How our historical commitment to a broken vision of evangelism just may lead to an inability to reach the lost.

We as spiritual guides to culture must never diminish our faith to a matter of mere rhetoric or a mere expression of practice devoid of truth. This is the true crisis in U.S. evangelism today. The “attractional” model of evangelism which has dominated the West for the last several decades is providing diminishing returns on investment. The Church’s self-serving and individualistic message of pragmatism is increasingly irrelevant to a generation that is more globally minded then ever before. Classic evangelistic rallies, though still sizeable, show a decreasing percentage of attendees who are truly non and anti-church individuals, typically less then 10%.

Churched people are also growing disillusioned by the concept of evangelism proper. Service, programs, and relationships are increasing values but the idea of being personally responsible for people’s souls is seen as antiquated. Why has this shift occurred?  I believe that it is the natural end of a sub-Christian culture-one of mere pragmatism. The impact this has an increasingly value driven culture is an increased marginalization of the role of religion in everyday life. The exaltation of pragmatism at the expense of values (e.g. compassion, justice, contrition, advocacy…) has finally begun to demonstrate just how hollow the American Church has become. 

In an effort to be fun, attractive, and “normal,” much of the American Church has simultaneously found itself ironically irrelevant.  For all its pursuit of relevance, the Church has missed its goal because the understanding of relevance was based on an individualistic, inwardly focused personal relevance. The relevance that is increasingly sought, however, is communal and global.

While in New York City, I happened to share Christ with Jerome. After sharing the good news with Jerome, he said these haunting words, “I not only understand what you are saying, I actually believe that it is true. I just don’t care that I’m going to hell. I care more about what’s happening right now with the poor in this city and the fact that people are dying around the world for lack of clean drinking water..”

Jerome mistook in my words for the stagnant, words of detached religion. Flowery words of worlds to come and a mere escape from hell. While this eschatological reality is the pressing reality we will all one day have to deal with, Jerome verbalized what many feel-the need to seek a bit more Heaven on earth. The litmus test for this emerging generation is the cultural, ecological, political, economic, sexual, and social application of Jesus Christ-only then will he be seen as also personally relevant.

When we reduce our faith to mere rhetoric we have participated in this hollowing out of the Church. The greater mistake the new pursuit for relevance will be the backlash against the power of the written word, doctrine, and a clear articulation of faith. As we scramble to embrace a spiritually hungry generation who is, in fact, in hot pursuit of a Kingdom vision in their hearts, we must not lose our commitment to Christ’s personal impact or the great eschatological realities. This generation has tasted God’s vision, in a dream perhaps, and will not be satisfied easily by much less then the fulfillment of this mysterious longing.

We need to transcend the mere rhetoric of the populace Church and press toward true transformative action. We need also to avoid mere activism that is void of the real power to change the world around us.