Answer One:
Preeminent Tradition
In Mark 7, when Jesus said, “You are experts
at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition”, who
was he talking to? Well today, we are
experts at fending off guilt. We say it
was the Pharisees and we are not even Jews, let alone Pharisees, so we are not
guilty of what Jesus was talking about.
However, putting aside the “Jew” factor, he was talking to
(and about) those who fit the description in Matthew 23:3-4 - “[They] have seated themselves in the chair of Moses;
therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to
their deeds; for they say things and do not do them; they tie up heavy burdens
and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them
with so much as a finger.”
And he was talking about those who fit Paul’s description
in Romans 2:
“[You]
rely upon the Law and boast in God, and know His will and approve the
things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, and are confident
that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in
darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the
Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth. You, therefore, who teach
another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that one shall not steal, do
you steal? You who say that one should not commit adultery, do you commit
adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the Law,
through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God? For ‘the name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you.’”
As I’ve pointed to elsewhere, there is a strong correlation between the
Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day and the church leaders of our day. We even refer to a “Judeo-Christian” religion
and “Judeo-Christian” ethics as if the ‘christian religion’ we have come to
know is an extension of the Jewish religion.
As Greg Boyd points out so well, “This may surprise or even offend you,
but Jesus is not the founder of the Christian religion.” Allow me to restate: Greg Boyd’s book is
titled The Myth of a Christian Religion,
and a myth it truly is. “Christian
religion” is an oxymoron: if it’s Christian, it’s not religion; if it’s
religion, it’s not Christian.
What Jesus and Paul established was not the continuation (albeit with
some variation) of the Jewish law and practices, but something entirely
separate and as different from Judaism as chalk and cheese. We know this – why do we live as if it isn’t
true?
Modern Western Gentile church leaders are as guilty as the Jewish
religious leaders of Jesus’ and Paul’s day of being experts
at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep our traditions. This is the first reason we are not impacting
the world as we expect to: we are advancing a religion that has nothing
whatsoever to do with the good news of the kingdom of God and everything to do
with ‘sermonising’ the church’s religious gospel – and we think these two are
equivalents, when they are as different as light and darkness.
Answer Two:
Schizophrenic Theology
In the original language of the documents of the new covenant, the word for good news or good tidings is the noun euangellion. But the word has two other forms in those documents: one is the verb form of the word which is probably best translated as spreading the good news – much as the ancient farmer used to sow his seed into the earth. Jesus referred to this in his parable of the sower, probably better referred to as the parable of the soils. Today, we often refer to this as ‘evangelism’.
The other form of the word is the noun which we often translate ‘evangelist’
– that is, the one whose special gift it is to sow the seed in good soil so it
produces the desired harvest for the Lord.
The evangelist is listed among the five-fold eldership ministries Paul
describes as central to the purpose and functioning of the ecclesia – see Eph
4.
Each of these three forms of the word have this in common: the original
Greek word is made up of a root word and a prefix. The root word is angelos meaning messenger and the prefix is eu meaning good. Generally,
the Greek word angelos is translated
– rather transliterated – into English as angel. An angel is essentially the bearer of a
divine message. A similar related Greek
word angelia is commonly translated
as message. So, the messenger bears the
message; the angelos bears the angelia.
When the message that is being delivered is the news of the Kingdom of
God in Christ, it is referred to as the ‘good message’ or ‘the good news’ or
simply ‘good tidings’. The one who
brings the good news is the ‘good-news-er’ whom we often refer to as the
evangelist. The act of bringing the good
news is ‘good-news-ing’ or evangelising or simply evangelism. Again I refer to Jesus’ way of talking about
this as “the sower went forth to sow”.
All this is fairly basic and widely known among church leaders and has
been for some considerable time. It is
considered a ‘101’ course in Theological universities and colleges around the
globe. Over the years, I have tutored a
number of bible college students in the basics of the kingdom of God,
evangelism and preaching. Colleges often
put a lot of store in their students knowing this stuff well – pretty much
instinctively.
But across those same years, I have conducted a little of my own very basic
research by asking participants in my training seminars and workshops one
simple question and giving them one simple task. I ask the participants to answer the
question, what is the gospel? They can
choose their preferred method to answer the question – whether to talk to me (a
verbal presentation) or give me an essay (a written presentation). I don’t mind what sources they use as long as
they reference them in some form. They
are aware that I plan to assess their presentations against the New Testament.
The participants come from a cross-section of backgrounds but are
representative of their social context.
Some have had formal theological training, some informal, some have had
none at all. Some have been christians
only a very short time, some for thirty or forty years or even more, others for
various lengths of time in between.
I get two consistent results without fail. First, the majority have little notion of what
the New Testament gospel is when assessed against the words and ministries of
Jesus and the first apostles. There are
a couple of exceptions to this: 1) a smattering of the participants who have
had formal theological training (though by no means all of them); 2) the
occasional individual whom I can best describe as a student of the Holy Spirit
with a deep, intimate, personal relationship with Jesus.
As I said, only a few could get an A on their exam, a result that I find
somewhat disturbing. But by far the most
disturbing result appears when the participants are given their task. The task is to ‘preach the gospel’ to
people. I don’t mind if it’s to a crowd,
a small group, or one-on-one to a family member, friend, neighbour or stranger
– whichever they prefer and/or are most comfortable with. The only stipulation is that I need to know
what they say to their listeners. I need
to know what information they give and what response they ask for from their listeners.
Sometimes my way of assessing what audiences are hearing is to attend
so-called gospel meetings or ‘crusades’ and experience what the audiences is
experiencing.
To date, what I have found is that, without exception, the only ones
whose ‘preaching’ measures up well against the New Testament is the Holy Spirit
taught disciple – and not all of them either!
What I am far more likely to hear is: 1) a sermon constructed of
personal anecdotes, jokes, some kind of ‘Jesus is the answer’ presentation, and
a call to ask Jesus into one’s life and pray some version of what has become known
as ‘the sinner’s prayer’; 2) a modern version of “sinners in the hand of an
angry God” followed by an ‘altar-call’; 3) a recitation of a formula like the
“Four Spiritual Laws” or “one Way to God” or whatever is the latest equivalent
followed by whatever prayer suits the presentation; 4) an up-beat ‘culturally
relevant’ kind of ‘rock-concert’ presentation with a feel-good homily about
good clean living in a dark, dirty, dangerous world followed by an invitation
to attend the Sunday morning gatherings of a similarly up-beat
‘culturally-relevant’ church with a hip name like ‘Creedo’ or CityLife or
HarvestField.
Probably no less than nine times out of ten, the good news of the
kingdom of God is not heard. And, in my
experience, what is heard directs the audience’s attention away from, not
towards, the good news of the kingdom of God.
In other words, to introduce the good news of the kingdom of God would
seem like you had suddenly changed the subject completely.
I used to take people to evangelistic meetings only to find myself
embarrassed by what was said and having to find another way to introduce those
people to Jesus and the good news that was his life and message. I began to coin the term ‘schizophrenic
theology’ to describe what I was hearing.
It is theology with multiple personalities.
At the theological or theoretical level, the good news of the kingdom of
God may be known and understood; when presented with an opportunity to proclaim
or herald it, it morphs into formulaic mumbo-jumbo – gobbledegook recipes. And when the opportunity presents itself to
call the listeners to some kind of decisive action, the response called for
bears no relationship whatsoever to anything we read about in the Gospels or
Acts – not even at the level of theory or intention.
So often, we instruct people to pray some prayer, read their bibles (and
if they don’t have one, we’ll give them one), go to church, get involved in a
follow-up group, and live clean moral lives – oh, and make sure you tell all
your friends what a changed person you are.
And so often, we do that because that is all we know; that is what
evangelism is.
To me, all of this is, at best, pre-evangelism, at worst,
anti-evangelism or counter-evangelism.
For some, it may work as an introduction to opportunities to demonstrate
and talk about the good news of the kingdom of God; for some it a definite
turn-off and cements the person in their position of opposition to all things
‘christian’; for some, the best it does is present us with the need (and
hopefully the opportunity) to undo the damage and try again.
The only redeeming feature in these episodes of schizophrenic theology
is that God is God and loves our hearers way more than we do – so from time to
time He draws people to Himself despite what we do. Fortunately, in every situation, His grace
transcends our frailties and our stupidity and our pathetic arrogance. But is this the best we can do? I think not.
In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul testifies that “we” (he and his
team) “have been approved by God to be entrusted with the good news.” Is it too much to expect that purveyors of
the good news today share that qualification?
This is the second reason we are not impacting the world the way we
expect or want to: schizophrenic theology – theology with a dual
personality. And why is schizophrenic
theology such a dominant force? I
believe it is primarily because “we do not perceive the Body of Christ
correctly”, to quote Paul. We see
evangelism through a paradigm of church, pastor, Western culture, linear
thinking and the business model. But I
do not think it is wise or appropriate to try to tweak the paradigm to make it
better; I believe that paradigm is “of the earth, earthy” and we need to dump
it and in its place put the paradigm of ecclesia, apostles prophets and
teachers, kingdom thinking and the discipleship model – a “heavenly” or eternal
paradigm.
For instance, anyone who takes on board the kingdom, heavenly, eternal
perspective written so beautifully about by Frank Viola in From Eternity to Here, will, in all probability, do evangelism
fundamentally differently – because the paradigm is fundamentally different.
[Continued next post]
Cheers,
Kevin.
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