Shift or drift
For more than a month now I have been writing about how we in biblical higher education must adapt to massive shifts that are occurring in our world without succumbing to mission drift. In previous posts, I have commented about the implications of the shift from Christendom to missional and the shifts in our demographic and sociographic landscape. As Dorothy observed, “We’re not in Kansas any more.”
Now we turn to another important shift: from receiving the Gospel as transactional to living the Gospel as transformational.
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I don’t think evangelicals have ever believed this, but in the era of “crusade” evangelism, it was arguably too easy for church insiders and outsiders to reach the mistaken conclusion that believing the Gospel was a simple one-time transaction. Some evangelism methods–and purported results–did little to disabuse us of that notion. Oh, we always advocated for “follow-up” to altar calls and urged that believers “sign up” for serious discipleship. But we too often failed to make it clear that discipleship is not an extra-credit course you opt for after conversion. Not only in North America but also wherever North American missionaries have met evangelistic and church growth success, the indictment “Christianity is 3,000 miles wide and an inch deep” resonates all too deeply. Thus, Barna Group president David Kinnaman documents that a substantial majority of North America’s so-called Millennials dismiss what they know of Christianity as unChristian.
Sign your life away
The Bible makes it clear that the Gospel and discipleship are inextricably linked. And I have good news for you: There is a growing tendency among serious Christ-followers of the emerging generation to understand and commend the gospel in transformational rather than transactional terms. Johnson University’s Gary David Stratton writes, “While Jesus of Nazareth never established a brick and mortar school in the modern sense of the word, the discipleship movement he founded was a collegial learning community indistinguishable from other forms of first-century higher education.” Get it? Jesus’ followers were disciples [students/learners] before they were “saved”! Knowledge does not produce obedience; rather, obedience is the only pathway to true knowledge.
The four-chapter Gospel
The grand story the Bible reveals includes at least four chapters, not two. The great themes of “Fall” and “Redemption” are only part of the story. When we proclaim and live a Gospel that omits “Creation” and “Restoration” we are not living up to our affirmation that, “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable” (II Timothy 3:16, emphasis added). The good news of the Gospel is that all that was lost in the Fall has been restored in Redemption and that God’s restoration-kingdom has broken into this world. Jesus’ followers are witnesses and emissaries of the Kingdom come to which the now-reigning but absent King will indeed return and make all things right and new. In the meantime, we citizens of that kingdom proclaim the Good News, extend the King’s offer of pardon and invitation to citizenship, and work by His power to make things right and new in His name. Anything short of this represents a truncated, transactional Gospel.
The center of biblical tension
I admit, there is tension–yes even contention–between understanding salvation and the gospel mandate in terms of holism (i.e., evangelism involves both proclamation and demonstration) and prioritism (i.e., concern for humanity’s spiritual condition and proclamation of a gospel of repentance and faith supersedes other legitimate but secondary concerns). Satan is relentless and perverse in his hijacking operation, but I wonder if the Spirit-wind is not breathing a fresh corrective into the church in our day? Time will tell–and biblical vigilance is always called for–but I think we would be wise to affirm the ways our students are inclined to embrace a more transformational Gospel and to grapple humbly with any correctives that may be necessary in our theological formulations, our institutional habitudes, and our tendency to conflate church occupation with ministry vocation.
Fresh gleanings to fuel your leadership awareness, reflection, and conversations …
What do pastors have in common with Mark Twain?
“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” is a frequent, if not entirely accurate quip attributed to Mark Twain. LifeWay Research’s Ed Stetzer points out another greatly exaggerated claim: the claim that an overwhelming number of pastors are disillusioned and on the verge of quitting the ministry. This claim has been frequently co-opted by those who wish to trash ministerial education. Welcome to the age of the internet …
Woe is me for I am undone …
Take a painful listen to Arab Baptist Theological Seminary student Suzie Lahoud’s discovery that, in the wake of the profound humanitarian crisis in Syria, much of her well-cultivated religious edifice has been exposed as idolatry. Here is a cautionary tale about how glibly we may be prone to bandy about the concept of worldview.