“EMBODYING OUR FAITH”
(Part 2)

This installment on Tim Morey’s book focuses on what what an “embodied apologetic” looks like, what it is that hinders this from happening in many churches today, and what will need to change in our thinking and outlook if we are going to pursue this approach in trying to reach those in our post-Christian culture with the gospel of Jesus.

First, an important definition that must be kept in mind throughout your reading:

apologetics: the branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof of Christianity; the explanation, defense or justification of a belief, idea, etc.


Now Tim’s comments continue:

•The early Church incarnated its message in such a way that people recognized it as truth. Though appeals to reason were an important part of early Church apologetics as well, they did not dominate evangelistic methods until much later in church history. Particularly as Enlightenment thinking took hold and empirical methodology moved to center stage as the most trustworthy way to discern what is true, the Church’s apologetic followed and become more rational and evidence based.

•There is always a temptation for the Church to stick with what is familiar and has worked in the past. (Tim cites numerous biblical and church history examples to show the challenge Christians have always faced at numerous cultural crossroads.)

We face a similar challenge in our time. It seems as if our apologetic, which has largely been shaped by modernism, has been perfected just as the rules of the game have changed. Modernism, with its idolization of reason, progress, individualism, and scientific naturalism, was originally perceived as a tremendous threat to the gospel. Yet over time, the Church responded with a new, finely reasoned apologetic that was well-suited to the challenge of the day. (In the midst of this,) the Church has grown comfortable with the modern world view. The tools necessary to construct that modern apologetic (reason, evidence, scientific method) have become so identified with evangelical Christianity that, to some, the suggestion of a different set of tools strikes the ears as something close to heresy.

•In the apologetics of modernism, we were best equipped to defend the faith against the atheist or the scientifically minded agnostic. In the postmodern context, however, the debate is rarely theism versus atheism. More likely, the existence of God is presupposed. A bigger issue might be which God and why. The question we encounter is that of religious pluralism: does any one faith have the right to claim it has the truth? The old arguments no longer hold sway.

•Many churches (particularly those who are consciously attempting to engage postmodern people) are beginning to ask what kind of apologetic will be effective in this new context. For most people, traditional apologetics become useful at a later point in the process (of evangelism) than they have in the past. Before the faith can be plausibly argued and the very good reasons to believe are accepted by the hearer, it must first be embodied over time in real people in a way that is winsome and convincing.

•One helpful way to speak of postmodernity is as a collective loss of confidence in what we are actually able to know. What has become clearer in the postmodern shift is that the modern era’s primary means of arriving at truth (through reason, logic, presentation of evidence, and scientific method) has its limitations. Reason, it would seem, is not infallible, even when grounded on beliefs we believe to be basic or foundational. (Tim offers several examples of this, especially of younger generations’ skepticism regarding truth claims.) For the typical postmodern, personal experience is a key arbiter of truth. Competing truth claims are processed on how coherent they are with other beliefs the person holds. Similarly, something is deemed to be true if it “works” or somehow has beneficial consequences. Factored into both of these approaches are the shared beliefs of that person’s immediate community. It is for this reason that traditional apologetics often seem completely lost on postmoderns.

•Skeptical people need to have those in the Church present the gospel in a way that it will be heard. We must remember that as missionaries to our culture, we have to approach people where they actually are, not where we wish them to be.


This points us all the more readily to the need for an apologetic that goes beyond rational arguments and is actively embodied in Christ’s people.

Philip Kenneson: “What our world is waiting for, and what the Church seems reluctant to offer, is not more incessant talk about objective truth, but an embodied witness that clearly demonstrates why anyone should care about any of this in the first place.”

•Three hungers seem to be particularly close to the surface in our post-Christian society: 1. a hunger for transcendence 2. a hunger for community 3. a hunger for purpose. We in the Church should find ourselves challenged by the presence of these hungers, because the gospel addresses all three. The ‘embodied apologetic’ I am fleshing out here corresponds with these hungers, as well as with the ministries of the Church. It is an apologetic that is experiential, communal, and enacted. This kind of apologetic presupposes that evangelism will most often occur as a process, rather than as a one-time event.

•EXPERIENTIAL: In the modern church, experience is suspect--risky at best and deceptive at worst. However, a Christianity that is only cerebral is also misguided. The Christian life is not meant to be an objective pursuit of orthodox doctrine but is embodied in those who follow a Person rather than a dogma.

•Jesus’ ministry was characterized by an experiential apologetic.

•The worship gathering particularly lends itself to an experiential apologetic.

•COMMUNAL: The hyper-individualism and family fragmentation of late modernity have left the postmodern generations with a great hunger to be connected meaningfully to others. The Church itself becomes a powerful apologetic as it strives to be what it is supposed to be.

•In a communal apologetic, evangelism has less to do with inviting people to events and more with inviting them into our lives. This means churched people will be encouraged to greater involvement outside the church, cultivating friendships that serve as bridges to allow others to investigate the faith community.

•ENACTED: Too often, Christianity is seen by those on the outside (and often those on the inside as well) as concerned only with believing the right things, attending church, and avoiding certain behaviors. What a contrast this is to the Kingdom announcement of Jesus!

•Our primary vehicle of an enacted apologetic are our ministries of compassion and justice. It is important to recognize that to our spiritual friends with whom we share Christ, we are not (at first) who we are, but who they think we are. Until we have shaken loose whatever stereotypes they have attached to Christians, our message will not be heard in context. Engaging in ministries of compassion set the words of Jesus in a context that mirrors the heart of Jesus and allows the hearer to see the reality of the message as it is acted out.

David Blosch: “Mission is not primarily an activity of the Church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God.”

•We understand that the Church is meant to carry out the mission of God, and may even be quite passionate about it. But our enthusiasm is often tempered when the mission comes too close to threatening an aspect of church life that we hold dear. On the mission field we take for granted that we must shift our methods to bring people the gospel in ways they will understand. But to think in these terms as we look at our own culture can feel quite threatening. Eddie Gibbs: “The reality is that the mission compound, which we have abandoned as a viable method in global missions, now exists in the U.S. in the form of the local church.”

•Somewhere along the line there was a split between our theology of church and our theology of mission. “Church” became the building on the corner were we worship on Sundays. “Mission” became an activity that happens somewhere else, usually by someone else. Rather than seeing the Church as missional in nature and existing for the good of the world, we came to see the Church as existing for our benefit and missions for the benefit of others. The primary concern (of the Church) becomes whether or not my needs are being met.


•If we take seriously the decline of the Church in America and our vocation as God’s missionary people, then we must begin to approach our own culture less like Sunday churchgoers and more like missionaries in a post-Christian world.

Next time, I will share Tim’s perspective on two aspects of this: contextualization and what it means to make disciples. Because cultural relevance is not optional! And discipleship is not a second-stage, elitist concept; it is synonymous with being a Christian.

Thanks for reading...

“EMBODYING OUR FAITH“
(Part 1)

After Pastor Bruce retired earlier this spring, I picked up Covenant church planter Tim Morey’s book, “Embodying Our Faith.”

I was interested in what he has to say about “church” today because if anyone has the pulse on what is going on in our culture and how to effectively reach out to people with the gospel, Tim’s the man! As founding and lead pastor of Life Covenant Church, Tim has very real, practical experience, awareness, and understanding about the challenges all churches are facing today. I was sure that his insight and expertise would be valuable for us here at Hilmar Covenant as we are in this time of transition, seeking how best to move forward and truly be a church that can communicate well and respond to the community we are in.

Tim did not disappoint either! Almost every paragraph had nuggets of wisdom and clearly articulated things that describe the situation the Church in America finds itself in today, and ways to make Jesus known, accessible, and desirable to people all around us. I underlined practically the entire book! And because I believe that what Tim has to share is so profound and timely for us here at HCC, I would like to share in my next three blogs some highlights of Tim’s book.

Also, Hilmar Covenant had a part in birthing Life Covenant! Tim’s congregation was the first one to receive the funds we set aside for church planting from our Family Center building project in 2002.

This first blog will recap Tim’s information about “the lay of the land;” the who, what, where, and why of Christianity and the Church in America today. Hopefully, many of you who are reading this are already well acquainted with these realities. However, I know that too many of us within the Church are not aware of what we are facing. Maybe what I have to share this time will finally open the eyes, hearts, and minds of those who, for whatever reason, just haven’t grasped the severity of the situation we’re in as Christians today or, perhaps, have simply resisted it. My next two postings will offer some helpful, positive information about how to better respond to those we want to reach with the gospel of Christ, and what Tim and his church have found to be most effective. First some background:

Life Covenant Church was planted in 2003, but has already daughtered two churches--and only twelve months apart! The way they raised the funds in order to do this is almost miraculous ($40,000 in six weeks for the first church plant, and the same amount in just three weeks for the second). They also have an ongoing partnership with an orphanage in Mexico and a special burden and call toward Africa. Through Opportunity International, Life Covenant is working to establish microenterprise in Mozambique. This work has expanded to include a seminary and another orphanage, especially for children at risk. The conclusion of their vision page states: “We dream of being used of the Lord to bring change locally and globally, and pray that He will make us the kind of church that if it ever closed its doors, the city would rise up in protest.” Under Tim’s leadership, Life Covenant is commited to reaching those under age 35, a group whose numbers are shrinking the fastest in the churches of North America.

Now the news from Tim that we probably wish was not true. As you read his words, apply them to our congregation and what his perceptions might imply for us:

• I was midway through college when the love of Jesus recaptured me, and I was anxious for my friends to experience what I was experiencing. But what I quickly found was that my church, which was a truly wonderful place, was not a good cultural fit for me and my peers.

The church prided itself in being contemporary...but it felt foreign, out of place. It wasn’t just the programs and the style of music; it was the posture, the place the church seemed to occupy in the world. So much about the church felt foreign, as if it had been plucked from another time or place. It was hard to picture the church as a place you would go if you were really looking to find answers about life, God, and reality.

• For a long time the church in the U.S. has enjoyed a sort of “home-court” advantage. The nation was culturally Christian, and the language we used to describe God, salvation, heaven, hell, Scripture, etc. was understood by the vast majority of Americans. All this is changing. As our culture moves deeper into the 21st century, none of these assumptions holds true. America might be best described as post-Christian, and tenets of postmodern thinking which once were fringe have trickled into our culture and become normal. If the church is to impact our society today, it must recognize that it no longer enjoys a “home court” advantage” but must gain a hearing among a cacophony of conflicting messages. It must be able to demonstrate convincingly the impact of its message, as well as declare its content with accuracy and clarity. A postmodern generation will judge the truth of a message by whether or not it is seen to be working.

• In looking at the religious landscape of emerging generations, there are three terms our church finds helpful in describing those who are outsiders to the church: unreached, unchurched, and dechurched. It is sobering to look at the number of people who fall into these categories. Church allegiance in America is in serious decline, even as interest in spirituality is on the rise. When actual head counts (as opposed to self-reporting) are used, the percentage of [adults attending church on a typical weekend is] 17.5%. What’s more, this number is steadily declining, even as the U.S. population grows. Beyond this, approximately 3700 churches close their doors permanently every year (71 per week). The situation is even more serious when considering young people in the U.S. Indeed, a large portion of the decline seen in these numbers is the result of the postmodern generation’s non-participation in the church.

• [A 1998 report found] that only 12% of the 31 million young people in the U.S. go to church, and 88% of those who attended as teens dropped out of the church by their sophomore year of college. Some in established churches would characterize this nonparticipation as youthful rebellion. However...rebellion presupposes some level of intimacy with what they are rebelling against. On the whole, this is not the case with this generation, as fewer of them have been raised in the familiarity of the traditions and rituals of the church, and, even among those who have, there has been an ever-widening disconnect between the church and the world they live in. While there are some large emerging churches, most are 30 to 100 people which, on the one hand, reflects a preference many younger evangelicals have for smaller communities of faith. Yet I believe it is a reflection of the difficulty of evangelism with this population as well.

• ...another sobering trend among Christians: many of those leaving the church are doing so not because they have lost their faith but to preserve it. Their contention is that the church no longer contributes to their faith, but instead has become a detriment to it.

• The response of many churches to the absence of the postmodern generation is denial. Most have downplayed the cultural changes that have occurred, while others have consciously written off any attempt at reaching postmoderns and hope or assume that they will return when they have children themselves or otherwise “grow up” (an ironic statement [since these individuals] are approaching their forties). These churches see little need for change on their part and instead wait for their prodigal children to return, and for those who were never part of the church in the first place to come to them.

• Another approach I think is both realistic and honorable: Some churches, looking at the reality of the situation, see the need for change in bringing the gospel to this culture, but must honestly admit that, for whatever reasons, they are not capable of making the needed changes. Instead, they choose to serve as parents or grandparents, using their financial resources and wisdom to empower others to reach those they cannot. Life Covenant Church is the recipient of this kind of blessing. Much of our startup cost was covered by a hundred year old church in a small farming town 300 miles from Torrence. < THIS IS US, HILMAR COVENANT! >

• All of these approaches (responding to the loss of young postmoderns in churches) run the danger of missing the point. Many, if not most, churches hold an underlying assumption that if only they “did church” better, people would come. This is not the real issue. The culture around us does not wake up each day thinking they would go to church if only there was a good one to attend. Church leaders seem unable to grasp this simple implication of the new world: people outside the church think church is for church people, not for them.

We may have saturated the market of people who want church the way we do it in North America. In response to this reality WE MUST BECOME MISSIONARIES IN OUR CULTURE! We need to apply ourselves to the hard work of understanding the culture God has placed us in, while prayerfully bringing the gospel to that place in a language and manner understandable to those we seek to reach.

• Christianity has lost the cultural position of privilege it has enjoyed since Constantine. As a faith with very particular truth claims, Christianity is seen as synonymous with intolerance, exclusivism, condemnation, bigotry, and oppression.

• How do we bring the message of Jesus to a culture that is deeply skeptical about truth claims, rejects metanarratives (such as the gospel), considers the church a suspect institution, takes offense at moral judgments and believes any religion will lead them to God?

There is a sense in which this is familiar territory. In many ways our missionary situation is more like the world of the New Testament and early centuries of the church than the subsequent eras. From the beginning, Christ’s church has lived in cultures with differing systems of morality, religious pluralism, syncretism, and deep skepticism over the claims made by Christians. Only in the West, and only in recent centuries, has the church ministered primarily within a predominantly Christian culture. < SO WHY DO WE LIVE SO DEFENSIVELY AND CRITICALLY AS CHRISTIANS TODAY (RE. THE DEMISE OF FAITH AROUND US)? OUR SITUATION NOW HAS BEEN COMMON TO CHRISTIANS THROUGHOUT MOST OF HISTORY. >

• Even as these cultural shifts present new challenges, they present tremendous opportunities as well. This is a great moment for the church. The church, now relegated to a marginalized role in society, has the opportunity to recover its vocation as God’s missionary people. This situation will require churches to study the Scriptures and our culture, lean heavily on the Holy Spirit’s guidance and power, and relearn how to think like missionaries. The “containers” in which the church brings the gospel will look different for those brought up with a more postmodern world view.

• Many have wondered what the new model will be for churches in the coming generation (in the way Willow Creek and Saddleback were the model for many baby boomer churches). I do not believe there will be one model. Rather, the new model will be to create one’s own model, to live as highly inquisitive missionaries who exegete the culture, understand both the believers and nonbelievers living in it, and build the church to function effectively in that context.

• My position is that as we move deeper into a post-Christian 21st century, the people of God will need to rediscover the power of an embodied apologetic. By this I mean an apologetic (defense; justification) that is based more on the weight of our actions than the strength of our arguments.

This is an apologetic that is high-touch, engages people relationally, ordinarily takes place in the context of an ongoing friendship, and addresses the needs inquirers have and the questions they pose. It provides the weight to our answers that reason by itself cannot.

• If we aren’t living like a church, are we a church? If we don’t care about being transformed into the image of Christ or about the world God loves, can we call ourselves a church? Is a church a church if it exists only for itself?

Well, that’s a lot to chew on and digest! But I hope you have found it challenging, intriguing, even exciting, as you have considered Tim’s experienced perspectives. Will we let ourselves be informed by his insights? Can we glean important instruction for our congregation here in Hilmar from the wisdom Tim has shared?

More to come - have a wonderful two weeks...