5 Things the Church Must Do to Reverse Declining Christianity in America

Mike Luckovich  Copyright 2015 Creators Syndicate

(I'm re-posting this for a friend.)

Here are 5 Things the Church Must Do to reverse declining Christianity in America.

1. Preach the Biblical Text.

Forget about trying to make people happy, or relaxed, or comfortable. (See here, e.g.)

2. Tap into Power.

Major in two biblical words: dunamis (power) and exousia (authority). Culture these. (Like this.)

3. Lead people into The Presence of God.

Think like Moses here: "Unless Your presence goes with us, we're not moving." (See here.)

4.  Teach Apologetics as Spiritual Warfare. Help people know why they believe what they believe. Watch, e.g., this. 

5. Form Community around 1-4. This is something the "nones" will never have. Community does not form around what people don't believe in. See this, e.g. And read this. No one in history has formed community better than Christianity has.


***
I write about these things in Leading the Presence-Driven Church. 

"Relevant" - The Great Nonsense Word of Our Time

Detroit

This is what the Lord says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;

    ask for the ancient paths,

ask where the good way is, and walk in it,

    and you will find rest for your souls.

    But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

- Jeremiah 6:6

A church that spends time and resources trying to be "relevant" has chosen the wrong path. "Relevant" is the wrong word to describe Jesus. Better to call him the Way, or the Truth, or the Life. Jesus is someone far higher, and deeper, than the spatially and temporally localized word "relevant." To call him such is to choose the wrong path.

"Relevant" is hip nonsense. See, for example, this essay in The Smithsonian: "What Does It Mean for Art to Be "Relevant"?

Art must be great. To be great often means being irrelevant. Relevancy is irrelevant to the great artist, who creates because he must, not because he's trying to fit in. 

In the Smithsonian interview music critic Jay Nordliner says:

"That’s the buzzword of the day, “relevant.” I think it’s one of the great nonsense words of our time. What does it mean? The Bach B Minor Mass is great. Is it relevant? I don’t know. It’s great. Is greatness relevant? Relevant to what? I think art can be liked and loved and appreciated. It instructs us and consoles us and thrills us and lifts us up. But this mania, this fashion, this fad for relevance is bizarre. 

It’s a perversion of art. I think it goes hand in hand with attempts to politicize art. A lot of people think that if something isn’t political, it doesn’t really matter. I suppose that’s what they mean by “relevant.” What’s the relevance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Brotherhood? Well, that symphony is a lot more than that – beyond our power to put into words."

The great artist is not trying to speak for today. "The best art speaks for all time and is timeless. It's beyond time and place." 

Jesus, and the Church, are more like great art than great science. That's why Jesus, and the Real Church, will be triumphant. Science is amazing, but Real Church is beyond our power to put into words, and cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language. Being beyond time and place, it cannot be diminished to time and place. This is why Jesus spoke in parables, with some syllogisms thrown in. (See Chapter 9 in my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church, on the metaphysical impulse that will not go away, and my writing on non-discursiveness.)

Pouring time, energy, and money into striving to make the Church "relevant" is the politicization of the Church. That is, it tends towards the politically correct as a justification for attracting people. It is reductionistic, desacralizing, and disenchanting. It leads people away from the ancient paths. It's a perversion of Church. It is idolatry.

Greatness, when it arrives on the scene, is usually misunderstood, and felt as culturally irrelevant and out of place. Like Jesus. Like his people.

How, then, shall we tap into the greatness of God and his Church? Lay relevancy down by the rivers of Babylon, and be faithful.

(Note: I see being "incarnational" as different, and more powerful, than being "relevant.")

Refusing to Take Reality for Granted

CNN posted this photo I took of a blood moon - HERE.

The existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir "had a kind of genius for being amazed by the world and by herself; all her life she remained a virtuoso marveller at things. As she said in her memoirs, this was the origin of fiction-writing: it began at those times when ‘reality should no longer be taken for granted’." (Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others, p. 109)

A virtuoso marveller at things.

For the third night in a row I'm going to step out into the dark, get still, look to the skies, and marvel at the Perseid meteor shower. I have time for this. I must do this.

The great, paradigm-shifting German philosopher Immanuel Kant was attending a lecture by a materialistic astronomer. (Materialism: all reality is only physical.) The atheist astronomer was talking about the insignificance of man, based on man's place in the vast universe. The astronomer concluded his lecture with: "So you see that astronomically speaking, man is utterly insignificant." Kant replied: "Professor, you forgot the most important thing, man is the astronomer." (Shared by Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft.)

In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant wrote the following, which was eventually engraved on his tombstone:

"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."

It's 9 PM. Linda and I are watching TV together. In an hour I'll step outside and look up, as I've done countless times before. 

When I consider God's heavens,

the work of His fingers,

the moon and the stars,

the comet's icy tail,

which He has set in place...

I cannot take reality for granted.

Linguistic Imperialism and the Imprisoned Church

Praying, at Redeemer

In my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church I make the case that the words and language we use do more than describe, they shape and structure our experience. I refer to Kenyan scholar Ngugi wa Thiongo's Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Thiongo's argument is that, more than British cannons, it was the British schools that taught children English that imprisoned Kenyans. 

My argument is that, in the same way, secular language has colonized the Christian heart and mind. Examples include "church" (meaning a building), "program" (meaning the "order of service"), and that deadly, cancerous word "relevant." (For more see my book.)

I am pleased to see the recent New York Review of Books has an article on Thiongo ("Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Tyranny of Language"). While reading, I thought about substituting Church language into Thiongo's ideas. Here we go!

(Thiongo) - “The condition for acquiring the glory of English was the humiliation of African languages."

(Me) - “The result of acquiescing to secular language has been the humiliation of biblical language."

(NYR) - "Long after he had left the Alliance High School, Ngũgĩ was struck by how little he and his cohort had noticed, let alone responded to, their socialization into a Western-oriented outlook. "

(Me) - "I am struck by how little pastors and churches have noticed, let alone responded to, their socialization into a secular-oriented outlook."

(Thiongo) - "The language of power is English and that becomes internalized. You normalize the abnormal and the  absurdities of colonialism, and turn them into a norm from which you operate. Then you don't even think about it."

(Me) - "The language of power is secular English and that becomes internalized. You normalize the abnormal and the absurdities of secular materialism, and turn them into a norm in which you do church. Then you don't even think about it."

(NYR) - "Whether or not the British in Kenya truly believed in their civilizing discourse, the rise of English in place of the local tongue helped to deepen the colonial endeavor and fix its structures into place."

(Me) - "Whether or not the Christians in America truly believed in their disenchanted, reductive discourse, the rise of desacralized language in place of biblical discourse helped to deepen the secular a-religious endeavor and fix its structures into place (in the Church)."

There's much more. This is about linguistic imperialism, which relegates biblical language to an unsophisticated, backwards culture that is uncivilized compared to mature, progressive, rational secular humanity. It overtakes Church culture, and becomes the linguistic air we breathe. Then, churches play the game, striving to be loved, cool, "reasonable," and accepted. While no one notices.

***
See Leading the Presence-Driven Church, Chapter 7, "The Language of the Presence-Driven Church."

Our 45th Anniversary

Linda and I bought this pair of coffee cups on our honeymoon at Chicago's Marriott O'Hare.
I am drinking from this cup today!

August 11, 1973 - Linda and I were married.

Today we're taking the day to celebrate 45 years of marriage.

I love Linda. Linda loves me.

Our love feels strong. 

Our love is strong.

Our shared faith in Jesus is the glue that bonds covenantal love. 

He has.

He does.

He will.

Today we thank and praise Him for this.

Linda and me

NOTE TO MY CHURCH FAMILY - Prepping for This Sunday Morning

Dear Redeemer Family:

I'm in our upstairs office at home, praying and preparing and putting together what I am going to share with you on Sunday morning.

God has told me He is going to do something great this Sunday. And why not, right?

I am calling you to pray and prepare your hearts for Sunday.

Here is the Scripture: 2 Chronicles 7:14-16:

Here are THE DECLARATIONS:

DECLARATIONS - Spiritual Hunger and Revival
● Our church is blessed when we stay hungry and thirsty for righteousness and the presence of God. (Matthew 5:6)
● Our church has great spiritual hunger and tenacity which brings great rewards. (Galatians 6:9)
● Our church is always thirsty for more.
● Our appetite for God increases every day.
● We live a life of great spiritual hunger.
● We live a life of radical faith.
● We will increasingly experience every aspect of the salvation that Jesus won for us.
● Our spiritual hunger and personal revival bring breakthrough to everyone around us.
● The Church is triumphant. (Matthew 16:18)
● Our church is known as a revival church, full of power and Christ-likeness.
● Our church walks in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
● Our church opens doors for radical revival movements that invite the nations to be touched by God.
● Our church walks in sustained revival.
● I’m not waiting for a move of God. I am a move of God.

SEE YOU SUNDAY!


PJ

Seek to Become Lower

Via Dolorosa, in Jerusalem

"As one rises higher and higher in spiritual power and blessing, and as his influence among men becomes greater and greater, then, as Dr. Dowie once said … he must ever seek to become lower and lower and lower."

- Michael Brown, Revolution in the Church: Challenging the Religious System with a Call for Radical Change (Kindle Locations 1475-1477)

God's grace and favor rests, not on those who are humbled (we all get humbled), but on those who are humble (this is about our character). See here.

Spiritual leaders who seek to become higher, recognized, even famous and honored, are opposed to God. God resists them. And what God resists will soon desist. Again, see here.

If you desire the spotlight you stand in darkness.

God has shown you, you mere mortal,

what is good.

You know what the Lord requires of you.

It is:

to act justly,

to love mercy,

and to get lower before your God.

Micah 6:8



***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

I am writing...

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

Linda and I will then co-write our book on Relationships. 

Promising

The River Raisin, Monroe

If you promise something to someone, follow through. Keep your promise. If you don't you will lose respect and trust. 

Why would someone say, "I'll call you this week and we'll get together," and not call them this week and get together? They could have simply forgotten. Perhaps make promises to flatter people because it's all about them, and not the other person.

A promise without action equals less than nothing. Unkept promises diminish relationship. "I promise" + "no follow through" = less than "No."

When your "I will" = "I will not" you make the promisee angry. Your promise creats an expectation in them. Anger is the emotion we feel when one of our expectations has not been met. When they realize that the expectation created by your "I will" actually meant "I will not," they will be angry at you.

I have done this, in ministry and with my family. I've learned the hard way that just one duplicitous act can make me come off as an inauthentic hypocrite whose words mean nothing. Just one unkept promise can create a barrier that's hard to bring down.

I must...  

1. Think before I say "I will" to something.
2. Ask: "Is God telling me to say "Yes?" If so, then do it; if not, then use the word "No."
3. When I say "Yes, I will __________," then I will do it when I said I will do it.
4. Ask for forgiveness if I've made a promise and not followed through (for whatever reason; it makes no difference). I am to contact the promisee and say, "I promised you I would __________. I did not. Would you please forgive me." I've found that most people will forgive, realizing that they are as imperfect as I am. 
5. Examine myself as to why I cannot say "No" to certain things, and instead promise people something with my "Yes." When I do this it is about a weakness in me.
6. Ask God to heal my inner woundedness that leads me to flatter and placate people with a false "Yes."

Jesus says, in Matthew 5:37 (The Message): 

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say 'yes' and 'no.' When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

Or: All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. <sup>(Ib., NIV)

***</sup>
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

I am writing...

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

Linda and I will then co-write our book on Relationships. 

My Last Philosophy of Religion Class

Room, in our home

This fall I will teach my last Philosophy of Religion class at Monroe County Community College. I've been teaching this class at MCCC for almost twenty years! (I taught Logic for seventeen years, plus a couple of Western Philosophy courses.)

If you want to get in on this, here's what I'll be teaching.

The Ontological Argument for God's Existence (Anselm's version, with perhaps a brief look at Alvin Plantinga's Modal Version of the Ontological Argument. This is an a priori argument. I love giving it, and seeing the looks on students' faces as they try to understand it.)

Gaunilo's Objection to the Ontological Argument (Which fails. Gaunilo did not understand the argument.)

Kant's Criticism of the Ontological Argument (Which is: 'exists' is not a predicate, or attribute, of anything. This leads to some interesting discussion on the meaning of 'existence'.)

The Kalam Cosmological Argument for God's Existence (This is an evidential argument for the existence of God; viz., an argument that uses a physical fact and reasons, by inference to the best explanation, to God. We look at my friend William Lane Craig's version of this argument.)

The Fine-Tuning Argument for God's Existence (This is probably the most powerful evidential argument for the existence of God. BTW - anyone who claims there is no evidence for God's existence is simply wrong.)

The Logical Argument from Evil Against the Existence of God (This is J.L. Mackie's argument, claiming that belief in God (theism) is logically incoherent.)

Buddhism's Idea that Evil Is an Illusion (We'll look at the core Buddhist ideas, and how they imply the non-reality of evil.)

Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense Against the Logical Argument from Evil (Based on modal logic)

The Evidential Argument from Evil Against the Existence of God (This is atheist William Rowe's version.)

Stephen Wykstra's argument showing how Rowe's Evidential Argument from Evil is illogical because it commits a 'no-see-um fallacy

Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman," written to persuade his fellow atheists that they failed to understand the logical implications of their atheism, which include the loss of objective moral values

Bertrand Russell's atheistic "Free Man's Worship," which follows Nietzsche's reasoning, except that Russell refuses to bow before nature's power

Stephen Jay Gould's Science and Religion as Non-Overlapping Majesteria (Gould's explanation of how science and religion do not, indeed cannot, conflict because they form two separate domains of reaching authority)

William Lane Craig's Moral Argument for God's Existence (We end the class with what is perhaps my favorite argument for God's existence.)

First class - Thursday, August 23.

T/Th, 5:30 - 6:50 PM

***
I'll be devoting more time to writing.

My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

I am writing...

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

Linda and I will then co-write our book on Relationships. 

Worry

Sunset, Monroe County

Of all the things I have worried about in my life, I estimate that less than 5% of them have come to pass. I have spent too much time worrying about things that came to nothing.

Worry, anxiety, fear… I’ve experienced them all. You have, too. What kind of person would not worry? One answer is: someone who had their brain removed. But then, of course, they wouldn’t be able to enjoy their worry-free life.

How is it possible to have the brains we have and move into greater freedom from worry? The answer Jesus gives is this: a person who trusts in God would not worry. “Trust” and “worry” do not go together. 

Jesus speaks about this in Matthew 6:25-34. Slow down and re-listen to these words.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? 

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

So... 

1. Worrying adds nothing to our lives. I’ve read studies that claim worrying subtracts from the days of one’s life. Worrying is non-productive. Worry, anxiety, and fear immobilize, and lead to non-action. Worrying makes worrisome situations worse. If today you are worried about something, rest assured that “worry” will not make the situation better and, in some cases, will make it worse because of the resultant non-activity.

2. Trusting in God will lead to basic needs being provided. We must distinguish between basic needs, and personal wants and desires. I have found myself, at times, worrying about something that I don’t even really need. This is a true waste of emotional time and energy!

3. Some run after material things as a cure for worry. But even acquisition can be worrisome. Richard Foster, in A Celebration of Discipline, argues that the more material things a person has, the more things they have to worry about. 

Here I am reminded of research I’ve done on materialistic cultures and levels of anxiety. Dr. David Augsburger wrote a brilliant study showing how some cultures who have little materially do not have a lexical entry for “anxiety,” because the condition is nonexistent. I have found that when I am thankful for what I have, rather than needing to have more things to be thankful for, I am more at peace in myself.

“Worry” is the tip of an iceberg. Melt off the top and more surfaces. To get rid of the tip, get rid of the entire iceberg. Spiritually, this is about our heart. I am asking God to heal my heart that is still too consumed with the cares of this world. Only then can He use me to help others with their cares and concerns. The more self-obsessive I am, the less good I am to others.

Here are some things to get help and healing from worry.

- Keep a spiritual journal. Write down your fears and worries, and give them to God. 1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on him for he cares for you.”

- Re-read your journal periodically. Remembering how God has been with you in the past gives hope for the present.

- Saturate your heart, soul, and mind with God-things. Do not let the media’s disasters fill your heart. A fair portion of media fears never materialize. Remember, e.g., Y2K. I have found that when I make it my first priority to fill heart and mind with God-things, I gain an eternal perspective on world-things.

- Separate your real needs from your mere wants. Observe how our American materialistic culture works to create false needs within us that lead to false anxiety over a) either not having such things, or b) over having them and needing to care for them, protect them, store them, worship them, etc.

- Follow Jesus more intently and more intensely. Read Matthew 25 about what Jesus says in regard to helping the poor and needy. Take His words seriously and move towards others. As you begin doing this, you will find that your own cares and worries diminish.

Trust God. Trust is not an emotion, but an action. Trust in God and worry cannot coexist in the same human heart.