Transcript Fishing A neighbor noticed an old farmer fishing in a tub of water in his back yard.

Fishing
A neighbor noticed an old farmer fishing in a tub of
water in his back yard. Out of curiosity he came
over and asked the farmer, “Man, there aren't any
fish in that tub, why are you wasting your time like
that?" "Yeah," the farmer replied, “I know there
ain't no fish in there, but it’s just so powerful
convenient to fish this way."
-– Source unknown
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The DNA of Evangelism in Emerging Culture
1. An Inconvenient Culture
Tom Morello
[Guitarist, Rage Against the Machine in, Rock Stars on God]
"When I first went to Harvard, there was a guy who
was always attempting to convert me. He was
always stuck on the point, 'If you do not accept
Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are just going to go
to hell.' That is just so unfair, because what about
the kid who has never heard those two words put
together - Jesus Christ? The kid grew up a Buddhist.
My friend responded by telling me some story about
a guy who knew nothing about God and was
converted through divine intervention. You and I both
know that in Bangladesh there are not like a billion
angels descending right now, and that all these
people who may be good, bad, or indifferent, just like
you or me, are all going to spend eternal life in
misery merely because they were born in the wrong
continent."
Tom Morello (cont.)
[Guitarist, Rage Against the Machine in, Rock Stars on God]
"… Maybe I would have a more positive view of
religion if I was impressed by the behavior of
those who preach it, not meaning preachers, but
anyone from the heads of government to the
people I know in the school who confessed to be
Christians. Some of those Christians were the
biggest (expletive) who mistreated their fellow
man in the worst ways. Religion is so tied up with
political manipulation that it is hard to see if there
could be a nugget of spirituality in there that can
genuinely influence your life. It is hard to find."
"Just in terms of
allocation of time
resources, religion is
not very efficient.
There's a lot more I
could be doing on a
Sunday morning.“
--Bill Gates
"I'm just a person who is
honestly trying to live
my life and asking, 'How
do you be spiritual and
live in the world without
going to a monastery?'“
--Jewel
“The born-again, onehand-in-the-air prayer
stance…resembles a
Nazi salute…”
/Christianity involves/
“naivete, insecure
leader-lust, psychotic
self-righteousness, and
medieval imbecility.”
--Michael Atkinson,
film review, The Village Voice, in a
review of Saved. CT 48 no. 8
(August 2004): 23.
“Believing there is no
God gives me more
room for belief in family,
people, love, truth,
beauty, sex, Jell-O and
all the other things I can
prove and that make
this life the best life I will
ever have.”
--Penn Jillette of Penn &
Teller
“I believe in God…I
believe in Jesus and
Buddha and
Mohammed and all
those that were
enlightened. I wouldn’t
say necessarily that
I’m a strict Christian.
I’m not sure I believe
in heaven.”
-- Sheryl Crow
“There couldn’t possibly
be only one way…Does
God care about your
heart or whether you
called His Son Jesus?”
--Oprah Winfrey
"Morals and Ethics
change depending on
what corner you're
standing on, and to me,
don't answer the bigger
questions…"
"I don't think all
religious people are
decent." … "I think they
hide behind the cloak of
being religious– they
don't have compassion
for their fellow men,
they're judgmental of
people who are not
their religion, and I
don't subscribe to any
of that."
--Madonna
“I’m sickened by all
religions. Religion
has divided people. I
don’t think there’s
any difference
between the pope
wearing a large hat
and parading around
with a smoking purse
and an African
painting his face
white and praying to
a rock.”
--Howard Stern
How often do you wonder:
[March 2006 Zogby telephone survey for NAMB]
“If I were to die today, do I know for sure that I would go to heaven?”
“How can I find more meaning and purpose in my life?”
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Yearly
Never
Not Sure
What is “emerging” in culture?
• Negative resistance
(materialism-Howard
Stern)
• Positive resistance
(pluralism-Sheryl Crow)
• Missional opportunity
• Indigenous opportunity
• Crossroads of two key
issues:
truth (is Jesus the only
way) & righteousness
(does faith make people
good or bad?)
2. Best Practices
“We know you have
tried to get us to church.
That’s part of the
problem. Many of your
appeals have been
carefully calculated for
success, and that turns
our collective stomach.
Take worship, for
instance: you think that
fashionably cutting-edge
liturgies relate to us on
our level, but the fact is,
we can find better
entertainment
elsewhere. The same
goes for anything you
term ‘contemporary.’ We
see right through it. It is
up to date for the sake
of being up to date, and
we are not impressed by
the results.”
--Sarah, writing about being
stereotyped as a GenX’er
A) being the real deal
B) Being Sure
[Greg Easterbrook, “Religion in America: The New Ecumenicalism,”
Brookings Review, 20, no. 1 (Winter 2002).]
“In their classic sociological study of Middle
American viewpoints, the authors of the 1924 book
Middletown America (Muncie, Indiana) fond that
94% of high school students agreed that
‘Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples
should be converted to it.’ Revisiting Muncie in
1999, sociologist Theodore Caplow found that only
42% agreed with that statement. Almost all
respondents were Christian, as before, but far
fewer felt theirs was the ‘one true’ faith to which
others much conform.”
C) Missional Culture
"Culture is the most important
social reality in your church.
Though invisible to the
untrained eye, its power is
undeniable. Culture gives
color and flavor to everything
your church is and does. Like
a powerful current running
through your church, it can
move you inland or take you
farther out to sea. It can
prevent your church's
potential from ever being
realized, or-- if used by the
Holy Spirit-- it can draw
others in and reproduce
healthy spiritual life all along
the way.
Robert Lewis & Wayne Cordeiro,
Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out
“The crisis of our
time is that at least
eight out of ten
churches have not
yet decided whether
they intend to
compete for the
minds and hearts of
human beings.”
--George Hunter, 2005
D) High pain threshold
“’Sold-out disciples’ are
folks who have looked
into the abyss of their
own man-made hell
and returned to life in
the Spirit. Their lives
are lived in radical
obedience to a Godgiven mission.
Everything they do
revolves around this
mission. They feel in
their hearts that they
would die for this
mission.”
--Bill Easum, Net
Results, April 2003, 24]
E) reform distorted theology
“Traditionalist church people
have invented a lengthy list of
alleged reasons why most preChristian people cannot
become Christians. So, in many
traditionalist churches that say
they want to grow, I have been
told that unchurched people are
not nice people, or they just
want to be entertained, or they
are slackers, or they are
probably living in sin, or they
wouldn’t be interested or they
wouldn’t fit in, or they are not
like us, or they are not of the
elect, or they would only come
as consumers, etc. All of these
reasons, however, are steeped
in one underlining dynamic: We
have decided that they are not
appropriate candidates for
Christianization.”
--George Hunter, 2005.
F) transforming relationships
“Vision is often determined by
who you spend most of your
time with. Consider Paul's call to
the Gentiles in Asia Minor. Paul
was in Antioch working among
Gentiles when he had the vision
of the man asking him to come
over to Macedonia.
So the question might be for
some of us, with whom are we
spending most of our time? If it
is among church people, then
our vision is focused on them. If
it is among the unwashed, nonChristian, pagan gentile, it most
likely for them. God works out of
the context of our lives.
The same was true with Jesus.
He spent most of his time with
people who were not part of the
system. True, most of them were
Jews, but most of them were
discarded or rejected Jews.
With whom are you spending
your time?” --Bill Easum
G) like + love
[Matt Smith & Vox Dei]
H) common wall holiness
I) honesty
J) Simplicity
K) Benchmarks
WWJD: Why Would Jesus Die?
[George Barna, State of the Church 2005, p. 52-53]
“Churches measure attendance, donations, numbers of
staff, numbers of programs and square footage as their
primary indicators of spiritual health and growth. Jesus did
not die on the cross for such incidental outcomes.
Individual believers, taking their cues from their church,
measure their spiritual vitality on the basis of the frequency
of their church attendance, whether they donate money to
ministry, and their general sense of personal ‘goodness’ on
a day-to-day basis. Again, such measures insult Christ. The
axiom ‘you get what you measure’ is certainly true for the
Christian body in the US. Until we start to think about,
pursue, and measure genuine spiritual transformation in
individual lives, we will continue to get what we’ve been
getting, as unsatisfying as that is, for years to come.”