The Lost and the Disoriented Found

by Dr Jim Lucas

Don’t believe it if you hear that North American culture is secular. Reg Bibby, Canada’s leading religious demographer concludes in a recent book entitled Restless Churches that about 80% of Canadians still believe in God. It is not that North Americans or Canadians in particular have jettisoned religion or spirituality, it is that many of them have rejected the church as a help in their spiritual journey.

On a recent Oprah Winfrey program, Oprah related a story to her guest on the show, the popular singer Faith Hill. She told of how she came to an incredible understanding with God when she was desperately trying to break into the acting profession. She finally decided to give up her struggle to Jesus and she began to sing the old gospel song “I Surrender All.” She told Faith Hill she did this with tears streaming down her face while out running. Immediately afterward, she was contacted by a Hollywood executive and asked to take a role in the movie “The Color Purple.” Faith Hill then sung the song “I Surrender All” as the audience listened on with rapt attention. No matter what we may think of Oprah’s spirituality, or her profession of faith, or her theology, there is no doubt that she is deeply spiritual, as are many in North America who do not connect with the church. This kind of open confession of faith is quite surprising given the presumption by many that we live in a post-Christian culture. Perhaps our culture is more post-church than post-Christian.

What’s the problem? When there is every reason to believe that there is a significant spiritual renaissance in our culture, why does the church not seem to be having much of an impact? Why do the nonchurched people of our culture perceive the church to be irrelevant to their spiritual journey? These are important questions.

There are at least two possible answers. Perhaps the answer is that the church, in attempting to relate to the culture has lost its uniqueness or saltiness and we are not perceived to have the answers people are looking for in regard to their spirituality. In other words, we look too much like the world to have the solution to their need. We appear to be trapped in the same quagmire. Someone has said that maybe in attempting to lean over to speak to a lost world, we have fallen in. Or, on the other hand, a second answer is that perhaps the invitation to join our ranks has been rejected because it seems too counter cultural and the price too high for admission. Now we know that the Gospel is counter cultural and the price of admission is high. But it should be counter cultural in the right way, the way Jesus was counter cultural, and the price of admission should be high in the way the call to follow Jesus is costly. But sometimes our version of the Gospel is countercultural in the wrong way, in the way that makes outsiders feel uncomfortable even before they hear the whole message. And the price of admission is too high in a way that makes outsiders reject the message before they hear it clearly. The first answer to our post-church dilemma involves the problem of syncretism, the second answer addresses the issue of cultural irrelevance. These two solutions sit at either end of a continuum. Both are positions that the church wants to avoid in her constant struggle to faithfully share the Gospel in a fallen world.

If syncretism is our problem, we need to clean house and determine what things are making us “of” the world but not “in” the world. Jesus of course, has called us to the opposite, to be “in” the world but not “of” the world (John 17:13-19). Have we somehow allowed the “Gods of this age” to infiltrate the Church and affect the way we present the Gospel: Gods like rationalism -- an over confidence in reason to lead us to the truth; individualism -- its all about me; dualism -- when we separate religion from the rest of life; or any of the other isms we are tempted to embrace? In doing this house cleaning we must be careful not to only focus on those things which we preachers typically harp on as sin. (Those sins that are visible and soundly condemned by our holiness forbearers.) Because it is those nasty heart attitudes and earth bound values that are more likely to be causing the problem. In fact, they are more likely the disease, and sin the symptoms. We must avoid simply treating the symptoms.

Since reading Dallas Willard’s book The Divine Conspiracy a number of years ago I have been struck by the thought that we must not simply get people to believe in Jesus, we must help people believe in what Jesus believed in. The challenge is to identify the values of our culture that are not in line with Jesus and then help people embrace the values of Jesus. As was the pattern in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard it said . . . but I tell you . . . ” (i.e. Matt. 5:27) It seems that seeing the contrast between this world’s values and the values of the Kingdom helps to reinforce the idea that as Kingdom people, we are to embrace a different belief system than our unbelieving friends. This kind of heart transformation, only possible through the work of the Holy Spirit, is what should make our church culture distinctive from the culture of our unchurched neighbours.

If cultural irrelevance is our problem. If people are avoiding us because they cannot clearly hear the Gospel, we need to learn from our missionaries who encounter this kind of disconnect every time they change locations. We need to understand that the culture of our churches is quite often foreign to those we are trying to reach. We have to adapt to the environment we find ourselves in without compromising the Gospel.

Leonard Sweet in soulTsunami comments that Pentecostals are well suited to respond to this kind of challenge. We believe and demonstrate that a relationship with Christ is more than a cerebral affair. It involves our experience of God’s presence. This resonates with one of the deepest needs of our culture:

The church is preoccupied with the problems of meaning when the culture is very little concerned with meaning. What preoccupies pomo (postmodern) culture is the quest for experience, especially experiences with a purpose, and the reveling in full sensory immersion rituals, signs, and symbols that connect to the divine . . . Hence the growth of primal spiritualities like Pentecostalism, the fastest-growing and most important religious movement of the 20th century. Pentecostalism has grown from 3.7 million at the turn of the century to around 450 million today, with a growth rate of about 20 million per year. . . . about 25% of the world’s Christians are Pentecostal or Charismatic . . . The two groups who have the greatest mastery of EPIC (Experiential, Participatory, Interactive, Communal) worship are the Pentecostals and the Eastern Orthodox. (Sweet, 208-209)

Also, George Hunter in Radical Outreach notes another way that Pentecostal ethos appeals to a deep longing in our culture. It has to do with our acceptance of everybody who is empowered by the Spirit. This springs from our emphasis on the Acts 2:17 passage where Peter quotes the prophet Joel indicating that the Spirit’s empowerment is for all people regardless of gender or race.

Every interpreter of Pentecostalism is impressed by the movement’s engagement and inclusion of many poor, uneducated, marginalized, disinherited, left-behind, and even outcast ‘losers’ at the bottom of society’s social ladder, and by the movement’s power to convince them that they need to change and that the Spirit can empower their change and will ‘gift’ them for ministry and make their lives significant. The movement, on every continent, makes ‘losers’ into ‘winners.’ Pentecostalism seems more able to achieve interracial fellowships, and to recognize and empower women for ministry, than any other branch of Christianity. In addition to reaching ‘the masses,’ many people of ‘the classes’ are attracted to Pentecostalism’s hope, life, changed lives, and more inclusive humanity. The movement has often observed that cynics ‘come to scorn and stayed to pray.’ (Hunter, 64)

This being the case, we Pentecostals should be well positioned to reach our culture but unfortunately we still struggle to contextualize the Gospel for our newest generation. Many of our churches appear to be designed to reach the people who are already within their walls. We have become museums that reflect the cultural trends of the last generation. Our music, style of preaching, programs and even our interior décor all say to the newcomer that if they want to join us they are going to have to adapt to another generation’s way of relating to God and to each other. I think that most of us who really want to reach others for Christ realize this problem and we are thinking, praying and even experimenting to try to find the solution.

So we need to be aware that syncretism and cultural irrelevance are two of the major reasons why spiritual people do not see the church as a help for their spiritual journey. There are others of course. There are many unchurched people who once tried the church and found it wanting. Or have wanted the church but found it trying. I call these people the “disoriented found.” They do not consider themselves lost. They know Jesus but they have been turned off by the church. Perhaps they have had a bad experience due to the legalism, institutionalism or politics of an unhealthy body. Just read the stories coming out of the Emergent Movement and you will find lots of reasons why Christians are avoiding the church these days. We need to find better ways to make our churches safe places. We need to be more concerned about how our churches need to be a foretaste of the coming and fully realized Kingdom. The community of the King should reflect his values and we should be “holy discontent” with values and attitudes that do not manifest Him. Sometimes I am worried that we spend too much energy trying to make the world act like Christians and not enough time making Christians act like Christ.

So we need to be aware that syncretism and cultural irrelevance are two of the major reasons why spiritual people do not see the church as a help for their spiritual journey. There are others of course. There are many unchurched people who once tried the church and found it wanting. Or have wanted the church but found it trying. I call these people the “disoriented found.” They do not consider themselves lost. They know Jesus but they have been turned off by the church. Perhaps they have had a bad experience due to the legalism, institutionalism or politics of an unhealthy body. Just read the stories coming out of the Emergent Movement and you will find lots of reasons why Christians are avoiding the church these days. We need to find better ways to make our churches safe places. We need to be more concerned about how our churches need to be a foretaste of the coming and fully realized Kingdom. The community of the King should reflect his values and we should be “holy discontent” with values and attitudes that do not manifest Him. Sometimes I am worried that we spend too much energy trying to make the world act like Christians and not enough time making Christians act like Christ.

There are four types of people we are trying to reach: the nonchurched nonbeliever; the churched nonbeliever; the nonchurched believer; and the churched believer. The first three of course are the challenge. The fourth is the object of most of our attention. Luke’s Gospel, chapter 15, would suggest that Jesus would be more concerned about the first three. Jesus wants lost people found and the disoriented found and welcomed into safe communities of faith. We need to be wary of syncretism and work hard at being culturally relevant. We need to pray and think and act like Jesus so that just as during His lifetime, people who are spiritually hungry will find hope in Him and the company of His friends.