Torch, Fall/Winter 2012

24 TORCH And yes, people come, but what type of people? Recent research confirms that very few American churches are growing by way of conversion. Instead, the sheep are simply meandering to greener pastures. Church growth cannot be equated with church health. Even when growth does occur from conversion, it is usually people from a Christian heritage who are returning to their roots. As Earl Creps demonstrates, post-everythings remain largely unmoved: “Sarah, a young professional woman, noted: ‘We know you have tried to get us to church. That’s part of the problem. Many of your appeals have been carefully calculated for success, and that turns our collective stomach. Take worship, for instance. You think that fashionably cutting-edge liturgies relate to us on our level, but the fact is we can find better entertainment elsewhere. The same goes for anything you term contemporary. We see right through it. It is up-to-date for the sake of being up-to-date, and we are not impressed by the results.’” Just because a ministry method is recent doesn’t make it relevant to a shifting culture. To reach them with the Gospel, we don’t need to be trendy, but we do need to be mission-oriented. Being a missionary is a difficult task, especially when the culture shift has taken place in one’s own backyard. As Paul did in Athens (Acts 17), competent missionaries embedded in a pagan culture diligently set about the task of contextualization — carefully studying the culture in order to find connection points for communicating the Gospel. This process is essential for dialoguing about the Christian faith in a way that an increasingly post-Christian society can understand. For instance, we can no longer assume that our hearers comprehend basic Christian concepts such as sin, God’s Word, creation, the cross, or even God. They speak a different vernacular, and our “Christian- ese” will be misunderstood or met with blank stares. Contextualization is something the emerging church seems to comprehend. However, we must simultaneously contend for the faith (Jude 3), or we will have nothing worth contextualizing. We don’t need to tinker with the Gospel to make it more palatable or relevant. The Gospel is already relevant. But like missionaries, we must attentively study our culture so that we can faithfully, yet intelligibly, communicate the unchanging message to a new generation. From Suburban to Urban In many ways, the emerging church has grown out of a reaction against a plastic, inward-focused, suburban version of Christianity devoid of influence and involvement in a hurting world. It criticizes the stale orthodoxy of churches and Christians that champion doctrinal definition but possess little concern for the poor and marginalized in society. Emergers disdain hypocrisy. So do post-everythings. So did Jesus. The solution, however, is not to redefine orthodoxy or soften doctrine but rather to authentically adorn the Gospel with action (Titus 2:10). T he economy is front-page news ... and not just because of the presidential election. Confronted by rising gas prices, volatility on Wall Street, the mortgage industry in crisis, and overall inflation, we’ve been forced to tighten our budgets, re-examine our financial investments, and ask tough questions about where our economy is headed. Join us in the next issue of TORCH (spring–summer) as we seek to make sense of the economic confusion, considering the causes, grappling with the consequences, and offering a biblical perspective on how followers of Christ should respond. NEXT ISSUE: EXT ISSUE: