we, ourselves, & us... & the narrow vision

I stumbled across this blog entry recently over at the Jim Wallis & Friends blog written by one of Jim's friends, Soong-Chan Rah.

The End of Christianity?

by Soong-Chan Rah 05-22-2009

Last month, in an issue of Newsweek, Jon Meacham describes what he perceives to be “The End of Christian America.” Meacham asserts that “Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population,” leading to the “end of a Christian America.” In the opening paragraph of the Newsweek article, Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, laments what he perceives to be a disturbing trend. “As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America’s religious culture was cracking.” Mohler is particularly disturbed by the decline of Christianity in New England, as he states: “to lose New England struck me as momentous.”

As many lament the decline of Christianity in the United States in the early stages of the 21st century, very few have recognized that American Christianity may actually be growing, but in unexpected and surprising ways. Let’s take for example the Northeastern city of Boston in a region of the country that Mohler believes we have “lost.” In 1970, the city of Boston was home to about 200 churches. Thirty years later, there were 412 churches. The net gain in the number of churches was in the growth of the number of churches in the ethnic and immigrant communities. While only a handful of churches in 1970 held services in a language other than English, thirty years later, more than half of those churches held services in a language other than English.

Between 2001 and 2006, 98 new churches were planted in the city of Boston.[1] In a city the size of Boston, 98 new church plants in a six year time periods is not spiritual death, it is spiritual life and vitality. Of the 98 churches planted during that six year time period, “76 of them reported the language of worship. Of those 76 churches, almost half of them … [have] non-English or bi-lingual [services], 19 worship in Spanish, 8 in Haitian Creole, and 9 in Portuguese.”[2] The perception nationally was that Boston was spiritually dead because there was noticeable decline among the white Christian community. In contrast, there has been significant growth among non-white Christians and churches.

When I was a pastor in Boston, I consistently heard the lament over the decline of Christianity in the city of Boston. However, the Boston I knew was filled with vibrant and exciting churches. New churches were being planted throughout the city. Christian programs and ministries were booming in the city. Boston is alive with spiritual revival, particularly among the ethnic minority communities. But very few seem to recognize this reality, even as this trend begins to appear nationally.

As sociologist R. Stephen Warner points out, “What many people have not heard … and need to hear is that the great majority of the newcomers are Christians. … This means that the new immigrants represent not the de-Christianization of American society but the de-Europeanization of American Christianity.”[3] Contrary to popular opinion, the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive and well among the immigrant and ethnic minority communities and not among the majority white churches in the United States. As we enter into a new era for American Christianity, we may indeed identify this era as a post-Western, post-white American Christianity. But we may also assert that this development may actually be the salvation of American Christianity rather than the decline and demise of American Christianity.

Instead of the collapse of evangelicalism, we are actually seeing the revival of American Christianity in a vastly different form. Evangelicalism has been consistently portrayed in the media as a group of white, upper-middle class, suburban, Republicans. Is it any wonder that the black church will oftentimes refuse this designation? Or that other ethnic minority Christians feel marginalized from the very community that shares their basic values and beliefs?

But now there is a new era for Christianity in America. A Next Evangelicalism — an evangelicalism that crosses across racial and ethnic lines with a shared value system rather than a political agenda. Evangelicalism is not dead, it is being redefined by a new constituency – hopefully for the better.

Soong-Chan Rah is the author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity and the Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary. www.ProfRah.com

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I post this because this is about the 4th time in the last week where I have found that us white folk seem to have a pretty narrow vision of the Church and its' growth. My prayer is that our eyes would be open to the things that Jesus sees, and that we (us white folk) would cast off the power we love more than Jesus.

Join me, please?

For this, I gave up... (blank) ?

A friend has this excerpt up on a wall in his office... and it caught my eye. As I read it I was struck by the implications. I also began to wonder which person I most identified with (John or the leader).

Jack Deere in Surprised by the Voice of God tells a true story of a new believer who starts going to church. He begins reading the Bible and is fascinated with Jesus Christ, the one who heals, teaches, performs miracles, and teaches his followers to do the same. He goes to church excited and expecting to be apart of this, but is met with something different:

Finally, after weeks of reading a miraculous Bible and attending monotonous religious services, John walked up to one of the lay leaders and asked, "When do we get to do the stuff?"

"What stuff?" asked the leader.

"You know, the stuff here in the Bible," said John, as he opened the New Testament and pointed to the Gospels. "You know, like the stuff Jesus did - raising people from the dead, healing the blind and the paralyzed, you know, that stuff."

"Well, we don't do that anymore," the man said.

"You don't?"

"No."

"Well, what do you do?" asked John.

"What we did this morning."

"For that I gave up drugs?" John was incredulous that the experience of the people of God today was so different from the experience of the people in the Bible. However, church leaders were able to get him over his disappointment. The key was just not to expect too much.

Then, this morning I was reading in Matthew's gospel, chapter 4, verses 18-20, and was struck by what occurs (taken from The Message by Eugene Peterson):

^18-20Walking along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers: Simon (later called Peter) and Andrew. They were fishing, throwing their nets into the lake. It was their regular work. Jesus said to them, "Come with me. I'll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I'll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass." They didn't ask questions, but simply dropped their nets and followed.

Jesus invites Simon and Andrew to come with him, in another translation the word "follow" is used in addition to the "come with me." This come and follow is associated with the Greek word aphentes, which refers to the words let, left, or leave. In this case it appears in the present tense, and so Simon and Andrew being called to leave or let their nets behind, and follow.

The other interesting aspect of this exchange is that Simon and Andrew are invited to be catchers of men and women. In leaving and following Jesus, Simon and Andrew will become people influencerers as students of Jesus. What they don't know is that as students of Jesus they will be participating in miracles because Jesus did more than preach (teach), die, and rise... he made disciples. Disciples that did more than relay his teachings (ethics - kingdom ways) and stories (parables, miracles preformed, and death & resurrection), they became miracle and ministry workers, too. And then, passed on the baton of miracles, ministry, and kingdom news to us.

I also wonder if following Jesus for Simon and Andrew would have turned out differently, as in if the following Jesus looked like daily scripture and law studies to make sure their behavior was right and true with attempts to becoming another competing voice of control and power that does really nothing to lift people out of the status quo to a life full of right relationships with the Creator and fellow creations. If this turned out to be the case would they (Simon and Andrew) have turned to themselves and said, "For this I left my nets?"

So, again, am I more like John or the leader in this excerpt? Sometimes both honestly. What have I left to follow to become a student of Jesus? And is the followship I am living worth it?

I gotta go listen to my Teacher and find out. Hope you do the same.

Grace and Peace to you.