BLOG 9/16/13. WHAT ABOUT A DIS-EVANGELIZED CHURCH?

The word gospel (or evangel, as in evangelical or evangelism) has been so totally emasculated of, and distorted from, its true meaning that one hardly dares use it with any hope of folk comprehending what you’re talking about. The root Greek word has the whole connotation of an overwhelmingly joyous and thrilling announcement that has inescapable implications for the hearers. It is not a Christian word per se, but the church appropriated it because it came the closest to carrying the meaning of the coming of Jesus, the Son of God to reconcile us, and all creation, unto God the Father. That is why the first four books of the New Testament are designated as ‘gospel’ accounts.

After the tragic and confusing and dismaying events that took place with the crucifixion of Jesus, and the subsequent resurrection, it slowly dawned on Jesus’ disciples what he had been saying all along about the necessity of his cross in order to reconcile us to God. Then, after the events at the Jewish Pentecost celebration, when the Spirit of God came upon the bewildered disciples in the upper room, they were absolutely and irrepressibly and joyously evangelized, i.e., they simply could not keep it to themselves, but rushed out to announce it to all and sundry in the streets, even at the risk of their lives.(That doesn’t sound like many churches I know!)

You get the early accounts of how “the word went everywhere” and multitudes believing in Jesus, including priests. People sold their possessions, left their homes, lost their lives, and incarnated a whole new kind of humanity because of the ultimate (cosmic) and thrilling reality of what had happened in and by the coming of Jesus.

And yet … go down the Biblical road about one generation, and the church had begun to lose the thrill, and began to be dis-evangelized. Look at the letters sent to the seven churches of Asia Minor by the Risen Lord Jesus (in Revelation 2-3) and you will see how all but two (two that were being persecuted severely) of them had begun to ‘lose it’—they had gotten distracted by doctrinal disputes, or pre-occupied with their own inner life, forgetful of their first love, or incorporating the errors and immorality of the dominant social order into their own communal life. They are commanded by the Lord to remember who they were, and why they were called, and what they are to be … or cease to be churches. They had inadvertently drifted into becoming communities with other agendas than the thrilling and transformational and reconciling event of Jesus.

I have a thesis, which I will test with my readers: that a church formed by the true gospel, has a life-span of about one generation, and then becomes familiar with the gospel words, comfortable with the gospel traditions, appreciative of a place to make social friends … but where many of the members have not had a living and personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Tell them this, and they will resent your saying it, but it is true all the same. That church has become no longer contagious with the message. The members are no longer are motivated by an irrepressible desire to get the thrilling news out in conversations with their neighbors and friends. Those professing to be Christian only know how to ‘go to church meetings’ but not how to live out, or incarnate, God’s New Creation in the vicissitudes of their daily lives.

I’ve observed this phenomenon take place, so that the church is all too much a mission field, or an unreached people group in itself. Where the church is evangelized it grows spontaneously, and is a people continually thrilled and transformed by their passion for Jesus and his mission.

Maybe I’ll give you a couple of graphic examples along the way in these Blogs. I’d love to hear comments of your experience.