People who fear nothing

Like many other evangelicals I was brought up to believe in some indisputable truths: that what was really important was my individual faith; that reason and logic were more important in the hierarchy of truths; that I said what I believed and believed what I said. I was not brought up to question any of these received truths.

At the same time I believed that reason and logic were responsible for the sorry state of much theological opinion in the post World War two situation in which I grew up. The documentary hypothesis was one example of a liberal agenda to which I was strongly opposed. I can remember having many heated debates with one or two of our "liberally minded" teachers at college.

Today I wonder if I was not being just as guilty of taking up a position which was also heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and reason and logic. At a time when we speak of the "post Christian" world I wonder if we, conservative evangelicals, have not failed to recognize the heavy influence of the age of Reason on our thinking and the development of our theology: we think we are being faithful to the scriptures without realizing that we are influenced by our culture also and that we have been trained to think in a certain direction. During the sumer I had a conversation with someone who insisted that we were sovereign human beings but I could not help but wonder if that was not more the comment of a middle class person and one who had too high a view of human beings: is it not true that only God is sovereign? Is it not true that we are all constrained by our circumstances and culture? Also the idea of us being individuals divorced from the rest of society is not true: no man is an island. at the moment our society is suffering from anti-social behavior and we tend to lay a lot of the blame for this on the parents of the children and young people who are getting the blame. Yet in the Old Days, and this is where I sound like a grumpy old man, we accepted the axiom that it take s a community to raise a child. Today you dare not interfere in the behavior of a child for fear of what the parents will say. A friend of mine who is a Catholic Priest tells the story of how he has gone to the parents of young people he has seen on the roof of the church only to have the parents deny that it happened just because of the denial of the children.

In the evangelical constituency we have tended to allow the faith and our relationship with God to become individualized and privatized. In more than one book in recent times I have read the view that Jesus did not come to save individuals: he came to change th world. I have heard of people leaving one of the main denominations to go to one of the, so-called non-denominational churches: the reason are always the same: they want a greater sense of fellowship; they want to have a more experiential style of worship and the more institutional denominations are not able to shift their tradition to give the support required. Today young people want a church with a social conscience and a sense of both the transcendence and immanence of God.

In another age we shunned the monastic movement with its emphasis upon prayer, study and meditation and a strong community atmosphere-I believe that we have thrown the baby out with the bath water and we need to take another look at the way we do church.

I think that the churches that will really cut the ice are those who have a real sense of community and who have a prophetic and apostolic ministry: those people who are willing to incarnate the gospel wherever they are, articulating the gospel in an appropriate way that really does communicate in the 21st century. We need communities;we need teams, we need resources and we need the commitment of the people of god who are willing to follow Jesus Christ wherever He leads. Even though we live at a time when Christendom has gone this is not the time to go away, not the time to lick our wounds but it is the time to minister and to reach out and to give ourselves for the glory of God. Jesus did not call us to be part of an institution but a movement of people who have given themselves to Christ.

Jesus had 12 men he called Apostles and then he had an inner core of Peter, James and John but we look to the mega church as our model. What could be achieved, even on a hum,an scale with 12 men and women who fear nothing but letting God down? In the sporting world they say that winning, and loosing, becomes a habit and so too does following God. Let's pray for small groups of committed followers of Jesus who are willing to settle in our cities and towns and to live alongside those who are in need, just as we are. When we do that we can stand back and watch how he will use us!!