Favorite Posts [5] : Thinking Caps at the Ready

At the 2006 Desiring God conference, Tim Keller gave a typically awesome "Keller-style" message. In the course of his speech, he asked a very provocative question. What will an approach to postmodern evangelism look like? If, as Keller contended, the "Four Spiritual Laws" and "Evangelism Explosion" programs of the past have lost their traction, how will we develop evangelism methods that marry Biblical and Systematic theology?

I started a short series of posts to must on that question, and the initial was picked up by the guys at TeamPyro in one of their blogspotting rolls. As a result there was a lot of traffic for a couple days, though not the ton of commentary that I'd hoped for.

Thinking Caps at the Ready [1]
Thinking Caps at the Ready [2]
Thinking Caps at the Ready [3]
Thinking Caps at the Ready [4] (The Aftermath)

The funny (and awesome!) thing is that Tim Keller just decided to answer his own question. His book, Reason for God, and the follow-up speeches he has been holding at colleges and hip place like Google really seem to be his way of developing and refining an approach. I'd recommend giving them a look.

Thinking caps at the ready! [3]

For all the background to this, check out Part One or Part Two...

Continuing to ponder Tim Keller's challenge from this year's Desiring God National Conference: What is the right approach to presenting the Gospel in a post-Christian, post-modern world?

In this post, I'd like to throw up the framework for a 'script' that's been running through my head (in various draft forms) for the last few days.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is anything worth reading, but I think best 'out loud' and figure that I ought to be able to use my blog for that purpose. Again, the interactions that some of us have already had here have been incredibly valuable for me... I hope that they have been for you as well, and I hope they will continue!

1) The Hook - "Why is there so much evil in the world?" or "Why is there so much suffering in the world?"

One of the first challenges that pluralism/diversity presents us is to find a point of entry to conversation. I spent a lot of time trying to think what 'existential realities' are sufficiently common across all ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds that you could reasonably expect them to resonate with any hearer. Two things seemed the most obvious: the problem of evil and/or suffering. We all experience these things, either internally or externally.

The classic Christian catch phrases such as "God loves you and has a wonderful plan..." or "If you died tonight, do you know where you'd go?" both assume some degree of common understand re: God, His identity/existence, etc. In such a multicultural, post-Christian culture, I'm not sure the scaffolding needed for those questions to get traction exist.

By pointing at evil/suffering, we really get at the root of what we live with regardless of any labels we put on ourselves. Muslims see evil and pain, as do Mormons. Even hardcore atheists who deny moral truth can't deny suffering as reality. So, why do these things we all experience exist?

Dr. Keller noted in his address that one challenge is the weaving together of story (Creation/Fall/Redemption/Restoration) and the theological elements of the Gospel (God, Christ, Sin, Grace, Faith). In the subsequent steps, I've tried - poorly, no doubt - to keep a sense of that dual reasoning... From here on out, I'll just list potential points and scripture references.

2) God created a perfect world, but it was corrupted by the entry of sin.

• God as Creator (Genesis 1; Psalm 8; Colossians 1:16; etc)
• The perfection of Creation (Genesis 1:17, 21, 25, 28-31)
• Entry of sin (Genesis 3)
• Effect of sin (Genesis 3:14-19; Romans 1:18-32, 8:19-22)

Sin's presence has been devastating... One single sin is enough to distance us from a perfect, just God by an infinite amount. But every one of us fights the impulses of selfishness, pride, anger, jealousy, and more every hour of every day. Everywhere in the world, people suffer physically and emotionally at the hands of human desires for power and pleasure run amok.

3) God seeks to redeem His Creation and gave us His own Son to reconcile us to Himself.

• God's desire to redeem (John 3:16-20; Romans 3:21-25; 2 Peter 3:9)
• God planned redemption from the beginning (Genesis 3:15; Ephesians 1:3-6)
• Christ's work on the cross as the means of atonement (Isaiah 53; Ephesians 2:13-17; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 9:11-15, 25-28)

Jesus lived a life of complete innocence, and yet he was put to death. Christ received the punishment for all the sins of all peoples so that the debt our sin created could be paid. Because of His perfect life and blameless death, the just penalty for our sins has been dealt with and the gulf between God and man can be bridged.

4) We can experience restored relationship with God now and have the promise of final restoration in Heaven.

• Peace and restoration now (Roman 5:1-2; 8:28-39; Galatians 4:1-7; Ephesians 2:4-10; etc)
• Perfected peace and fellowship in the future (John 14:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18; Revelation 21:1-8, 22-27)

5) Why it had to be this way... Why Jesus is the only way.

• God is holy and all our sins are ultimately rebellion against Him (Leviticus 5:17; Psalm 51:3-6; Isaiah 6:1-5; Romans 3:23, 6:23)
  
• God, who sets the all the rules, orchestrated a way to bring restoration (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrew 9:15)
• Jesus declared Himself to be the Son of God (Matthew 16:13-19; John 8:48-59, 10:24-33) sent into the world to sacrifice Himself for sinners (Luke 18:31-34, 22:14-20; John 8:42-47, 11:17-27)
• Jesus declared Himself to be the exclusive path to salvation (John 14:6-10), an idea which his disciples continued to teach after his death (Acts 4:8-12; Romans 3:21-22; 1 Corinthians 15:1-10)
  

Ok... This has gotten really long already, and is already two days overdue. So, I'm gonna pull the trigger. Thoughts, anyone?

Thinking caps at the ready! [2]

Well, what a difference being BlogSpotted (r)(C)(tm) makes... I started to publish a follow-up to my initial post re: presenting the Gospel in a post[whatever] context, then I noticed all the links inbound from TeamPyro. So, I decided to press pause for a second. I figured that I could wait and then pull some of the comment content up here to the main page.

I figured it was time to just pull the trigger since the comments haven't exactly rolled in. Nonetheless, a big welcome to those of you who've tuned in for the ride...

To me, two of the first big gotchas that Keller's challenge raised are the issues of Time and Substance. The church in which I grew up got all uppity about the 4 Spiritual Laws as an evangelistic tool one year. I remember boxes of 4SL-based tracts arriving and being stacked neatly in the narthex (yes, we had a narthex) for people to take. Looking back, the appeal to us seemed to rest mainly in two arenas:

1) The 4SL methodology was understandable. This appeal was manifest in two ways:

• The clear 'method' was critical because I think it's safe to say we were far from well catechized Christians. Our understanding of the Gospel was, in hindsight, pretty weak. So, something like the 4SLs really provided the somewhat-solid foundation for our own understanding of our message.
• In addition, the 'script' aspect of the presentation gave us confidence... We didn't need to think of 'what to say' or how to respond to questions - it was all right there for us.

2) The presentations were relatively short. The facts of the Good News are plainly laid out and could be presented to someone over lunch, a coffee break, or even just casually talking on the street. There was no need to set aside time or be concerned about 'squeezing everything in'.

Nowadays, both of those past strengths meet new challenges... For one thing, the scaffolding/methodology assumes a certain mono-cultural, semi-white bread, historically Judeo-Christian worldview in the hearer. As Keller points out, that simply won't get you any traction in some contexts today. Say something like, "God loves you", and you might well expect to hear back "Huh? Who is this God guy?" Suddenly the scaffolding and script comes crashing down around you. In the same way, responding to such 'paradigm-busting' questions requires that you invest time into your response (and in the study to arm you to respond).

Tim Keller notes the rising use of the Alpha Program as perhaps the new 'silver bullet' in evangelism. In light of these challenges I think it's easy to see why it's successful. Based on my limited understanding, ample time is set aside for the lessons/Q&A and the material is relatively meaty. So, Alpha presents substantial answers to questions and gives people time to interact with the material in a group.

So if part of the challenge is to formulate an exceptionally pithy presentation of the Gospel to post[whatevers], I think we have a problem. The challenges of a multicultural, pluralistic, post-Christian era mean that we have to be prepared to start from ground-zero and build things carefully.

Setting aside the issue of time, to focus on content... A couple of the comments were especially on-target and helpful, IMHO. Eddie Beal (aka Taliesin) kicked things off by saying that 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 provides a good framework for dealing with both the 'Christ-haunted' and the completely profane people we meet. I think that is a great place to start. As I have been chewing on Dr. Keller's challenge, I had in my head a framework like this:

• Present Jesus and the Resurrection as historic fact. Postmodernism has created a truth problem, and I think at least one way to tackle that would be to present the historicity of the New Testament Gospels. Jesus was born, lived, taught, died, and rose from the dead. These events are way more than just historically 'plausible'. This discussion could range all over the place, from philosophical, epistemological challenges to real questions about evidence for Jesus having walked on the Earth...
  
• Present what Christ taught about Himself. Not only was Christ a real person, but He certainly cast Himself as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world"... Why did He come to earth? What is sin? What is my condition thanks to sin, and how do I get outta this mess? I suppose the goal would be to weave together both the propositional, concrete, systematic theological statements and the overarching story line of redemptive history. I think that this is really at the core of what Keller's driving at. I suppose I don't understand enough about the value of 'story' to the postmodern worldview to flesh this out much more.
• The Existential Rub. What are the real, personal questions in this person's life to which Christ is the answer? It might be feelings of guilt or shame, facing death, a craving for justice, or any number of things. But how can allow the Gospel to impact their worldview and answer their struggle now? As Frank Turk (aka centuri0n) noted in his comment: "[T]he Christians were presenting this [God] who intersects with reality in the man Christ Jesus, and is working out History for His glory and the salvation of us lousy sinners." Christ is not just ! He is here and now!
  
• How then do we live? Assuming that we get this far, how do all the points above impact our day-to-day life, both at the level of worldview and of practical living.

In thinking that through, the one thing that became crystal clear to me was that any of these discussion demand of us that we know what we believe... I noted above that at least part of the appeal of the 4SL and similar programs was that they gave us a theological crutch.

Now, perhaps more than ever, we need to have internalized much more that a script. Though there's really only one message/lesson (the Gospel), we need to be able to articulately bring that truth to bear on a number of possible challenges or objections.

Everyone's a philosopher nowadays - so we need to be able to present Christ as Truth rather than just an option on the buffet table (Luke's illustration). Everyone is also 'spiritual' - so we need to be able to show the Gospel as superior to all the false faiths and ideas that our sin imposes on us. Everyone wants justice and peace - so we need to show that justice and peace cannot be had without the Gospel and Reign of Christ. For us to be able to do this, the message needs to be especially real and alive to us.

This has turned into more of a rant than a systematic post, and I'm sorry about that. But I'm tired, and I don't feel like re-writing this anymore. I'll try to do better next time. In the meantime, I hope more of you chime in.

Thinking caps at the ready!

Ok... It's no secret that this blog is rather limited in its popularity. I know almost all of y'all and y'all almost know most of me.... Uh, or something like that.

I always intended to write here just to a chronicle of my many struggles, few victories, and other miscellaneous ramblings re: my life in Christ. If you've been reading, thanks! You're the best. If something here was worth coming back for, that's a sure evidence of God's grace.

But now, I wanna put us to work... I've been chewing on something for some time and thought it'd be neat to bat it around with you. There won't be nearly as many of us exchanging ideas as there would be if I were Phil Johnson and this was the vaunted TeamPyro site. This is more like Team Micro. Still, the ones of you I know personally are all wicked smart folks (casting me the role of lovable, tag-along ignoramus)...

Here's the question:

At this year's Desiring God conference, Tim Keller discussed* the way postmodern thinking and an increasingly post-Christian culture is impacting the presentation of the Gospel. Citing Lloyd-Jones and others, he posits that the challenge of evangelism in previous generations was 'awakening' people to the Gospel. Christian concepts of morality and God's existence were, to a large degree, deeply woven into our individual and cultural fabric. Even the people who weren't Christian were likely "Christ-haunted".

As post-Christian culture rises, the West has become a mission field again where people need to be taught the Gospel again rather than simply awakened to it. Add the influence of postmodernism in on top of it all and the 'Four Spiritual Laws' or 'Evangelism Explosion' style of presentation just don't seem to get the same traction as they once did.

So, Keller puts the challenge this way:

It's going to take all our best theological thinking ... to develop user-friendly Gospel presentations that merge both systematic theology and biblical theology in such ways that people can grasp [the message] rather quickly... We have to do theology if we're going to get the Gospel across.

I don't have anything to bring to the table of 'best theological thinking'... But some of you do. So I put these questions to you:

• If "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" is no longer the right 'elevator pitch' for Christianity in this culture, what do you think is?
• How do we construct a presentation of the Gospel that weaves both the systematic theological elements (God, Sin, Christ, Grace, Faith) and the 'story arc' elements of Biblical Theology (Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration)?
  

Well... What do you think? [read this as a call for a fun discussion in the comments!]

Download the lecture here[Right-click, Save As, etc]. The whole thing is fabulous, but if you wanna zone in on the just the 'challenge' jump to 21:00 thru 30:30. As a supplement, you could also digest Tim Challies fabulous liveblog notes here or New Attitude's excellent summary post.