Sep
05
2007
Is Structural Renovation the Answer?
I’ve been thinking a lot over the last 10 years or so about the Christian fascination with “fitting in.” As I said in a recent interview with Justin Taylor, many Christians have concluded that the best way to reach the world is to become just like the world. The truth is, that Christians make a difference in the world by being different from the world; they don’t make a difference by being the same. It’s this conviction that has me working on a new book tentatively titled Unfashionable. My reading for this book has me going back to the one who, for the last 10 years, has helped me the most in my thinking about the church and it’s role in modern society, David Wells. In a post a couple days ago I gave you a passage from his book God in the Wasteland. Here is another passage from God in the Wasteland that I read again tonight:
“The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is not inadequate technique, insufficient organization, or antiquated music, and those who want to squander the church’e resources bandaging these scratches will do nothing to stanch the flow of blood that is spilling from its true wounds. The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgment is too benign, his gospel is too easy, and his Christ is too common.”
Or, as Os Guinness once wrote, “The ultimate factor in the church’s engagement with society is the church’s engagement with God.” Amen! Christians should be encouraged and challenged by the historical reminder that the Church has always served the world best when it has been most counter cultural, most distinctively different from the world. We younger evangelicals can do something about this if we radically commit ourselves to the beauty of being unfashionable. C’mon!