The future is here today: how ready is the church?

A Jewish rocker friend, who’s shared the stage with the likes of Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell and others, wrote a cool song with a great hook: “We’ve got to rescue the future, for the future is here today.”

In our tech and media soaked mobile world, from layperson to leader, within the church and outside of it, many teeter on the brink of breakdown, digital dysfunction. The onslaught of tech is way ahead of what the church is ready to handle. The worlds of communication and scientific advancement are overwhelming our ability to cope practically, emotionally, morally, ethically.

Things are messy, we need answers, yesterday.

“I was suddenly faced with what I had been distracting myself from. Resting for a moment against the trunk of a tree, I stopped, and suddenly found myself bent over, convulsed with the newly present pain, sobbing.”
“An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.”
– Andrew Sullivan
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html

Quoting Sullivan, Russell Moore then commented as follows:
“I was most intrigued by Sullivan’s proposals for the church to be a haven in a digitally exhausted world. ‘If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation,” Sullivan writes. “’Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasm, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.’ He is exactly right.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/21/jesus-doesnt-care-how-many-twitter-followers-you-have/

A friend of mine in ministry once held up a cell phone and a tablet and declared “you’re looking at today’s moral compass.”

Another friend, Pastor Ray Ortlund from Nashville, says this: “The need of our times is nothing less than the re-Christianization of our churches, according to the gospel alone, in both doctrine and culture, by Christ himself. …though what a renewed church will look like might, at present, lie beyond our imaginations…” (He then goes on to reveal some of what that can look like). That’s from his book The Gospel: How The Church Portrays The Beauty of Christ, published by Crossway.

What and how we think about God = our future

Now, I’m a recently empty nest dad, a worker, writer, erstwhile pastor, and occasional speaker. I’m a pilgrim not a trained theologian, but I care deeply about what we think about God.

In fact I’m fully persuaded that when it comes to thinking about God and thinking about technology, there is a connection. The former illuminates the way to navigating the murky and often dangerous waters of the latter. But what does this “thinking about God” mean to everyday people like you and me? Let me explain.

Wayne Grudem, in a presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society, nearly twenty years ago (JETS 43/1 (March 2000) 5–26, II.1) made a compelling case that God wants evangelical scholars to write more books and articles that tell the church what the whole Bible teaches us about current problems and questions facing the church. This is needed now and especially in the new world rushing in upon us. I was misty as I read Grudem’s document, as point after point resonated deeply with feelings I’ve had for years, yet am so very inadequate for. The Harvard educated scholar goes on to say that he believes the Bible was written so it could be understood by ordinary believers, and that intelligent believers who are not technically trained in exegesis, but who will seek diligently to find the teaching of scripture, can do quite a good job.

Grudem lists a host of real world issues, facing every church today, needing well formulated doctrinal guidance and honest evangelical consensus. How great would it be to bring gospel clarity both to the world and to the often tossed-to-and-fro-by-every-wind-of-doctrine church! Having said that, I would posit that there is not only a paucity of evangelical theological academic precision being brought to bear on some of today’s most difficult and pressing questions (as Grudem pleads), but also that there is a gap between those in academia and our pastors and congregations/lay persons.

Grudem makes excellent points. But I have found too, what Laura Simmons points out (in her fine book Creed Without Chaos, which is about one of my heroes, Dorothy Sayers). “The tendency of laypeople,” Simmons says, “is often to assume that because they are not trained theologians, they therefore have nothing to offer in the theological realm.”

I suggest, that we must effect a grassroots change in that regard. It is going to take a mass movement, head to toe (Eph. 4:16), to stem the tides of today’s myriad serious church challenges. But it begins with a spark. Dante wrote something like “from a small spark comes a great flame.” So called laypersons have an immeasurable amount to offer in the theological realm, as the Bible shows (Acts 4:13, 1 Cor. 1:20-29) and history has demonstrated.

In his review of Laura Simmons’ book, Robert K. Johnston, professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary wrote: “As the institutional church falters, lay theology becomes increasingly important, infusing dogma with new life. In twentieth-century England, the list of such lay thinkers was impressive–Chesterton, Lewis, Eliot, and the least known of this group, Dorothy Sayers.”

Where are the masses of serious lay theologians we so need? I would suggest our churches, universities and colleges, are potentially filled with them, if we would but help them arise!

Grudem is looking for those who have doctoral level training in Old and New Testament exegesis to lead the way via their training. Amen. Twice Grudem asks whether it has become “true that the more people know about how to interpret the Bible with academic precision, the less willing they are to tell the church what the whole Bible says.” Is that a reflection on our culture? Are we timid to present our dogma, not preaching the very truths that are our best hope of creating an inroad into the hardened confused culture all around us?

Ephesians 5:15, speaking of really basic everyday life…conversation, sex, money and so forth, says “Be very careful, then, how you live…”

How do we fit THAT fit in with social media, our cellphone-gods, the internet, etc.? Read the whole chapter 5 of Ephesians, hear the exhortation, feel the conviction and strength of the dogma therein.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Martin Luther, George Whitefield, John Wesley and John Calvin, is their loving ruthlessness, when it came to dogma. A secret to their power was that that they understood “the dogma is the drama” (as Dorothy Sayers said). If Christ is the heart, surely the dogma is the blood pulsing through the veins of the gospel narrative. Just read Wesley on holiness, the cross and resurrection, Calvin on Romans, or Edwards on sin and forgiveness, as they bring an unapologetic apologetic. And don’t’ forget the majestic minds of Augustine and other Fathers, who also were bold in the narrative of the dogma. Understanding and articulating the core and often shocking message of our historical, Biblical, orthodox faith, as it applies to our new world, is critical. Not just by a few who are paid to do so, but by each of us. An economy of trickle down Bible-nomics won’t suffice.

All that to say…
• Nothing worthwhile is easy, especially when it comes to the narrow road, the narrow gate. (Matt. 7)
• Making a difference in our often upside down world, by knowing and walking with God via the Scriptures, must be led NOT ONLY by our theologians and pastors…
• But by each of us: By YOU.

2 Timothy 2:15 says “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” John Calvin said “The word is the instrument by which the illumination of the Spirit is dispensed.” (Institutes I.IX.3). Jesus said “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4).

So come broken, messed up (join the club), God-seeking. You lead the way in your own world: Become a lover, student, and a do-er of God’s Word. Lead others to this source of life. Search the Scriptures to speak to the craziness of our age. Do it by faith in the God of the Scriptures. Do it with your Helper, the Holy Spirit. Watch and be amazed!

As Ray Ortlund says: “We didn’t ruin God’s plan; we are God’s plan!”