2 Things the Church Must Do to Help Our Post-Christian Neighbors Trust Jesus

As I write, I’m sitting on my front porch watching my neighbor Evan do yard work across the street. I’d like to see Evan and his wife, Maddie, trust Jesus for their salvation. They’re successful, friendly 40-somethings: hip, attractive, neighborly, easy to talk to. They know I’m a pastor; we’ve had them over for dinner; we do our best to initiate as much conversation and front-porch interaction as we can.

Yet Evan and Maddie don’t seem to know they’re missing anything. They haven’t identified any God-shaped holes in their hearts. I don’t think they’re hardened or closed off to faith; they just don’t appear to be asking any soul-level questions. How can we reach them?

1. Simply exist and thrive.

That’s right. To reach our post-Christian neighbors, churches just need to be—to faithfully gather God’s people for worship, catechesis, and spiritual formation. In doing so, we help God’s people to be good neighbors. The church must equip me, and all its members, to live a prayerful, faithful Christian life across the street from people like Evan and Maddie, for as many decades as God allows. We must pray that over time the Spirit of God will use our faithful Christian presence to make his grace known to our neighbors.

To reach our post-Christian neighbors, churches need to faithfully gather God’s people for worship, catechesis, and spiritual formation. In doing so, we help God’s people to be good neighbors.

That’s what happened with Mark, my former next-door neighbor. Mark was a crusty, battle-hardened Vietnam vet with a nominal Christian faith. He wasn’t keen on any Jesus stuff, and he wasn’t thrilled to learn I was a pastor. But he had a soft spot for kids, and over the course of years, my kids won his affection and softened him toward our family and the church. He came to worship with us one Easter, and he had such an enjoyable time that he came back every Easter Sunday (but only Easter Sunday) for quite a few years.

Then Mark had a massive heart attack, and his wife called to ask if I’d come visit him in the hospital. As Mark faced his mortality, the trust we’d built over a decade moved him to bare his soul and ask some of his deepest questions about God. I was able to open the Scriptures and share the gospel with him. He wasn’t willing to pray with me then and there, so I prayed for him and then left him with clear instructions on how to repent of his sin and trust Christ for salvation. He died a few days later. My hope is he died trusting in Jesus. His wife affirmed that my conversation with Mark had brought him great peace and that he’d spoken much with her about it in his final days.

This is what it’ll take to help our neighbors trust Jesus for salvation: faithful relational engagement over years. I long for the church in America to resource and equip Christians for that sort of long-haul witness. We need discipleship, spiritual formation, and life-on-life engagement more than we need evangelistic events or outreach meetings and strategies. 

2. Embrace a bigger gospel.

Our neighbors won’t trust Jesus for salvation unless we, with the Spirit’s help, can show them Jesus has something meaningful to say about life. Our neighbors aren’t asking “What must I do to be saved?” They’re asking “What does the church or Christianity have to do with my life?”

I’m persuaded Dallas Willard had it right when he identified “gospels of sin management” as a core problem within Christianity. More than merely a way to manage sin, the gospel of Christ offers people salvation and a new life that transforms them and the world around them. In the church, our neighbors should see a beautiful, attractive, and compelling picture of life in the kingdom of God.

Our neighbors won’t trust Jesus for salvation unless we, with the Spirit’s help, can show them Jesus has something meaningful to say about life.

Pastors everywhere must preach, teach, and disciple people with this fuller vision of the gospel. In Colossians 1:5–6, Paul speaks of “the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.” This text reminds us the gospel continues to work in us even after we first believe. It’s not merely good news on the day we heard it; it’s good news that keeps on bearing fruit and increasing.

John Frame, Jack Miller, and Tim Keller helped me see the fullness of the gospel from three perspectives: cross, grace, and kingdom. Since Jesus is our prophet, priest, and king, the good news about Jesus confronts us, changes us, and governs us. The gospel is a message to be proclaimed, an identity to be received, and a kingdom to live for. It’s a new forgiveness, a new status, and a new way of life. It’s the message that Jesus died for our sins (1 Cor. 15:1–5), that through him we’re adopted into God’s family (Gal. 3:26), and that he has inaugurated God’s already-and-not-yet kingdom (Mark 1:15).

When we proclaim the gospel through only one of these perspectives, we miss its richness and beauty and minimize its transforming power. Our post-Christian neighbors need to know the historical events of the gospel—the cross and resurrection—to accurately assess the gospel as a matter of public truth, not private belief. They need to know the gospel’s personal invitation—adoption into God’s family through faith in Jesus—to see the new status and identity Christ offers them. And they need to know the new kingdom era announced by the gospel to see how the way of Jesus subverts and upends the world’s value system.

Embracing and enjoying the gospel in all its fullness can help churches become distinct, countercultural communities full of virtuous, Spirit-transformed people. That’s what our neighbors need to see. As missiologist Lesslie Newbigin once wrote, “The only possible hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation which believes it.” Or, as the church father Irenaeus is quoted as saying, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Our neighbors need to encounter people who are fully alive, living in joy and hope and freedom. As they do, they may start asking the soul-level questions only the gospel can answer.

That’s what I’m praying for Evan and Maddie—and for your neighbors too.