BLOG 4/18/13: WHAT DO THEY HEAR, OR EXPERIENCE WHEN THEY TURN UP?
I sit here in one of my favorite coffee houses (Dancing Goats) and look at all of the energy being generated over computers and/conversations, and the evangelist in me wonders where all of these people are when it comes to any connection with Jesus and his thrilling announcement of New Creation? What we know from polls is that there are at least a couple of countervailing tides spiritually in this emerging generation. One is that there is a whole lot of disenchantment, or disillusionment with so much of the church. Another is that there are Christian communities who are reaching a whole new generation of fresh and contagious believers. We also know that we no longer assume that those around us have ever been exposed to any Christian or Biblical vocabulary, since they have never had any contact with the Christian faith that connected with them. We call this a post-Christian culture.
I’m particularly sensitive to these folk because I have some of those post-Christian neighbors whom I really and dearly love, and with whom I enjoy conversations over leisurely meals. But because I am so thoroughly formed by my lifelong Christian and Biblical engagement, I tend to use, routinely, a lot of Biblical and ‘churchy’ jargon. When I do, I also routinely get stopped in mid-sentence and asked what I am talking about. I realize that I unwittingly speak a different language. And yet these dear friends, whom I love, are such authentic persons, and such caring and thoughtful folk. One Christian writer has designated such persons as sojourners, i.e., spiritually confused God-seekers.
All of which makes me wonder this: If one of these friends were, on some Sunday morning when he or she had nothing else to do, to bite the bullet, and think: “What the hell. I think I’ll go scope out one of those churches and see what it’s all about.” So they turn up on the back row in a community of strangers—what would they see, hear, and experience? I think those are really, really important questions for any church that is serious in engaging in the mission of God.
One writer (N. T. Wright) proposes that there are four quests shared by most human beings—and certainly by my dear neighbors—the first is a quest for justice, then a quest for spirituality, then a quest for relationships, and finally a quest for beauty. Another source comes at it from the perspective of three common human anxieties, which are defined as the anxieties over meaning (what does my life mean?), the anxiety over acceptance (does anyone care that I’m here?), and thirdly, the anxiety over hope (what lies beyond what I can see, and beyond this life?).
There are a whole lot of churches which have become immunized to their own message, and are content to gather habitually, and to mouth the words, engage in the traditions, but don’t come close to answering the above human quests. Many habitues of such churches remain essentially untouched by the radical teachings of Jesus. Such will never reach my sojourner friends.
But then there are others (usually new church plants) that have not forgotten why they are there. They celebrate the church’s New Testament faith, and appreciate its traditions, but are always aware that they are there to be a radiant display of the divine nature, they regularly speak to the human quests and questions, and so regularly embrace those sojourners, and explain to them what they are doing, and also making clear the distinction between faith in Jesus, and unbelief—and do it with true sensitivity and compassion.
The question should always be on the front burner with church leadership: When sojourners take the plunge and visit our gatherings, what do they hear and experience? Jesus and his thrilling promises of new and transformed life (justice, true spirituality, new relationships, and beauty), or just some form of “religious Christianity” (to quote Bonhoeffer again)?
