In my last post, I asked readers what they thought a missiology for the South might look like. I appreciate the comments, Mike, Bob, Les, and Rick. I was hoping for a little more discussion, but, let's face it, I'm not talking about the latest political brouhaha amongst Southern Baptists or anything exciting like that. I'm just talking about the future of the church in the South over the next generation. Relatively meaningless, I know. :)
At any rate, as I have been researching the theological weaknesses behind the evils of racism and segregation in the Southern Baptist South of the 1950's and 60's and how those weaknesses continue to affect us today (all for a book that I am trying to write), I have stumbled across an unexpected culprit that has caused me to raise my eyebrows a bit. In my reading, interviewing, studying, and praying, I have come to believe that a major reason that people could fill churches all across the South on Sunday and then treat others horribly just because of the color of their skin without feeling conviction was because of the gospel that was preached and believed. If your view of the "gospel" is that it is mostly a set of propositions that you agree with so that you can go to heaven when you die (i.e., eternal life) and salvation cannot be lost no matter what you do, then the commands of Scripture about loving others will be ignored when they bump up against a culture that ultimately gives you your identity, especially when that culture tells you that the "other" is inferior to you. What is there to fear? You're going to heaven. Of course, fear came in when you committed really bad sins like drinking alcohol, dancing, or broke any sexual taboos. So, belief and lifestyle were connected on some issues but not others, even though those other issues were just as biblical, if not moreso in some cases. This hypocrisy became a major theological problem and it is still embedded in the "gospel" we preach and the theology that we believe. We've never dealt with it adequately. We still face a theological separation between belief and behavior because we desire and offer heaven without the cross. Unfortunately, this separation has weakened our churches to the point of impotence when it comes to standing against the world. This weak, cheap gospel of personal, individualistic salvation without discipleship is what allowed Southerners to be racists while they filled Southern Baptist churches. It is what allowed the Lutheran church in Germany to turn away from the Nazi brutalities toward the Jews and even accept them as necessary. It is also what allows us today to say that we believe one thing and live a completely different way and feel no shame or conviction. Isn't hypocrisy a great part of what the baby boomers rebelled against in the 60's? Didn't the church have a stake in that regarding how we treated others while claiming to follow Christ?
David Fitch in The Great Giveaway says,
In our doctrine of salvation then, evangelicals must avoid commoditizing salvation into an individualist consumerist transaction, something we have been prone to. There is a reason why it sounds intrusive to ask a stranger the question "Do you know Jesus as personal savior?" We have privatized the relationship with Jesus so as to make him into a gnosticized faith that seems isolated from everyday life. We must un-privatize our faith in Christ and reconnect our relationship with God through Christ to a way of life that we can invite people into and a movement of God in history. Then we can ask, "Do you have a place where you can ask questions about life?" "Do you know a story that can make sense of your life?" When we do this, we focus away from scaring people out of hell to inviting people into a compelling way of life. We realize that making salvation about being saved from hell irrespective of being saved to new life cheapens it into a piece of individualist knowledge, bordering on Gnositicism, that does not take root in embodied lives.
In postmodernity, truth is about character. Religious truth can no longer be relegated to the realm of private feeling or preference. This is because modern science, which pushed it there originally, no longer reigns supreme. Truth is in the living. Any evangelism therefore that separates one's renewed legal status before God from the new life we have in Christ strips the gospel of its power for a postmodern evangelism. For the postmodern world, justification cannot be separated from sanctification and sanctification cannot be separated from a living people of God. The basis for a compelling Christian account of salvation in postmodernity is a changed life among a living community of Christ. (58-59).
What connects justification and sanctification? What connects faith and grace with a new way of life? I would submit that the concept of repentance makes this connection. When telling people how to be saved, Peter said, "Repent and be baptized . . ." (Acts 2:38). Another time he said, "Repent, then, and turn to God" (Acts 3:19). In both instances, the Greek word used is Metanoeo, which basically means to change one's mind. It denotes a turning around from going one way to going another. In the Christian sense, repentance means that we turn from our sins and the ways of the world and we turn to God through faith in Christ our righteousness. What is the result of this repentance? Our sins are wiped out. This does not mean that repentance saves us. We are justified by faith apart from observing the law (Rom. 3:28). But, repentance is the response to the grace of God and the gift of faith. Repentance is our turning from our old life and old way of thinking to Christ and His Lordship expressed in a new life (Ephesians 4:22-24).
Another time, when Paul was asked by the Philippian Jailer, "what must I do to be saved?" Paul responded, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved - you and your whole household." The Greek word for "believe" here is pisteuo which means to put trust in or have confidence in something. It is more than just mentally agreeing that something is true. It draws out an action of trust and confidence on our part. This kind of faith involves repentance, because if I am believing in Christ, or putting my trust and confidence in Jesus, then that implies that I am no longer putting my trust or confidence in other things. I trust in Jesus alone for salvation and life. I trust in Jesus alone for my identity, not my heritage, my skin color, my family, money, possessions, or titles. I entrust myself to Christ and I align myself with Him.
Repentance, or a turning to God from independence, sin, and being captured by the world, is what is missing in our proclamation and acceptance of the gospel. And, I would submit that it has been missing for a very long time. Jesus wants our whole life. He does not just tell us to turn away from drinking alcohol or having extramarital sex and then allow us to do whatever else we want and live according to whatever world system we find ourselves in. No, He wants our whole lives and His ways are higher than our ways. This is what the Sermon on the Mount is telling us. The Way of Jesus was higher than the way of the segregated South, but we were not able to see it because we were captured by our culture. Likewise, the Way of Jesus is higher than a consumeristic, materialistic, individualistic, self-seeking American culture, but we often cannot see that either because we are still captured by our own culture in hidden ways. This is where the journey of discipleship comes in and it is not optional. Jesus only preached one gospel, which was the Gospel of the Kingdom - the good news of the inbreaking reign and rule of God. Our response to this message of the nearness of the Kingdom of God is to repent (turn from our present kingdom) and believe the good news (gospel) - Mark 1:15. Personal salvation is involved in that at the core, of course, but it is not the complete story - or, I should say that our understanding of salvation as merely forgiveness of sins and entrance to Heaven is not the complete story. God has reconciled us to Himself in Christ, but He also reconciles us to one another. Salvation is the establishment of a vertical connection between us and God, but the effect of salvation is a horizontal reconciliation between us and others through Christ. When the gospel has been poorly preached, or preached in an individualistic way, hypocrisy has been the result (even if many are personally saved) and the truth about God is maligned.
We must work to reconnect our sanctification to our justification. Not confuse the two, but reconnect the two. Perhaps this is what James meant when he said that faith without works is dead. Justification is by faith and sanctification is by that same faith. We must also work to embed our experience of salvation and its effects within the community of Christ. The Church is vitally important as a witness to who Christ is and a nurturer of the Christ-life within us. We must experience the Christian life in community with other believers, or I dare say, not at all.
An individualistic gospel. A crossless gospel. A lack of Biblical discipleship in the midst of community. Propositions believed apart from their truth being embodied in lifestyles and community. An acceptance that Jesus is the Truth while abandoning that He is the Way or the Life as we turn to other things. All of this joined together to dramatically affect our witness. We ended up innoculating ourselves against the real gospel by believing a watered down version. Individuals personally believed a message about Jesus dying for their personal sins, which was good, but if discipleship and the cross was left out, what was the cost? What else was lost from the Gospel of the Kingdom, the "full message of this new life" (Acts 5:20)? To be faithful witnesses to Christ in our current situation, we must reconnect the faith of the individual with the life of the community with the fruit of repentance expressing itself in good works. This can be done without moving toward a "works righteousness" by simply calling people to respond to God in faith AND repentance and to leave their old life behind and embrace all that God has for us and calls us to in Christ. It is called being a follower of Christ, which implies that I am leaving my old life and going where Jesus goes. We need the prophetic and the apostlic as well as the evangelist and the pastor/teacher to articulate this message.
I realize that I am coming across as really negative here. That is not my intention. It is not my goal to disparage everything that Evangelicals and Southern Baptists have believed and taught over the past few generations. Not at all. I am very grateful for my gospel heritage. There has been much good and many, many people have been reconnected to God and others. It is because of our fidelity to Scripture that renewal is even possible. We would not have that if those before us had not preserved the integrity of the Bible for us. But, it is in reading the true Scriptures that we are able to discern the truth about our present predicament. Yes, the true gospel has been taught and lived by many people and has been expressed in many churches. God has worked in powerful ways. Again, I do not mean to come across as condemning or negative. Rather, I am trying to get to the root of the malaise that grips us in our communities and our churches. Scripture guides us here. For so many, Jesus is an add on to the life they've always wanted. He is a means to an end. This is what I am speaking against and I hope to point a way forward to the positive message of the new life that Christ has for us. But, for many, as my friend David Phillips said, deconstruction is needed before reconstruction can take place. Repentance implies a turning away and a turning to. How can we repent if we don't know what we are turning away from or what we are turning to? It is not my intention to tear down people or cause unnecessary discomfort, but it is necessary for us to open our eyes and see that perhaps we have been embracing half-truths with devastating consequences. If I am wrong about this, I will bear the results. But, I don't think I am. We must exchange a truncated, personalized gospel for the real thing, the Gospel of the Kingdom - the reign and rule of God in all of life. If this is believed and lived out in community, could you imagine the results? That is something to be positive about!
Your last post interested me, but I didn't comment because I'm a Northerner with a grudge against the South. So, I don't know how helpful I can be in helping think through, but I definitely hope and want it to be thought through.
For starters, I tend to believe that the real challenge for the Church isn't so much with reading and contextualizing to the culture they are ministering to, but getting their priorities straight spiritually. I'm taking a seminary class on the mission of the Church right now and a big oversight I think of even most contemporary discussion of missiology and missional thinking is that it's recasting the same problem in a different and more complex/abstract light. The way conservative evangelicals talk about missional engagement now seems to still suffer from the basic problem of converts converting rather than disciples discipling. It takes a moment to create a convert but a long time to create a disciple.
The difference is huge and needs more attention then it is being given. Converts know and repeat a "creedal" version of Jesus while disciples live and model the historical Jesus of the Gospels. David Putman's recent book on Breaking the Discipleship Code is a welcome companion to the discussion (even though I wished he would have gone much further in certain areas). For myself, Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship forever remains a seminal text in understanding one of the most basic duties and responsibilities of the Church. Churches live and die by their ability or inability to disciple believers. I think most churches have a very spiritually immature view of discipleship, Jesus and mission. Most churches don't have the first idea of any kind of "cost" that should come along with following Jesus and are happy to grow in number of those who may be "changed" but not truly transformed.
My impression of the South is that it is still too much a Christendom culture. The massive amounts of conversion without discipleship has created a field of weeds (converts) that tend to choke out the real crops (disciples). To an extent, I suspect that much of the South needs to be pruned (or more appropriately with the last analogy the chaff burned). Not to be entirely negative churches need to really investigate the "cost of discipleship" and see what they can do to turn some of those weeds into real produce. On the whole though I don't think there is any missional formula that will save the South from, comparatively, a collapse of Christianity. The numbers will continue to dwindle for at least a couple decades until it's about as "godless" as the Northeast and West Coast.
Posted by: Blake | March 31, 2009 at 10:47 PM
Thanks for the insight, Blake. You gave me a lot to think about and I agree with you. Discipleship is the key. In the past, we have made discipleship about classes and information transfer. That is important, but how do people grow into Christlikeness? Lifestyle, relationships, mentoring, and doing is a lot more important than we ever dreamed.
I think that you are right about the future of the Church in the South, unfortunately. Of course, Jesus will never be defeated, but many of our churches are headed for difficult days (if not already there) unless they "Re-Jesus" as Alan Hirsch says. I pray that happens.
I am actually a lot more hopeful overall than I appear. God is working all over in powerful ways. It just looks different than it used to. But, I am very confident that God will be glorified and that many will come to know Him through all of this.
Posted by: Alan Cross | March 31, 2009 at 11:11 PM
Michael Spencer (iMonk) has a really great post up tonight that addresses much of what I am trying to say here, only much better:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/imonk-101-jesus-joel-and-the-hard-parts-of-the-gospel
He says,
"Jesus makes things very complicated for American Christians. If you simply follow him around in the Gospels, you are going to get into trouble. Why? Because he isn’t just talking evangelism. He’s talking about a whole life of Kingdom-dominated, life-transforming discipleship."
Take the time to read it. It is very eye-opening.
Posted by: Alan Cross | March 31, 2009 at 11:40 PM
I've lived in the south all my life and feel the Lord is leading me to plant a new work where I live. I'm 45 and beyond the ideal age, but am pursing God's calling all the same. The biggest challenge I see in the South is how we've seemed to integrate Christianity with Middle Class values and created a syncretic religion rather than a passion to become disciples of Jesus. Our conversion centric, consumerist focused methodology makes Christianity costless. Experiencing the sufferings of Christ isn't laboring in a mission field with little to no fruit or being truly persecuted for one's faith, but having someone disagree with your view on abortion. It truly has become a subculture that's incredibly difficult to overcome and can only be overcome with a focus on the much slower process of making disciples. It will take time, commitment, and a redefinition of what success looks like.
Posted by: Jeff Parsons | April 01, 2009 at 10:33 AM