Sunday Lunch

As to some new ideas to stop the bleeding, first of all I would like to recommend family devotions. From the earliest times in the lives of your children, awaken your whole family around 4:30 am, and put together an hour long presentation of scripture, sharing, prayer requests, and prayer. Everyone should share, and sleeping is absolutely forbidden…

Okay, not really.

Look, I don’t want to diss anyone. Seriously, if family devotions were a part of your upbringing and it was meaningful and life-altering, I honor you and especially your parents for what they were able to do. Unfortunately, as well-intentioned as they might be, it is not the experience of most people, including parents and their children that devotions accomplished what was intended. More often than not they were forced, dreaded by everyone, too long (no matter how short), ineffective, and generally… uh…hated.

The intentions of family devotions are so good. But is there a way to engage your family in meaningful conversations about your faith and about the things that count? And can we find a way to make that happen naturally and spontaneously?

An idea came to me as I walked through my own home one afternoon. I was picking up papers, crafts, worksheets, coloring pages, loose cotton balls, and some multicolored pipe-cleaners that were all over the house that day. And it occurred to me that this represented just one week in the church life of my daughter. This pile was a collection of work that she had been given beginning with Sunday School on Sunday morning, Children’s Church after that, Sunday night worksheets, Wednesday night choir, and followed by her age-appropriate missions program. Wow!

Talk about drinking from a fire hose! She had at least five different lessons from five different teachers about five different subjects with five different scripture verses to memorize. But then, she would be doing that all over again starting the next Sunday morning. Five more of everything. I started looking through the pile and realized that none of what she had heard that week matched any of the three sermons I had heard in the same time frame.

Then a thought hit me. If the church wanted to help facilitate my being the point man in my daughter’s spiritual formation, why couldn’t they plan it out to where all the pastors were using their creativity to coordinate lesson plans? Wait, hear me out. It would have really helped if my daughter and I were learning the same things, you, know, at our own levels, but the same concepts, maybe even the same scriptures at the same time. That might actually spark some authentic and unforced conversation between us.

Then I thought about Sunday lunch. The Sunday afternoon meal after church has always been a family thing for us. How cool would it be if the conversation around the table at lunch time on Sunday afternoon was to eventually come around to the subject matter of the day? What would it do for our kids if they were to become involved in, included in the deep issues discussed at table on Sunday afternoon? Not compulsory, not strained, but naturally included, encouraged. What if their opinions actually mattered? (I’ll go here next.)

This is something with which we have experimented, and we can see real potential for the future as we grow into having just such a creative planning team. Some object lessons work for all ages. Videos, movie clips, and larger metaphors can bridge or can be made age-appropriate. Whatever tools we have at our disposal. Shouldn’t we be the most creative people on earth?

Just my first idea. What do you think?

“Send” the Indigenous, Part 1

The church in which I grew up has become one of the largest missionary sending organizations the world has ever known. It was conceived and birthed in the heat of passion for going and sending based on the aforementioned Great Commission. But if there is one thing we have learned, it is that why and how one is sent is as critical as being sent in the first place.

What we have learned is that sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a country, a culture, or a people group is the invasion of what I’ll call fanatical Christian salvation guerillas. Because, the one and only message they have is salvation. So they storm the country with medical teams, food supplies, or relief efforts, in an attempt to gain an attentive ear for their message by providing for needs. Now, providing for needs isn’t a bad thing. That is very much a Kingdom value taught by Jesus. But not when the real purpose is bait and switch.

When physical needs are met for the sole purpose of creating a captive audience for a quick presentation of the Gospel, that is bait and switch. And, it doesn’t just happen in foreign countries either. It also happens in churches every week right here in the good old US of A.

Youth are baited with pizza, extreme games, celebrity guests, and fancy hangouts. Adults are baited with promises of wealth, beauty, and success, not to mention a break from their children for at least an hour. Add on top of that promises of discipleship training for every age group (as though that was supposed to be the job of the church and not the disciple).

Worse than that, the needy in our cities are promised food in exchange for a church service which they have to attend. “Free clothing” comes with a secret price tag—the cost of which is measured in enduring bad music and a reductionist salvation message. In either situation—the fancy church or the skid row mission—the problem is the same. Here it is: What you win them with, you win them to—whether it’s pizza, prosperity, or free clothes.

Now, I know that many churches and Christian organizations do wonderful things for people with no strings attached. Those groups have my compliments. But there are just as many, if not more, who use this as a “strategy.”

Last Sunday afternoon, I went to a downtown park where some friends of mine were doing a cook out for our homeless friends. There were at least 60 of us in the park that day. And although this was a first (the cookout), it was not the first time these men, women, and children had fed, loved on, and talked to many of these people. They called each other by name, and were so genuinely glad to see one another. And the food and the hugs and the football and the croquet were all paid for and given away unconditionally.

Unfortunately, some there that day who didn’t know my friends were waiting for the other shoe to drop. So when two guys got out their guitars to play some jazz and folk music, one man was overheard to say, “Uh-oh! They’re gettin’ out the guitars. Here comes the Jesus message…”

Bait and switch.

Now my friends and I had no intentions of doing anything more than feeding, hugging, and spending some time with them. But they were so conditioned to the schemes and methods they had seen so many times before that they were certain we were getting ready to “lay some Jesus on them.”

Some of my other friends who are missionaries in Asia have a name for people who convert in one of these bait and switch situations. They call them “rice Christians.” Rice Christians (whether in Asia or South Tulsa) aren’t won to Jesus, they are won to: fill-in-the-bait.

Now, so far you’re wondering how this applies to our subject of “Sending the Indigenous.” I guess what I’m wondering in my head and wandering through with the above is if we are ready to entrust the Holy Spirit with the next step. If we can trust Him to draw or to persuade the indigenous to follow him without our coercion or manipulation, are we ready to allow Him to help them to contextualize the truths of scripture for their own culture without our messing it up for them?

Before we can talk about sending the indigenous to reach their own, we have to answer the question: Are we ready to let them build their own versions of ecclesiology (church) and maybe even soteriology (salvation) that may or may not resemble our versions?

Contextualize the Message, Part 2

In his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan introduced his now famous line “the medium is the message.” Only the smartest people got it back then. Now, 45 years later, we can observe it every day. Just watch a television commercial. Advertisers don’t sell products, they sell cool. (Think: Abercrombie & Fitch, Mac, Starbucks.) These days, how you say it is more important than what you say.

Just to simplify, let me give you an example. If you were to hand someone under the age of 30 a cassette tape and say, “This is a really cool song,” you can be certain it will never be listened to. Not to mention the fact that they won’t have anything to play it on, the medium is so outdated that what is on it cannot be cool. The medium itself (cassette tape) screams, “Un-cool!”

Now, McLuhan would tell us that I was over-simplifying his life’s work—that what he meant was so much more than this. I get that. But this concept is no small matter to those of us who believe we have the most important message ever delivered. So it is proper that we should consider the media with which we communicate it.

It should be said that McLuhan was no Luddite. However, he was well aware of how media affect not only the messages they contain but also those who receive them. Like other educators (Neil Postman for example), he believed that technology was a force to be reckoned with. But McLuhan’s proposition isn’t just about technology. Let me give you another example.

Have you ever stumbled onto a television preacher and been stunned at the delivery? Try turning off the sound. It can be pretty disturbing. Especially if you consider that the message that is being communicated is in everything except the words. So, with the sound off, what is being communicated? That is the message—whether the sound is on or not.

One more. Let’s move to street level. I was having lunch the other day with an old friend that I hadn’t seen in 10 years. As it turns out, he carries fake $1,000,000 bills which have a salvation message on the back. (He got them from Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron.) And he indiscriminately hands them to people he meets. I was mortified. It goes against everything I believe about connecting people with Jesus. Why? Well, what is the message being communicated? It’s not the one on the back of the fake bill.

Here’s the real message. I don’t know you. And I don’t have time to get to know you. But I have an agenda, and it supersedes common courtesy and your measly feelings. So here it is. You’re going to hell. (So sad.) But, you can change that right here, right now before some freakish cash register accident claims your life. Yes, if you will only say these words (printed here for you) you too can have eternal life. Oh, and by the way, it’s okay to feel inferior. I do have superior knowledge about what is best for you. You don’t have to thank me.

Some of you may think I’m exaggerating about how unchurched people feel about this kind of approach. I’m not. In fact, many Christians feel the same way. I have a friend who just had a t-shirt made that says: “I’m already saved. Leave me alone.” Except it says it a little stronger than that.

So, with McLuhan in the back of our heads, how do we contextualize the message for the next generation? Here’s another way to ask the question. How do we assure that the medium we use communicates the real message we want to express?

Contextualize the Message, Part 1

There is a 100 year old story (legend) told by the great Indian follower of Jesus Sadhu Sundar Singh. (A Sadhu is a Hindu ascetic.) The story is about a Brahman man—a high-caste Hindu—in India who fainted from the summer heat while sitting on a train at a railway station. Someone ran to the faucet, filled a cup with water, and brought it to the man in an attempt to revive him. But in spite of his condition, the passenger would not accept the water because it was offered to him in the cup of a man belonging to another caste. Then someone noticed that the high-caste man had a cup on the seat beside him; so he grabbed it, went out and filled it with water, returned, and offered it to the man, who now readily accepted the water with gratitude.

At this point, Sundar Singh would tell his audience that missionaries from the West had been offering the “water of life” to the people of India in a foreign cup. Therefore, they were reluctant to receive it. However, Sundar Singh was offering it in their own cup, so that they were much more likely to accept it. In other words, as an indigenous member of the Indian culture, Sundar Singh was able to offer up the Gospel in an indigenous form. Now they could understand the message within the context of their lives.

Unfortunately, the American church has mistakenly supposed that she has been communicating the Gospel in the language and the context of the culture. Perhaps, the message and methods of the early twentieth century worked back then, but for the last 50 years the strident call has been falling on increasingly deaf ears. We have not been offering the water of life in their cup. We’ve been offering it up in ours—a cup forged in modernity and revivalism, with words and idioms of a bygone era. I call it a King James message to a Stephen King world.

Meanwhile, the culture has left us in the dust, while we have become more and more culturally incestual. Some who would criticize the Amish practices of isolationist customs and behaviors are just as separatist in their traditions and programs.

The Campus Crusade tract The Four Spiritual Laws depicts a familiar picture to most Christians of an uncrossable canyon between man and God which must be bridged by the cross of Jesus. Unfortunately, before that message will be heard, there is an equally uncrossable and ever-widening gap fixed between church culture and popular culture. And it is a crevasse that must be bridged by the church.

In places and circumstances where people have been less receptive to the message of the Gospel, several scholars have tried to understand and plot the journey to faith. James Engel in his 1975 book What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest? shares what has become known as the Engel Scale. Expanding on Engel’s work, Paul and Sue Hazelden began working on a modified Engel Scale in 2000 which is a bit more broad. It includes people who have no “God concept” at all. And, finally Frank Gray of the Far East Broadcasting Company developed the Gray Matrix that expands their work. His matrix includes not only the cognitive elements of the Engel Scale but also attitudinal aspects—a person’s receptivity to the message—on a two-dimensional model with vertical and horizontal axes.

These will not be explained here, but they can be studied separately by accessing the links provided. Believe me, they are an invaluable resource for anyone who is trying to understand the progression toward faith and how important life context is in that process. It is also a valuable tool for the church to recognize that most of its efforts will not reach to people any further away than about a negative four on the Engel Scale. And most church programs are designed for people in the “C” quadrant (higher knowledge and receptivity) of the Gray Matrix.

In part two we will include what it might look like to offer the water of life in their cup.

Immerse Yourself in the Culture

One of the mistaken assumptions of early missions from the West to “less civilized” continents was that the countries being conquered, colonized, “civilized,” and proselytized were in some way inferior to Western culture. Anyone who has ever seen the 1980 Jamie Uys masterpiece “The Gods Must Be Crazy” realizes the absurdity of that thinking. Or if you know the story of Gandhi, whose moral superiority brought the British Empire to its knees, you can appreciate the hubris of such belief.

Thank goodness and hindsight that we are now teaching new candidates a better approach to “foreign missions.” At least in most schools we are embracing the worth and the beauty of cultural diversity. And we’re teaching aspiring missionaries how important it is to immerse themselves in the life and culture of the indigenous.

However, we Westerners are slow to learn. It is unfortunate that the same antiquated 19th century kind of thinking still goes on inside the minds of people at all levels in the American church. American Christians believe their way of life to be superior in every way to those outside the church. Therefore, we continue the conquer, colonize, civilize, and proselytize mentality of our forbears.

But what if we—like our foreign counterparts—were to immerse ourselves in the culture around us? What if we were to embrace the culture outside the walls of the church? Here in America. What would that look like? I’m not advocating sin. I’m not advocating promiscuity. What I am advocating is changing the TV channel away from Christian television and to the shows that are exploring spiritual matters. Try listening to NPR instead of Christian radio.

Current shows like “Lost” or “Heroes” or “Ghost Whisperer” explore spirituality. Even the prime-time cartoon “The Simpsons” poses questions and explores possible answers to the spiritual quest of some of its characters. And has done so for 20 years! In fact, Homer’s next door neighbor Ned Flanders (fictional graduate of Oral Roberts University) made the cover of “Christianity Today.” There are myriad ways to explore the culture without indulging in immoral behavior.

More importantly, what I am advocating is sitting at table with those who will never darken the door of a church. What I am advocating is befriending “prostitutes,” “tax collectors,” and “sinners.” Does that sound vaguely familiar?

What I am advocating is creating opportunities to be a light that is surrounded by darkness. A candle adds very little light to a room brightly lit with hundreds of other intense lights. And a light hidden under the “bushel” of church walls is no light at all.

Then, beyond sitting at table, we must listen to the hearts and the voices of those who find themselves outside our exclusive circle. The inventor of the stethoscope, René Laennec, said, “Listen to your patients; they are telling you how to heal them.” Great advice for the church.

I love this quote from Earl Creps’ book Off-Road Disciplines: “Christian leaders today need to listen for the questions posed by those navigating our cultural perfect storm, regardless of the relationship of those voices to the Church. This sort of humility requires no compromise of orthodoxy but goes a long way toward defusing an often suspicious post-Christian audience, while maturing the Church in its devotion to Christ.” (p. 132)

Learning the language and immersing one’s self in the culture are the first two steps that will allow us to contextualize the message of Jesus for the people outside the church. Contextualization is the next step in the process.