evangelism

In Ephesians Paul speaks of evangelism as being one of the gifts for the building up of the body of Christ. Unfortunately, however, evangelists often inadvertently tear down the body of Christ. I can remember in high school fretting, even to the point of tears, as to whether I was actually saved. This anxiety spiked following revivals or evangelistic services because it seemed that the evangelist did everything possible in order to spawn doubt in the believer's heart. I can remember hearing these preachers relay stories about individuals that thought they were saved but then realized they had not produced a truly sincere profession of faith. If these Christians were not really Christians, how could I be sure that I was? After all, I could hardly remember my acceptance of Christ at age nine, much less remember the sincerity of such a moment.

And I have spoke with others that have had similar experiences. Last week, one person told me that he accepted Christ four times, and was baptized three! (I think this is right; it was something ridiculous like that.). All in effort to "nail down" his certainty of being a believer.

These tactics that foster doubt in Christians, especially young people, are wrong. They harm the effectiveness of the Church by causing its members to doubt their place in it! If it is the Gospel that anchors the actions of Christians, any preaching that loosens that anchor will harm Christian activity.

But at a deeper level, these tactics undermine the Gospel. They imply that the believer must muster a certain degree of enthusiasm and sincerity or at least have a certain level of sophistication in order to validate their faith in Christ. This is simply not the case. There is an episode in the Gospels where a woman seeks to simply touch Jesus' clothes in hopes that by touching them she might be healed from her sickness. This is not mature faith but a superstitious one. Nonetheless, Jesus says your faith has made you well (Mt 9.22). Why? The point Tim Keller extracts from the text is that it is not the sincerity or sophistication of one's faith but the object of one's faith that heals them. The woman did not have an accurate understanding of faith, but the object of her faith was right. Interestingly, our culture thinks the exact opposite with regards to faith: it is not the object of our faith that matters, but the sincerity of it. This is not true of biblical Christianity and it does not measure up with reality either, says Keller.

To make his case, Keller describes three men running from a bloodthirsty bear. The men reach a cliff and there is a frozen pond at the bottom. They are faced with a dilemma: take their chances with the bear, or jump onto a frozen pond that may or may not hold them. The three men all, by faith, decide to jump onto the frozen pond. Yet they all have varying degrees of faith. The first has hardly an inkling of faith that the ice will hold him but jumps anyway. The second person is about 50% sure that the ice will hold. The last guy, seeing the other two made it, had a strong faith in the ice's strength to hold him. Given their varying degrees of faith, all made it! All were saved! In other words, it was not the level of their faith, but the object of their faith, in this case, the pond. (This is Keller's illustration as I remember it; I probably botched it in one way or another)

So, it is not so much the level of our faith but the object of it that matters, namely, Jesus Christ. Many evangelists would do well to remember this point. As I think back to my salvation experience at age nine, I do not remember what exactly I believed about Jesus. I am sure it was fraught with theological problems. Nevertheless, I do know the object of my faith at that point. I simply threw myself to Jesus, just like those men threw themselves onto the frozen pond. And through that, I was saved.

Wise Saying

Last night we had dinner with several couples and we started talking about some of the whacky things churches do to get people into their church. It is amazing some of the cockeyed and crooked antics employed as "outreach."

Amidst our discussion, I was reminded of a great saying my youth minister used to say regularly: "What you win 'em with, is what you win 'em to."

In other words, if we are getting congregants in our church doors with only pizza and games, then that is what we have won them to. It is a pithy point, and one that stands as a good corrective to many of our outreach endeavors.

NoiseTrade

Just learned of NoiseTrade, a site encouraging the spread of good music for a tiny fee (what you think the CD is worth or telling three friends about the site).

(HT: Tim Challies)

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Christian witness

NPR's Talk of the Nation did a bit on chocolate chip cookies today. The discussion was helpful and my wife and I are already employing some of what we learned.

The guest talked some about the wonders of salt. Salt, she said, suppresses bitterness and enhances sweetness. Salt has a way of squelching what is distasteful and strengthening what tastes right. You've probably heard that Christians, as "salt," are to be both preservers of the world and those that add zest to it. Well, add this one: as salt, we should also be a suppressor of what is bitter and distasteful and an enhancer of what is sweet and savory.

In addition to a good discussion on cookies, you will see a fine number by Cookie Monster.

"Trapped in Time"

Trapped in Time is a book about two 1980s teenage siblings that through some kind of meditative exercise are taken back to the 1950s (I think this is the means by which they journey back into time; I haven't read the book since 5th grade). There, they run into their parents who are meeting for the first time and mess up the whole event. Their task then becomes to get their parents together. Sound familiar?

The book follows very closely the storyline of Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies. It was my fifth grade teacher, Bernal C. Payne, that wrote Trapped in Time. Mr. Payne told us that the writers of Back to the Future banked off of his idea (this was c. 1990). If I recall correctly, Mr. Payne even took the thing to court, but was unsuccessful. It made sense because the two stories were so similar.

The plot thickened a couple of years back when I was watching the special features on my new Back to the Future trilogy DVD set. I learned that one of the writers, Bob Gale, was from St. Louis. This is where I grew up and also where Mr. Payne grew up and taught. The chances of Bob Gale stumbling upon a children's sci-fi novel from a local St. Louis author seemed highly likely.

In any case, if you like Back to the Future, I'd highly recommend getting your hands on Trapped in Time.

The bite of Jesus' words

I recently heard a good Tim Keller sermon. In this sermon, Keller said that anyone that really hears Jesus cannot respond moderately to him. This is a good word for both Christians and non-Christians.

For non-Christians that presume Jesus to be simply a masterful teacher, not Savior and Lord over all, it is a good word. It seems very acceptable to shrug Jesus off as a great man, but not who he claimed to be. Regarding those that like to call Jesus a great moral teacher, C. S. Lewis says,

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity, 52)

For Christians, on the other hand, it is tempting to look at the more radical Christian as an odd duck. I recently heard about a family that sold their nice, year-old home in order to buy a lesser home in a poorer neighborhood. They wanted to live more simply and are seeking to be a renewing presence in a needy area. This is the kind of intentional, counter-cultural radicalness that Jesus' words lead us to. That is, if we really hear him.