How Emergent and Evangelical Churches See Themselves in a World of Servitude and Politics

To Kyle's article below I can only applaud his wisdom and humble understanding of what the church of God truly is. Well done!

R.E. Slater
July 9, 2011

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No Power? No Problem: Reflections on Evangelicals and Influence

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/No-Power-No-Problem-Kyle-Roberts-06-29-2011?offset=0&max=1

by Kyle Roberts

posted June 28, 2011

Is evangelicalism losing influence in the United States? Yes, answer a majority of Global North evangelical leaders surveyed at the recent Lausanne conference on evangelism.

The suggestion is not a shocking one to anyone familiar with the ebb and flow of the movement in its contemporary forms. But the gloomy outlook of evangelical leaders provokes a good bit of reflection (in particular when you compare the pessimism of Northern hemisphere evangelicals to the optimism of their Southern hemisphere counterparts).

A majority of global North evangelicals (54%) believe that in five years the situation for evangelicals will be either worse than now (33%) or about the same as now (21%). By comparison, 71 percent of leaders in the Global South believe the state of evangelicalism will improve. Yet the finding that most fascinates me relates to perceptions of evangelicalism's influence. In the North, only 31 percent of leaders expect to see evangelical influence grow, compared to 66 percent who expect evangelical influence to diminish. In the South, 58 percent expect an increase while 39 percent expect a decrease in influence.

What shall we say to this?

As Samuel Johnson noted, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." A perception of impending doom or coming decline forces those invested in that declining movement to gather their thoughts, re-focus their vision, and change course as necessary.

When the picture is accepted for what it is, rather than explained away as a series of anomalies or misinterpretations of data, then people can begin to shape creative solutions and re-imagine their future.

The question cannot simply be: How can evangelicalism recover its social influence? For one thing, the definition of the term evangelical is no longer stable. What counts as evangelical, on what basis, and who decides? The increasing ethnic diversity of American evangelicalism is complicating the picture. New studies show increasing diversity in how evangelicals, particularly younger ones, approach social issues, with homosexual marriage being the obvious current example. With such diversity underlying the movement, how can its social influence be measured?

But a deeper question remains. Could a decline of evangelical influence be a good thing for the gospel?

What is the task of the followers of Jesus? What is our vocation? Jesus said it is to be "the salt of the earth," the "light of the world," and a "city on a hill" (Mt. 5:13-14). Evangelicals have often brought to these images the assumption that saltiness and brightness = power as a voting block and a lobbying force. But those assumptions misconstrue the nature of the ecclesia, the gathering of disciples that seeks to follow Christ in the world and that understands its calling to suffering on behalf of and for the church (Col. 1:24) for the sake of the world (Mt. 28).

We too often measure the role and influence of the church with the barometers of the modern corporation or political program, barometers that are foreign to Jesus and the gospels. We too often gauge "success" by the extent to which our collective voice reinforces a particular, homogenous vision of life and minimizes our discomfort with difference and otherness. Evangelicals have too often seen ourselves as purveyors of a product or an ideology. Perhaps the better way to conceive of the church's identity and mission is as a diaspora: a scattered faithful remnant who seek to be servants of the gospel through the loving, gracious, non-coercive acts of witness. We are called to live out the implications of the gospel with humility and hospitality, pointing to the source of hope in Jesus.

Perhaps the evangelical church in the United States should embrace a decline of social influence in order to be God's elect who suffer in and for a broken world. When the church as an institution is perceived as powerful, it is often prone to triumphalism, exclusion, and self-preservation. As Karl Barth reminded us, the vocation of Christians and of the church is simply to serve the world by witnessing to the gospel. Since Pentecost, there has always been a historical church (in whatever form) to serve in this way. God uses the Church (including evangelical churches), but he doesn't require it. As Barth put it, "God does not belong to the Church" (The Epistle to the Romans [Oxford 1933, trans. Hoskyns], p. 339).

In the midst of this mainly gloomy picture of the Church lies a hopeful point: it is precisely because of its guilt, its transience, its negative instrumentality that the church plays a central role in God's economy of revelation, salvation, and reconciliation in the world. The way forward is to give obedient witness to the paradoxical reality of God's grace as manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

It is not for us in the North to surmise what Christians in the Global South should make of the optimism of their leaders toward the future of their evangelical movements and their influence in society. But here in the United States, perhaps we should embrace the apparent impending decline in social influence as an opportunity to follow Jesus to the margins of society. Furthermore, perhaps we should embrace an increasing diversity within evangelicalism itself as a fruitful development toward serving a complex, variegated world.

North America sits at the center of a shift from modernism to postmodernism to whatever comes after that (if that hasn't already come). Ours is a world shot through with plurality and difference, fragmentation and fissure, indeterminacy and openness. How can we speak the gospel into a world bereft of unity, stability, meaning, and hope? Only through the posture of witness and "faithful presence," a presence that is self-consciously fragile enough to engage the world without breaking it further. We are pots of clay. We are witnesses to the Gospel of grace. That's all.

The Church is vastly bigger than evangelicalism. And the kingdom of God is bigger than the Church. This means that any decline in evangelicalism's power and influence does not signal the end of God's work. But it may be that through recognition of our declining influence and by the practice of witness we can find God at work in us and through us in greater ways than we could have imagined.

Kyle Roberts is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology and Lead Faculty of Christian Thought, Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN). He researches and writes on issues related to the intersection of theology, philosophy, and culture. Follow Kyle Roberts' reflections on faith and culture at his blog or via Twitter.

Roberts' column, "Theological Provocations," is published every second Tuesday on the Evangelical portal. Subscribe via email or RSS.