In this passage our Lord is brought a man who is paralyzed. After proclaiming his sins are healed Jewish leaders accuse him of blasphemy. At this Jesus heals the man and sends him away. The second part is on the calling of Matthew.

The Paralyzed Man healed

What can be said about this passage? First and foremost Jesus has authority to forgive sins. Jesus has authority to forgive sins because it was given to him by the father. Beyond this his death and sacrifice for our sins allow us to live. When Jesus forgives the man the religious leaders become indignant. The religious leaders understood that only God could forgive sins, and they also understood this was done though the law, which they were the sole interpreters and keepers thereof. God would forgive them, they reasoned, but only through the means that have been given to them through the covenant of Abraham. Jesus knew all of this, yet he says “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?”. This means that there was something beyond them just being mistaken and not knowing the plan of the father for this is no sin. No, Jesus calls their thoughts evil because they were more concerned about someone stepping on their toes than their offense to God. This is a common theme in all of the gospels. Jesus goes on to challenge them with “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”- pointing out that they should know how to act but are not acting in the way God desires and commands after he is mocked by the leaders while eating with known sinners. How many of us are sinners? All of us, and so Jesus comes to all, but he is least accepted by those who are least without excuse. When Jesus heals the man he says “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” This is an example of a Jewish qal wahomer (“how much more”) argument: if God gives Jesus authority to heal the visible effects of humanity’s fallenness, why would he not send him to combat that cause of that fall? This is why social justice, mercy, and alms giving is so important for the Christian life. It proclaims the gospel.

The Calling of Matthew

Matthew’s calling displays that Jesus loves us in spite of us. I have often wondered why tax collector is such a “sinful” job. After all the entire bible gives a high view of taxes. Historically the tax levied to Rome was an occupier’s fee. The Jews were being charged for their occupation, and since their nation was seen as instituted under and by God; since it was a “kingdom of priests and holy nation”- being a Jewish tax collector would have been seen as traitorous and against God. Being a tax collector would have been seen as a betrayer of his culture, God, and people. So Jesus coming to the tax collector is a bold statement. Our sin is betrayal of God and yet this is who Jesus comes to. He comes to those who have betrayed him, “rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.” His action suggests that if God is willing to come to worst, is his not willing to come to all? And this is what he says “For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” The Pharisees self-righteousness he seeks to correct, but at this time they are unreceptive of him, as are all people who think they are so good as to be free from any sin. I often suspect that one can be so proud that they are beyond all save divine intervention. God must often break people like the Pharisees with painful trials so they can understand their condition.

These are my thoughts on the passage. If anyone has anything else to add please leave it in the comments.

This sermon was delivered on April 26th, 2015 at West Loop UBF.

Introduction

A bit of disclosure is in order here: Since September of last year, I haven’t been attending church on a weekly basis. I’ve attended Catholic Mass a few times and have taken communion and have also had ongoing conversations about the Bible and life with others and have done my own personal study on biblical topics, but nothing like being plugged into a faith community on a regular basis. To some this may be disconcerting or off-putting, like who takes a half a year off of church and then preaches a sermon? But I thank Rhoel for reaching out to me and befriending and simply talking to me on a human-to-human level. One thing that I really appreciate about the West Loop community is you all’s desire to understand and practice the gospel in a loving manner. So I thank you all for accepting me and giving me the privilege to speak here today. I don’t take this lightly and I don’t want to waste your time, but instead I want to hopefully communicate an important point about the gospel that I think we, including myself, often miss. I’ll attempt to make my point in thirty minutes or less and end with a nice cherry on top which is an example from my own life.

What Does it Mean to be “Spiritual” Anyway?

I mentioned how I’ve been taking some time away from organized religion. I felt as though I needed to do this because I was growing increasingly weary of experiencing this disconnect, that I observed, which exists between the concepts of spirituality or “otherness”, that is something beyond our physical world, and the very material reality that we live in today. To put it bluntly (and with an example to follow), I got tired of sitting in church week after week and hearing things that sounded lofty and spiritual, but were not portable to my everyday life. And believe you me; this was not the fault of the church per se, because if anyone knows me, I love lofty ideas. This is more of an internal battle or beef within me.

At some point last year, the big question that I asked myself was what impact does spirituality have on us on a daily basis, that is, how does this line up with our present-day, physical reality in an impactful way? The form of Christianity that I was largely familiar with was one in which that aforementioned disconnect reached a tipping point on some key issues for me. For instance, in Western Evangelicalism, we are often taught as of first importance, that Jesus has forgiven us of our sins once and for all. Now, I don’t dispute this at all and it’s something that I certainly rejoice in. But a type of thought pattern which was pervasive in my own life was this idea that as believers, we are forgiven largely as individuals and as long as we individually are forgiven, then we are right with God and all is well with the universe. The problem with this is that we don’t sin in a vacuum; often times, we wound each other through our sins and if we are honest with ourselves it’s not enough, that when we sin against someone, to say “you know what, Jesus has forgiven me of my sins, so let’s leave it at that and move on”. On one level that’s true, but on another don’t we actually need to seek reconciliation with the other person; isn’t forgiveness at the cross meant to be an entryway into new relationships built on honesty and repentance? Or on the flip side, if I or someone else is wounded by another, we may often think to ourselves, “Jesus alone will heal me of my wounds by way of his sacrifice on the cross”. We tend to both diagnose and treat our wounds in this way; we overly-spiritualize and try to superstitiously wish away our real hurt and pain. And some wounds are spiritual, but there is also the very real, nitty-gritty task of processing our human emotions.  And still the task of reconciliation, and in some cases seeking restitution from the one that wounded us, remains. Don’t you think? But like I said, there is often this disconnect in Christianity where we are encouraged to see ourselves as these spiritual beings who only need spiritual solutions to our very real problems.

I also thought about what David said in Psalm 51:4, where he says “Against you, you only, have I sinned…” While it is true that all sin is, in a sense, against God there is a very real human dimension to what David did. After all, Nathan spells out what he did very bluntly: He killed Uriah the Hittite with sword and stole his wife. Furthermore, David wasn’t even man enough to murder Uriah himself, but indirectly used the Ammonites to do so. Nathan doesn’t pull any punches in regard to the very real people that David hurt; he doesn’t put a spiritual spin on the situation in any way, shape or form.

I’ll tell you what’s also an even bigger problem with this over-spiritualization: Jesus never advocated this. Look at what he says (right after the Lord’s Prayer, which is largely seen as a “spiritual” exercise between a believer and God):

“14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” – Matt 6:14, 15

Very interesting that Jesus would say this; in the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness does not appear to be the primary thrust of the prayer, yet Jesus deems it important enough to add a sternly worded epilogue specifically about forgiveness between God and others.*

And consider Jesus’ words here:

22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

It seems to me that Jesus is connecting these “spiritual” acts of forgiveness and worship between God and man to the human relationships that exist in our everyday lives. It’s as if he’s saying that no matter what our relationship is like with God, if we aren’t treating the real human beings in our everyday lives with integrity and compassion, our spirituality doesn’t really amount to much.  And this makes sense because think about who Jesus is; he is God incarnate or God made flesh. He is the very intersection between this spiritual otherness that we define as God and human beings just like ourselves. It’s as if God is saying in Jesus that our spirituality is inherently tied to our physical world, our own humanity and the communities that we are involved in.

Incarnational Ministry vis a vis Empathetic Communication

This incarnational aspect of God is what I want to “flesh” out through Acts 17. This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible for in this we are given a vivid example of God’s desire to communicate spiritual truths to us on our human level.

This was during Paul’s second missionary journey, which transpired between the years 50-52 A.D., (he did three in total) and before he arrived at Athens, he was driven from first Thessalonica and then Berea (where he famously met the “Noble Bereans”).  He was driven out of those regions by Jews who wanted to destroy his gospel-preaching efforts. For the sake of Paul’s safety, he was escorted to Athens with the hope that Timothy and Silas, his traveling companions, would join him there at a later time.

Upon arriving in Athens, Paul is deeply bothered by all of the idolatrous statues in the city. Surely Paul understood that it was Rome’s practice to subsume the religions of those that they subjugated. It was to keep the idea of Pax Romana (which was really not peace) intact. But in Athens it was overkill; one ancient is quoted as saying that Athens had over 30,000 idols [1]. I’m sure that Paul was alarmed by the fact that the Jews in Athens could possibly be syncretizing with the culture around them and thus missing the message of the gospel contained in the Holy Scriptures. Think about how many times that Isaiah denounces idol-worship. In fact, this is one of the key points of his sermon to the philosophers later on. So Paul takes the initiative to engage the Jews and the Greek converts to Judaism (called God-fearing Greeks) in discussions namely concerning the Messiah using the OT. From what Luke records, the idea of the resurrection of Jesus particularly piqued the interest of some of the Greek philosophers and so they begin debating with him. They probably regard him as some unsophisticated, primitive Jew (because remember, Greek culture at the time was hot and Athens in particular was seen as an intellectual bastion of sorts.) They probably argued, “Hey, we have all sorts of gods who are immortal, but an obscure Jewish guy from Palestine sure ain’t one of ‘em.” But nonetheless some of the people were interested in what Paul had to say (Luke notes that a lot of people were content to simply pontificate about the latest ideas at the time). So they took him to a place called the Areopagus, which functioned as a place of settling matters of jurisprudence.

Paul seizes this opportunity, taking the floor and launching into his gospel message. Notice how he begins his dialogue. “People of Athens! I see that in every way are very religious.” This was actually a commendation, because he affirmed the fact that they were somehow seeking to worship or reach out to God. And also notice the fact that he addressed them as Athenians. He didn’t open up his sermon by saying, “Non-descript people group who I’m preaching to, repent or burn in hell!” Rather he started with a positive affirmation which was actually quite true.

Next, Paul exploits one of their idols, using it as an entry point to introduce his God to them. He says, hey you guys have this inscription to an unknown God, and wouldn’t you know I happen to know something about a God that you guys don’t know about so take a listen to this:

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

This is such a profound message of God’s initiative to reach out to us. He corrects the idea of man’s tendency to make God in his own image, thus fashioning idols and temples and so forth; he turns this notion completely on its head by saying that no, we are in fact made in God’s image. And he’s not dependent on us, endlessly requiring our servitude so that he may be both appeased and sustained. Furthermore, he’s not a vending machine that only blesses us when we do something for him. Rather, out of his own loving initiative, he is the one that ultimately serves us and gives life and provision to us. And look at what Paul is doing; he’s essentially giving the message of the entire OT without using OT quotes or references. He understands that his audience doesn’t have the OT as a reference point, so he communicates biblical truths in a way that they can understand. In fact, he intersperses quotes from their own poets and philosophers. Aratus, a Cilician Stoic philosopher and poet remarked that we are God’s offspring. And the Cretan philosopher Epiminedes wrote that “in him we live and move and have our being.” These are beautiful statements which completely undermine the sentiment that we have come about by happenstance; indeed, God was intimately involved in everything from choosing our skin color and ethnicity to determining where we would be born; God infuses his own image into us so that through interacting with each other, we would come to know him in his fullness (theologically, this is called the variegated or multi-faceted nature of God). So it is no mistake that we are who we are, rather it is God’s perfect wisdom to put us in the optimal position where we could reach out to him and know him.

Finally, Paul closes with the revelation of God’s appointed judge, Jesus Christ. He will rule the earth with justice and judge every act; he will put everything in its proper place. A foreshadow of this kind of perfect adjudication is found in the resurrection and thus vindication of his Son; he was unjustly put to death, but God rose him from the dead in effect reversing the edict of guilt showing that he had power over such definitive decrees. Not even the stark reality of death can overcome God’s desire to mete out justice. In fact, Christ is justice personified and that is why he prevails even over death. This is a massive comfort to those who long for justice in this world; those who are involved in combating sex trafficking and tackling civil rights and equality issues. In the person of Christ, we see that mankind’s ultimate trajectory is toward becoming a perfectly just and loving being like him.

Through a comparison of the tenets of Epicureanism and Stoicism (link to ppt slide), we can see specifically how Paul contextualized the gospel to his audience. (The red and blue circled items are tenets which line up with Christianity while the strike-throughs do not) Note a few things here: 1) Paul affirms some of the positive aspects found in each philosophy (namely, free will and determinism). And he corrects some things which are vital to understanding Christianity and knowing the incarnational nature of God. For instance, God is theistic rather than deistic and understanding our existence does not come from abstract wisdom (logos) but rather through knowing God the person in Christ (Logos). Paul has a keen understanding of his audience and out of love, he can empathize with some of their beliefs and make a meaningful connection with them.

How God has Contextualized the Gospel to Me

Several years back I developed something called the Evil Survey, where I simply ask students about the problem of evil. After all, this is an issue that the gospel seeks to rectify and it hits home with everyone, religious or not. So the method is to simply ask questions and understand people’s world views. It doesn’t use any biblical language and avoids asking both leading and loaded questions. Through this, I’ve had many eye-opening conversations with people from all kinds of backgrounds including believers, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, former believers and so forth. Notably, what I’ve come to learn through this process of listening and asking questions is that 1) people genuinely long for someone to listen to and either challenge or affirm their worldviews and 2) I have to respect where people are at in a given moment in their lives. It’s as if God has been evangelizing me or teaching me the gospel through this, making me more human in the process. And this comports with a statement made by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear.

So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.” [2]

Though he’s speaking about the Christian community here, I believe full and well that we should apply this to those outside of the church. Additionally, I work in a multi-cultural environment where rather than preaching to my colleagues, I have taken the approach of simply seeking to understand where they are coming from. What are their life narratives? For instance, as someone who has migrated from the Middle East, what is it like to now live in America? What are the challenges, what do you like and dislike about it? What do you think about life and spirituality? Again, this process has served to humanize me and it has made me realize that as human beings, we all stand together in a sort of solidarity in that we are trying to make sense of life and seek some kind of meaningful purpose.

Counter-intuitive, Unconditional Love

But the main way that I have come to know the gospel in a contextual manner is through my wife. My wife and I are almost complete opposites. She’s always on time, has a schedule for everything and is detailed oriented to the tee. She doesn’t like to talk much either; she’s a doer. I couldn’t be more annoying to her. I’m always late, I take my time and I’m a lofty thinker and my head is usually stuck in the clouds. Plus, I like to talk. A. Lot. I always ask her, “What’s on your mind?” and I want to engage her in some kind of theological discussion, to which I receive the proverbial eye roll and sigh from her.

All this said, over the years, I’ve come to find out that my wife is one of the most loving people I have ever known. She puts up with so much of my stuff. If marriage teaches you anything, it’s that yes, you’re a jerk. See, mom will never admit this to you, though she knows it’s true. She’ll love you till the day you die but your wife loves you enough to tell it like it is. But my wife loves this jerk. She accepts me as I am and affirms the good things she sees in me on a daily basis. I’m simply floored and smitten by this kind of love. I’ve come to the conclusion that her unconditional love is God’s incarnate love to me. It’s fascinating how counter-intuitive his love can be. I thought that love would be putting me with someone who is the same as me, but in fact, it has come through two seemingly opposites. But this is wonderful, because through her I’m able to view an intriguing and captivating side of God that I would have otherwise never known. And now we have these beautiful children who are a product of this incarnate love. When I look into their faces, I’m amazed and taken aback at what God has done. We’re all vastly different in our little family unit and thus we’re put in a position where we can each grow in our humanity, that is, in Christ’s image together. So my family has sort of been the church to me over this past half year or so.

My Hope for the Church

In closing, I want to remark on a saying that I used to hear in ministry. It’s that you don’t have to necessarily like your fellow church members but you do have to love them. This is one of the most misguided sentiments I have ever heard. How are you going to love someone that you don’t like anything about? The gospel affirms each of us as individual and unique human beings. While the cross reveals the ugliness of our sin, it also helps us to look past this in order to see the beautiful images of God in one another and simply appreciate, learn from and behold that beauty. When we look at one another, we are looking into the face of Christ, I believe. Wouldn’t it be great to simply relate to one another in the church in this way? This is my prayer and hope. I’m starting first in midst of my family members. And who knows, I may someday again commit myself to a particular church fellowship. Thank you all for listening and God bless you all abundantly.

[1] Kayser, Phillip G., “Ruins of Athens – The Curse of the Athenian Model of Education”. Biblical Blueprints. 2009. Pg. 4 [http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/RuinsOfAthens.pdf]

[2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “Life Together”. 1954.

*[Author’s note] This originally said, “Very interesting that Jesus would say this; there is nothing about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer, yet this is right at the end of it making a seemingly important point.” This is of course wrong. I’ve both read and written about the Lord’s Prayer many times, so I might chalk that glaring error up to confirmation bias; I felt strongly about making a point about forgiveness and so I viewed the prayer a certain way. Good lesson in objectivity or the lack thereof we sometimes display. This could also indicate that I simply need someone to proofread my material beforehand :)

Thursday

I arrived late Thursday and had a very long talk with one of the students from the Hyde Park chapter. He asked how things had been. Honestly the messages in my chapter have greatly changed in the last year. I really see that God has worked on my pastor. He no longer adds world mission into places where I do not feel it is obvious. Our relationship is better these days, and he understands that our relationship is very different. I try to understand him more, and I try to communicate more with him. The student was glad to hear. We talked a lot and I got to sleep very late. I had requested to have bible study with the chapter leader the next morning so I was very tired by the time I awoke. He asked me to read the book of Ephesians and give a brief outline.

Friday

I brought my outline to the bible study. I outlined the book as such:

• Blessings of the Spirit
• Who Christ is and his role in God’s redemptive plan.
• Who Paul is and his role in God’s redemptive plan.
What the Church is and its role in God’s redemptive plan.
• How the church ought to act to carry out that plan and how its members should act to help carry out that plan.
• A call to persevere against Satan.

He showed me his outline which was much more detailed. We talked about how the church should proclaim the kingdom. And he taught me how the church should shepherd God’s people, but the context of John 10 needed to be carefully understood. He said that UBF has been given shepherds. I mentioned that while the sacrificial nature of UBF shepherds and their great love for their students was its strength sometimes it was had been over stepped. He corrected me “Many times.” He mentioned that shepherds proclaim the kingdom. It was a very good bible study. Later that day I went to campus night.

Campus Night

People were totally bewildered to see me. I think in large part because I was unaccompanied by my “shepherd”. I suppose it is also surprising to see someone travel such a long way when they are really obligated in any way. It didn’t escape my notice that Yvonne Lee stared for a long time. I eventually moved to the back and when I saw Dr. Augustine he was shocked to see me.

Later Dr. John Lee from Springfield joined. The first speaker was Jacob Lee. I remember he was funny. At one point he said “I was not good enough to called Abraham so they named me Jacob which means deceiver. But I came to like the name since he had 12 sons.” I was put off by his talk. The powerpoint read “Why UBF should remain in world mission.” I didn’t believe this was a point of debate, and furthermore his answer amounted to- because UBF always has. Just because something has always been done one way does not mean it has to. But eventually he made his point. He presented from Stephan Lutz book calling campus mission strategic. I won’t go into details but he gives an outline from that book.

Mark V was the next speaker. His talk was on the history of campus mission movements. Mark V spoke incredibly fast. I was having a hard time keeping up with him. He also had a pained look on his face. I later found out he was in extreme back pain, and I suspect he was trying to get through it as fast as possible. What really struck me about his presentation was that campus mission movements grew out of YMCAs and the student volunteer movement in the mid 19th century. That explains a lot. American imperialism and a drive to evangelize the world have often went hand in hand (along with all their problems too). And here we see it.

It was remarkable how so many of the ideas of the founders of the campus movement are so similar to the ideas that Samuel Lee would later speak of. Hearing these ideas from someone who doesn’t have the history of Samuel Lee gave them more of an air of legitimacy. The frequent quotes from the founders of the student volunteer movement and its role as a parachurch were very helpful for me to understand the core foundational ideas behind UBF and its relation to Christian doctrine and why at times this has been a weak point in campus mission movements.

Kevin Albright went on to give a survey of Intervarsity. He mentioned that they do a lot of the same things as UBF. They do inductive bible study for instance. He also mentioned that many people in their organization were not encouraged at times, and the author of the book he read on Intervarsity regrets that they were not given more help. One thing he mentioned that struck me was that Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) was more for new converts and Intervarsity was more for discipleship.

Here he meant “discipleship” as “become a more mature Christian”. But for me I have always understood discipleship as growing in Christ in whatever capacity the Holy Spirit moved you. For me I have been taught that a Christian is a disciple and a disciple is a Christian (Acts 11:26, Ephesians 2:19-22). So for me telling me someone is not a disciple is the same as saying they are not Christian. But one can be a Christian and not mature. Although it is dangerous to judge or label, a goal of maturing Christians is a noble one at the very least (this makes no mention of the methods however). To call UBF a “discipleship ministry” has always been redundant to me.

In the next article I will talk about the last few speakers. I was more than a little surprised (and inspired) by their testimonies. I also caught up to someone on Joe Schafer’s recent letter, so I will include that next time too.

But there is also a side of Islam that we can not easily go and pass by – or even ignore. What about my Muslim neighbor, my acquaintance who practices his religion and remains a peaceful man or woman? Do I dare to befriend him/her, or even talk about faith? Am I ready to confess and testify God’s love before that person? Am I willing to know some principles of Islam in order to be able to respond in a more detailed way? Am I willing to trust God instead of just trying to get away from contact with Muslims?

Being from Germany, I am confronted with a society that houses many Muslim immigrants, as well as experiencing that the Christians in my surroundings are very often not interested in the subject of Muslim-Christian dialogue. Many Christians have doubts about it because they see it as either superficial (because it just enhances where we are “same”) or dangerous (because it can produce quarrels).

In fact, Youtube is full of examples that show us how a dialogue like that should not be held. There are so many bad and unhelpful examples. Still, there is something that i found different and very interesting. Since 2005, the “University of Wollongong, Campus Dubai” holds Muslim-Christian dialogue sessions, incited by students and carried out by two speakers – one representing the Muslim, the other representing the Christian view.

The 2013 dialogue between Rev. Tabibti Anayabwile and Imam Dr. Shabir Ally was particularly interesting. The topic of that session was:

How can we find forgiveness from a Holy God?

1.) both speakers respect each other (in this case, are good friends) and respect God
2.) they strictly keep to the subject in all they say about the Bible and the Qur’an
3.) the topic is relevant for every human that seeks God
4.) they agree to disagree at the end – and dismiss the session by telling the audience to research more on the topic and being / becoming responsible believers

Here is the trailer on Youtube:

If this makes you feel interested, just type “Dubai dialogue 2013 Christian” into Google and you will get the full session in Videos, each video has a duration of about 10-15 mins

I would be happy for some feedback on this topic!

I have only been in my current chapter for a little over a year now, but I feel like what happened last night was something, by accounts of many former and current long standing members that at the very least was very new. Instead of having a bible study, testimony sharing bible symposium my pastor decided that we should do something to minister to non-believers, or sceptics. This was a key idea in Stephan Lutz’s book that was required reading for UBF leaders recently. The idea that book, of which I cannot recall the name, is that if only minister to the churched we are not really fulfilling the great commission. As followers of Christ we must take the message to the places that need it the most and this includes hostile arenas. In my experience colleges offer the most hostile arenas for the modern evangelist. I can recall just two days ago a pastor coming to SIUE to preach on the quad. He was assaulted by an atheist after affirming that Levitical Law was the word of God (to be fair to all involved, his wording could have been a little bit better in light of Galatians…) I was very inspired by the change I saw in my pastor’s move for this. Here are some things of note.

An Unrestricted Forum

As a teacher I know well the danger that comes with an unrestricted forum. It can lead to some major issues. If we allow for all opinions, it is very easy to run into situations where people’s emotions get the best of them. It also allows for people to make themselves looks vulnerable (read: stupid). The bonus is it allows for some major change in people. The degree in which is can be bad is also the degree in which it can be good. I was under the impression that the conversation would be more of a panel style. This would allow for no possibility of the above problems. When I arrived I found that it was more of an open forum. I also discovered we had ran out of room. We had so many students that half the missionaries moved to the hall to make room.

The bible answer men

We looked hard to find an authority to host the forum. Some more prominent UBF leaders such as Dr. Ben Toh were invited but regrettably could not make it. I was selected by default because I had lived for 4 years with an atheist in college. My former roommate’s father also joined me. The pastor made the 3^rd but we still wanted a key note answer man. For this I invited Missionary Nirosh from Springfield UBF. He is fairly new to UBF in Springfield. Nirosh is quite a character. He is originally from Sri Lanka. He tried Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Rastafarianism before he came to Christianity. He has missioned in Papua New Guinea, India and Indonesia mostly dealing with tribal peoples. He is the most graceful man I know. In addition to runing a company that helps various groups improve their public image, he is also frequently called in when various Christian organizations need advice on changing their image. He was truly a God send. Nirosh is also the most graceful man I know and he delivers the message in Springfield UBF once a month.

Adam

Adam was the only actual atheist who was there. All the other students in attendance were Christian. I want to note two things from this. First I believe that many college Christians want answers to the challenges to Christianity. They don’t merely seek the basic gospel, for many growing up in church this has all been made known to them. Many college Christians fall away from faith because these lingering doubts grow and go unanswered. Adam had a list of questions to answer and instead of a panel style discussion it turned into Adam asking a list of questions he brought and the whole room answering him. I tried to directly answer him as best as I could. Nirosh’s answers would often times be so full of grace I felt as though they could not be possibly convincing but never the less this caused Adam to soften as the night went on. He was not so hostile by the end and I was thankful for his arrival. He was born and raised a Jew, so he actually had a very accurate knowledge of the Old Testament. Things became awkward when he said something that one of the missionary’s daughters took as an accusation. Her voice was calm but I could tell she was livid. He apologized and things moved along.

The Mormon

The last topic on the agenda was the exclusivity and sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Adam quickly asked which Christianity we meant and I said that we meant traditional Christianity as affirmed by the Nicene Creed. I paused and then said “We must also add the Anathansian Creed. It gives the doctrine of the trinity. The word “trinitas” appears nowhere in the New Testament. We will exclude other Christian groups who do not hold this such as Mormonism.” This caused a Mormon to become very upset with me. She said I had no right or authority to claim Mormonism was not Christianity and she had known Christ all her life. She said she was unsure of where I heard such a claim. I remarked as such “I may be wrong, but my source is Ravi Zacharias. He is a well-known theologian who actually spoke at the Mormon tabernacle some years ago.” My pastor then asked her about the trinity. I was upset but then something remarkable happened. Paul started speaking to her about how God was coeternal and that only the sacrifice of Jesus was needed for salvation. “No!” he nearly yelled when she objected “Only the sacrifice of Jesus is necessary.” This was in stark contrast to the Mormon version of things which says that Jesus is not atonement but actually an example. That we must follow the law. Nirosh turned to the Adam and said “This is why we don’t bring these things up.” Adam smiled. This woman and my pastor had a discussion on the faith vs works and the trinity with my pastor citing On the Incarnation of the Word to refute her. At some point Nirosh calmed things down by saying that while she may not believe in those aspects of Mormonism he had spoken with Mormons who denied that God was triune.

 
Conclusion
Overall I felt like the conference was a great success despite the awkwardness I felt at times. I am unsure I want to be the answer man again because it was very frightening to me at times. With my friends who are unbelievers I can speak easily, but to total strangers it requires a lot more confidence that felt lacking in me at times.

1) God has a plan, but it’s unwise to focus on it excessively.

I always find it odd when Christians place such a high taboo on fortune telling and magic, but always talk about “God’s will”. If you are always trying to discover “God’s will” for your life you are trying to divine the future. Jesus rebuked the Jews of his day various times for demanding and searching for signs. Trying to decide what God’s will is is akin to asking what you are doing tomorrow. You might have some idea but you really don’t know, and by the time you do know tomorrow is still a day away. Dwelling on God’s will is dangerous and not practical. It best it is of no consequence and at worst its fortune telling. Therefore I suggested to the man not try to concern himself with if it is God’s plan or not.

2) God’s calling is external and internal.

UBF usually presents the “Shepherd” identity as a special calling you have by virtue of UBF showing up. I once met with an admissions officer of Covenant Theological Seminary. The man asked me “Do you feel called to seminary?” I admitted that I was unsure. His next question was puzzling: “How much do you have in student loans?” I told him I had none, but was unsure why that was related to if I was called or not. As well as I can remember he said “God’s calling is both external and internal. You must have a strong desire to minister, and your conditions must allow you to. Some people come here with seventy-five thousand dollars in student loans and are newly married and want to get a masters in divinity. I always say to those people ‘Do you think that God is making your path straight for this?’” I told him as a doctor he would be in the right place to help minister to many people, but what matters is if he wants to. He must have an internal call, manifested as a desire. I suggested he pray about it, and I told him that what he wanted to do was more important than what others wanted him to do.

3) Know what you are getting into before getting into it.

One thing I emphasized was that there was absolutely nothing wrong with being a campus minister and being a UBF shepherd if you go into it knowing what that entails. I said that many people had become “shepherds” without knowing what that meant. They believed they were doing “God’s work” but really it meant marrying by faith and adhering to a lot of over bearing authority, strange cultural norms, random titles, ect. I referred him to the 6 stages of UBF training slides that UBF produced some time ago. I told him that his “calling” would entail what appeared in these slides. UBF training model

4) There is a season for every activity under the sun

I mentioned that even if he decided to do campus mission that there is a season for campus mission and there is a mission that isn’t for campus mission. Every believer is called to “evangelize” – which simply means to live and speak in such a way that people are pointed to and find out about the good news of Jesus. Not every believer will have the gift of evangelism. Those who are gifted are able to connect with unbelievers in powerful ways and are able to equip other believers who do not have the gift of evangelism to be more effective in their attempts to share their faith (Ephesians 4:11, 12). People with the gift of apostleship will likely have evangelism in the spectrum of gifts, but they are wired to start new works, break new ground, and get movements moving. Teachers may or may not have the gift of evangelism, but are able to open and teach the Word of God in clear, practical, and powerful ways… in the end giftedness simply describes the way the Spirit has empowered us to fulfill the great commission, to be disciples who order our lives in love for God and others, who make disciples (helping unbelievers become believers and helping believers to walk more fully and authentically in the power of the gospel. This is the call on every believer, though we all have different gifts that will give us strengths to carry out that call. Evangelism is not tied to an area. There is no promised land of evangelism. Campus mission is only one place. I told him that many in UBF do campus mission for a while and God calls them away.

5) Being a true Shepherd does not constrict the gospel to a script

The shepherd’s goal is to evangelize and lead others to Christ. If he plans to do this by constricting and limiting his or her efforts to a single, scripted version of Christianity while focusing his or her efforts into a tiny socioeconomic group of students from wealthy families- I feel that the shepherd has sold out his dream of evangelism for a lie. I told the man that I could never get over how I heard people repeatedly pray for raising disciples on affluent college campuses while my students were gunned down, murdered people, and drew weapons on me. I told him that simply donating 1% of your tithe once a year isn’t what the scriptures meant when they said “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” I encouraged the man, that regardless of his acceptance of the title and call for campus ministry he should help the poor and disadvantaged.

I told that if he accepted the title with all this in mind, then there would be no problem with him accepting the title.

What do you think? I know many might disagree with some of the things I said here, others might agree. What would have you have told the man?

In their own words

Before I share my thoughts, here is a published description of “Campus Evangelism”. This matches what I was taught.

In this way God gave our ministry the specific mission of raising students as spiritual leaders. A broken shepherd heart and a burning love towards students became the spirit of our ministry. Because of this we had to see ourselves as permanent students. Those who graduated from college and got a job did not think of themselves as salary men but took pride in being shepherds of students. Whether others recognized us or not, we loved students more than the president or the chancellor or professors.

 

We believed that we owned the campus. With this sense of mission and pride of being shepherds, we dedicated our youth and possessions to God. Especially, married women spent their time more on campus than at home, more in taking care of student sheep than their own children. Those who could not graduate from college came to our ministry and accepted campus mission. Though they were older than average students, they entered the college in order to shepherd college students. Moreover, even though the rent around the university was more expensive than other places, we wanted to live near the campus and feed student sheep with the word of God.

 

Maintaining the status of a permanent college student and campus shepherd is a peculiar way of life and required constant struggle. When old people kept on coming and going through the campus, they became the objects of suspicion and investigation. Some was accused of being a kind of criminal. To make matters worse, some missionaries were even put into prison, including Dr. Joseph Chung of Chicago UBF, who was imprisoned for a few days. In spite of all these hardships, we did not abandon campus mission because it was God who gave us the specific mission of campus evangelism, and this mission became our reason to live and the purpose of our lives

 

God did not call us to be ordinary people who does ordinary work. Among all peoples of all nations, God called us to be shepherds for students. Our mission does not end in gathering students. God called us to be disciple-makers who raise up spiritual leaders and shepherds. May God help us to keep this spiritual heritage of God’s specific calling to us as disciple-makers among college students to the end.

Source: ubf history

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– Nothing good comes to mind about the slogan campus evangelism. I am too jaded by this one. Anyone?

Bad (change it)

– I cannot think of anything to change in this one. I can only think of things that must be stopped.

Ugly (stop it)

– I was taught to believe that we owned the campus. Note the statement above “We believed that we owned the campus.” This led to things like marching around the campus 7 times like Jericho, which I personally did not do but it was reported several times from other chapters. But I did walk on campus much and participated in ubf prayer meetings on campus. Some claimed they would bury their bones on campus.

– I was taught that ubf is a college ministry, and it is. But they also extend the ubf context to all ages of life. The have BBF (for babies), MBF (for middle school/elementary), HBF (for high school), UBF (for university). Then after that you go through MbF (marriage by faith) and start the whole cycle over again. The ubf people who become 60 or 70 years old are pressured to become “silver missionaries”, usually accompanied by a joke about “retire” meaning “put new tires on”. So ubf presents as a campus ministry, but tries to enforce all ages to conform to the campus ministry paradigm. You can’t have it both ways. Either ubf must choose to actually be a campus ministry only or create unique programs suited for various ages.

– I was taught to “be part of campus life” my whole life. As ubf’s own words say, “Maintaining the status of a permanent college student and campus shepherd is a peculiar way of life and required constant struggle.” ubf demands that you stay a permanent student. So ubf should not be surprised when many leaders in ubf eventually leave.

Also, we have stopped going to the campuses to invite students to Bible study. We may have lost our initial “fire,” zeal and enthusiasm, because of the many burdens of life. There is surely also truth to this.

Work Harder. So is the solution simply that we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and repent of our “family-centeredness,” laziness and worldliness, and just work harder to re-devote ourselves for evangelization, “fishing,” and proselytizing? Perhaps, so.

But is this it? Just try harder? Study the Bible more?

Might I propose reasons that some (not all) might find uncomfortable or disconcerting?

Let Local Leaders Lead. David Garrison, in his 2003 book Church Planting Movements, says that once a missionary has established a church among the native people, the task is to instill in them a passion for starting new churches, not under the direction of the missionary, but by the indigenous leader’s own authority and with their own resources. Could this be a reason why the work of God in UBF has stalled for the most part, except for a few places? Our missionaries are still the ones in authority wherever there is a UBF chapter in virtually all countries. Is this bad?

Authoritarian leadership. UBF has an authoritarian leadership style, which Jesus explicitly says that his disciples should not do (Mt 20:25-27; Mk 10:42-44). Both Peter and Paul say the same thing (1 Pet 5:3; Phm 8-9). “Lording our leadership over others” just kills the spirit of those lorded over sooner or later, even if they may welcome it at first when they are new “naive” Christians. After 50 years of UBF history, authoritarian leadership is only now being gradually addressed. Surely, everyone agrees that a leader should not “bully” his members in the name of love, shepherding, or “training.” They should gently persuade others, as both Jesus and Paul did in the NT, and as God Himself did in the OT.

With prayer and respect, everyone in the church should be able to freely speak whatever is on their heart and mind. Once someone asked me, “Can we say this in the church?” I was surprised at her question, because the answer is “Of course,” since we are among Christians who love each other. But the reality is that if she vocalized an objection or posed a disapproving question about a leader’s decision, she would be regarded negatively and unfavorably. So, she “shut up.”

There must be friendship, equality and justice. Jesus, our Lord, calls us his friends (Jn 15:15). David Garrison says that a priesthood of all believers among Christians (1 Pet 2:9; Ex 19:6) is the most egalitarian doctrine in the Bible. But when a missionary is the one in authority over indigenous people, equality is only a theory but not a reality, because the missionary who planted the church will always be “a notch above” his converts and disciples.

Staff education must remove cultural and personal elements as much as possible. Every culture is blind to its own eccentricities and uniqueness. In Korean culture, hierarchy and order is perfectly normal and few would question it. In the U.S., equality, fairness and justice is the norm. When a UBF missionary disciples his American convert, he will inadvertently impose his own cultural values on his American disciple. Unless he consciously “denies himself” to not do so, he will be converting his American disciple to become like a Korean Christian.

Missionary mistakes. According to Roland Allen’s classic Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, a major mistake of missionaries is that they did too much. The book is available online here. Rather than simply sowing the seeds of the gospel and entrusting the native converts’ growth and development to the Holy Spirit, they over-trained them, thus re-making them into the missionaries’ own image and culture, rather than allowing them to grow into the indigenous Christians that God would have them become. Even after years of ministry, the missionaries continued to impose strict discipline and tight control over the affairs of the native Christians. They did not leave the church in their hands, for they regarded them as immature and “not ready,” compared to the missionaries “high” standards.

False sense of importance and indispensability. Let me conclude with a paragraph from Allen that explains why missionaries have prevented the growth of indigenous Christian leaders (Chapter 8):

“The secret of success in (Paul’s) work lies in the beginning at the very beginning. It is the training of the first converts which sets the type for the future. If the first converts are taught to depend on the missionary, if all work, evangelistic, educational, social is concentrated in his hands, the infant community learns to rest passively on the man from whom they receive their first insight into the Gospel. Their faith having no sphere for its growth and development lies dormant. A tradition very rapidly grows up that nothing can be done without the authority and guidance of the missionary, the people wait for him to move, and, the longer they do so, the more incapable they become of any independent action. Thus the leader is confirmed in the habit of gathering all authority into his own hands, and of despising the powers of his people, until he makes their inactivity an excuse for denying their capacity. The fatal mistake has been made of teaching the converts to rely upon the wrong source of strength. Instead of seeking it in the working of the Holy Spirit in themselves, they seek it in the missionary. They put him in the place of Christ, they depend upon him.”

After 50 years of UBF history, many indigenous converts may have already adopted UBF traditions and methodologies, which are culturally Korean, as their norm of Christian life. Can they still be autochthonous? What can we now begin to do as a global ministry for the next 50 years?

Sandwitched between 2 staggering sorrows. I arrived in Manila at 1 am on Fri July 20. I didn’t sleep because of jet lag. I received an email about the horrific Colorado shootings, which killed 12 and wounded 58. The next day I received another staggering news of a close friend having a stillborn birth. My heart has been aching and thrown into a tailspin ever since I arrived in Manila. Sandwitched between these 2 sorrows, I attended Antipolo UBF on Fri evening, a 2 year old church plant. The lead church planter is Dr. John Talavera, a professor of Anatomy and Physiology and his lovely wife Hannah.

50 students came; 3 student leaders established. Last year, when I visited Antipolo UBF, I expected a few students to show up for a weekly group Bible study since it was a new church plant. But 30 students showed up which stunned me. Now a year later, 50 students attended on Fri. It was as exhilarating as the 2 events were staggering. In 1 year, 3 student leaders have been established who now lead 3 weekly group Bible studies.

Jesus slept during the storm. The students welcomed me with a song and gave me an Ignite T-shirt, the name of their Christian fellowship on the campus. Based on Hannah’s recommendation, I led an impromptu Bible study on Mk 4:35-41. I emphasized that Jesus slept peacefully during a storm because he trusted God, while the disciples were frantic and fearful of losing their life because they trusted themselves and their own abilities. Since they will have their preliminary exams next week, I asked, “Do you sleep well?”

The gospel. Mainly, I explained the gospel to them. Though Jesus slept in peace in the storm, one day, on the cross, he would not be able to sleep. He had to die awake and in full consciousness because of my sins, so that I, who should be restless and sleepless forever, would be able to sleep in peace all my days. During this storm, Jesus could trust God and sleep. But during the ultimate storm of his life on the cross, Jesus could not sleep, because of his love for me. He who should live would willingly and voluntarily die, so that I, who should die, might live.

Teary testimonies. After my exposition of the text, several students shared with tears how they were moved by Jesus who loved them and died for them in spite of their sins. While some cried, others laughed with joy.

Thank God for the work of the Holy Spirit in Antipolo. It was my first day of a 2 month trip. But it felt like the highlight and climax of my trip on the first day. Pray for me and for my friends in the Philippines.

Knowledge. Sadly, some Christians may be quite zealous and excited, but they do not have much to say. Knowledge must be deeply rooted in the Bible and the great theological tradition. Some have said that studying theology is divisive. I would say that ignorance is more divisive. Others say, “Just study the Bible.” This is good. But anyone can very easily “just study the Bible” with a narrow, skewed, rigid, unbalanced, inflexible, tribal and sectarian way that is quite offensive to other Christians with different traditions, cultures and experience. For example, it is not generally regarded as offensive for an American to disagree with their leader. But in Korean culture, it is invariably perceived very negatively as being rude, disrespectful and an anathema.

Audience. In UBF jargon, it would be “know your sheep.” Aristotle said, “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient (not the teacher).” A good Bible teacher must know the prejudices, expectations, mood and attitude of the one to whom he wishes to communicate. It helps to know which movies, songs, TV shows, and books average people like. If you don’t know the contemporary culture well, you may be correct, but not heard. This is always a hurdle of cross generational and cross cultural evangelism.

Culture. Be attentive to the patterns and events in the world that correspond to patterns and events in the scriptural revelation. That way, you will discover what the church fathers called the logoi spermatikoi, the seeds of the Word, that can see the good, the true and the beautiful in any culture. Karl Barth, the greatest Protestant theologian of the last century, proposed an image for prospective preachers that is just as valid for prospective evangelists: they should carry the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

TGIF. Today’s evangelists, Bible teachers, shepherds should be thoroughly conversant with the new media: Twitter, Google, Internet/Instant messaging/iPad, Facebook (TGIF), along with podcasting, and the myriad other means of communication available through the Internet.  These new media give the evangelist the opportunity to get his message out 24/7, all over the world at relatively little cost. Some old style, old school Christians are uncomfortable with this. But not interacting could lead to increasing irrelevance. This is here to stay and will only continue to explode.

We have to face the fact that the vast majority of eyes today are not glued to books or to newspapers, but to the computer screen.  Many years ago, a very successful writer said, “The first rule of the writer is to read.” Good advice. To follow it today, we have to get the message into the world where the most “readers” are found.

This is a very exciting time for Christians, in many ways as exciting as the middle years of the 1st century when the message about Jesus was brand new, or as the beginning of the 16th century when the printing press first emerged. Now is a kairos, a privileged moment, to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Viva el Cristo rey! (Long live Christ the King).

Do you embrace Fr. Barron’s 5 points with a sense of excitement and challenge? Can you think of any other points to add? (Here is Fr. Barron’s full transcript of his video: The new evangelization and seminaries.)

This raised a controversial question for me: How should the gospel of Jesus be shared with the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender (GLBT) community? Should we care? Is it even possible? The GLBT community is a political hot button and a divisive issue for Christians, to say the least. However, based on my reading and discussions this past week, I would like to share some of the ideas that I have discovered.

Here are two ways Christians shared with me about how to preach the gospel to homosexuals:

First way: GLBT people are condemned to hell. I asked one of my Christian friends how he would share the gospel if he was invited to a GLBT convention some day. His response was that he would tell them they are all going to hell because they are homosexual.

Seond way: GLBT can be saved if they become heterosexual. Other Christians told me that the gospel can be preached to the GLBT community, but they could only find salvation if they repented of their sin of being GLB or T.

I reject both methods above, personally. I also personally reject a lot of the thinking behind those methods. As I formulate my answer, I would like to hear from our ubfriends community your thoughts on this question. I found this topic to be a highly challenging and thought-provoking way to clarify my understanding of the gospel we all claim to love and preach.

I am uncomfortable with both extremes. Churches seem to be either celebrating homosexuals or condemning them to hell.

1. Is there a better way to share the gospel?
2. How would you preach the gospel at a GLBT convention?

If you can get past your phobias and thoughtfully consider these questions, I think you will find your Christian beliefs challenged and clarified.

Bowing to alternative views that appeal to us has always been a temptation. We refuse to believe there is only one way of salvation, only one way to the Father. We choose to believe there are many paths to God.

Why? Because if there are many paths to God instead of just one, then we can willfully and selfishly choose the path we want. We can live the way we want, and never be held accountable by God. We can choose a religion that appeals to our own pride and vanity.

This quotation by evangelist Michael Youssef recently appeared in a friend’s Facebook post, and when I saw it, I instinctively felt a negative reaction. I hope you don’t mind humoring me as I try to explain myself, because this matters to me. I am not objecting to the content of Dr. Youssef’s words, but to the tone and attitude behind them as they are likely to be perceived in our present historical context. I think that his words are unlikely to accomplish what he hopes they will, which is to bring sinners to repentance.

Perhaps I seem arrogant to challenge a man who is, I am sure, very great and genuine. But I am bothered by his words and want to tell you why.

I do not deny that sinners are selfish, willfully disobedient and given over to Satan’s temptation. But as followers of Jesus, we ought to be willing to apply those rebukes to ourselves first. And God is using this postmodern generation to help us do just that.

A few years ago, Rick Richardson spoke at a UBF Staff Conference. One of his major points was that we are now living and evangelizing in a context where the church has a bad name. There is a deep breach of trust between Christians and non-Christians which we ignore at our own peril. I’ve spent years speaking to students on campus and have seen this firsthand. Over the last two centuries, the Church has damaged its witness by assuming a position of privilege and power. Christians’ overconfidence in their own positions, dogma, and practice has left many people hurt and wounded (even dead!) and deeply disillusioned by the Christian faith. In this historical context, shouldn’t our stance be one of humility and openness to criticism? But I don’t hear this in the quote by Mr. Youssef.

I recently read The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission by Leslie Newbigin (Revised edition, 1995). The meaning of the book’s title is this. As Christians, we have been brought into God’s kingdom. That kingdom in all its glory is already fully present and realized in Jesus. But among his followers in this world, that kingdom is still a well hidden secret, not yet apparent to the human eye. Jesus has died and risen and been bodily glorified, but we as yet have not. Until we have been glorified with Jesus, our relationship to this world must resemble the relationship that Jesus had when he physically walked among us: a relationship characterized by openness and meekness.

Newbigin bases his argument on the principle of election. Election has been widely misunderstood and misapplied. God’s elect are people chosen and called by God. But because they are sinners, they all too easily mistake their election for a kind of special status that makes them superior to the non-elect. This happened among Israelites in the Old Testament, and it happens within the Church today. All too easily, election morphs into a position of privilege and power. But the biblically accurate picture of election is a position not of privilege but of humility and suffering.

God’s elect are called to the way of the cross. Here we need to be very careful, because this too is often misunderstood. What is the way of the cross? Is it to obey a life of “mission,” of obedience to church practices, dogmas or even to Bible verses? At times it may include these, but the way of the cross is much more than these. To follow the way of the cross it to live with a deep sense of responsibility toward our fellow human beings. It is to live as a witness to the salvation we have been given in Jesus. This responsibility goes far beyond verbally stating certain uncompromising truths which are commonly used in evangelistic presentations. No, it is much, much harder than that. To follow the way of the cross, we have to actually live out and embody the uncompromising truths of the gospel.

The way of the cross, according to Newbigin, requires that we enter into mutual relationships of love with God and with the Other (the non-Christian). This relationship with the Other may be hard and long-suffering. It may take enormous investments of time, humility and love to lay the foundations of trust. Trust develops through open, reciprocal dialogue where privilege, power and position have no place. This is the nature of missionary encounter. It involves listening to, entering into the reality of, and even accepting the rebuke of the Other. You can’t enter into this kind of mutual dialogue with Other as anything but equals before the cross, as a living witness to Jesus who is there seeking the sinner.

Missionary encounter doesn’t happen when you hone your argument skills, puff up your chest, and boldly declare your uncompromising convictions, letting the chips fall where they may. That doesn’t resemble Jesus. Nor, for that matter, Peter or Paul.

This is how Newbigin (p. 182) describes the purpose of dialogue with people who do not share our faith:

This purpose can only be obedient witness to Jesus Christ. Any other purpose, any goal that subordinates the honor of Jesus Christ to some purpose derived from another source, is impossible for Christians. To accept such another purpose would involve a denial of the total Lordship of Jesus Christ. A Christian cannot try to evade the accusation that, for him or her, dialogue is part of obedient witness to Jesus Christ. But this does not mean that the purpose of dialogue is to persuade the non-Christian partner to accept the Christianity of the Christian partner. Its purpose is not that Christianity would acquire one more recruit. On the contrary, obedient witness to Christ means that whenever we with another person (Christian or not) enter into the presence of the cross, we are prepared to receive judgment and correction, to find that our Christianity hides within its appearance of obedience the reality of disobedience. Each meeting with a non-Christian partner in dialogue therefore puts my own Christianity at risk

(emphasis mine).

In other words, my own beliefs and practices of Christianity are never the same thing as Jesus himself. In a true missionary encounter, it is Jesus, not our proclamations of Jesus or anything else, who is at work. Evangelists are always in danger of talking about Jesus as if he is not there, reducing him to a belief system or a few Bible verses. Doctrinal positions may communicate certain things about Jesus, but they are not the same thing as Jesus. Jesus is a person. Sharing the gospel, his personhood, does not resemble a one-way transmission. It is not a monologue in which one party merely issues declarative statements and the other party merely receives them. True communication among persons always involves dialogue.

In another excellent book, Missional Church in Perspective by Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile (2011), the authors put it this way (p. 134):

The gospel is not merely a possession to be passed from one person to another, a kernel that exists in whatever cultural husk is at hand, but rather a living event in, between, and beyond us that changes both parties involved in the encounter.

The words of Michael Youssef which I quoted at the beginning of this article may be true in a certain propositional sense, but in our current historical context they fall far short of reflecting The Truth. I cannot imagine that Jesus himself would approach the Other who is reluctant, (yes, proud, but also) skeptical, disillusioned, and possibly hurt by Christians or the Church with what appears to be flippant disregard, labeling them as selfish, willfully disobedient and given to lies simply because they do not yet believe as he does. Jesus wants far more from us. Jesus requires us to let him love them through us, the forgiven ones, by listening carefully to them, hearing and healing the lack of trust which often lies at the root of their objections, and not assuming that we are the sole possessors of the truth whose job is to defend it all costs. Jesus would never be satisfied with an uncompromising proclamation of doctrines which makes dialogue impossible and drives the nonbeliever away. If Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, then he will be alive and present and active in our encounter with the Other if we allow it.

Near the end of Newbigin’s book (p. 181), he portrays the missionary encounter with a simple yet profound diagram.

The ascending staircases are all the various ways by which human beings have tried to better themselves and reach God. They represent “all the ethical and religious achievements that so richly adorn the cultures of humankind.” But in the center, at the bottom of every staircase, stands a symbol of a different kind. It is not a cultural or belief system but an historic event. This event involved a double exposure. God “exposed himself in total vulnerability” to human beings, allowing us to do to him whatever we pleased. And at the same time, he “exposed us as the beloved of God who are, even in our highest religion, the enemies of God.” This diagram conveys the paradoxical truth that God meets us at the bottom of our staircases, not at the top. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17).

This same paradoxical truth applies in the missionary encounter. My system of Christianity as it has developed through history is one of the staircases. If I want to have an evangelistic meeting with a person of another faith, I need to come down from my staircase to the very bottom, to the base of the cross, where the two of us may stand on equal footing. There must be a self-emptying. “Christians do not meet their partners in dialogue as those who possess the truth and holiness of God but as those who bear witness to a truth and holiness that are God’s judgment on them and who are ready to hear the judgment spoken through the lips and life of their partner of another faith” (emphases mine).

To those who have not heard of him, Tebow is the quaterback of the Denver Broncos, and he is perhaps the most well known Christian in the U.S. today because he always professes his faith publicly whenever he scores a touchdown and whenever he speaks. (At the time of this writing he has over 800,000 followers on Twitter and over 1.3 million subscribers on Facebook.) After a score, he would bow on one knee in prayer, which has been nick-named “Tebowing.” After every game, whenever he is interviewed he always says, “First I thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…” and then he goes on to profusely thank his team mates and his coaches by giving them all the credit for what they do. He is humble, self-effacing, spirited, joyful, likable and obviously happy whenever he speaks. He is 24 years old, single and still a virgin, which is unusual for those who are in professional sports. His parents were American missionaries to the Philippines, and Tebow is presently using his own money to build a hospital in the Philippines.

So much has already been written and said about Tebow by the Christian media, the secular media and on countless sport’s talk shows. But after giving my sermon yesterday on Sanctification, I want to make a connection between Tim Tebow and the Apostle Paul’s frequent use of athletic imagery.

A point I made in my sermon is that the Christian who is being truly sanctified by God is one who does not think of Christian life as a relaxed easy stroll in the park, but as an intense race to the finish in order to win the coveted prize at any cost. Paul frequently used sport’s imagery in his epistles (Php 2:16b; 3:14; 2 Tim 4:8; 1 Cor 9:24-27; Acts 20:24) to capture the spirit, passion, zeal, enthusiasm and victorious joy of the Christian life.

Tim Tebow has captured the imagination of many, both Christian and non-Christian, because he is a winner, and the world loves winners. Even Lady Gaga was impressed and tweeted about what a champion Tebow is! Also, whenever Tebow speaks and plays football, he is intense, real, tough, fearless and confident, yet always humble, unassuming and always deferring credit to God and others. As Paul wrote, we Christians should “shine like stars in the universe” or “shine as lights in the world” (Php 2:15; NIV, ESV). By God’s grace, Tebow seems to be brightly testifying to Christ in our unbelieving world. I pray that God may protect him from Satan’s certain temptation toward anyone whom God is using to reveal the name of Jesus.

Finally, if you are a movies and sports fan as I am, here is a cautionary warning from John Piper if you love movies and sports more than Jesus.

Does sport’s capture your interest? Is your Christian life like a joyful race to the finish line? Surely not like a celebrity, but is God enabling you to shine like a bright light in a dark place because of Jesus?

Camp #1: Begin with God’s holiness and hatred of sin. Members of this camp will say that we need to focus, especially at the outset, on the fact that human beings are sinners under the wrath of God. We need to make people aware of their sinfulness so that they can repent and turn to God to and save themselves from judgment and hell. An example of this kind of preaching can be seen in the 8-minute video clip below by Mark Driscoll. At one point, starting about 4:30, he says, “Some of you — God hates you… God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think you’re funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is meritous. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you; he hates them too. God hates, right now, objectively, personally, hates some of you.” This may be a very extreme example. And, in fairness, you ought to watch the whole clip in order to hear the context of those words. But Mark Driscoll does say it. He claims that, if you haven’t yet made a decision for Christ, God hates you, and he will continue to hate you until you repent.

Camp #2: Begin with God’s unconditional love for sinners. These people say that focusing on God’s hatred of sin is unnecessary, counterproductive, even inconsistent with the kind of gospeling done by Jesus, the apostles and the early church fathers. For an example of this perspective, watch the video presentation of The Gospel in Two Chairs by Pastor Brian Zahnd.

Interestingly, if you listen carefully to what these two pastors are saying, you will find that they have based their gospel presentations on different views regarding the character of God. 

I’m not interested in hearing arguments which of these two perspectives is more correct or biblically supported. It is easy for members of either camp to quote Bible passages to argue that their side is correct, and from experience I have found that proof-texting rarely changes anyone’s mind.

Nor do I want to hear arguments over which of these two methods is more effective among the various groups of people in today’s culture. That would be a very interesting topic, but let’s please save it for another day.

Today I want to approach this on a very personal level. So, Dear Reader, I am posing three personal questions for you. Feel free to answer any or all.

1. What style of gospel preaching, if any, initially helped you to put your faith in Christ? Why do you think it helped you at that time?

2. What style of gospel preaching resonates with you today? Why?

3. If you have a strong negative reaction toward one of these two styles of gospel preaching, why do you react negatively? How does it make you feel? When you hear someone preaching in that style, why do you think they are doing it that way? What do you suppose about their knowledge, background, character, motives, and so on?

Yes, I believe that this is what Jesus meant. In the Old Testament period, God worked out his special purposes within the nation of Israel. But the change from B.C. to A.D. was accompanied by a huge paradigm shift in the way God would continue his salvation plan. The good news of Jesus was to be proclaimed to the nations and take on a new life within each of those nations. A nation is not a collection of isolated individuals. It is an organism, a living system, with a unique God-given character and identity. When the gospel is implanted into a complex living system, it can be transformed into something new and beautiful without sacrificing its special identity and vitality. Implanting a gospel into a complex living system is tricky business. God knows exactly how to do it, but usually we do not.

Sociologist Rodney Stark, in his fascinating book The Rise of Christianity, describes how the faith of the apostles spread over three centuries to become the dominant religion in the western world. This growth wasn’t sustained by Christians locating single converts and training them to make more converts. Rather, Christianity spread through families and communities in unexpected ways, through strange confluences of social, biological, and political forces that defied all human expectation and planning.

In Chapter 4, Stark describes a horrible epidemic that swept through the Roman Empire in 165 A.D., killing approximately one fourth of the population. Some medical historians believe it was smallpox. The city of Alexandria was especially hard hit and lost up to one third of its population. Another disease, perhaps measles, appeared in 251 A.D. and the effects were just as devastating. Historians of religion tend to overlook these epidemics and fail to understand their impact on the church. But Stark believes that these outbreaks played a decisive role in shifting the balance of religious affiliation toward Christianity. He argues that, compared to followers of pagan religions, Christian communities were much better prepared to cope with these tragedies. Christian beliefs and practices resulted in dramatically higher rates of survival. When the epidemics had run their course, Christians comprised a substantially higher percentage of the population because fewer of them died, and the loving and heroic Christian response attracted new followers in the wake of tragedy.

The plagues of 165 and 251 A.D. infected Christians and non-Christians alike. But these groups had very different understanding of what was happening and responded in very different ways. Greek philosophy had no answers. And pagan religion could offer no explanation except, “The gods are angry.” Attempts to appease the gods through sacrifice were ineffective. Wherever an outbreak occurred, pagan priests (along with the doctors, civil authorities and wealthy people) would abandon the city and flee to the countryside, leaving the rest of the population to suffer and die alone. A letter written Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, from approximately the 260 A.D. describes this behavior (p. 83):

At the first onset of disease, [the heathen] pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.

This callous treatment of the sick and dying in the ancient world is confirmed by non-Christian sources. The Greek historian Thucydides, describing a plague that struck Athens in 431 B.C., writes in gory detail (pp. 84-85):

The doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance of the right methods… Equally useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of the oracles, and so forth… they died with no one to look after them; indeed, there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention… The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of the dead bodies of people who had died inside them. For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen to them next, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law… No fear of God or law had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately.

In contrast, the Christian response to the epidemic was driven by an outlook of confidence and hope. Historian William McNeill, quoted by Stark (pp. 80-81), writes:

Another advantage Christians enjoyed over pagans was that the teaching of their faith made life meaningful even amid sudden and surprising death… Even a shattered remnant of survivors who had somehow made it through war or pestilence or both could find warm, immediate and healing consolation in the vision of a heavenly existence for those missing relatives and friends… Christianity was, therefore, a system of thought and feeling thoroughly adapted to a time of troubles in which hardship, disease and violent death commonly prevailed.

Instead of fleeing from the epidemic, Christians heroically stood their ground and remained in their communities to care for the sick and dying. Bishop Dionysius writes (p. 82):

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and administering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead… The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.

No one in the ancient world, neither Christian nor pagan, understood how to treat or cure smallpox or measles. But simple nursing of the sick – for example, providing those with food and water who are too weak to feed themselves – can dramatically increase the chance of survival. “Modern medical experts believe that conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two-thirds or even more” (Stark, p. 89). The differences in survival rates within Christian and non-Christian circles was noticed by ancient people and regarded as miraculous. Apart from any evangelistic effort, the differential rates of mortality during the great epidemics of 165 and 251 A.D. produced a quick and dramatic shift of population toward the Christian faith. And the loving witness and heroic self-sacrifice of Christians in the midst of tragedy improved their reputation in the Roman world, drawing more people to Christ.

The Great Commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 is a call to participate in God’s work of transforming the nations through Christian discipleship. Discipleship may include attempts to convert nonbelievers to faith in Christ. But is that the main part of what Jesus is saying? If we try to interpret the Great Commission in the context of Matthew’s gospel, I believe the answer is no. Matthew’s gospel contains five extended sermons by Jesus. One of these, the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), is focused on discipleship. Reading through the Sermon on the Mount, we find very little about direct evangelism. Jesus does, however, present radically new ways of seeing the world (e.g., as in the Beatitudes) and radically new ways of living and relating to God and to people (e.g., doing good to others without expecting an immediate reward). These teachings equip Christians to deal with the triumphs and tragedies of life in unique ways that set them apart them from their non-Christian neighbors when it really counts. The believers’ Christlike responses to the epidemics of 165 and 251 A.D. were not intended to increase the sizes of their congregations. But their congregations did grow as a result.

If multiplication through discipleship training is not the primary engine of church growth, then what is?

Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). Yet the biblical record shows that after Jesus issued this command, the apostles did not intentionally implement a program to convert nonbelievers. The first thing they did was to join together in worship and prayer to await the coming of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:52-53, Acts 1:14). On the day of Pentecost, the supernatural activity that accompanied the Spirit’s arrival caused a bewildered crowd to gather (Acts 2:6). In response to their questions, Peter stood up and began to preach the gospel (Acts 2:14). His listeners were cut to the heart and asked the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Three thousand were baptized that day (Acts 2:41). This rapid expansion of the church was not produced by Peter’s superior evangelistic methods, personal courage, charismatic presence or persuasive words. It can only be explained as a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

In the days immediately following Pentecost, church members did not focus their energies on deliberate evangelism. Rather, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). They shared their belongings and gave freely to anyone in need. They worshiped and prayed in the temple courts and ate together in their homes (Acts 2:43-46). This joyful, faithful, exhuberant community life in the presence of Christ caused the church to grow organically: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

On many occasions, the Holy Spirit led the apostles to preach to nonbelievers (Acts 3:11-26; 8:29; 10:1-48). The early Christians took advantage of God-given opportunities to proclaim Christ wherever they went (Acts 8:4). But a deliberate, systematic effort by the church to convert people to faith Christ seems noticeably absent until the Antioch church, under direct leading by the Holy Spirit, sent out Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:2-3). The Apostle Paul proved to be a specially gifted evangelist and missionary, planting churches in key urban centers throughout the Roman Empire. Yet in none of his epistles does he ever issue a general call to any church to embark on evangelistic expansion or church planting. He recognized that God has called some individuals to be evangelists (Ephesians 4:11; 2 Timothy 4:5 ). But in his writings to various churches, his main concern is not that the congregations multiply their numbers, but that believers maintain their devotion to Christ, love one another, and live good, productive, godly and holy lives in their communities (1 Timothy 2:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:11, Titus 3:14).

In The Rise of Christianity (HarperOne: 1996), sociologist Rodney Stark attempts to answer this question: “How did the obscure, marginal Jesus movement grow to be the dominant religious force in the Western world in just a few centuries?” Drawing upon all available historical records, he estimates that in the first three hundred years after Christ, the church expanded at an average rate of about 40 percent per decade, or just under 4 percent per year. Compared to other religious movements, this rate is not exceptional. (For example, Mormonism grew at approximately the same pace during its first century.) What is remarkable is that the early church was able to maintain this steady growth for such an extended length of time. If the Jesus movement comprised just 1,000 members in the year 40 A.D., an increase of 40 percent per decade would produce nearly 34 million Christians (about 56 percent of the entire population of the Roman Empire) by 350 A.D. This same rate could not continue indefinitely; it had to slow during the second half of the fourth century as the pool of potential converts dwindled. Growth at 40 percent per decade to 400 A.D. and beyond would have been mathematically impossible, as the number of Christians would have soon exceeded the population of the world.

How was Christianity able to sustain this growth? Writing as a sociologist, Rodney Stark does not attempt to construct theological explanations. Rather, he describes the empirically observable social processes by which the numbers of Christians increased. The picture that he paints is not of one disciple making another disciple in his own image, who in turn makes another disciple in his own image, and so on. Conversion and discipling of individuals did happen, of course. But religious movements — and Christianity is no exception — can only grow if they learn how to inhabit the complex webs of social relationships that exist among members of families and communities. He writes (p. 20):

The basis for successful conversionist movements is growth through social networks, through a structure of direct and interpersonal attachments. Most new religious movements fail because they quickly become closed, or semiclosed networks. That is, they fail to keep forming and sustaining attachments to outsiders and thereby lose the capacity to grow. Successful movements discover techniques for remaining open networks, able to reach out and into new adjacent social networks. And herein lies the capacity of movements to sustain exponential rates of growth over a long period of time.

Imagine a fledgling, close-knit community of believers who, in sharing common life with one another, create such strong relationships with one another that their ties to the outside world become weakened. Suppose they develop their own cultural habits, speech patterns, standards of dress, etc. which clearly set them apart from the rest of society. As their community grows and develops, they build organizations and create their own institutions (e.g., schools) to perpetuate their beliefs and values. With vigorous and intentional effort, members reach out to non-members and attempt to bring them into the fold. But when the occasional newcomer arrives, he is trained and transformed so thoroughly that he can no longer strongly identify with his family or native community. Can such a movement succeed over the long term?

In short, the answer is, “No.” Social movements can sustain long-term growth only when they spread through preexisting social networks. Stark writes (p. 56):

Religious movements can grow because their members continue to form new relationships with outsiders. This is a frequent pattern observed in recruitment to religious movements in modern times, especially in large cities. Many new religions have become skilled in making attachments with newcomers and others deficient in interpersonal attachments… Movements can also recruit by spreading through preexisting social networks, as converts bring in their families and friends. This pattern has the potential for much faster growth than the one-by-one conversion of social isolates…

Sustained growth of Christianity over its first three centuries was possible because the living faith of the apostles was allowed to freely adapt and contextualize itself into the various people-groups of the Roman Empire. One description of how the early Christians lived is found in an ancient letter (Letter to Diognetus) written about the second century. It paints an amazing portrait of an incarnational people who live as citizens of God’s kingdom while remaining firmly grounded and connected to their native cultures:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life… With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in… And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through… Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country… they live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

In the next installment, I will describe some other unexpected processes by which the early church grew.

Did that happen? Of course not. In retrospect, the idea that consumers would, simply by viewing this commercial, be transformed into an aggressive and unpaid sales force was preposterous. This ad may have sold a few bottles of shampoo to desperate young women who were willing to try anything to have hair like Farah Fawcett and Heather Locklear. But the brand didn’t experience anything like the exponential growth in sales that this commercial envisions.

Ever since my college days, I have heard a similar idea promoted as the best, indeed the only truly effective, strategy for evangelizing the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The idea is that we can carry out the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20) only if we put aside addition and intentionally strive for multiplication. Rather than trying to convert large numbers of people to become nominal Christians, we need to focus our efforts on making a small number of zealous disciples who will make more disciples, who will make more disciples, and so on. These disciples that we make cannot be those typical, average, low-level churchgoers (a.k.a. “cultural Christians” or
“Sunday Christians”) but an elite force of highly committed, well trained, well disciplined, self-replicating apostles. Then, in a few generations, voila! – the Great Commission has been fulfilled.

In his classic book The Master Plan of Evangelism (first printing in 1963), Robert E. Coleman makes a compelling case that this was the strategy envisioned by Jesus himself, his “master plan” for reaching the lost world. Over the course of Jesus’ three-year ministry, the gospel accounts show Jesus paying increasing attention to the twelve apostles. Among them, he places special emphasis on three (Peter, James and John), and among these three he shows special love and care to one (Peter). Jesus didn’t focus on a small number of apostles because he didn’t care about the world. Rather, he did it precisely because he loved the whole world and he knew that the strategy of multiplication was the surest and most effective way to evangelize the planet.

Yes, it is true that Jesus focused his efforts on a small number of highly committed disciples, and it was they who bore witness of his resurrection to the world. But does this fact canonize multiplication as the definitive, divinely mandated method by which Christ’s mission to the lost world will be accomplished?

A generation ago, many evangelicals would have said, “Yes.” Giving top priority to raising highly committed Christians who were passionate about sharing the gospel was the hallmark of 20th century parachurch ministries. The Navigators, for example, developed and practiced elaborate discipleship programs whose main purpose was to create self-replicating disciples. Dr. Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF (who credited the Navigators as one of his spiritual influences), emphasized one-to-one Bible study for the purpose of raising Bible teachers who would in turn raise more Bible teachers.

Ministries based on this idea did at first meet with some success. But most experienced a dramatic slowdown in growth during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and within the last decade those efforts virtually ground to a halt. Many disciples were made, and here and there a few still are being made. But the results have not come anywhere close to the wildly optimistic predictions of a generation ago.

Why didn’t the multiplication strategy pan out?

Here is one possible explanation: The present generation of Christians has lost its zeal. Ministry members became complacent, lazy, worldly, self-centered, and so on. If they just repent and recover the spirit of the ministry founders — their passion, dedication, boldness, and absolute obedience to Jesus’ world-mission command – then the multiplication strategy will surely succeed.

Perhaps that explanation has some merit. But many evangelicals are coming to believe that the basic idea of multiplication is unrealistic. My wife and I have been working through an excellent book published by NavPress called The Complete Book of Discipleship (2006). The author, Bill Hull, is a pastor and writer who was discipled by Navigators and Athletes in Action. Hull used to promote the multiplication doctrine. But on pp. 27-28, he writes:

As many writers and teachers have proclaimed, when all who become disciples make disciples through several spiritual generations, the result should not be reproduction (adding disciples one at a time) but multiplication (one disciple makes two, who make four, who make sixteen, and so on). I’ve heard sermons (in fact, I’ve preached a few) theorizing that if we just follow this multiplication plan, the entire world will be converted to Christianity in thirty years. That was more than thirty years ago.

In spite of how logical it sounds, this plan runs aground repeatedly on the rocks of human frailty and ignorance of how people really change. We must admit that this mathematical formula has never worked in any broad way. It might have limited success in controlled environments, but it would be wrong to claim that multiplication has worked to the extent of reaching whole cities, cultures or generations.

There’s nothing wrong with making disciples of Christ. In fact, Jesus commands us to do it. The key question is: What are these disciples supposed to be doing? Should they be singlemindedly devoted to making more disciples? Or should they be focused on something else?

In the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

A disciple must be taught to do everything that Jesus commands. And Jesus commands us to do a whole lot more than just making disciples. Hull notes (pp. 29-30) that the New Testament records 212 commands of Jesus. These commands can be summarized in three simple principles:
1. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Love your enemies.

Faithfulness to the Great Commission requires a kind of discipleship whose primary goal is spiritual formation that produces the inner fruit of the Spirit manifested in loving relationships. When Christ and his love are present, the church sees growth that is natural and contagious. Hull writes (p. 28):

The principle behind discipleship does involve one person influencing another, which does result in a change in heart and mind. The success of discipleship doesn’t depend on soldiering forward in a mechanical strategy of reproduction and multiplication. And discipleship doesn’t involve developing a well-trained, elite sales force. Rather discipleship occurs when a transformed person radiates Christ to those around her. It happens when people so experience God’s love that they can do nothing other than affect those around them.

The heart of being a disciple involves living in intimate union and daily contact with Christ. Discipleship – the effort both to be a disciple and to make other disciples – is about the immense value of God at work in one individual’s life and the resulting impact on other lives.

In the next installment, I will describe some truly surprising, unexpected means by which the early church grew over the first three centuries. Stay tuned.

In a nutshell, Paul says that God hardened the hearts of most first-century Jews to reject the gospel message of righteousness by faith. The remnant who accepted the gospel did so by the grace of God alone. And the Gentiles who accepted the message did so by the grace of God alone. Paul also expressed his hope that someday the Jews, seeing God’s work among the Gentiles, would be aroused to envy, believe the gospel and be saved.

Why did God choose to work this way? Paul’s analysis suggests the following.

• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then Christianity would have been so closely bound to Jewish lifestyles and traditions that the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles would have been hindered, and the message of salvation by grace alone would have been watered down.
• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then they could think it was their superior character, discipline, keeping of the law, etc. that allowed them to fulfill their purpose as the chosen people. The fact that only a remnant accepted Christ was a mark of shame upon the Jewish Christians which humbled them, making the remnant less arrogant and less likely to impose their own cultural standards upon the Gentiles (although some of them still tried).
• The Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant also had to be extra careful not to think of themselves as superior in any way, because if God did not spare arrogant Jews, he would not spare arrogant Gentiles either.
• If and when the gospel ultimately flows from the Gentiles back to the Jews, it will again be an act of saving grace by God’s own choosing.

Another powerful description of election is found near the beginning of 1 Corinthians, where Paul notes that neither Jews nor Gentiles were naturally inclined to accept the gospel (1Co 1:22-24):

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Note the use of the word called. He uses the same term again a few verses later: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called” (1Co 1:26). That term emphasizes that it was God who, by his divine sovereignty, selected and called the believers in Corinth out from their respective cultural groups to follow Christ. It was not their own choice, their own faith, their own character, their own anything. It was only because of him that they became Christians, and so they have absolutely no reason to boast (1Co 1:30-31). This sense of being called by Christ, and not approaching him by their own merit or choosing, was so pervasive among the early Christians that it is reflected in the name of their community. The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means, “ones who were called out.”

What does Paul’s teaching on election imply for the spread of the gospel and missionary work today? Here are three practical lessons that I draw from it.

First, it underscores the fact that evangelism is not driven by human planning, vision, or zeal, but is undertaken by God’s initiative and the work of the Holy Spirit.

There is a short passage in the middle of Romans chapter 10 where Paul writes (Ro 10:14-15):

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

This paragraph has often been interpreted as an exhortation to evangelism. Countless pastors have quoted these verses to urge their members to volunteer, go out, and carry the gospel to an unbelieving world so that they too can have “beautiful feet.” In the context of Romans 9-11, however, this is not an exhortation to evangelism. It is an explanation of why a remnant was chosen out of Israel to believe in Jesus. The original disciples of Jesus didn’t volunteer; they were called by Jesus and then sent by him and the Holy Spirit to the preach the gospel to the rest of Israel, who for the most part rejected the message because God had hardened their hearts. And the hardening of their hearts was part of God’s plan!

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that evangelism is unnecessary. It is necessary. But it is God who calls and sends some to evangelize, and it is God who manages the outcomes, either positive or negative, and uses them for his own mysterious salvation purpose. To think that we can decide to accept a vision and go out and evangelize, and that we will be successful if we only try hard enough, pray long enough, and use the correct methods, then we are deluding ourselves. God’s interest is to save the nations, not to expand our churches and ministries. He is more than willing to allow us to fail, to chasten us, to humble us, etc. if necessary to show us the world that no group is intrinsically privileged, that salvation comes to everyone by the grace of God alone. He is more than willing to use poor, ineffective, arrogant, or ethnocentric evangelism to reveal the weaknesses of evangelists, churches and Christians and show the world that everyone, including all missionaries and all religious leaders, are sinners not just in theory, but in actuality. He is not interested in helping unrepentant Christians to save face. He wants to show off the amazing grace of his Son, not to dazzle people by the greatness of us.

Second, it shows that God’s mission travels in all directions.

God did not intend for the gospel to travel just from Jews to Gentiles. His plan was for the gospel to start with a remnant of Israel, to flow out the Gentiles, and then ultimately come back to Israel. If the gospel were to flow in one direction only, then it would elevate certain persons and groups to privileged status over others. But the gospel flows in all directions. As missionaries evangelize disciples, they must allow themselves to be re-evangelized by the disciples. This makes the concept of a missionary-sending nation somewhat dubious. Rather than praying for any nation to be “a missionary-sending nation,” it would be more reasonable to envision “a gospel-proclaiming and a gospel-receiving nation.” A church that sends missionaries overseas should not imagine itself to be just a power-station for mission, always giving but never receiving, insulating itself and not allowing itself to be influenced by the Christianity of the converts. As the Church welcomes new believers into the fold, it must itself be transformed. God is always interested in using the various parts of the Body of Christ to evangelize, renew and reform other parts. If any part seeks to reform another, it had better be prepared to be reformed right back.

In part 4 of this series, I discussed the problems with the “mission-station” strategy in which foreigners enter a new culture, set up a church that resembles the one from back home, and attempt to raise disciples in their own image. Donald A. McGavran (1897-1990), the missionary and scholar who coined this term, criticized the mission-station strategy on the grounds that it is ineffective and inhibits church growth. Although I believe his arguments have merit, I do not consider slow growth to be the main reason why Christians must avoid establishing mission stations. We must avoid doing so because this approach conflicts with what the New Testament teaches about election and undermines the gospel of salvation by grace alone.

Third, it underscores the need for great humility – not a false modesty, but a true acknowledgement of our own spiritual poverty – in the way we do apologetics, evangelism and discipleship.

Paul’s teaching about election leads explicitly to the conclusion that at no point may any Christian individual or group think of themselves as superior to any believer or nonbeliever. This does not mean that there is not a proper time for some to teach and others to learn. Indeed, election means that some are called by God to positions of teaching. But the role of teacher carries a grave responsibility to examine himself to uncover the weaknesses of himself and the group from which he comes. As Paul warned in Romans 2:17-20:

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

We have no business evangelizing others if we are not simultaneously allowing ourselves to be evangelized by the message we are preaching and by the work of the Holy Spirit among those we are attempting to reach. At no point does evangelism depend on our own effort, faithfulness, righteousness or obedience, because the gospel comes to all not because of our wonderful goodness, but only despite our horrible badness. And if our efforts do not produce the desired result, if the message we preach is rejected, what are we to conclude? Lesslie Newbigin (as quoted by Bosch in Transforming Mission, p. 413) wrote:

I can never be so confident of the purity and authenticity of my witness that I can know that the person who rejects my witness has rejected Jesus. I am witness to him who is both utterly holy and utterly gracious. His holiness and grace are as far above my comprehension as they are above that of my hearer.

In the next, and final, article of this series, I will pick up a question that was left unanswered at the end of part 4: Who decides the ethical implications of th gospel?

God cares about relationships. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he didn’t leave behind a book of writings. He left behind a community of witnesses who were filled with the Holy Spirit and entrusted the preaching of the gospel to them (Acts 1:8). As members of this community proclaim the gospel, they invite others to become part of God’s family where their true personhood will be realized. That family is not equivalent to a church organization. It is the body of all people who belong to Christ, the “communion of saints” that is mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed. Evangelism that fails to call people to join this body is alien to the New Testament. Jesus never intended his disciples to be lone wolves. Nor did he intend them to live in small, isolated, parochial clans whose members remain suspicious of everyone on the outside (Mk 9:38-40). He prayed for all his followers to be one, to experience among themselves the loving oneness that has with his own Father in a highly visible way, so that the whole world would see that the gospel is true (John 17:20-23).

So the preaching of the gospel is not just passing a set of teachings from one person to another; it is knitting persons together in grace to heal them, their families, their communities, and the world of the relational brokenness caused by sin. The healing that we experience now through the work of the Holy Spirit is the downpayment, the foretaste, of the full restoration that will be enacted when Jesus returns in power and glory. The present signs of the kingdom, our miraculously restored relationships with God and with one another, are the evidence and the engine of true evangelism.

If God’s plan to restore relationships requires that the gospel be spread from one person to another, one community to another, and one nation to another, then someone has to begin that process. Certain persons, communities and nations must be chosen to receive the gospel and bear it to others. That is the key idea of election as described by Paul in Romans 9-11.

Election wasn’t invented by Paul. It is the storyline of the Old Testament. Out of all nations, God called one nation, the Israelites, for his special purpose. He shaped their history through divine intervention and revelation, preparing them to be the first ones to welcome the Messiah.

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin starts his discussion of election by reminding us of how offensive it sounds to nonbelievers, especially today. The idea that certain individuals and cultures have received special, unique knowledge from the Creator — the one who is Maker of all, whose image is borne by every human being – seems ludicrous. It is especially hard to believe, given that the people who were chosen were not outstanding among the great civilizations of the world; they hardly distinguished themselves by their achievements, scholarship, or virtuous lives. If God cares for all, as we believers claim, then why would he heap special treatment on some, on a small minority of people who do not appear to deserve it?

Election is patently offensive to every generation and culture. If a stranger arrives from a foreign land claiming to have special knowledge of universal truth, that claim is enough to make natives cry, “Missionary, go home!” How do we handle with this thorny problem? First, we should openly acknowledge that it is a problem. Second, we must understand that God’s election was never intended to set one person above another, one group above another, one culture above another. Election does not confer any moral privilege or special standing before God. In fact, the manner in which election unfolds throughout history makes it absolutely clear that salvation comes by grace alone, not through the intrinsic goodness or special qualities of any person or group. Never at any point in God’s history do his elect have any claim to special treatment by him because of their obedience, effort or virtue. The blessings received by the elect never come to them because of their wonderful goodness, but only despite their horrible badness.

When God called Abraham, he said: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Gen 12:1-2). It is tempting to read this statement as conditional: “If you leave and go, then I will bless you. If you don’t, I will not bless you.” But the blessing is not conditioned on Abraham’s response. God simply announces that he will be blessed, and God invites him to go and see the evidence of that blessing. Abraham does not earn the promise; his obedience is the way that he receives the promise.

The author of Genesis makes it clear that Abraham had no intrinsic virtues that set him above other people. When he went down to Egypt, he acted dishonestly. He appears less honorable than Pharaoh, and yet God rescued and blessed him (Gen 12:10-20). Again, in chapter 20, Abraham is less righteous than Abimelech, but God chose to bless him anyway. This favoritism toward Abraham has a universal purpose: God intends to bless all nations on earth through him (Gen 12:3).

About 430 years later, God made a special agreement with the Israelites at Mount Sinai. This covenant is described in Exodus 19:5-6: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Unlike the covenant of promise that God made to Abraham, this covenant of law is very conditional. If the Israelites obeyed God fully, then they would receive his special blessings. This covenant of law did not amend, change or supersede the covenant of promise that God gave earlier (Gal 3:17). God’s declarations to Abraham stood regardless of what the Israelites chose to do.

In an article posted last month, David L. correctly noted that Exodus 19:5-6 is a promise made to Israel, not to the Church. Christians who apply these verses to themselves are taking the passage out of context. The covenant described in Exodus 19:5-6 is a failed covenant and was doomed to fail from the start. Even before Moses came down from the mountain, the Israelites had already broken the agreement by worshipping the golden calf (Ex 32). A literal application of Exodus 19:5-6 to ourselves would lead us to believe that if we obey God’s commands, then God will bless us and our nation. If so, then we must not ignore the word fully. The obedience required by this covenant is complete obedience to the law of Moses, all 600 commands, because anyone who places himself under the law is obligated to obey it in its entirety (Gal 5:3).

The covenant of law failed because the Israelites willfully disobeyed. But God, in his sovereign purpose, used their disobedience to demonstrate that, though they were the chosen people, they were no better than anyone else. The division of their kingdom, the destruction of their temple, and their captivity in Babylon should have produced in them a deep humiliation that paved the way for the message of salvation by grace alone. This humiliation of failure, combined with the knowledge of God’s saving grace through Jesus, should have given them an openminded and generous spirit required of missionaries. God was preparing them to go to other nations and say, “We are no better than you. We are not coming with superior strength, wisdom, or moral standards. We were and still are deeply sinful and broken, and in many ways you are better than us. But God, for reasons that we do not understand, walked among our people and revealed to us something about his great salvation plan. We witnessed God’s redemption firsthand through the death and resurrection of his Son. Now we are experiencing his work of restoration. God wants to repair our relationship with you. We are your brothers and sisters, not your elders. We are not attempting to rule over you or change you into Jews like us. We will respect you, accept you and love you as you are, because that is what God has done for us; that is the essence of the gospel. We believe that the Holy Spirit is already hovering over you, working in mysterious ways that we cannot yet understand, and we hope to learn from you what God has been doing among you. We encourage you to respond to the Spirit’s invitation and become equal partners with us in this glorious work of restoration.”

That is the character that God wanted to instill in his chosen people. And, to an extent, that is what happened in the generations leading up to Christ, especially among the Hellenistic Jews scattered across the Empire. While they kept their laws and traditions, they also spoke Greek, and they began to mingle and develop meaningful relationships with the Gentiles around them. Their synagogues began to attract God-fearing Greeks who, for good reason, did not submit to circumcision but nevertheless loved the Lord. Many Hellenistic Jews developed an open and tolerant spirit as exemplified by Stephen and Philip in Acts chapters 6-8.

But in and around Jerusalem, the opposite was happening. In the years leading up to Christ, the rabbinical schools heightened the distinctions between clean and unclean, narrowing the popular conceptions of who was going to be saved. God’s salvation was no longer for all Israel; those were seen as worldly and compromised, such as the tax collectors and public sinners, were excluded. As Pharisees trended toward rigid interpretations and practices of the law, those considered to be elect became fewer and more distant from the rest. And the Essenes, who became so strict in their practices that they considered the Pharisees to be impure, formed monastic communities and withdrew to the caves at Qumran. They labeled everyone outside of their community as “Breakers of the Covenant.”

As these groups increasingly staked their identity and self-worth on the keeping of their traditions and laws, their expectations for the coming Messiah turned toward validation and reward for the elect, combined with punishment for anyone who oppressed or opposed them in any way. The enemies of the Jews were seen as the enemies of God, destined for enslavement or destruction. The late missiologist David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission, p. 19-20) explained:

As the political and social conditions of the people of the old covenant deteriorate, there increasingly develops the expectation that, one day, the Messiah will come to conquer the Gentile nations and restore Israel. This expectation is usually linked with fantastic ideas of world domination by Israel, to whom all the nations will be subject. It reaches its peak in the apocalyptic beliefs and attitudes of the Essene communities along the shores of the Dead Sea. The horizons of apocalyptic belief are cosmic: God will destroy the entire present world and usher in a new world according to a detailed and predetermined plan The present world, with all its inhabitants, is radically evil. The faithful have to separate themselves from it, keep themselves pure as the holy remnant, and wait for God’s intervention. In such a climate even the idea of a missionary attitude toward the Gentile world would be preposterous… At best God would, without any involvement on the part of Israel, by means of a divine act, save those Gentiles he had elected in advance.

Ironically, the religion of the Jews hardened into keeping of laws and traditions which, although apparently based on the Old Testament, ignored the actual flow of OT history. Their faith became increasingly focused on right principles and practices rather than on right relationships with God and other people. Bosch continues (p. 20):

To a large extent Jewish apocalyptic spells the end of the earlier dynamic understanding of history. Past salvific events are no longer celebrated as guarantees and anticipations of God’s future involvement with his people; they have become sacred traditions which have to be preserved unchanged. The Law becomes an absolute entity which Israel has to serve and obey. Greek metaphysical categories gradually begin to replace historical thinking. Faith becomes a matter of timeless metahistorical and carefully systematized teaching.

When Jesus arrived on the scene around 27 A.D., he overturned the popular understanding of election by declaring God’s unconditional saving grace to all Israel, especially those who were marginalized and considered impure. He elected the Twelve to represent pillars of a new chosen people who would embody the gospel and convey it to the nations. But just as the rest of Israel had difficulty embracing the Gentiles, so did the apostles and the early Church. As much as Peter and his fellow church members had to evangelize the nations, they themselves had to be re-evangelized by the nations, by seeing and fully accepting the work of Christ in Gentile believers who were different from them. God’s election does not give anyone a superior status. His election is designed to show the world that, from first to last, salvation comes to all by grace alone.

Here I want to focus on some aspects of election found in Romans chapters 9-11. Paul didn’t write those chapters to settle modern theological debates. He was expounding on the relationship between the Gentiles and Jews. He was trying to explain why the nation of Israel, which had been created and chosen by God to receive the gospel and carry it to the world, rejected Christ and failed to carry out its mission. And he was relating that explanation to his teaching that righteousness must always come by faith alone, not by observing the law. I imagine that if we could ask the Apostle Paul about the merits of Calvinism versus Arminianism, he would respond with a very puzzled look, not because he never heard of Calvin or Arminius, but because to him this debate would sound very odd.

As modern evangelicals, we tend to think of salvation in terms of the rescue of individuals. We imagine humanity as an endless parade of souls marching along on a highway to hell, and our mission is to pluck as many souls as we can off that road and set them on the path to heaven. If we follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, the most faithful Christian is the one who asks everyone he meets, “If you were to die this afternoon, do you think you would go to heaven?” The most effective missionary is the one with the highest number of converts. And the overarching goal of discipleship is to change each person into a lean, mean, soul-saving machine. Other aspects of gospel work — feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the lonely, and so on — are just for the sake of good public relations, to open people’s hearts and prepare them for the “real” purpose of evangelism, which is to close the deal and get everyone converted and baptized before they die.

I am not saying that this individual-rescue idea of salvation is entirely wrong. I do believe that there is a great deal of truth in it. But this is not the way that the gospel is presented in the New Testament. It is the mindset of a 19^th-century tent revivalist, not the language of Jesus, Peter or Paul. One reason why the New Testament doesn’t present the gospel in those terms is that Hebrew people had radically different notions of what it means to be a person.

In our understanding, a person is an autonomous being, one who exercises independence in thought, decision and action. In debates about abortion, for example, one of the key questions is, “When should a fetus be considered a person?” Many have argued that a fetus should be considered a person when it becomes viable and has a reasonable chance of surviving outside the mother’s womb. This modernist notion of persons shows up in that famous statement by Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” His existence as a person is validated when he exercises his own rational thought.

But the Hebrews who wrote the Bible had different ideas about personhood. To the Jewish mind, a person was someone who was had significant relationships with others. At the beginning of Romans 9, Paul wishes that he could be cut off from Christ if only his fellow Israelites would be saved. To us, that desire seems very strange. Who among us would be willing to be condemned for all eternity to save other people, many of whom we have never met? But to Paul it made sense, because he never regarded himself as a lone wolf. He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee among Pharisees (Acts 23:6, Php 3:5). His personal identity was so closely bound to his people that he couldn’t imagine himself being separated from them. If being with Christ was going to cut him off from his community, he almost didn’t want to be with Christ.

The other apostles had similar feelings. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) When we read this, we tend to scoff at the disciples: “How could they possibly think that way? Didn’t they realize that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom, not a political one?” But their question was perfectly legitimate. They couldn’t imagine a gospel message that would personally save them without also restoring their nation. Given all the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament, and given what Paul says in Romans 9-11, their question is defensible and biblically sound. The Hebrew God cares about individuals, but he also cares about the nations and especially about his chosen people. How often do the Old Testament prophets speak God’s word not to individuals but to the nations and to Israel?

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin argues that the idea of persons as relational beings is consistent with Scripture and with orthodox Christian belief. It is rooted in the understanding of God as Father, Son and Spirit – three persons in one God. Human beings created in his image share in his relational nature. The first mention of human beings appears in Genesis 1:26-27:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The Trinitarian God spoke and created people as males and females, designed for relationships with one another. This longing for interpersonal relationship is expressed in sexuality. Sexual attraction, which is hardwired by God into our bodies, minds, emotions and personalities, is the magnetism and glue that creates families. The families produce children and become the building blocks of societies. In addition to these relationships with one another, we were also made to be in relationship with the rest of the created world. Our role in that relationship is to rule over the earth, serving as its stewards and managers (Gen 1:28).

When sin enters the world in Genesis chapter 3, it mars all the relationships that define us as persons. Man’s relationship with himself is broken and he experiences shame. He runs and hides, a sign of his broken relationship with God. Marital intimacy is cracked as the man blames his wife, and they cover themselves with fig leaves. Their relationship with the world is broken when the ground is cursed and rebels against them, producing thorns and thistles instead of food. When the destruction spreads through Adam’s family to his descendants and to all of society (chapters 4-6), God decides to scrub the world by a devastating flood. But the flood doesn’t solve the problem, because human beings remain evil from childhood (Gen 8:21). Human efforts to fix up the world are doomed to fail, as evidenced by the Tower of Babel, and the disunity, conflict and chaos continue (Gen 11:1-9).

If sin destroyed the relationships that make the world run as it should, then shouldn’t the gospel be about repairing relationships and restoring the world? Yes; that is how the Bible is structured. World history is a story with four great acts. Act 1 is creation: God made the world and everything in it; then he created people to love him, to love one another, and to take care of the earth. Act 2 is the Fall: sin entered the world and destroyed our relationships with God, with one another, and with the created world. Act 3 is redemption, which began with Abraham and ended at the cross. God paid the price for sin through the death of his son. Act 4 is restoration, when God remakes humanity and the earth. Restoration begins with the resurrection of Christ, his ascension to heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this post-Pentecostal era, the Holy Spirit is working to restore our relationships with God, with one another and with the world. Act 4 will continue until Jesus returns to completely destroy sin and death, to raise our bodies and establish the new heaven and the new earth.

If we see God’s purpose as holistic restoration of mankind and the world, then our understanding of our mission must be broader than saving individual souls so they can go to heaven. The Church must be involved in the healing of relationships at all levels: our relationship with God (evangelism and worship), our relationships to ourselves (physical and psychological healing), our relationships with our spouses and children (healing of families), our relationships with our neighbors and with all society (healing of communities and nations), and even our relationships to the created world (environmental stewardship). No single individual can do all these things effectively, but the Church as a whole can do them by allowing different parts of the Body of Christ to perform their specialized functions. These activities of the Church will not transform the whole earth and usher in the kingdom of God; that will happen when Jesus returns. But the working of the Holy Spirit through the Church serves as a witness, a sign, and a foretaste of the kingdom that is already breaking into the world.

So what does all this have to do with election? That’s a good question…

The tensions between these groups surfaced at the beginning of Acts chapter 6, when Hellenistic Jews pointed out that Hebraic widows were being taken care of by the church, but the Hellenistic widows were not. Acts 6:1 (NIV 2010) reads:

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

Notice what this verse actually says. The matter raised by the Hellenistic Jews was not an idle or godless complaint. Their grievance was genuine, because their widows actually were being discriminated against. We don’t know how this happened, but it displays a lack of sensitivity and fairness on the part of the church leadership. Wagner believes that this issue, the inequitable distribution of food, was merely a symptom of a deeper and more serious problem. Hellenistic Jews comprised a very large part of the early church, and their donations of cash and property were keeping the church financially solvent. Yet their interests and views were not being represented among the church’s leaders, because all twelve of the apostles were Hebraic Jews. At the beginning, it had to be so, because these were the men handpicked by Jesus to be witnesses to the world. But as the demographic character of the church changed, the style and composition of its leadership needed to change.

Wagner makes a statement that is profoundly challenging and provocative: Even the twelve apostles were ethnocentric.

This statement should not be taken as criticism of the apostles. They were men of exemplary faith and character. Yet it is an undeniable fact that, because of their upbringing and historical situation, they lacked cross-cultural and missiological sensitivity. The apostles were born and raised as Hebraic Jews, and their identity was closely bound to keeping the details of Mosaic law. They had been taught, quite correctly, that the Jews were God’s chosen people, and that God’s revelation and salvation came through Israel (Ps 147:20). The notion that the doors of salvation had suddenly been thrown open to the whole world – that God was now ready to accept people of any tribe, tongue and nation without precondition through faith in Christ alone – was truly a radical departure from their Old Testament sensibilities. It was going to take them quite a few years to adjust to the new work of the Holy Spirit that was going on around them in the post-Pentecost era. Meanwhile, it was very natural and understandable for them to exhibit ethnocentric attitudes, believing that the Hebraic Jewish lifestyle to which they (and even Jesus) conformed represented the purest, best, and most biblically correct way of life on the planet.

But the Hellenistic Jews thought differently. As they grew in faith and maturity, they could not remain as sheep, sitting under the apostles’ authority forever. Indeed, the Holy Spirit would not allow them to remain comfortable there. They needed to share in the blessings and responsibilities of leadership as full partners in the gospel which they had inherited. God had prepared a special mission for them, to become a bridge between the Jewish and Gentile worlds.

To the apostles’ credit, they recognized that a real problem had arisen in the church, and they dealt with it in a reasonable manner. They convened a meeting of the disciples and appointed seven new leaders, giving them responsibility for handling the matter. It appears that all seven of them (traditionally called deacons, from the Greek diakonos, which means “servant”) were Hellenistic Jews, because all seven had Greek names.

The role that these seven men played in the leadership of the church is a matter of dispute. Some commentators believe that they remained subservient to the apostles, carrying out menial and practical tasks (“waiting on tables”, as mentioned in verse 2) so that the apostles could remain focused on prayer and ministry of the word. But Wagner believes that these seven were not merely assistants. Indeed, the account by Luke emphasizes their high degree of spiritual qualification. They were known to be full of wisdom, faith and the Holy Spirit. The next two and a half chapters of Acts are devoted to the influence of two of these men: Stephen, who because of his powerful preaching became the first Christian martyr, and Philip, who carried the gospel to Samaria and to the Ethiopian eunuch.

Wagner believes that these seven newly appointed leaders stood alongside the apostles, sharing apostolic authority by ministering to the Hellenistic Jews as the original apostles continued to minister to the Hebraic Jews. He characterizes this event as a division in governance, an amicable split that eased the ethnic tensions in the church, helping the Christian message to break out from the shackles of Hebraic culture so that the gospel could spread beyond Jerusalem and Judea.

After the appointing of seven Hellenistic leaders, the church entered a period of rapid growth. Luke remarks in Acts 6:7:

So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

If the leadership of the early church had not been diversified, would this dramatic growth have still happened? Not likely, says Wagner. As a specialist in the study of church growth, Wagner pays close attention to Acts 6:7 and similar verses which are scattered throughout the book of Acts. One lesson that he draws from this passage, and from his study of worldwide missions, is that the cultural backgrounds and attitudes of church leaders really do matter. In a more perfect world, Christians of different cultures should be able to serve the Lord side by side without any disagreements or conflicts, fully understanding and accepting one another without any discrimination or judgment whatsoever. Multicultural ministry is an ideal to which we ought to aspire, and when it happens it is indeed a beautiful thing. But two thousand years of history have shown that this tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Cultural differences and misunderstandings between people-groups abound, even within the church. Realistically, it not always possible or desirable for groups that are culturally divergent to remain under the same ecclesiastical authority, especially if the composition of church leadership does not reflect the diversity of its members or the society that the church is seeking to evangelize. No group of believers can sit comfortably under the leadership of foreign missionaries indefinitely, and missionaries who ignore this fact will inadvertently prevent their own ministries from growing. Wagner writes:

One of the most difficult lessons for cross-cultural missionaries to learn is that when they plant a church in a culture different from their own, the leadership of the new church must come from those rooted in the second culture or else the church will not grow and develop as it should. Missionaries may understandably assume that because they have been Christians longer and know the Bible better and pray more and adhere more rigidly to norms of Christian behavior than do their new converts, they therefore can, and should, assume leadership of the new church. They do so, however, to their own detriment and they inadvertently hinder the spread of the gospel over the long haul (pp 142-143).

The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this principle. Whenever Paul planted the gospel in a new place, he made it a high priority to raise native leaders and turn decision-making over to them as soon as possible. When Paul did so, the churches that he planted experienced difficulties and growing pains, as his letters to these churches attest. But Paul’s quick handing over of leadership freed him to continue to use his unique missionary gift to carry the gospel to new places, while allowing the new churches to develop organically into faith communities that could dramatically impact the societies around them. Cross-cultural missionaries are gifted at carrying the gospel from one people-group to another. But natives will instinctively know better than the missionaries how to contextualize that gospel in their own culture.

Wagner’s book is a chapter-by-chapter commentary on the book of Acts with two special twists. First, he places strong emphasis on the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, discussing the extent to which these gifts are present in the Church today. Second, he deals extensively with issues of contextualization – the challenges faced by missionaries as they bring the good news of Jesus Christ into human cultures radically different from their own.

With respect to the Holy Spirit, Wagner began his academic career as a cessationist. That is, he believed that miraculous gifts of tongues, prophesy and healing ceased to be part of normal Christian experience after the age of the apostles. During his tenure at Fuller, however, he revised his views and became a continuationist, believing that many modern-day displays of miraculous gifts are authentic.

The tension between cessationism and continuationism is a fascinating and important subject, but we will leave that to another day. Here I will summarize some of Wagner’s comments on evangelism and culture.

Wagner describes three different kinds of evangelism, which he designates E-1, E-2, and E-3.

• E-1 evangelism is monocultural. An E-1 evangelist shares his faith with other people within his own people group. No significant barriers of language or culture are crossed.
• E-2 evangelism crosses mild cultural barriers. An example of E-2 evangelism would be an Anglo-American preaching the gospel in Australia.
• E-3 evangelism means carrying the gospel to radically different culture. For example, a Canadian missionary serving in China. Or a British pastor reaching out to Hindus and Muslims in London.

This classification as E-1, E-2 and E-3 is a fairly standard terminology not invented by the author. But he does make two major points which I found interesting and compelling.

His first point is that most converts to Christianity have been made through E-1 evangelism; this has always been the case, and it always will. E-2 and E-3 evangelism are necessary to sow the seeds of the gospel in a new place, but dramatic church growth will rarely take place until the message of Christ takes root among native leaders who begin to evangelize their own.

Examples of this are easy to find. For example, Protestant missionaries successfully brought the gospel to Korea in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but mass conversion of large numbers of South Koreans did not take place until indigenous Korean Christian movements (including UBF) sprang up in the 1960’s.

Another example is the rapid spread of Christianity in modern-day China. Missionaries to China are playing only a minor role in this; most of the growth is taking place through the multiplication of indigenous house churches.

Wagner argues that the gospel spreads more effectively and naturally through E-1 evangelism than through E-2 and E-3. When E-1 evangelism is happening, conversion to Christianity does not require newcomers to cross significant racial, linguistic or cultural barriers. They will not need to disavow their current ways of life to adopt radically new patterns of behavior presented by foreign missionaries. Most of their relationships with family members, friends and neighbors can remain intact. Wherever true E-1 evangelism is going on, as opposed to E-2 and E-3, the decision to accept Christ remains a religious decision to join the family of God, rather than a cultural or social decision to leave one people group and join another.

Wagner’s second point is that E-1 evangelism is a general mission given to everyone in the Church, but E-2 and E-3 evangelism is a special calling that only certain individuals have. There is little excuse for Christians not to engage in E-1 evangelism; in one way or another, every believer ought to be sharing his faith in Christ with the people around him. Therefore, a healthy church will usually be growing in numbers, because E-1 evangelism will be naturally taking place day in and day out.

But E-2 and E-3 evangelism are another matter. These are a specific ministry which require a specific gift. Wagner calls it the gift of missionary, and he defines it as follows: “The gift of missionary is a special ability that God gives to certain believers to use whatever other spiritual gifts they have in a different culture.”

Wagner estimates that only about 1% of Christians have this gift. He admits that this is just a rough guess, based on his own experiences and impressions. The figure of 1% is unimportant. His major point is that, while everyone in the church should be sharing his or her faith within the immediate community, E-2 and E-3 evangelism are a special mission to which only a few are called.

Interestingly, Jesus was an E-1 evangelist. He did not seem to have the gift of missionary. Or, if he had it, he chose not to use it during his three-year public ministry, because as he said in Matthew 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

And his twelve apostles were also E-1 evangelists. They ministered primarily to Hebraic Jews like themselves. On a few special occasions, God did use them to evangelize beyond their culture. For example, on the day of Pentecost, they received supernatural ability to communicate the gospel to Grecian Jews from many parts of the Roman Empire in their own native tongues. Another example occurs in Acts chapter 10, when God calls on Peter to evangelize the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was a Gentile. This was a special event, and Peter was prompted to do it by a special vision from heaven. Afterward, however, Peter seemed to return to his usual ministry to the Jews, and wholesale evangelization of Gentiles did not begin until the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries in Acts chapter 13.

Although we would like to think that the message of Christ breaks down barriers and creates unity in the human race, Christian history has shown — and the book of Acts also testifies to this — that differences among people-groups are stark, and significant hurdles must be overcome whenever Christians from one group attempt to evangelize another.

This is the fundamental problem of missiology. When E-2 and E-3 missionaries carry the gospel to another place, how do they contextualize the message and implement it there? Which of their own beliefs and practices are non-negotiable and must be carried into the new context, and which must be sacrificed to give the native peoples freedom to develop their unique identity in Christ so that the spread of the gospel is not hindered? There are no easy answers to these questions. The Bride of Christ has always wrestled with these issues, and until Christ returns, she always will.

The most significant example of this in the early church occurred when some Jewish Christians from Judea began to teach that circumcision was necessary for salvation and church membership. In their minds, this was a non-negotiable practice that defined them as God’s people. “If a new Gentile believer accepts Christ, why shouldn’t he be willing to be circumcised?” they thought. The influence of these Judaizers was so strong that even the Apostle Peter began to waver, until Paul personally rebuked him on this matter (Gal 2:14). The battle over circumcision reached a climax in Acts chapter 15, when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem to present their views to the Jewish believers. At this so-called Jerusalem Council, Peter played the pivotal role; he strongly urged the church to accept Gentiles as full members on the merits of their faith in Christ alone.

Most people are simply unaware of how deeply they have been shaped by their own cultural upbringing, by their own national and ethnic identity. This is why the missionary calling is a special gift. A missionary needs an unusual kind of discernment and willingness to sacrifice many values (even good ones) that he holds dear. Even the twelve apostles who were personally trained by Jesus had great difficulty with this. It was hard for them not to impose additional requirements on new believers from other cultures to make them resemble their own culturally influenced notions of spiritual maturity and piety. Therefore, it is perfectly understandable and natural to expect similar difficulties to be going on in our midst today.