5 Decades Apart: The Jesus Revolution and the Asbury Revival

I’m not a conspiracy kinda guy, so I don’t for a minute believe that the producers of The Jesus Revolution, releasing this weekend in theatres, were in any way involved in the revival which broke out on February 8th in Wilmore, Kentucky at Asbury University.

But it’s an interesting convergence; it’s excellent timing

The Jesus Revolution was the cover story in TIME Magazine in June, 1971. Explo ’72, the first major Christian festival, happened in the year it’s named after. But if we stretch a bit, we could say that by 1973, The Jesus People, Jesus Music and The Jesus Movement really started to intensify.

Which puts it 50 years prior to the events of this month.

Back to the present: On February 8th, a chapel service started at Asbury which didn’t end until it was suspended for 11 hours on February 16th in order to work out “sustainability” details. Those overnight breaks have continued. Wilmore, Kentucky has a population of only 6,000, and well over 20,000 people have been drawn to the campus to experience the event at its ground zero, with lines to get in the main building, or other facilities carrying the event on closed-circuit stretching half a mile. Town officials have had to close access to the town and post signs stating “Revival Over Capacity.”

Today it’s back on, and contrary to most of the early days of the event when they were trying to contain it somewhat, it is available to stream live.

The first two days — before the media heard about it — the chapel service was a mix of music and times of personal confession, prayer and testimony. The confession element is a recurring theme in recorded revivals throughout church history.

But much of the event since has been music-driven. Listening last night was basically hearing a worship music soundtrack of a generation. There have been no sermons. No special guests. No introductions. No extravagance. No unusual manifestations.

That last distinction is important. There has been nothing that would characterize this as a charismatic outpouring. Nothing of what John Wimber would have called “signs and wonders.”

Asbury is a non-denominational school, but identifies as part of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. By February 13th, the event had spread to other schools.

The Jesus Revolution of the 1970s was also largely music-driven, but Contemporary Christian Music (or simply CCM as it became known) wasn’t the industry it is today and didn’t have the same marketing machinery. Spinoff events — Jesus ’75, the Fishnet festivals, the Creation festivals, etc. — advertised guest speakers front and center. Today, you have to dig deep into the advertising to find the speakers or seminar-leaders list, the musicians totally dominate the event, and are the main attraction for attendees.

But the early days were very grassroots, homespun and organic; not dissimilar to what’s going on in Kentucky et al as I type this. I can tell you, with absolute assurance, that you would not be reading this article were it not for how the wake of the Jesus Movement impacted me and nurtured my growing (and sometimes shaky) faith.

In many ways, my own life has consisted entirely of wanting to share the water from the well I found, whether that be sharing the music as an itinerant youth minister with a traveling video show, a coffee-house performer wholly dependent on the condition of the pianos at the church or venue, a seller of Jesus Music record albums, and later, a champion of Christian books and authors through promoting sales and writing reviews for various publications.

“Part one of the gospel is ‘taste and see;'” I was taught, and “Part two of the gospel is go and tell.'” My sphere of influence never reached far beyond my small corner of the world, but occasionally, especially through my writing, and the early iterations of this blog and its two year spinoff with Christianity Today, I was able to tell the stories of Christian musicians making a difference and using their art to point people to Jesus.

Music is a powerful force. And Christianity is “a singing faith.” The two verses of scripture that speak of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” cause those to arise in one case out of the overflow of God’s word “dwelling in you richly” as the King James puts it, and in the other case out of being “filled with the Spirit.” Either way, it produces a song.

Of course, The Jesus Revolution is more than just a story of music. I haven’t seen the film as I write this, but it’s partly about a pastor who was willing to risk all to bring the love of Jesus to a new generation. It was in many ways radical for its time, until you think of all the social change that was taking place 1966-1969 in the wider world. The changes in fashion and hairstyles, the introduction of hallucinogenic drugs, the Vietnam war protests, the ‘Summer of love.’

All those things teed-up the conditions for Christian youth to find a voice; to find a response.

Asbury University is very different. Although the event is far from organized the college is going to great lengths not to associate it in any way with anything business or politically oriented. Some people arrived with shofars (the ram horns used in Hebrew and Messianic praise) and they were asked to restrain the use of them because people would conflate the event with the January 6th riot at the Capitol building in Washington. Fox News was politely asked not to come, and complied. Their lead reporter said, “…They’re doing something so right, so beautiful, so true that media coverage can’t enhance it and can only detract from it…God bless them for turning us down.”

Early on Brent Williamson wrote:

Nobody was in charge. There was no known leader. There was no known worship team. There was several different people who spoke and you could tell they weren’t in charge.
They rotated the singers and musicians every two hours or so.
There was a guitar, piano, and beat box. That was it.
They asked if you need to talk to someone to please take it into the lobby or outside.
No fancy lighting. Wood seats without cushion. Stained glass windows. The floor was concrete. There was NO words on a screen to sing from. No offerings.

I saw puddles of tears on the concrete. It was a wave of the Spirit that hit certain people at different times.
The altar was full non stop with people weeping and also worshiping at it too.
The Spirit of God was making the altar call.

Mark Swayze wrote:

So who are these college worship leaders at the Asbury Outpouring? Who sits on the “Worship Steward” team?
You will never know.
They are a nameless and faceless generation.
They are rebelling against the celebrity culture infiltrating the church.

Sarah Thomas Baldwin wrote:

Most of the people coming have no idea that their usher navigating the wheelchair through the rain has a Ph.D. and their prayer minister is a retired seminary professor. Most of the people don’t know how huge numbers of you have set aside your jobs, your family time, and your sleep to show up and direct people, check bags, and sometimes set aside your preference in musical style to be up late into the night in prayer. Many of you could preach and teach as you have done around the world and on the Asbury campuses. Yet you are so humble to take out the trash and stand out in the cold to get people inside. You have offered to do what you can and it has been loaves and fishes. We will never be the same.

Humility is a value that resonates with me. The 1970s comparison would be early Jesus Music musicians selling homemade albums out of the back of cars or their VW Microbus. Again, this was long before the CCM marketing machines emerged. The musical epicenter of the movement in southern California was relocated to Nashville, the heart of the music business.

Perhaps this is a cautionary tale for the people in Wilmore.

The Asbury participants however, seem to have managed to produce something that cannot be capitalized on; cannot be easily exploited. I’m sure there will be books on top of countless articles online. Maybe 50 years from now people will buy theater tickets for ‘The Asbury Revolution.’

We’ll have to see what it becomes.

In the meantime, find out everything you can about what’s going on a Asbury and where it leads.

Then, this weekend, watch the film and experience a youth revival that is still making a difference.

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Some of the quotations were sourced from the Facebook feed of Regent University’s Dr. Ewen Butler who teaches on Revival and Church History. The picture is from a short article by Craig Keener which appeared on Julie Roys’ website, click here to read. Other information gleaned from the Twitter hashtag, #AsburyRevival and there are some excellent, detailed articles linked there. Thanks also to David Spencer.

For the trailer for The Jesus Revolution film, click here. Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier) plays Rev. Chuck Smith. That alone is worth the price of the ticket! For the sometimes parallel history of CCM and today’s modern worship, check out this article posted here in 2008. 

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Writing, borrowing or compiling a fresh devotional each and every day for 12 years means that our sister blog (and now primary project) Christianity 201 has a huge back-catalog of devotionals on many subjects. For our February 21st piece, I went though every single article that covered the idea of revival, and highlighted several of them in a single piece. Click this link to read “On the Subject of Revival”

 

Evangelical, Exvangelical, or Christ Follower?

I remember it as though it were yesterday. Two middle-aged, well-dressed men walking up the driveway to my parents’ house. I eavesdropped on the conversation. They were from a Baptist Church several miles away — one would need to drive past about five churches to reach it — and were inviting families in the neighborhood to church. Already being part of another church my father politely declined their invite and wished them well in the door-to-door evangelism.

Fast forward several decades and Christian denominations don’t bother going two-by-two in communities as before. The form was “co-opted” by Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons (as they formerly preferred to be called.)

Today the same situation rages with regard to the word Evangelical. It’s been co-opted by a few whose political leanings often overshadow their allegiance to Jesus. So some are looking for another label.

That’s a shame. The “people of the good news:” (the evangel) had it first before those whose God is politics “co-opted” it. Perhaps instead of looking for a new moniker, they should be telling the political Christians to leave the camp and let them come up with a new word to describe whatever the heck that fusion of Christianity and conservatism is. Then inform the media who the true Evangelicals are.

This is not an American problem. The politicization of various issues among Christ-followers has spread. Where I write, north of the 49th Parallel, we see this polarization occurring frequently in non-U.S. contexts.

Our first identity must be to Christ. Not a political party. Not a fiscal or political ideology. Not an opinion on race, gun ownership, or dare I say it, even abortion. Christ, and Christ alone.

Conspiracy Theories Just Never Stop

I was going to post something else earlier today, but I’ve just spent the better part of an hour chasing down a rabbit hole of sensationalism someone posted on their Facebook page; and more time thinking about it.

The story announced with great confidence that in the move toward online sermons, tech giants were blocking sermon content from Christian churches. [Pauses. Do I include the link? Nah, why bother. Search it if you must.] Notice that both sermons and churches are plural. The implication is that this is pretty widespread.

Instead, there was a reference to one church which had its app suspended over allegedly insensitive remarks concerning the Coronavirus. This church is headed up by a controversial pastor whose subject matter and content was probably already being closely watched. [Pauses again. Do I mention the church? Suffice it to say it’s in Moscow, Idaho. Some of you will immediately make the connection.]

Usually it’s televangelists who advance this theme. If they can unite you and me in the face of a common enemy, experience tells them that we will then reach into our pocketbooks and donate to the organization which has sounded the warning.

Fear = Funding.

I did not shoot from the hip at my friend who had posted the link on Facebook. Instead, I spent a long time trying to find other examples of this that weren’t based in countries already under a religious persecution watch. Instead, I found two other articles, one of which was an echo of the one posted, the other one of which was its source. None were major media, or even major religious media.

When you read something like this, do the research. You may not be trained as a journalist [considers temptation to add, ‘Neither am I, though I play one on TV.’] but you’ve got time on your side right now.

Check everything before liking or sharing.

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We’re not doing link lists (Wednesday Connect) during this time because most items posted would have a single focus and you’re seeing those anyway.

However, it’s been announced that Willow Creek has named a new senior pastor. David Dummitt is the founding pastor of 2|42, based in Ann Arbor Michigan (where they have five services each weekend) with six additional campuses (many of which also have multiple services). He starts in June. See the full story at Religion News Service, which also links you to a formal announcement and video from Willow Creek. [Watching one of his sermons at his current church as I type this.]

Also: A longstanding teaching and music festival in the UK – Spring Harvest – was forced to become an online event this year which means you and I get to be part of it all week, April 13-17. Speakers and worship songs which may be unfamiliar to you! Refreshing! Check out the various videos at YouTube.

 

Parallel Trends in Other Faiths

Not realizing the direction my life would take, I regret to say that I only took one Religious Studies course at the University of Toronto. It was a rather broad survey course, probably used as an elective for Nursing students or Engineering students who needed a “soft” course to round out their program.

The professor said something that has continued to captivate me to this day. In the previous decade, a hot topic in Christianity had been The Charismatic Movement, a movement marked by instances whereby the ‘Gifts of the Spirit’ were turning up in places not normally considered Pentecostal in theology; not the least of which was the gift of speaking in tongues, or what is known as glossolalia. The teacher said that this was not exclusive to Christianity but that glossolalia was turning up in other faith streams as well, and had longstanding expressions in religions not at all affiliated with Christianity.

That rocked my world. To my mind at the time, anyone not following Jesus was pagan, so how could pagans speak in tongues? Or did this confirm the suspicions of conservative cessationists (though I didn’t know that word then) that all of this was of Satan, not of God?

The idea of elements of movement having parallels in other faiths brings me to today’s topic…

…We had walked down Toronto’s Brunswick Avenue following a sign for a yard sale, that turned out to be rather misleading. She had things on sale. And they were in her front yard. But not enough to warrant the block we had walked. As we were about to take a shortcut through a small park, a small building, not much more than the size of one housing lot, caught my eye.

As it turned out it was the First Narayever Synagogue. I peered through the window, and someone inside saw me and opened the door. A few minutes later, we were standing in the lobby looking at the inside. It was Sukkot and downstairs there was a crowd of people sharing a meal together in celebration of the high holy day.

It was then that the person who had opened the door told us that it was “an egalitarian Orthodox synagogue.”  Wait, what? You can do that? It was confirmed that the women — at least the two we saw — were wearing a head covering, one of which was the familiar kippah (or what we sometimes call a yarmulke) normally worn by men.

Again, my world rocked. My brain is still trying to wrap itself on the idea of being egalitarian and being Orthodox at the same time.

Critics of egalitarianism in Protestant circles argue that this is simply the church capitulating to the broader culture. An echo of the feminist movement of decades gone by, perhaps. But it does mean that the same cultural pressures apply equally in other faiths.

The website states, “Our shul follows the traditional Hebrew liturgy, with changes made for the purposes of gender egalitarianism.” That would seem to imply inclusive language. And yet, in matters of theology and practice, still Orthodox. The page also states clearly that their services are what Evangelicals would term “seeker friendly,” and again with no hint of theological compromise; the charge often levied at Christian groups who structure their service to welcome guests.

…In another way what we saw reminded me of Next a church in downtown Kingston, Ontario which is characterized by its lack of parking. This is a neighborhood congregation, though again, being Orthodox, many would live within walking distance of the synagogue, since driving a car would constitute doing work on Shabbat.

As is taking pictures. We were told that wasn’t possible. The one above is from their Facebook page. The one below we took outside after leaving. I’ve always wanted to sit through an entire service in a synagogue, but assumed that if I did, it would be one of the major ones in Toronto’s large Jewish community.

Now I think I’d rather it were this one!

 

 

 

 

Keeping Up With the Trends

I noted on a recent link collection that in the new Hillsong Young and Free video, keyboards, digital controllers and synths dominate. If you listen to the feeds from North Point and Willow and other large churches, you’ve probably heard the presence of keyboards increase over the last two or so years.

Today I was in a magazine store, and was looking for a good keyboard magazine for my oldest son.

You guessed it.

All guitar magazines.

There’s a trend in music that the magazine industry hasn’t caught up with.

They’re just doing the same thing they’ve been doing for the past several decades…

…As you know, I’ve been collecting analogies that can be instructional for those of us in the church. By this one today I don’t mean the type of instrumentation in our worship bands, but rather the larger situation whereby the world is changing and the church hasn’t noticed. Blissfully unaware we keep doing our thing and wondering why the world doesn’t find it as relevant as they once did.

I mean, you can certainly take the lesson literally if you want to.

But figuratively, we’re playing guitar while the world has switched to keyboards.

We need to always be aware where our methodologies and structures have fallen behind, and where we need to catch up.

Your Church Family Directory

One of the two churches with which I’m directly involved has a church directory which includes email addresses. The major benefit I see is that it allows people to continue the conversations started on Sundays throughout the week; to initiate contact; or to follow up with friends they haven’t seen in awhile.

The church family phone directory is probably something that will disappear over the next decade because of (a) privacy concerns, and (b) the degree to which the megachurches set the agenda of smaller churches. Nonetheless we thought we’d visit this topic.

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Since my church uses a photo directory, I had a thought today that it would be fun to do one where instead of actual photographs, people submitted an avatar, as they do on social media. It would be 100% contrary to the purpose for which photo directories were created in the first place, but definitely fun and colorful.

Full disclosure: I was looking at this picture of two cats when I came up with this, and thinking it might be better than the dated picture of Mrs. W. and myself they’ve been using for the past four years.

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Next, there is the issue of people who appear in these directories who have long moved on, hopefully to another church.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a megachurch pastor. We often forget that numerically, he would qualify by today’s standards. The church experienced phenomenal growth. At their size, not to mention the cost of paper, a church directory would have been impossible. But there was a membership roll and people wanted their name kept on it. He wrote,

Let us not keep names on our books when they are only names. Certain of the good old people like to keep them there, and cannot bear to have them removed; but when you do not know where individuals are, nor what they are, how can you count them? They are gone to America, or Australia, or to heaven, but as far as your roll is concerned they are with you still. Is this a right thing? It may not be possible to be absolutely accurate, but let us aim at it… *

I don’t think that everyone I’m aware of actually wants their directory listing to be kept. They’ve possibly changed churches and aren’t giving it a thought. Rather, the fault lies with the church for not noticing their absence. (Having written that, I just got in touch with someone I haven’t seen lately to see how they’re doing.)

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I see we’ve covered this topic before. Four years ago, I proposed something different:

How a social media hub is different from a Church directory

I’m writing this in a vacuum, because I haven’t exactly seen done what I am proposing here. I just see a need. So here’s the proposal, and if you have any suggestions or revisions based on experience with a church that’s doing this please leave a comment.

Social media, as we have come to know it, is with us to stay. The platforms will migrate over time, but a generation has grown up communicating on line, and overall, I would say that for the church, this is a good thing. We can start a conversation at a weekend service, and continue it all week. We can learn that people have specific interests, and send them links to articles and channels of interest. It replaces the classic “encouragement notes” or “thinking-of-you cards.”

• Ideally, a church directory lists every member and adherent. A social media index lists only people who want to share their various social media platforms.
  

• A Church directory contains addresses and numbers for mobile phones and land lines.  A social media index has names and locations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, tumblr, WordPress and YouTube pages.

• A Church directory often exists in print; a church social media hub exists only online. It’s live, so information may be added or removed at any time.
  

• Church publications generally promote the church’s own social media pages. A social media index highlights what the church family is doing online.

• Church directories are usually only distributed to the people whose names are contained in them. A social media index can just be a page on the church website — “Central Community Church on Social Media” — with no restricted access, because each of the pages concerned are public anyway.

• Knowing that anyone in your church can access your pages is a wonderful way of keeping yourself accountable for what you write, post or link to. Your social media pages may reflect a personal family focus and other interests and hobbies you have; but ultimately you are aware that fellow church members might drop in at any time, unannounced.

• Social media is constantly changing. A social media index for your church family needs to be updated on a regular basis, perhaps weekly. If a given platform falls out of use, there can be a decision to delete all links to that platform.
  

• If any social media platform from any church member is reported to have questionable content, all their listings would be removed.

If one of the basic problems in the church is that we don’t really know each other, I know of no other way to change that than to be interconnected online. This allows us to get to know each other to a greater degree.

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We’ll look more at this topic tomorrow!

*Spurgeon quotation source, click here.

Blockbuster Churches in a Netflix World

Today we’re featuring a re-post of an article which first appeared in April at the website I Already Am. To read this at source, click this link.

Blockbuster Churches in a Netflix World

By Nathan Lorick

Fifteen years ago, we were living in a less technological society than we are now. Blockbuster, the video rental market leader, was booming with thousands of retail stores scattered across the nation. Millions of customers poured in week after week to rent the newest action thriller or comedy. Blockbuster was simply at the top of their game, or so they thought.

Beyond the glare of the blue and yellow lights, something was happening that went largely unnoticed. A new company had formed with a new creative form of video rental that would push the limits of the norm. This company, known today as Netflix, had the right idea at the right time. However, for various reasons, the CEO of the new company wanted to partner with Blockbuster to create a new dynasty that was sure to take the video rental world to levels not seen before.

In 2000, the CEO of Netflix approached the CEO of Blockbuster and offered to sell the newly formed Netflix for a mere $50 million. While that number sounds large to us, this is a small investment for a major retail business. It wasn’t the money that caused the CEO of Blockbuster to decline the offer; instead it was because he missed the opportunity to see beyond the present market. Hindsight is 20/20. Today, Blockbuster is out of business, and Netflix is the largest video rental company—worth more than $30 billion.

This is a modern picture of what many churches are going through. At one time they were thriving and growing at rapid rates. Their ministries were effective in every way measurable. Things were as good as they could be. However, somewhere along the way, attendance began to drift off, giving became less dependable, and the influence of their ministries became unknown to those outside of the church. Simply put, churches were so focused on the present, they stopped dreaming about the future. They essentially became a Blockbuster church in a Netflix culture.

So what can be done about this if your church is in this stage? What is the key element to moving forward into a new season of growth and vitality? While there can be many answers, I want to narrow it down to one key element: re-launching evangelism in your church’s strategy. Evangelism is the axis on which our church must turn in order to see it revitalized to life and growth. Nothing brings new life to a church more than seeing people experience new life in Christ.

So how do you bridge the desire for church revitalization and evangelism? I believe this is found in three simple answers:

1. You must create a culture of evangelism in your church. Church members must sense the need and urgency to reach people for Christ and recognize their responsibility in God’s kingdom work to share the good news of Christ. Your church has to create strategies that are focused on reaching the lost with the gospel. When this happens, people begin to expect God to transform lives each and every week. Creating a culture of evangelism in a church will simultaneously create a culture of newfound enthusiasm in a church.
2. You must create opportunities to train people on how to share their faith and to engage in personal evangelism. People are eager to see God use them for His purposes. They genuinely want to see people come to faith in Jesus; many just haven’t been discipled in how to do it. When your church equips people with the necessary tools to share the gospel, God uses them to expand his kingdom. Once someone leads another to Christ, they develop a new excitement because they know they have been used by God!
3. You must consistently dream about the future and try new tools for evangelism. In our day, we have more tools and gadgets to share the gospel than ever before. Churches should always evaluate what is out there to utilize as well as continue to be innovative in how they engage those without Christ.

The tragedy of Blockbuster is that they settled for being good in the present and missed the opportunity to be great in the future. Likewise, God has given us an incredible opportunity to shine his light brighter than ever before. I encourage you as a church to be forward thinking in how to engage your community with the gospel. After all, we’re not a part of a video retail business; we are a part of a worldwide gospel revolution.

used by permission | see more at the blog I Already Am

Christianity’s Diminishing Influence: What if We Were the Refugees?

In eight years of blogging I’ve repeated many articles but this is the first time I’ve ever repeated a book review, especially one that appeared only 12 months prior. But as I was looking at these Pew Research stats, especially the one showing Christianity and Islam having relatively equal numbers in the year 2050 (based on current projections) I realized we are about to witness a massive paradigm shift.

This book is therefore very timely, but without the fear-inducing sensationalism of mass-appeal titles.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? ^{Ps. 137:4}

Book Review: The Church in Exile

Although I worked for InterVarsity Press briefly several lifetimes ago, and have covered other IVP books here before, this is the first time I’ve attempted to review anything from the IVP Academic imprint. So let me say at the outset that perhaps I have no business considering scholarly titles here; however there is a personal connection that had me wanting to read this book, and that resulted in my wanting to give it some visibility here.

Lee Beach was our pastor for nearly ten years, and one year of that overlapped a staff position I held at the church as director of worship. He came to us after serving as an associate pastor and then interim pastor of a church just 45 minutes north. He was young, passionate and everyone just called him Lee.

Today, years later, when mentioning him to students in his university community, the honorific is always used, it’s Dr. Beach at McMaster Divinity School in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada where he serves as assistant professor of Christian ministry, director of ministry formation and teaches courses on pastoral ministry, mission, the church in culture and spirituality.

The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom is made more accessible to those of us who are non-academics because of its timeliness. Because of immigration, the rise of secularism, and a decline in church membership and attendance, Christianity is losing both numbers and the influence that those metrics bring. In some communities already, Christians are no longer the majority stakeholders.

From his vantage point in Canada where religious pluralism has been normative now for several decades, Dr. Beach has a clear view of where the U.S. is heading. From his background as a Christian & Missionary Alliance pastor, he also has a heightened awareness as to the status afforded Christianity in other parts of the world.

The book is divided into two sections. The first begins in the Old Testament with a focus on those times God’s people lived in exile, or were scattered, particularly the narratives concerning Esther, Jonah, Daniel, and what’s termed the Second Temple period, where the community of the faithful seems to be diminished; a shadow of its former self. (Sound familiar?) From there, the book moves to the New Testament with particular attention to I Peter.

In the foreword, Walter Brueggemann points out that while exiles may have a sense that the present situation is temporary, the Jewish Diaspora brought with it no expectation of returning home. In other words, their placement was what we would call today ‘the new normal.’ That so well describes the church in 2015. There is no reasonable anticipation that things will go back to the way they were.

The second section builds on the theological framework of the first to turn our thoughts to the more practical concerns of being the church in the margins. How does one lead, and offer hope in such a period of decline? How does our present context govern or even shape our theological framework? How does a vast religious mosaic affect evangelism, or one’s eligibility for inclusion or participation in church life? How do followers of Christ maintain a distinct identity?

To that last question, the term used is ‘engaged nonconformity’ wherein

Exilic holiness is fully engaged with culture while not fully conforming to it. Living as a Christian exile in Western culture calls the church to live its life constructively embedded within society while not being enslaved to all of its norms and ideals. ^{p. 183}

It should come as no surprise that some of this section cites practitioners of what has been termed the missional church movement.

“But wait;” some might say, “We were here first.” While that may not be exactly true, the spirit of it is well entrenched, and early on we’re reminded that you can experience the consequences of exile even in your own homeland. You don’t have to sell your house to feel you’ve been displaced, and that’s the reality that will impact North American Christians if it hasn’t touched some already.

In the post-Christian revolution, it is fair to say that the church is one of those former power brokers who once enjoyed a place of influence at the cultural table but has been chased away from its place of privilege and is now seeking to find where it belongs amid the ever changing dynamics of contemporary culture. ^{p. 46}

In the end, despite my misgivings about wading into academic literature, I read every word of The Church in Exile, and I believe that others like me will find this achievable also, simply because this topic is so vital and our expectation of and preparedness for the changes taking place are so necessary.

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The Church in Exile is now available in paperback (240 pages) from IVP and wherever great books are sold (click the image above for a profile) and retails at $25 US.

The Perils of Being the Guest Speaker

I was coming to my third point when I noticed my mouth was getting dry from all the talking. Sometimes at work, I just push past this, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the glass of water that had been placed there.

I paused, picked up the glass, hesitated, and took a small sip. You guessed it. It was water that had been sitting there from the previous Sunday. Were some in the audience aware of what had just happened? Should I acknowledge the distraction? With the adrenaline rush that you get when you’re speaking before a group of people, I simply continued on in my message.

I did not get sick that day. I’ve often wondered if in this denomination, it’s the pastor’s responsibility to refresh the water glass himself. As a guest speaker, it’s certainly an occupational hazard.

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Over the course of a couple of years, I had become the default speaker when the pastor, who had ministry interests both in Europe and Central America, needed to be away.

The first Sunday I arrived wearing a dress shirt and dress pants, but no jacket or tie. I was fairly certain this wasn’t normal for that church, but I wanted to make a statement.

The second time I spoke there I also went business casual, but this time, in my introduction, I explained how my work and my writing put me in contact with dynamic churches and pastors across North America and how the church is changing, being very careful to emphasize changes in church architecture, ministry philosophy, music and dress. I think I even acknowledge my own lack of a tie as example of this.

The third time — or just before the third time via email — one of the members told me that a few of them had been part of a discussion resulting in the decision that they would chip in and buy me a suit. “Where else would I wear it?” I asked. Even at the last wedding and funeral I attended, a sports jacket had been sufficient. “I think I do indeed own a suit;” I told them, “But that’s not the direction the North American church is moving.”

The fourth time I simply donned the sports jacket as I was leaving the house. When I arrived at the church, I noticed a few smiles.

…We got to hear John Wimber a couple of times in Southern California in 1989. They were both Sunday evening services, and he was wearing a track suit. Actually, he played with the worship band and then got up to preach, and if someone had said to you, ‘One of the people in the band is the pastor and tonight’s speaker; now guess who it is;” unless you’d seen his picture on his books, I guarantee you would have gotten it wrong.

Andy Stanley wears jeans for the most part, though not yesterday. In the south, it’s all very natural. Rick Warren has his trademark Hawaiian shirts. Bill Hybels is always very corporate, but I’ve never seen him in a suit, and not sure if I’ve seen him in a jacket and tie. (A quick scan of Yahoo Images bears this out, but for the one shot that I’m sure was taken at a banquet.)

The church in question now has a new minister so my guest-speaking and clothing-paradigm-smashing days there appear to be over. What I hope they remember is that the messages were good, but if my name is mentioned, what I think they may remember will have nothing to do with the Bible expositions I brought.

CT Article Gives Insight into Local Church Culture

I’m not going to provide any spoilers here, you’ll have to read the article; but in the July/August issue of Christianity Today, sociologist Bradley Wright unveils the results of a study that involved contacting nearly 3,200 churches by email using fake accounts belonging to people with distinct ethnic-sounding names, to see if the nature and volume of the replies said anything about racial attitudes in today’s churches.

Rather, I want to look at two things that were peripheral to the research results.

The article was also CT’s cover story. Their cover was nearly blown, however when one pastor, relocating from Alaska to Texas got the same email in both locations.

First, only 59% replied. Now in statistical research, for all I know, that might be a fairly decent response rate. But these are churches and that type of response is to me, very disappointing. For a faith that follows One who taught that a shepherd will leave 99 sheep in the pen to go after the one which is lost, that 41% did not reply is really close to abysmal. (Elsewhere on this blog, we’ve noted the same is true of Christian publishers, media outlets, and parachurch organizations in general.)

If you or someone you know oversees the general email box of your church, or gets the inquiries generated through an online form, make sure they have a mechanism in place where every legitimate email is getting a reply.

Second, it was interesting to note the definition of what constitutes racial diversity in a religious group. If 80% or more of a congregation is of a fixed race (i.e. White, Hispanic, Black, Asian) then that church is not diverse, regardless of how prominent a role some families may be given. Overall, among all religions the rate is 15%, but if you pick a Protestant Church this Sunday the rate is only 5%, in other words, nineteen-times-out-of-twenty, that congregation will be four-fifths or more of one race.

It was noted that one church body, Willow Creek, which also provided the greatest number of responses (and was declared “the winner,” assuming this was a contest) has been intentionally looking for ways to diversify its attendance.

The article is available to subscribers, or in print at newsstands. A number of charts also break down the research results.