The Gospel Coalition

Christianity Today writer Collin Hansen reports on a panel discussion between evangelicals Russell Moore, Denny Burk, John Franke, D. G. Hart, Michael Horton, and David Lyle Jeffrey dealing with this very question.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am currently writing another book for Multnomah entitled Unfashionable: How to Live Against the World for the World. I have completed three chapters and am halfway through chapter four. The basic thesis of the book is that Christians make a difference in ths world by being different from this world; they don’t make a difference by being the same. If there’s one trend in Evangelical circles that concerns me most it is our fascination with fitting in. I hope this book serves as a clarion call to be “unfashionable.”

Anyway, over the next few months, I will be posting some excerpts (unfinished) to gain your feedback. This is the opening story of chapter one:

I woke up that Sunday morning with an aching head — and a sudden, stark awareness of my empty heart.

Having returned to my apartment from another night of hard partying on Miami’s South Beach, I’d passed out with all my clothes on. Hours later, as I stirred to a vacant, painful alertness, I vaguely realized it was Sunday, and somehow I decided to go to church. I didn’t even change my clothes. I jumped right out of bed and ran out the door.

I’d grown up going to church, but I hadn’t been back in so long that I didn’t know what to expect. Five years earlier, at the ripe young age of sixteen, I’d dropped out of high school, and my lifestyle became so radically disruptive to the family that my grieving parents had no other choice than to kick me out of the house. On a memorable, dreadful afternoon, I was escorted off my parent’s property by the police.

Looking out the patrol car’s rear window, I saw my mother crying. I felt no grief, no shame, no regret. In fact, I was pleased with what I’d achieved. Having freed myself from the constraints of teachers and parents, I could now live every young guy’s dream. No one to look over my shoulder, no one to breathe down my neck, no one to tell me what I could or couldn’t do.
I was finally free — so I thought.

I chased worldly pleasure harder than most my age. I lived on the edge, trying desperately to find myself through promiscuity, drugs, and alcohol. I was on a pleasure-seeking rampage in search of satisfaction and contentment. I was a man on a hedonistic mission.

But the harder I pursued these things, the more lost I felt. The more I drank from the well of worldly bliss, the thirstier I became. The faster I ran toward godless pleasure, the further I seemed from true fulfillment.

This world was not satisfying me the way it had promised, the way I’d anticipated. The offerings of this world had hung me out to dry. I felt betrayed. Lied to.

Broken and longing, I hungered desperately for something, someone, that was “out of this world.”

What I didn’t realize was how God wanted to show me there was more to life than this world was offering, more to who I was than I was experiencing. And to do that, he was graciously bringing me to the end of myself. That’s why I ran out the door that Sunday morning and went to church.

I walked in late and found my way to the only seats still available, in the balcony.

I didn’t understand everything the preacher said that morning, and I didn’t like all the songs that were sung. But that didn’t matter. I encountered something I couldn’t escape, something more joltingly powerful than anything I’d ever experienced. Through both the music and the message, the transcendent presence of God punctured the ceiling.

He was on full display. God — not the preacher or the musicians — was being lifted up for all to see. It wasn’t some carefully orchestrated performance (which, believe me, I would have been able to see right through). Rather, the people of God were simply honoring God as God.

I was captivated by the weightiness of this God-centered atmosphere. It was, quite literally, out of this world.

Here was the radical difference I longed for.

After the service, I couldn’t leave. I had to stick around and find out who these people were and what made my experience that morning so magnificently satisfying. As I talked to some of them, I was struck by how different they seemed from the group I’d been out with the night before — or any other night, for that matter. The people here seemed more solid, less see-through; more real. They asked me questions. They listened. Their relationships seemed authentically others-centered rather than self-centered. They genuinely cared about each other — and me.

When I went back to my apartment that afternoon, I thought long and hard about what I’d experienced that morning. What stood out most was just how refreshingly different it was compared to everything I’d become used to in the world — everything I’d come to believe was “cool” and “in style.”

I couldn’t wait to go back the next week.

Soon afterward, God saved me, raising me from spiritual death to spiritual life. And though I can’t pin down the exact moment this happened, I always point back to that morning in church and say, “That’s when I felt the Hound of Heaven beginning to track me down.”

A couple of months ago I had a wonderfully enjoyable on-air conversation with my old buddy Steve Brown. For those who aren’t familiar with Steve, he used to pastor Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Miami. He is now Professor of Preaching at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando and the author of numerous books. Steve is probably best known, however, for his deep radio voice. He has been hosting both a daily radio show and a weekly radio show for many years. He is the President of Key Life Network and one of the most enjoyable Christians you’ll ever encounter. Listen here as Steve and I chat about life, sin, and my book Do I Know God? Enjoy…

Football commentator John Madden called this the hardest hit he’d ever seen. I watched it live and cringed. This is precisely why I am a preacher and not a football player.