Coming In Through Another Door (Part 1)
This essay is the first part of a two-part post by guest author Lynn Rhodes. The second part will appear one day after the first part here.
There has been a lot of angst, and rightly so, about the ongoing decline in church membership and/or attendance. But there may be something very good coming out of this. This rapid shrinkage is forcing churches to re-evaluate what it means to be a part of the kingdom of God and how to draw people into that kingdom.
Sadly, it has been easy for people to settle into a comfortable check-box relationship with God. For example:
✔ I believe that God is my creator and Jesus is my savior.
✔ I believe that the Bible is true and that it is still binding on us today.
✔ I’ve been baptized.
✔ I go to church most Sundays.
✔ I give some money to the church.
✔ My moral life is better than that of many people I know.
If these things are what Jesus meant when he admonished us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,”[1] then being a Christian isn’t radically life changing. If people do not see that your life has been totally changed by your belief system, why would they want to know about it or follow it? They are left to wonder what you really believe.
One thing that makes it hard to present the concept of salvation to people is that many people no longer believe that sin even exists. Once our culture adopted the concept that there is nothing that is always right or always wrong, the next step was to decide that there is no universally binding system of behavior or ethics. We all get to decide what our personal limits are. This reduces sin to “mistakes” and eliminates any eternal consequences. The collective ethical system of such thinking became well expressed by once popular sayings like “How can it be wrong if it feels so right?” and “If it feels good, do it.” As a result, our “redemption from sin” method of evangelism is not reaching very many people.
In evangelizing the Western World, we must find an approach that will penetrate this mindset. It will require us to come in through another door than that of calling people to adhere to truth and/or presenting the necessary things we must do in response to God so that we avoid eternal damnation (like believe, repent, confess, and be baptized). John Mark Comer says, “Most secular people have zero interest in hearing the gospel, preferring to look for salvation in other sources.”[2] Rather than beginning by convicting people of sin and its consequences, we need to begin by exploring the effectiveness of their present lifestyle in enabling them to have hope, peace, and purpose. From there we can move to the reality of failing to live by God’s principles for life (sin) and the need to be free from our failures (redemption). Only then are we ready to introduce a concept such as God cleansing us from sin through baptism and allowing us to enter into a new life.[3]
Comer points us in the right direction: “Do you ever feel that nagging ‘thought’ tug at the back of your mind: Is the life I’m living the life I most deeply desire? Is this it?”[4] Dr. Laurie Santos, in The Happiness Lab podcast,[5] looked at the deep human need for a purpose to guide our lives and give meaning to our existence. (Is it ironic that I was listening to this podcast while on a trip to nowhere on the treadmill at the gym?) One of the things she described as being hard was to find a purpose reaching beyond this life. In reality, following Jesus is the only way to find a purpose that reaches beyond this life. Sadly, some are living with a lifestyle that incorporates some of the ways Jesus teaches us to interact with people—as with those involved in humanitarian causes, for instance—but they have never fully surrendered to Jesus so as to find his perfect redemption.
Let me close with an analogy from history. After Viktor Frankl survived the horrors of the German Holocaust, he reported his observation that, in the horrible 24/7 suffering of that existence, people only lived as long as they had a purpose for staying alive. Once they lost that sense of life’s meaning, they soon died. Similarly, when we call people to life with Jesus, we are offering them the greatest reason for living (and dying) that there will ever be. We are calling them to life on God’s level, a life that transcends whatever struggles we may encounter in our journey into eternity.
1. Matthew 6:33.
2. John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way: Be Like Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook, 2024), 128.
3. Romans 6.
4. Comer, Practicing the Way, xi.
5. https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=the+happiness+lab+podcast+how+to+find+your+purpose&mid=D60A6B34E090764D2456D60A6B34E090764D2456&FORM=VIRE
