The Choice Before Us

“There exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. So we must strive very hard, by the grace of God, to keep the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave to it.”  

~ C.S. Lewis

I want to begin with a story. It’s the story of the Church. Once upon a time, and for almost two thousand years, the Church enjoyed a prominent and important place in society, America included. The Church was a culturally significant and respected institution. In this period of time called Christendom the Church stood at the epicenter of culture.

As the center of society, the Church had tremendous authority and influence. Like E.F. Hutton, when the Church spoke, people listened. Universities listened. The Media listened. Businesses listened. Governments listened. These institutions were guided by the wisdom dispensed by the Church. And in many cases, people sought out the Church to find the answers to the big questions of life. And it was the happiest of days for this thing called the Church.

But in the United States, as had already happened in Western Europe, something changed. A seismic shift occurred. The nature of that shift can be illustrated by a seemingly innocuous event one sleepy Sunday evening in Greenville, South Carolina, 1963. That night the Fox Theater defied the state’s time-honored blue laws and opened for business. Unbeknownst to most, Christendom in America was mortally wounded.

In the words of Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, 

“That evening has come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom…On that night, Greenville, South Carolina—the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world—served notice it would no longer be a prop for the Church. There would be no more free passes for the Church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head to head with the Church over who would provide the world view for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.” 

Ever since, the cultural landscape in America has changed dramatically.The Church is no longer the central institution in Western society. It’s been dethroned—marginalized by an increasingly secularized culture. With its influence diminished the Church has now become just one of any number of different places that people go to find Truth and Meaning. Optimistically, a few might still look to the Church for answers. The reality, however, is that the Church has become culturally insignificant.  

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"It seems we work very hard to insulate ourselves from the very world Jesus says we should be focused on. It seems we have created, without malicious design, a Christian bubble—an evangelical subculture—where Christians live surrounded only by other Christians, and as a result, there are few among the lost whom we get to know intimately. Christian experts tell us how to raise our kids, how to handle our finances, what music to buy, what movies to see, and which books to read. The bubble is complete. But God is on a mission outside the bubble."

—Ed Stetzer & Philip Nation, Compelled by Love, p.33.

Why ‘Sentness’ is Needed

These stats are taken from a friend’s Ph.D dissertation:

34% of the U.S. adult population has not attended any type of church service during the past 6 months

6 out of 10 unchurched people consider themselves to be Christian

1 out of every 3 is unchurched (73 million adults)

Since 1991, the adult population in the US has grown by 15%, and during the same period the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled (39 million to 75 million)

Roughly half of all churches in America didn’t add one new person through conversion growth last year

Without a major shift in the way we ‘do church’ this trend will only continue. If we continue to wait for people to come to us in order to hear the Good News, within the next twenty years we will be a country with a Christian residue only. Live sent!

Welcome To My New Blog

Today’s the start of something small but also something I hope will grow. I’ve started a blog. Finally!  Nothing like being 10 years behind the times, right?  Thanks to those of you who have encouraged me to do this for years now. 

My hope is that this blog might be an intersection of the Gospel and culture.  The title “sentness” refers to the result of the Gospel being fully embraced in the life of a believer.  There is much talk these days about being missional and much of that talk is divorced from the Gospel.  I believe that true missional living, every believer a missionary, is the fruit of understanding and appropriating the Gospel—Christ crucified, buried, raised to life.  As an apple tree always produces apples, the Gospel always produces missional “sentness.”  If there isn’t the smell of missional sentness about a believer’s life then maybe they don’t really understand the Gospel.  At a retreat in Estes Park, CO earlier this year it was put like this…

The default posture of every believer is one of sentness.  If you lack sentness, you lack Jesus.

Hopefully the words written here, the pictures and videos posted will be an encouragement to God’s Church and further the mission of Christ and His Kingdom—all to the glory of God.