A Love-Hate Relationship

I have a love-hate relationship with the American Evangelical Church, and particularly in that tradition known as Southern Baptists. I love so much of who we are and what we have been about. I am grateful for my heritage: hearing the gospel as a child, and in my case seeing it on display through the Jesus Movement in the lives of hippies who were changed.  I love my church’s love for me and for family, and its simple faith in Jesus. I love that my heritage has loved the Bible and defended it. I love that I have been taught to stand on great moral truths.

I love the great hymns and the gospel songs, the youth groups and the mighty preachers who have stood as heroes to me.  I love the familiarity of church services and the nurturing nature of them for those who are involved.  I love the opportunities I have to minister in this context. Not a day goes by but that I thank God for the amazing and wonderful honor I have to teach at a Southern Baptist seminary. I could go on for many paragraphs talking about all I love.

But there are also things I hate, things that drive me crazy.  So bear with me while I vent.

I hate the motivation so often taught and demonstrated for living for Jesus, what I call the “supposed to” motivation.  You know, the “go to church because you are supposed to,” “put on a tie because you are supposed to,” “say yes to the nominating committee (regardless of your sense of calling) because you are supposed to,” etc.  There is a place for that. When your children are small you do not have to explain everything. Some things they need to do — not play in the street, not splash around in the toilet, not bite their little sister’s ear, because they are supposed to avoid such things.  But at some point early on the motivation should become much more noble.  How about, God is the most glorious Being in the universe, unmatched in majesty, and deserves our greatest love and surrender?  What if we spent more time on the metanarrative of Scripture instead of merely quoting its commands?  Maybe the reason some younger ministers kick back at the current denominational milieu is because they are tired of being told to toe the line simply because they are supposed to.

I hate the way we have so focused on the head and too often ignored the heart.  We have been told we are stupid by the cultural elites and liberal scholars.  I heard that in college and seminary: “if you are an inerrantist you are a light weight intellectually.” As a result we sometimes have had a sense of insecurity that led to an overemphasis on really good things—propositional apologetics, rational proofs, etc—while not simultaneously cultivating the heart.  As a result we too often have people who can quote the Bible and even teach it, but whose lives disconnect. Example—I know of more than one great Bible teacher, filled with the knowledge of the Bible, who ended up having an affair. Of course this can happen to a man who has a great heart for God and a great mind, but the epidemic of falling preachers has to make one think if there is more to what is going on. Example,: church leaders, clergy and lay, who can quote the Scripture and give a small dissertation on evangelism but who have never said a word to their neighbors about Jesus. We have become experts at giving advice and horrible at living what we say we know.  We must spend more time cultivating the heart.  We must spend less time on Christianity as behavior modification and more as a life yearning for God.  When we teach youth “world-view,” we must do more than teach the facts to remember, but also a passion to nurture.

I hate the way we have become excellent at construction but terrible at architecture. We can build institutions and do it well. We can build buildings, schools, etc. We are historically great at buildings, budgets and bodies. Yet while we have mastered building institutions we have failed at building disciples.  A great Christian today in many circles: one who attends regularly, gives faithfully, and serves consistently.  Show up, give much, and work hard.  A busy Christian is a godly Christian.  No, a busy Christian is a tired Christian. A busy Christian at the institution is a Christian who cannot love his neighbors because he never has time for them.  What if we focused less on preserving our institutions and more on the long term future for the church in America, and gave less attention to our accomplishments and more to strategically reaching America in the next generation?  Enough with the lowest common denominator approach.  Enough with the mindless conformity.

I hate the way we have become experts at HOW to do things and terrible at WHY we do what we do.

Now, we could still do better at the how in some ways.  Most believers still do not know how to share their faith confidently.  But before the how is the why.  We try to encourage believers by giving them simple, practical how to’s that work.  Imagine this: you never heard the gospel. Someone explained to you the great narrative—Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, and you began to see your life in relation to that great drama.  Suddenly Christianity is not one more commitment, with the result church leaders have to work hard on the “how” because we have failed at the “why.” What if pastors began faithfully preaching through books of the Bible expositionally with a long term view of teaching the why so believers would be more passionate about the how?  In fact, some are doing that around the country to huge crowds of young adults hungry for the Word.

I hate the way we have become horrible at change and yet we are even more unwilling to learn from others. Sometimes I think we believe if we did not think it up, whatever “it” is, it must be from the devil.  Also, we seek to make changes by reacting (read: overreacting) rather than by looking at the larger picture. Example: corporate worship—I love going to services where the church is trying to break away from the stereotypical corporate worship of the 1950s.  I do not mean to say all of corporate worship in the 50s was bad, but that the day of replicating worship services across the nation is long over. Most recognize corporate worship changes somewhat based on context. So what do they do? They stop singing great hymns.  Or virtually eliminate them. I observe this all the time. This is interesting when so many younger believers love the hymns, when sung in a manner that makes them more than a funeral dirge.  Some churches try so hard to be “contemporary” without any idea of what that is.  The result is a variety show, or a talent show (let’s let everyone know all the cool songs we can write), or a worship service that resembles a Saturday Night Live sketch of Christian corporate worship more than the people of God meeting with Him. I travel with a band and even though we mostly do youth events we still sing hymns as a part of our corporate worship. We also see this in preaching. I have been places where preachers, in a genuine desire to relate to today, became so bound to power point and video that when the technology did not work they could hardly function. I like to employ powerpoint and sometimes use video.  But I like to be able to make it just fine with, well, a BIBLE J.

I hate the way we have become obsessed with consumerism to the place that we have taken a good thing, like numbers (which after all, refer to people), and made it a bad thing. Numbers matter. The Acts records numbers on, well, a number of occasions. But when one becomes motivated by pragmatism and driven by numbers more than the great gospel and a great God, we become utilitarians more than living witnesses.  Thus our church membership numbers are meaningless, and regenerate church membership becomes lost in our rolls. When we are  driven excessively by numbers we become cowards who can hardly function if the numbers are not there and who run the risk of compromising the message if we are not careful.  Now, I know there are those who make excuses for their pathetic evangelism: “we stress quality not quantity.”  Yea right. They are cowards too.  Afraid to proclaim the good news boldly because of our insecurities is no better than dumbing down the gospel because of a fear of not having numbers.  Let us not fear numbers, but let us also not be driven by them.  Instead of putting out a number and saying “we must plant X churches” this year, which can lead to compromising our standards, let us figure out what a church planter looks like, and plant churches that are both evangelistic and reproducible, and do that better. The long term impact of doing less better is much greater!  I am not opposed to setting numerical goals.  I did so as a pastor. But the goal was never the god; it was merely a goal.  People matter more than flow charts.

I am done. Whew. I am actually an optimist by nature and have great hope for the future. So many questions I see by younger leaders I teach have less to do with rejecting their heritage and more to do with building a greater future.  We are in a spiritual, theological, and philosophical ecotone, and the future I pray will belong to those who honor Christ more than the immediate needs of the present or the secondary traditions of the past.