evangelism

On Faith and Culture, Part 2: Flexible Evangelism

October 24, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

I ended the previous post with the observation that the world and everything in it is broken by sin. Because of that brokenness, Jesus left his disciples a command to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mt 28.19-20). Even in Paul’s day, and even with the relative cultural unity brought by the Greeks and then the Romans across the Mediterranean Basin, there were cultural issues to address:

Just within Judaism there was division between those who spoke Hebrew/Aramaic and kept closely to Hebrew customs, and those (“Hellenists”) who admired the Greek culture and tried to adopt as much of it as they could (e.g. Ac 6.1).

The division between Jews and “Gentile dogs” was as deep and wide as it could be (e.g. Ac 10.28; 11.2-3).

As Paul traveled the Roman Empire, he faced occasions where he didn’t understand the local religious practices, or even the language (Ac 14.8-18).

Even within the church there were disputes about whether one should keep kosher or celebrate the Mosaic feast days (Ro 14.2, 5), or whether one should eat meat that had been offered to an idol in a pagan ritual (1Co 8.4-13).

These were real concerns, real disagreements, that caused real divisions. Answering these questions was hard.

Throughout this process of early evangelism, the apostles made it clear that there were some things, both doctrinal and practical, on which Christians must agree. They evidenced this primarily in their sermons, all of which tended to focus on the same set of core doctrines, the hub around which the wheel of Christianity turned. (That link is important; take a minute to read the post, and ideally the whole series, since it’s foundational to the current discussion.) They began with the well-founded assumption that the Hebrew Scriptures—what Christians call the Old Testament—are God’s inspired Word and thus to be trusted—and obeyed—implicitly.

But beyond that core, they demonstrated some flexibility on how they approached various groups. For example, Paul addressed a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, with a discourse on how Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew Scripture, since these educated, observant Jews had a cultural context for that argument (Ac 13.15-41). But at the Areopagus in Athens, facing a pagan audience, Paul quoted none of the Hebrew Scriptures, focusing instead on the writings of various Greek poets and philosophers (Ac 17.18-31)—specifically,

Epimenides, Cretica (Acts 17.28a)
Aratus, Phaenomena l. 5 (Acts 17.28b)

By the end of this sermon, however, Paul demonstrated the importance of the doctrinal core by emphasizing unapologetically the resurrection of Christ, an assertion that brought mocking from this culture (Ac 17.32).

It’s interesting to compare the two sermons more closely:

Opening Hook: national pride (Ac 13.17) vs. “unknown god” (Ac 17.22-23)

Storyline: national covenant (Ac 13.18-22) vs. creation (Ac 17.24-29)

Consequence: Messiah as fulfillment of promise (Ac 13.23-41) vs. certainty of coming judgment (Ac 17.30-31)

These two commissions—to preach the undiluted and undistorted gospel, and to preach to every culture on the planet—give rise to disagreements. Believers are priests, illuminated by the Spirit, but they’re imperfect, and so they differ as to how to go about this central task.

We are tasked with taking the gospel to every culture on the planet—cultures that exist because we are created in the image of God.

Good stewards will represent Christ, in word and deed, in the most effective way to reach the culture.

But the message must not be compromised by that accommodation to the culture.

While contextualization means doing what’s necessary to make the gospel understandable in the target culture, it is not a blank check to be as groovy as possible.

This raises—it does not “beg,” but that’s for a different post—a question. Which ways of making the gospel message more easily accessible by a different culture are appropriate, and which are not? How do we tell the difference? Where do we draw the line?

On Deconversion

March 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger 11 Comments

These days I’m noticing a lot of friends who are turning from the faith. These are people with apparent, even convincing previous commitments to Christianity who now welcome the label of unbelief.

I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon. Why so many? Why now?

One possibility, I suppose, is a culturally driven one–that the apparent increase in deconversions is an optical illusion, that there are no more today than there have been in the past. The illusion comes because most of my friends now have and use a personal publishing platform, and they live in a culture that encourages “authenticity” in the form of controversial public pronouncements and the consequent wave of affirmation, in the form of “likes,” from fellow travelers. In that environment, deconversions that in another time would have been kept relatively private are now out there for all the world to see.

Possible, I suppose. Though survey data seem to show that the number of professing evangelicals is indeed shrinking.

Another possibility is theologically driven. For those of us who find—with all due respect to our Arminian brothers and sisters—the Bible to be teaching that a genuine believer cannot finally be lost, the conclusion that someone who deconverts—and persists—was never genuinely a believer to begin with is pretty much unavoidable. And if that’s the case, what could explain all those false professions?

I offer a possibility.

For my increasingly lengthening lifetime, American evangelicalism has prioritized evangelism; it’s one of Bebbington’s four essentials of the movement. In a culture that values efficiency and effectiveness, after the model of Henry Ford, we want to make the process of evangelism fool-proof, so that any believer of any experience can successfully carry out the Great Commission. So we develop methods, and we teach them in little pamphlets in simple language. The Romans Road. The Wordless Book. Sunday school. And lots of others.

And Christian parents, who more than anything want their children to live without the noxiousness of sinful decisions and eventually to go to heaven, lay that simple process on their beloved ones from the earliest ages.

Now, at the age of 4 or 5, any child is going to follow the instructions of an authority figure that he loves and trusts, particularly if there’s no real cost to it.

“Do you want to burn in hell forever?”

“Well, um, no, I’d rather not.”

What sane person would answer any other way?

“Then you need to pray this prayer.”

“Um, okay.”

And the “Amen” is followed by the fervent statement, “You’ve asked Jesus into your heart! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not going to heaven!”

Scripture tells us that salvation is a divine work. The Spirit convicts of sin (Jn 16.8) and illumines the mind; the Father draws the convert to the Son (Jn 6.44). Unless God is acting on this convert, he’s not a convert at all.

Is it possible that we have a generation of people who grew up in Christian homes and made a “decision” that you’d have to be an idiot to say no to, but have never felt the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and the drawing (and keeping) power of the Father, the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? A generation that today sees professing “evangelicals” by the thousands engaging in behavior that they find deeply disgusting—most notably abusive sexual behavior, hypocrisy, lack of empathy, and the apotheoses of celebrities with prominent character flaws—and they say to themselves, and to their social circles, “Why am I associating with these people? What reason do I have to stay in a relationship to which I’ve never had any commitment beyond an intellectual one, and in my immature years at that?”

Of course it’s possible.

Maybe we should watch for evidence of God’s working in a young person before encouraging him to “pray the prayer.” Maybe we should show our devotion to carrying out the Great Commission by seeking genuine, not facile, conversions. Maybe we should be God’s servants, rather than his pushy facilitators, in this important work. Maybe we should be less frantic, less desperate, and more trusting and confident.

Good intentions don’t seem to be good enough.

Photo by Romain V on Unsplash

On the Unruffled Passivity of Modern Evangelicalism

August 13, 2020 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

I’ve lived pretty much my whole life in evangelicalism. My parents weren’t believers when I was born, the youngest of their children, but when I was about 5 they heard the gospel and began attending an evangelical church, where eventually all of us made professions of faith. I’ve written about that before.

That church was mainstream evangelical; I can recall a citywide crusade featuring Torrey Johnson, the founder of Youth for Christ, that our church and several others participated in. A few years later we moved across the country, where my pastor was the young Chuck Swindoll, fresh out of seminary, and my Christian high school had been founded by such evangelical lights as George Eldon Ladd, Gleason Archer, and Harold Ockenga. Then I came to Bob Jones University, which was, well, a little further to the right on the theological spectrum, you might say, and I ended up staying there the rest of my life, so far.

So my evangelical bona fides are pretty solid. Been hanging around Christians since I was just a little tyke.

Many years later—maaaany years later—I was walking down Main Street in Greenville when a young man walked up to me, handed me a tract, and started to present the gospel to me. He was a student at Tabernacle Baptist Bible College in Greenville, out seeking to share the gospel with strangers on the street.

Why do I remember that so clearly?

Because it was the first time.

It was the first time anybody had ever told me about Jesus outside of a church building or event.

I was in my mid-40s.

I’d lived in the Bible Belt for a quarter of a century, and nobody had ever told me about Jesus, unless I went to their church and asked.

And it gets worse.

Since that afternoon 20 years ago, it hasn’t ever happened again.

For all the Christians I’m around, nobody reaches out to introduce me to the gospel.

What would account for that?

Well, you might say, I’ve been at BJU for almost 50 years now, and these people all know me, and they know I’m a professor of Bible, and they know I’m already a believer.

Fair enough.

But I don’t know every Christian in this town, not by a long shot, and that was even more true back in Boston and, before that, in Spokane. And I must have interacted with any number of Christians in daily commerce, where they wouldn’t have known me.

I crossed paths every day with Christians who didn’t know if I was a believer or not.

Nobody ever told me, except for that one kid from Tabernacle—God bless him.

Am I the only person? Is this just a case of hasty generalization based on a woefully insufficient evidentiary sample?

How many people have witnessed to you outside of a church?

How does that happen to someone in my shoes? Is the church not evangelizing, or is the evangelism just going on in places where I don’t hang out?

Are we afraid? What’s an ambassador for Christ got to be afraid of?

Are we distracted? What could possibly be more important?

Have we subcontracted the job to the professionals? Where is that in the Bible?

Do we just not care? Are you kidding me?

Do we assume somebody else is picking up the slack? Well, if my experience is any measure, nobody else is picking up the slack.

The King has left us very specific instructions, with all the resources necessary to carry them out:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28.18b-20).

Are we just going to sit in our churches and wait for them to come to us? I don’t find that in Jesus’ little word “Go.”

What would our world be like if we all got serious?

Photo by Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash

On Cold-Call Evangelism and Cultural Appreciation

January 31, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

While I’m at it, let me give another example of how we decide whether to fight over behavioral questions.

One of the things I’ve learned on frequent short-term mission trips around the world is how different cultures are, and how important it is to know and respect those differences if you’re going to minister effectively.

Cultures are different, and that’s something to celebrate. My favorite example of that is eating a meal at someone’s house. Here in the US, we were all trained as children that when someone has you over for a meal, you eat everything on your plate. Why? Because turning away food means you don’t like it, and it’s rude to say that to the person who has prepared that food for you.

In China, though, you must not eat everything on your plate. Why? Because eating it all says that your host didn’t give you enough—and that’s rude too. You should leave a little bit, and if he offers more, say, “I am very satisfied, thank you.”

Isn’t that cool? Two different cultures have attached opposite meanings to the very same action, and both meanings make perfect sense. Cultures, consisting of humans made in the image of God, are reflecting God in their creativity—even when they don’t recognize him as God. Yes, that’s cool.

Something else to notice is that cultures develop their convictions for very surprising and sometimes trivial reasons. Let me give you an example.

Back in the early 20^th century, houses had porches. The main reason was that in the summertime, when it got hot, it would often be warmer inside the house in the evening than it was outside. Families would sit on the porch in the cool of the day, enjoying the breeze and escaping the stuffy heat inside.

As a consequence of that, people sitting on the porch saw their neighbors and the people walking by, and since they were just sitting around, it was common for the others to step up onto the porch and engage in conversation.

Then something big happened.

Air conditioning.

Now there was no need to sit out on the porch in the summertime; it was more comfortable indoors. And furthermore, with TV to watch (it had been around since 1939, but it became ubiquitous in American homes in the 60s), there was no time to talk to the neighbors and the passersby, or so we thought.

And so we quit dropping by one another’s homes.

Seriously. When some stranger knocks on your door, what’s driving your thinking? Getting rid of said person as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And as a result of that, what we used to call “door-to-door visitation” is largely ineffective today. I know of churches that still engage in it aggressively, but I know of none that can claim any significant amount of response—I’m thinking particularly of evangelized church members—for all their efforts.

So most American evangelicals don’t spend time with cold-call evangelism. The preferred approach today—for those who evangelize, and shame on those who don’t—is “relational” evangelism, forming relationships with neighbors or co-workers or retail workers with the goal of living and speaking grace and gospel in a way that woos them to Christ.

Are these Christians weak on evangelism? Not if they’re really doing what they say they are. But what about Acts 20.20? Doesn’t that verse say we’re supposed to go door to door? No, it doesn’t. It might say that Paul did, but he was living in a culture different from ours, and those differences matter.

Now, let me moderate that just a bit.

The porch illustration I’ve given here is specific to American culture—and modern, suburban American culture at that. The US has always been a mix of cultures; even in pre-colonial days the Oneida were different from the Cherokee, who were different from the Apache, who were different from the Tlingit. In the Colonies, Massachusetts was very different from Georgia. We even had a civil war as a result of sectionalism and the cultural divide that sectionalism represented. And today, all four corners of the country—I’ve lived in all of them—differ from the middle.

Today door-to-door visitation works in some places in America, and in even more places around the world.

Know your culture. Appreciate its strengths. Address its weaknesses. Represent Christ in it with wisdom and grace—and strategic smarts.

And again, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Photo by christian koch on Unsplash

Groovier Than Thou

August 20, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mat 28.19-20).

This is the Big One, the Prime Directive. If we don’t give attention to this, nothing else matters. The church’s job—the individual believer’s job—is to present the gospel to everyone on earth, evangelizing, baptizing, teaching.

This despite the fact that most people aren’t interested (Rom 3.9-18), and that most people, apparently, will never be interested (Mat 7.13-14).

So how do we catch their interest?

There are 2 schools of thought on that.

We make the gospel as attractive as possible by excelling at everything we do, particularly at those things that are already interesting to the people we’re trying to reach. We become the best at academic pursuits, at artistic pursuits, at athletic pursuits, at anything that will provide a bridge to the unbeliever.
We present the gospel as winsomely as possible, but we let it speak for itself. We depend on the Holy Spirit to do the attracting.

I grew up in churches that held to the first view. It was the 60s, and many of us Christians tried to be as groovy as everyone around us, as a lever for inciting interest in the Lord we served. “Real peace through Jesus, baby.”

Sidebar: I know the word groovy hasn’t occurred to anybody in 40 years. It’s anachronistic and therefore odd. It sounds like somebody who’s not cool but who’s trying to be—desperately and clumsily, like a 70-year-old woman with long, bleached-blonde hair, a barbed-wire tattoo, and a bikini. I’m using the word intentionally, and I’ll come back to the anachronism problem later.

I was much older before I understood the theological and historical roots of this approach. It was rooted in a couple of ideas, one centuries old—oddly enough—and one quite recent at the time.

The first theological basis was post-millennialism, which has been around since at least the 17^th century. This view, still popular today, especially in some Reformed circles, is the idea that Christ will return to earth after the church has established the kingdom through centuries of increasing power and influence. Today it’s the basis of Christian Reconstructionism, or Dominion Theology. The view finds its biblical roots most obviously in Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom will arrive slowly; see, for example, the parables of the mustard seed (Mat 13.31-32) and of the leaven (Mat 13.33).

If post-millennialism is correct, then the church needs literally to take over the world, to become its ruler. And if that’s not going to happen by force—I don’t know any post-millennialist who’s advocating force today, despite the fear-mongering from the American political left, which tries to paint all evangelicals as Dominionists, people who want to take over the whole system and impose their beliefs on everyone else—then it needs to happen by influence in every area of life. The church needs to win at everything, in every area of culture.

The second theological basis was a proposal by a leading American evangelical, Harold Ockenga, in the late 1940s. He called for a “new evangelicalism” that would be characterized by 3 distinctives: 1) a rejection of fundamentalist separatism; 2) a commitment to academic engagement with theological liberalism; and 3) a commitment to social involvement. Those who embraced Ockenga’s proposal called for replacing separatism with “infiltration.”

And that in turn opened the door for evangelicals of my generation to try to be groovier than thou.

But as I participated in and observed that strategy, I wasn’t happy with the pragmatics of it. I noticed that we weren’t having much success at attracting long-term disciples with grooviness. They would be more accepting of us—perhaps, if we were groovy enough, and our grooviness didn’t come across as fake and manipulative—but that didn’t seem to translate into their being more accepting of Christ. And I couldn’t help noticing that being groovy affected us, our thinking and our behavior, a lot more than it affected the people we were trying to reach.

I wasn’t happy with the theology of it either. I knew that salvation is God’s work, not ours—from beginning to end. I knew that justification and glorification are entirely God’s work; and I knew that sanctification, which occurs between those two, while something we play a part in bringing to pass, is empowered, enabled, by the Spirit of God.

And so I knew that the very beginning of that process, conviction, is the Spirit’s work as well. It’s not my clever turn of phrase, or my quickness with exactly the right answer to the doubter’s question, or my overpowering intellectual brilliance, or my grooviness—or even Jesus’ grooviness—that brings the unbeliever to Christ; it’s the power of the Spirit, using the living Word of God (Heb 4.12), that confounds the doubter’s resistance from the inside out (John 6.44).

So. I don’t have to be groovy. In fact, since what’s groovy changes as quickly as the word used to describe it—cool, hip, rad, awesome, whatever—I’m going to waste a lot of energy trying to keep up with an ever-moving culture (what?! you mean Hanson’s not rad anymore?), energy that would be better invested in simply telling and living the gospel story.

So I’ve quit trying to be groovy—and that’s made my daughters’ lives easier, if nothing else.

And you know what?

There’s great freedom in not carrying the burden of getting the unbeliever to Christ. God will do that. I don’t have to be cool enough, or smart enough, or quick enough to carry it off. All I need to do is live the fruit of the Spirit, and tell the story.

Or, as my friend David Hosaflook says, “Pray, meet people, and tell them about Jesus.”

And, come to think of it, that requires all the energy I’ve ever had.

Photo by Katia Rolon on Unsplash