real difference, and we all need to "always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (1 Peter 3:15). So we all need to be ready to speak when called upon. But it begins with living lives of love, because Love Himself has given us life.

If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Scot McKnight's "What Is the Emerging Church?" 2

This is the second part of a series summarizing and reflecting on Scot McKnight's "What is the Emerging Church?", a talk given at Westminster Theological Seminary on October 26, 2006. The first part is available here.

At this point of the talk, Dr. McKnight is using Lake Emerging as a metaphor for discussing the emerging movement, with four rivers flowing into it: Postmodernism, Praxis, Postevangelicalism, and Politics.

The second river Dr. McKnight discusses as flowing into Lake Emerging is that of praxis. Emerging types are more interested in what believers do than the minutia of what they believe. Orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy (living right as opposed to believing right) is what is focused on, largely because no two theologians have perfectly agreed on every point of doctrine, and Jesus didn't call us to a doctrinal position but to a way of life. The emerging movement is focused on "living the way of Jesus." Scot makes clear at this point that emerging leaders don't think that our relationship to God is established by what we do, or that it doesn't matter what we believe; they simply see how we live as being more important, on balance, than has been regarded previously.

Another current in the praxis river involves worship. Those in the emerging movement are interested in exploring different ways of worship, and recognizing that aesthetics matters in how one experiences God. They regard praxis as influencing theology, as well as the reverse, and wonder if the very layout of the places in which we worship influences the content of that worship and what we believe about God and His people. A third current is that of social justice. The emerging movement places great emphasis on justice, defined largely as eradication (or at least ameleoration) of poverty, racism, and social inequality. The main issue is engagement and involvement with the world: Christians are not to remove themselves from the world and hope for the return of Christ, but rather work for justice in the here and now.

What Scot regards as the heart of the praxis river is the missional element. This might best be described as being involved in God's redemptive work in the world. Whereas Evangelicalism was concerned with reaching people in the world and drawing them out of it and into the church, the emerging movement is concerned with the church itself moving into the world and participating in God's redemption of it. This involves more than just the spiritual aspect of people getting saved; it involves the whole person--physical, emotional, social, as well as spiritual.

The Post-evangelical River

The emerging conversation is also something of a protest movemet against evangelicalism--not to say that it rejects evangelicalism in toto, but that it views itself as rejecting what it sees as some of evangelicalism's flaws and limitations and going beyond evangelicalism. The emerging movement regards evangelicalism as reflecting a "Bible study piety," concerned more with doctrinal precision and condemning those who disagree than it is with living out the command to love. The goal of the Christian life is not to master the Gospel, but to be mastered by it and to exhibit it by living it out.

For something of the same reason, the emerging movement is rather suspicious of systematic theology, at least in terms of trying to formulate a definitive statement of the Gospel. The definitive statement of the gospel should be the lives of its adherents, not a linguistic formulation. The emerging movement is also suspicious of the "in vs. out" mentality of Evangelicalism--they're less sure that we can know with any confidence who is truly in the family of God and who isn't. For this reason, they prefer to view everyone as in or moving into the family of God, and trust that showing God's love to them will continue to draw them in. Scot offers a warning at this point: the good news is not just to be lived out, but also to be proclaimed, and our efforts at "living missionally" still need to have as their goal the redemption of everyone possible through Christ.

The Political River

The final river flowing into Lake Emerging is political (this aspect is largely on the American scene). Although emerging leaders sometimes talk about a bipartisan or non-partisan political involvement, they are largely on the political left. This comes from the social justice element of the praxis river: emerging believers tend to believe that part of working toward social justice in the world is prodding the government to do the same. Essentially, the emerging movement rejects the dichotomy between evangelism (how conservative Evangelicals relate to the world) and the social gospel (how the mainline churches relate to the world), drawing both together in its missional emphasis.

It appears to me that this "political river" is really little more than an outgrowth of the social justice aspect of the praxis river; perhaps not best described as a "river" in its own right at all. Scot's division may be valuable, however, because I think a number of people who consider themselves emerging in the US are basically Evangelicals with liberal political sympathies.

This short blog series has been less concise than I would have hoped (it was intended as one post) , and also more of a simple synopsis as opposed to a synopsis and reflection. I would welcome two things: if any of my readers haven't read Scot's paper for themselves by this time, please do download and read it. And I would appreciate any responses you might have to these ideas--either corrections to my understanding of what Scot has presented, or your impressions on any aspect of the subject matter itself.

Maintenance or Mission?

The following excerpt from the article, "Good News People," by Harold Percy, allegedly appeared on the Crossmarks website, although I couldn't find it there, and has been republished on A Peculiar Prophet and Danno's Dangerous Mind. I think it has a lot of very, very good stuff on how churches need to look at reaching the world.

MAINTENANCE OR MISSION?

1. In measuring their effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, "How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, "How many disciples are being made?"
   
   
2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, "If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won't do it." The mission congregation says, "If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it."
   
   
3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, "How will this affect me?" The majority of members in the mission congregation ask, "Will this increase our ability to reach those outside?"
   
   
4. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, "We have to be faithful to our past." The mission congregation says, "We have to be faithful to our future."
   
   
5. The pastor in the maintenance congregation says to the newcomer, "I'd like to introduce you to some of our members." In the mission congregation the members say, "We'd like to introduce you to our pastor."
   
   
6. When confronted with a legitimate pastoral concern, the pastor in the maintenance congregation asks, "How can I meet this need?" The pastor in the mission congregation asks, "How can this need be met?"
   
   
7. The maintenance congregation seeks to avoid conflict at any cost (but rarely succeeds). The mission congregation understands that conflict is the price of progress, and is willing to pay the price. It understands that it cannot take everyone with it. This causes some grief, but it does not keep it from doing what needs to be done.
   
   
8. The leadership style in the maintenance congregation is primarily managerial, where leaders try to keep everything in order and running smoothly. The leadership style in a mission congregation is primarily transformational, casting a vision of what can be, and marching off the map in order to bring the vision into reality.
   
   
9. The maintenance congregation is concerned with their congregation, its organizations and structure, its constitutions and committees. The mission congregation is concerned with the culture, with understanding how secular people think and what makes them tick. It tries to determine their needs and their points of accessibility to the Gospel.
   
   
10. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregations asks, "How many Lutherans live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?" The mission congregation asks, "How many unchurched people live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?"
    
    
11. The maintenance congregation looks at the community and asks, "How can we get these people to support our congregation?" The mission congregation asks, "How can the Church support these people?"
    
    
12. The maintenance congregation thinks about how to save their congregation. The mission congregation thinks about how to reach the world.

Becoming Missional

I'd like to welcome Becoming Missional to the blogroll. Jerry's most recent post has a fascinating YouTube link showing Bono at a Washington prayer breakfast. Bono's remarks are extremely challenging, and much more overtly Christian than anything else I've heard (or read) of him.

Jerry also has some interesting stuff on a church transitioning from traditional to missional. I don't yet know if I'm a "friend of missional." I'm probably an acquaintance. I'm really not sure if there's something genuinely new here, or if there is largely idealism here that hasn't yet hit the wall of the sometimes painful realities of life in the church world. Even if it's the latter, there's something to be said for renewing idealism periodically.

The Problem of Subculture and Missional Living

Rich Tatum wrote, as a comment to his own piece on the Robert Duvall movie, The Apostle,

After watching The Apostle I walked out of the theater amazed that Duvall, an admitted outsider, had worked so hard to get our culture right–and he very nearly succeeded.

This comment made me begin thinking about the problem of subculture. Like it or not, American Christians live in a subculture that is getting increasingly marginalized. (I can't speak for believers elsewhere in the world. Sorry, this post is going to be rather USA-centric.) When we address this topic at all, it is either with dismissive contempt--the speaker imagines that he is not a part of this subculture, and is usually referring to a branch of the church that appears to him to be exasperatingly "out of touch" with the surrounding culture--or with a sort of righteous indignation--the speaker views the surrounding culture as increasingly hostile, and retreat into one's own cultural norms is defended as "taking a stand" for moral uprightness. Both views are oversimplifications of a problematic issue.

Subcultures are merely homogeneous groups that exist within a larger culture and share various cultural norms that can include specialized knowledge, terminology, dress, rituals, customs, and expectations. They exist throughout society, among ethnic groups, professional vocations, aficionados of various sports or types of entertainment, as well as other groupings. Get a group of engineers or doctors or political junkies or comic book fans or football fans together, and the commonalities will come out pretty quickly. Someone may think it ridiculous to go to a convention wearing fake pointy ears, but perfectly normal to go shirtless with a painted chest to a football game. Subcultures are a necessary component of any larger culture that isn't monolithic. It's rather pointless to argue that a Christian subculture shouldn't exist; that would be equivalent to arguing that people with common experiences and interests should pretend as though they didn't have anything in common. It defies human nature.

In some ways, the Christian subculture is a remnant of what the larger American culture used to be. I once read a comparison of Franklin Roosevelt's and Ronald Reagan's first inaugural addresses; it's astonishing how much more biblical quotations and allusions were in the "liberal" Roosevelt's address as compared with Reagan's. Despite the fact that Reagan was the darling of the religious right, American culture had shifted dramatically in forty-eight years, and the shared biblical frame of reference that had existed in the larger culture was virtually gone. I am not here subscribing to the notion of a golden age of "Christian America." When would that have existed--during the days of slavery? I am simply acknowledging that there was once a shared cultural heritage that included a great deal more biblical knowledge than is common today. Whether people believed in them or not, or lived according to biblical tenets or not, Bible stories provided much of the content for an American shared cultural heritage. In large measure, the modern Christian subculture is merely a holdover of that earlier heritage; and so there is truth in the charge that the Christian subculture is merely a response to a larger culture that is by turns indifferent and hostile.

Nonetheless, it's hardly a positive response to huddle together in defensive fashion. Scripture calls us to remain in the world, even as we resist the temptation to become a part of it. Light in the darkness; salt on a tasteless meal: Jesus' metaphors for who we are imply that we are supposed to make a difference in the world around us, which implies both that we are engaged in that world and yet form a perceptible contrast to it. Be involved, but be different. That's our mandate.

Unfortunately, this is part of the problem: even if we have a shared vocabulary, social expectations, and rituals, we are tending not to be very different from the surrounding culture in ways that really matter--the behaviors that are supposed to mark Christian faith. We get divorced at about the same rate as non-Christians; we are influenced to almost the same degree by mass media; and practice of such spiritual disciplines as prayer and Bible study are embarrassingly modest. Often, we've got it exactly backwards. We know how to dress, talk, and behave when we gather together as Christians or happen to meet one another, but our lives too often don't witness to the power of a transforming relationship with the infinite and holy creator of the universe. We're the same as everybody else, except for the secret handshake. That's an overstatement--but by how much?

One of the emphases of the emerging church movement is something called "missional living." I'll be honest: I know about this much more from reading about it than from experiencing it firsthand. But the concept is based on what missionaries have long understood: that to reach a people group different from yourself, you have to adopt as much as possible the customs and behavior of the group you're trying to reach, for the purpose of securing a hearing for the gospel. People who attempt to live missionally specifically try to avoid the look and manner of "church people"--the things that tend to separate us from the world at large--while actively engaging unbelievers and offering a genuine difference.

I don't know how much of this is real, how much is wishful thinking, and how much is simply motivated by a desire to get out from under traditional taboos within evangelicalism. I've known too many people spouting anti-legalistic jargon who, at bottom, simply wanted to live more worldly. And yet something in my soul longs for this. The prophetic voice of the Church has collapsed into the "culture wars," which themselves have largely become little more than a mandate to vote Republican. I can't help but feel that we were supposed to be... something else.

What do you think about missional living? Anyone have personal experience in this area? Is it something only single twentysomethings can glom onto, or can we middle-aged people also do it (in a way that wouldn't be ridiculous)? Any thoughts?


If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?