Change or Die 3 - 10.7.7
Our Image Problem and what we will do about it

            There's a dangerous little line-item in the church budget called convention allowance.  On Thursday and Friday, I used some of that money to attend a conference in Atlanta called Catalyst, which hopes to ignite “change agents” for the local church (and aims for younger people than me, but they didn't card us at the door).  As I result, I decided (for the first time in forever) to throw out my outline ideas and preach something totally different.

            It's dangerous to send me to a conference like this one because I'm 43 and middle-aged and you know how it is with guys and mid-life crises.  We tend to want to turn things upside down.

            Which is exactly what Jesus did, and it's exactly what they said about the apostles in Acts 17:6 (KJV). 

            The fact is, I come back from the convention more convinced and more inspired by a truth that has been growing in my heart ever since we completed this building 20 months ago, a truth that led me to preach a series called CHANGE or DIE, and that truth is that some things need to be turned upside down or, more accurately, turned right side up again, before this church totally slips off into irrelevance.  I do believe that we are at a change or die moment.  If we don't do anything, it probably won't be a quick death for us, and it may not be all that painful.  The painful thing in life and in church is to care about people and to change, and the comfortable thing to do, the thing many churches choose to do, is to sit tight and wait it out for another week or month in hopes that THEY finally come to their senses and come to Jesus and to church.

            This book is called unChristian, by David Kinnaman, and it is the result of a study by the Barna Research Group of what people in America, especially people under 30, think of the church.  The title says a lot:  They think we are unChristian. 

            Before I give you some specifics, I'll tell you that one thing that surprised me a little was that for the most part, Americans have a pretty good understanding of the Christian faith.  They have been to VBS and Sunday School and youth group or catechism, the have gone on the missions trips and met at the flagpole before school, and they didn't find it particularly meaningful or spiritually challenging or helpful.  “Been there, done that”.  In fact (p. 74):

            “In spite of the fact that many of them are currently disconnected from a church, most Americans, including two thirds (of those age 16-42) tell us that they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ at some point in their life.  This is slightly lower than the percent of older adults (73 percent) who have made such a commitment.  This is an amazing fact about our culture.  The vast majority of Christians, regardless of age, assert they have already made a significant decision to follow Christ!”

            Now obviously this makes us wonder about the nature of the commitment – why it doesn't make more difference.  My point, though, is that when I tell you the specific criticisms people have against the church, understand that they are speaking from more experience than I want to admit.  I can't say:  “Well, they just don't know us.”  Or:  “That's just the media's portrayal of us.”  People have been to our churches and heard our gospel and seen our lives and heard our attitudes and they don't like what they see.

            Here are six things they do see (and we could say a lot about whether it's reality or perception, but we know that when you're trying to attract people (whether it's to your restaurant or to the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ) perception IS reality.  But I suggest to you that their perception of us isn't as false as we think.  The six things they see – we're... 

1. Anti-homosexual.  91 percent of people under 30 say this about the church.  Now I can quote you 1 Corinthians 6:9 and other verses that teach me that homosexual practice is against God's will.  But consider this one simple question:  Can you imagine Jesus being identified by 91% of the people of Galilee as being anti-homosexual?  Can you imagine that being the first thing out of people's mouths when someone asks, “What do you know about this Jesus guy?”
2. Judgmental.  87 percent said this.  The book goes on to say that it isn't our beliefs that people are referring to here so much as our swagger.  “What do you know about this Jesus guy?”  “Well he's anti-gay and he is judgmental.  He's proud of his sinless life and he makes you feel like dirt when you're around him.”
3. Hypocritical.  85 percent said this.  Again, let me remind you that this isn't something they heard about Christians on Gray's Anatomy or Lost but something they experienced when they went to church and heard what Christians said about purity or clean living, and saw the swagger with which they said it, and then observed as much drunkenness or drug-addiction or abusive language or use of pornographic material as anyone else.  The fact is, many people under 30 saw this hypocrisy in their own homes. 
4. Only concerned with converting people.  This one surprises me some, because I tend to think that a lot of us don't try very hard to share our faith.  The Onion, a satirical news web site, once ran a story called “Fellow Dormmates Warned about Christian in 462.”  "If you see the guy who lives in the single down at the end of the hall, get away," Arnell told Troy Rasbach, Pete Marquez and Jonathan Wilkins, who had assembled in Arnell's room to watch SportsCenter. "He'll totally corner you and start telling you about Jesus."  If you read the article, you'll see that they know us so well that they know how to satirize us.  Now it hurts to hear something made fun of that we teach and hold to be so important, but what is obvious to outsiders is that we don't seem to respect them “just as they are”.  Again, “what do you know about this Jesus guy?”  “Well he'll only show interest in you as long as he thinks you'll sign up for His mission.”
5. Sheltered.  More specifically, we're boring, unintelligent, old-fashioned and out of touch with reality.  Is this true?  I think it's true of a lot of people inside and outside of the church.  But it isn't my perception that counts, and when I think of a lot of churches I have visited, I can see where the idea comes from.  David Pryor told me recently about a well-known minister or Bible-college president who was asked to visit a stagnant, dying church and give them some advice.   They asked:  “What can we do to make the most of what we have?”  He said:  “You should advertise and charge admission for people to come and see a historical re-enactment of how church was done in the 1950s.”  When I did the lessons on Sunday night the past couple of weeks about developing some good, hard-nosed Christian skepticism, what I was getting at was: Every time we demonstrate to people that we haven't thought through our faith and applied it to the real issues of life, we give them a reason to dismiss Jesus Christ, and that is a sin.
6. Too political.  Expanded:  “Christians are primarily motivated by a political agenda and promote right-wing politics.”  Is it true?  We can all point to cases where it has been. On the other hand, most of us probably feel that the criticism is unfair.  But it is a dominant perception, and we need to know it.

            Last week we talked a bit about the power of denial.  When people are confronted with a change-or-die moment with regard to their health, for example, or their marriage or their job, they often deny the truth and try to turn the blame for the problem out to other sources.  Let's see if we can do that here, because if we can, we don't have to worry about change.

            My first reaction is to call out 1 Corinthians 1, a Scripture I used last Sunday when I said that if our view of life makes a lot of sense to outsiders, it probably isn't very Christian.  Well, v. 18 says:  “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” And v. 21 - “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

            Well naturally outsiders aren't going to get us.  What we believe is foolishness to them. 

            But please understand what Paul is talking about here.  What exactly is it that seems foolish to outsiders?  Is it our stance on homosexuality, or our judgmental swagger or our hypocrisy?  Is it our sheltered, non-critical way of over-simplifying life?  Is it our politics?  NO.  It's the CROSS that is foolishness.  What does the cross stand for?  Sacrifice, being willing to lay down your life for others, the fact that Jesus would DO that as the answer to the problem of evil in the world and in my heart.  THAT is what is foolish.

            And TO WHOM is it foolish?  It's foolish to people who do things by might and power.  It's foolish to people who live for money and beauty and popularity and success.  It wasn't foolish to the fisherman who could barely make a living, and it wasn't foolish to the dirt farmers who almost starved every year, and it wasn't foolish to prostitutes.  These people didn't have any stake in the power-structures of the world, and the cross, validated by the resurrection of Jesus, made a lot of sense to them.  When it came to make sense, they went out and lived the same kind of lives Jesus did.  They made the sign of the cross in their actions, laying down their own desires, their futures, their very lives for the sake of others, even for the sake of their enemies.  THAT is the foolishness of the Gospel.  So there is no excuse there for any arrogance or backwardness or judgmentalism or lack of concern for people.  Quite the opposite.  Like one of my professors used to say, “If people don't like you, make sure it's because you're like Jesus, not because you're a jerk.”

            But still, we do stand for things that are unpopular in a self-centered world, and I feel pretty confident in saying that we live in a self-centered world.  Purity, for example.  Jesus talked about it directly when he spoke of lust and adultery. 

            But when you consider the list, you don't see anywhere that we're disliked because we stand for purity.  We're disliked because we stand for purity and we look down on those who don't stand for it and we don't practice it ourselves.  That's hypocrisy and judgmentalism. 

            On p. 47 of unChristian, Kinnaman says this about the study that Barna research group did:  “When asked to identify their activities over the last thirty days, born again believers (BTW, these aren't just people who say they're born again, or who the surveyors think are born again.  These are people who say that they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important, they believe they will go to heaven when they die because they have confessed their sin and accepted Jesus Christ as Savior – p. 46) born again believers were just as likely (as anyone) to bet or gamble, to visit a pornographic website, to take something that didn't belong to them, to consult a medium or psychic, to physically fight or abuse someone, to have consumed enough alcohol to be considered legally drunk, to have used an illegal, nonprescription drug, to have said something to someone that was not true, to have gotten back at someone for something he or she did, and to have said mean things behind another person's back.”

            Ten things in that list.  I think I have done two of them in the last 30 days.  That's not very good.  Maybe you have done more.  It gets a lot worse if we swagger around talking about “the world” or “sinners” and how messed up they are.  That's what people see us doing.

            One other thing to add:  The focus of unChristian is on what outsiders think of us, particularly YOUNG outsiders, people in their late-teens through early 30s.  But the truth is, it isn't just young outsiders that see the church this way, but young Christians as well.  The fact that they haven't given up yet doesn't mean that they have drank our Kool-Aid and bought in to our messed-up system.  If we don't change, it's just a matter of time.

            We've got an awful image problem.  It isn't the offense of the cross that's pushing people away, but the offensiveness of Christians.  Now I will admit two things here.

1. The reasons behind some of these six criticisms are complex.  What I mean is that it isn't entirely our fault if the world hates us.  Any time you are criticized, there is probably some unfairness in it.
2. You can't always please your detractors by becoming what they seem to want.  People think we're too focused on converting them.  We cannot fix that by agreeing to never talk about Jesus.  I think that hardly needs to be said, but I want you to know where I stand.  There's a book out that, if you saw it's title on Amazon, you might wonder why I'm not using it in this series.  It's called Why Christianity Must Change or Die.  The author of that book is John Shelby Spong, a retired bishop in the Episcopal church, who thinks that it's high time that we stop claiming that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world, and says that the cross is a barbaric idea that has to go. That is heresy.  We can't do that.

             But again, our image problem isn't tied in to our doctrine, but to our selective practice of it, and our failure to live up to whole teachings and direct examples from Jesus Christ.

            We have an awful image problem, and we are losing a generation as a result, and it is already very late.  I'm not exaggerating to say that this is a change-or-die moment.

            What can we do about it?

            I think that the situation is so desperate that we have but one option remaining.  A marketing campaign in the newspaper won't work.  A four-color mailing won't work.  A new sermon series won't work, though preaching will either lead the way or else we will fail.  A change in worship style won't work, though I see a need for changes in the way we approach  worship (and I think you need to prepare yourself for that), because so much of what we do during the week flows out of what we do for God here, and so much of what we do here reflects how we serve God during the week because it is all worship, either of God or ourselves.  New youth programs and a better choir and more missions trips and more Fellowship Dinners aren't the answer we need.

            The one option we have left is given to us by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:14-16, when he says:

            14 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

            We think we are being faithful to Scripture if we merely give our Amen to the fact that homosexual behavior is sinful.  Beyond that, some of us ignore gay people, and some of us verbally condemn them as soon as we can and the result is that 91 percent of a whole generation thinks of the word “anti-homosexual” as the best word to define us.

            Would they say the same about us if we let our light shine before them?  A common testimony among gay people is that they tried church and the only thing they found there was condemnation and cutting remarks and exclusion and the ONLY place they find acceptance is in the gay community.  But what if they could say, “I know that Christians are mostly gay-bashers, but I'll tell you, there is a church in Kingston up on a hill where people really care about me.  If I have problems, or I just need company or someone to eat Sunday dinner with, I know there are people there who love me and who don't treat me like I'm some kind of monster, and yeah, I guess I know where they stand, but I can't escape the fact that they have the love of God in them.  In fact, they provide more volunteers for AIDS hospice than any group I know, church or secular.

            What if the Christians at Morrison Hill fed more hungry people and provided more shelter and clothing than anyone else for people who have either messed up their own lives or had them messed up by people?  And what if we were known as the ones in Roane County who led the way in providing not just shelter but genuine hospitality for people who otherwise would be living in their cars tonight?  What if this place, these beautiful and useful buildings God has entrusted to us were, somehow, some way, open day and night for people who needed to get off the street or out of their cars or away from some tempting or destroying situation?  What if, impossible as it seems, our very homes were such place?

            What if you and I became known as the least materialistic, least selfish, least wasteful people in Kingston, people who practice loving the next generation by recycling our garbage and cleaning up the mess that our lifestyle creates?  What if we became known as people who love our neighbors around the world by paying attention to who makes our luxuries and how much they get paid for doing so and what conditions they work in? 

            What if people whose lives are messed up could come here without shame and find a people who are overflowing with grace and truth?  What if we could teach real grace to people who know only tolerance?  What if we were known as people who were genuinely authentic about our own sinfulness and genuinely authentic about our path for real change?

            To sum all this up in one question:  What if we were known as leaders in servanthood who lay down their lives for others?

            None of this sounds all that radical.  Do you know why?  Because it is never radical to TALK about becoming the servants of all.

            But we are going to DO IT, and it is going to turn this place upside down, because with all our virtues and all our love, we are NOT the church I just described.  But today, I am claiming God's power to make us a church of people who serve others way beyond what makes sense.

            This will cost money.  It will consume time, and that means we will have to stop doing some things we now do to put our efforts into what is really important.  It won't make everyone happy because, frankly, some of us couldn't be happier with the way things are now. 

            And it might not even change our image problem as much as I hope and trust that it will.  But this isn't a marketing campaign.  It isn't PR.  It's Christianity.  We will do it because it's what Jesus teaches us to do, and because it is what he has already done for us.

            What I am saying is that it is time for serious action.  People need to see the light of Christ shining in us.  If they think our faith is ridiculous, maybe that's because for all they can see, it is.  Let's change that.  It's the only thing we have left.  People are tired of hearing us.  They need to SEE what we believe.

            Now I don't know that we'll accomplish everything I mentioned today, and I'm sure God has ways for us to serve that I haven't thought of yet.  But the thing I know is that sacrificial service will begin to define us at MHCC.

            Today is October 7.  You'll hear more about this next week, and the week after, and for quite some time.  By Thanksgiving, you will begin to see noticeable, tangible differences in what we emphasize, what we reward, what we expect from each other, what we value....and most importantly, in what we do.

            This is a change-or-die moment.  Will you PLEASE pray with me and pray FOR me so that I become different so that I can SHOW you what I'm talking about? 

 Morrison Hill Christian Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN  37763   (865) 376-5205