We call it "the Gospel Message." That's taken from a couple of Old English words that mean "good story." That's how they translated the Latin word evangelium. Naturally, the best story we could tell would be the story of Jesus Christ. By the grace of God, I was born with a gift for story-telling. What about those who have no such gift? How do you tell the story?
Growing up, I came early to the calling to preach, when I was 16. I had been hearing that call since I was born-again at age 9, but never quite knew what that relentless urge meant. While trying to figure it out, I came quite close to insanity. At age 15 I could have been committed to psychiatric care, but I did a great job of hiding my misery, my self-destructive desires, the constant fear of being found out. That demon was tossed out when I finally realized it was the call to ministry.
Why did it take so long? Frankly, I blame the churches where I attended. Not each individually, but the whole bunch of them. Not one of them offered anything that resembled a discipleship program for kids. Now we have such things, thankfully. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s that was pretty rare. Suddenly it became all the rage. Why? I strongly believe it was the direct result of the so-called "Jesus Movement." For all those decades, there were established churches that reached their various constituencies. Right in the middle of social protest and sky-rocketing drug use and illicit sex -- hippies finding Jesus without the Church. While the public school system was borged by a plan specifically designed to turn kids into mindless robots, servants of the state, socialists by instinct, there was a bright light burning in the darkness. This light wanted nothing to do with pure tradition, that says, "That's the way we've always done it."
In the midst of a social rebellion that attacked the very middle class lifestyle that made it possible for all these kids to have leisure to read up on communist theory and play protest music, a small segment of them actually knew what they were rejecting. I've written plenty about the foibles of the middle class. The Protest Generation were little wiser, foolishly rejected everything without examining the clear historical record of consequences of such silliness. It was a revival of Romanticism, a philosophical orientation that somehow the light of truth would simply dawn on everyone who was seeking, and all would be love and peace. Who knows if it could have ever happened, since most of them had no idea what they were rejecting, and everyone followed some handful of messianic visionaries, who could scarcely enunciate the content of their alleged revelations. In the midst of this storm of idiocy, there was a quiet place of bright light. There was a small group that really did have a vision -- a vision of God.
This small group rejected the materialism that had crept into so many churches, and seized them with a reactionary suspicion of anything that had not been done in the past. Wearing their hippie fashions, they met in the open, baptized in public water fountains, and grasped the Truth with both hands. They wrote their own hymns of praise, putting Scripture to this new musical style, and took their gospel mission to the streets. Most of all, they began teaching that there was a matching change in behavior that should arise from this free and enthusiastic religion. That change did not come dressed in a suit and tie, with proper haircuts, and a predictable pattern to life. It came with a mighty effort to cut through all that window dressing and follow the real historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Naturally there were excesses and failures, long chases down dead-end paths. Plenty of folks mindlessly jumped on the Jesus Bandwagon, just like they did with Flower Power and all the other fashions of the day. Any excuse to try and be cool. Those fell away in due time. There was too much cost in discipleship, too many situations that demanded real sacrifice. As society at large changed to meet them half-way, most of these folks found themselves in churches sooner or later. Many churches had gotten a clue to reach the new generation where they were, to some degree. Sure, there was a bit of fakery and crass commercialism in that, too. Still, it breathed new life into the church, brought a new dynamism. The Lord uses whatever vessels are available, and He used the vessel of social revolution to shake His Body.
It's not that a genuine life of Gospel power dressed in a suit and tie couldn't reach them in the first place. It's that there were so few living that genuine life. Far too many had been sold into the slavery of assuming Jesus demanded a suit and tie, with brick walls and colored glass windows, before He would meet with them. So the Lord gave that life to a new generation of seekers and disciples who sought it. They brought that life back into the churches that would receive them, made room for them. But then that generation was itself compromised by building a collection of elements from that revolution into the organization. The revolution was institutionalized, and became "the Establishment." It was dissected, analyzed, and pretty much drained of life. Slowly, discipling became the Discipleship Movement. While that eventually took criminal extremes in some cases, the mainstream churned out dozens of neatly packaged discipleship programs. Much good was in it, but too much of it was just another sales gimmick, a market to be exploited. So the suit and tie became the slacks and polo shirt.
The Great Commission was also exploited. "Don't have the power to live and speak the gospel? No problem! We have here this great new kit of canned evangelism; just send check or money order. Monster Dowtown Church uses it, and Pastor Ambitious reports they had 2000 new converts and 1700 baptisms last year!" While a few weak souls did indeed find the courage to tell the good news that Jesus saves, most were entirely too wrapped up in keeping the list of steps memorized. They stored up great piles of Scripture passages, logical presentations, and convinced any number of people to say the right words at the right time in the outline. Then the newly saved soul asks how to deal with a homosexual son and the trained lay evangelist melts into the carpet. Oh, yes! We have discipleship. Yet, for some reason we haven't taken the time to make folks think like Jesus.
How wide is the gap? How far do we have to go, from the world in which we now live, to the world where Jesus reigns? It was hard enough for Jesus to break up the fallow ground of Jewish belief. At least there was a great deal of common ground in Eastern mystical orientation, in spite of the corruption of Alexandrian Pharisaism. However, the difference was still enough to get Him killed, as well as several of His closest friends. How far different that Gospel Message is from our cultural soup today! In every generation, our Enemy raises yet another barrier to prevent people from even grasping the message, much less accepting it. Where do we start in reaching alien hearts and minds?
We start from the same place Jesus started with each of us: the Miracle of Grace. Let the modern culture follow Satan ever so slavishly; whom He calls will truly be able to hear. He uses your voice as His, your hands and feet as His -- if you have taken the time to recognize when they aren't acting for Him, and seek His power to change. It's not necessary to catalogue all the ways we can fail Him, but to have some clear idea what it looks like to obey. Study the real thing, and the counterfeit becomes obvious. You start where you are, walk in the light you have, and move where He points, one step at a time. Strip away all that is merely the window dressing of the age, and simply see that sacrificial love in action everywhere you look.
Ed Hurst
02 August 2004
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