by Mike S. Adams
[Mike Adams is a criminology
professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW).]
Nearly 2000 years ago, Jesus
of Nazareth stated, “Therefore everyone who confesses
Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But
whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in
heaven. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to
bring peace, but a sword.”
As I was re-reading those
three verses yesterday, I was reminded of a speech broadcast live (and
rebroadcast several times) on television from my school, the University of
North Carolina – Wilmington. In the speech, the self-proclaimed religious
expert strongly urged the audience to abandon the notion of the deity of
Christ. To do so, he claimed, would be to fully appreciate what a great man
Jesus really was.
Such an assertion raises a
number of issues. One issue is the weight of the ego of the speaker who urges
us to believe that he is telling the truth about the deity of Christ – while
suggesting that Jesus was simply lying. In the conflict between the religious
speaker and Jesus Christ there is, of course, a gap in credibility. One has
been the subject of more books than any other who has ever walked upon the
planet and also has the distinction of having time based upon His birth. On the
other hand, I cannot even recall the speaker’s name.
Of course, another issue is
the mental dexterity of a speaker who claims that Jesus is only a great man if
He (or he) is also a liar. Such assertions were once confined to those with IQs
below room temperature – long before our universities declared war upon the
notion of truth (or Truth) in the postmodern era of education. Now that we
scoff at the notion of truth, the epithet “liar” has lost some of its punch.
The speaker who urged the
audience to reject Christ’s claim that He is God did so under the full protection
of the First Amendment. And I am glad that he was able to do so. There is no
better appreciation of the Truth than that which is gained from its
juxtaposition with falsity.
But the problem at my
university (and many others) is that the First Amendment is not deemed
applicable to those who make the contrary assertion that Christ was, and is,
our Lord and Savior precisely because He is the Almighty God. A conversation I
had with a student just last week is illustrative.
The student was fired from his
job at UNCW for being too “open” about his faith in Jesus Christ. Fortunately,
he got another job on campus shortly after he lost one for disagreeing with the
“Gospel” according to the Office of Campus Diversity and, instead, following
the Gospel according to Matthew. (See paragraph one for details).
I do not know whether the
student was asking me for advice but here it is anyway:
Your goal in your new job at
UNCW is to get fired again. The reward for doing so
will be much greater than the minimum wage. (See paragraph one for
details).
If this one example does not
suffice to demonstrate that UNCW (The University of No Christian Witnesses) is
intolerant towards Christian speech, consider another. Last month, a new
Christian student organization was told to be cautious in its efforts to spread
the Word of God because of the university’s harassment policy, which, of
course, limits “offensive” speech.
And you know the type of
speech they are talking about. It’s the kind that creates a “hostile
environment.” (See paragraph one for details).
When I received an email from
one of the Christians in the organization – an email that included the text of
the administrator’s preposterous warning – he was looking for advice on how to
deal with the situation. I offer it gladly in these following sentences:
Your goal in your new
Christian organization is to spread the Word of God with such zeal that you
will be thrown off campus for violating the harassment policy – the one that
ignorant administrators think trumps the First Amendment right to religious
expression. (This is also the policy that malicious administrators pretend to
think trumps the First Amendment right to religious expression).
Of course, getting booted off
campus will not be a big deal. But the reward will be very great. (See
paragraph one for details).
As I think about my advice to
these students, I am reminded of the “Holiday Greeting” sent out earlier this
week by UNCW Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo. The greeting mentions the word
“diversity” but not the words “Christ” or “Christmas.”
There is something very wrong
with the idea that the word “Christ” is offensive by itself but protected free
speech if followed by the words “was not the Son of God.” I believe that this
idea has consequences. (See paragraph one for details.)
==============================
Can a true Christian deny the
virgin birth? This question would perplex the vast majority of Christians
throughout the centuries, but modern denials of biblical truth make the
question tragically significant. Of all biblical doctrines, the doctrine of
Christ’s virginal conception has often been the specific target of modern
denial and attack.
Attacks upon the virgin birth
emerged in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, with some theologians attempting
to harmonize the anti-supernaturalism of the modern mind with the church’s
teaching about Christ. The great quest of liberal theology has been to invent a
Jesus who is stripped of all supernatural power, deity, and authority.
The fountainhead of this
quest includes figures such as Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann. Often
considered the most influential New Testament scholar of the twentieth century,
Bultmann argued that the New Testament presents a mythological worldview that
modern men and women simply cannot accept as real. The virgin birth is simply a
part of this mythological structure and Bultmann urged his program of
“demythologization” in order to construct a faith liberated from miracles and
all vestiges of the supernatural. Jesus was reduced to an enlightened teacher
and existentialist model.
In America, the public denial
of the virgin birth can be traced to the emergence of Protestant liberalism in
the early 20th century. In his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?,”
Harry Emerson Fosdick—an unabashed liberal—aimed his attention at “the vexed
and mooted question of the virgin birth.” Fosdick, preaching from the pulpit of
the First Presbyterian Church in New York City, allowed that Christians may
hold “quite different points of view about a matter like the virgin birth.” He
accepted the fact that many Christians believed the virgin birth to be
historically true and theologically significant. Fosdick likened this belief to
trust in “a special biological miracle.” Nevertheless, Fosdick insisted that
others, equally Christian, could disagree with those who believe the virgin
birth to be historically true: “But, side by side with them in the evangelical
churches is a group of equally loyal and reverent people who would say that the
virgin birth is not to be accepted as an historic fact. To believe in the
virgin birth as an explanation of great personality is one of the familiar ways
in which the ancient world was accustomed to account for unusual superiority.”
Fosdick explained that those
who deny the virgin birth hold to a specific pattern of reasoning. As he
explained, “those first disciples adored Jesus—as we do; when they thought
about his coming they were sure that he came specially from God—as we are; this
adoration and conviction they associated with God’s special influence and
intention in his birth—as we do; but they phrased it in terms of a biological
miracle that our modern minds cannot use.”
Thus, Fosdick divided the
church into two camps. Those he labeled as “fundamentalists” believe the virgin
birth to be historical fact. The other camp, comprised of “enlightened”
Christians who no longer obligate themselves to believe the Bible to be true,
discard this “biological” miracle but still consider themselves to be
Christians.
More contemporary attacks on
the virgin birth of Christ have emerged from figures such as retired Episcopal
Bishop John Shelby Spong [KH: a heretic] and
German New Testament scholar Gerd Luedemann. Luedemann acknowledges that “most
Christians in all the churches in the world confess as they recite the
Apostles’ Creed that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary. Now...modern Christians
completely discount the historicity of the virgin birth and understand it in a
figurative sense.” Obviously, the “modern Christians” Luedemann identifies are
those who allow the modern secular worldview to establish the frame for reality
into which the claims of the Bible must be fitted. Those doctrines that do not
fit easily within the secular frame must be automatically discarded. As might
be expected, Luedemann’s denial of biblical truth is not limited to the virgin
birth. He denies virtually everything the Bible reveals about Jesus Christ. In
summarizing his argument, Luedemann states: “The tomb was full and the manger
empty.” That is to say, Luedemann believes that Jesus was not born of a virgin
and that He was not raised from the dead.
Another angle of attack on
the virgin birth has come from the group of radical scholars who organize
themselves into what is called the “Jesus Seminar.” These liberal scholars
apply a radical form of interpretation and deny that the New Testament is in
any way reliable as a source of knowledge about Jesus. Roman Catholic scholar
John Dominic Crossan, a member of the Jesus Seminar, discounts the biblical
narratives about the virgin birth as invented theology. He acknowledges that
Matthew explicitly traces the virgin birth to Isaiah 7:14. Crossan explains
that the author of Matthew simply made this up: “Clearly, somebody went seeking
in the Old Testament for a text that could be interpreted as prophesying a
virginal conception, even if such was never its original meaning. Somebody had
already decided on the transcendental importance of the adult Jesus and sought
to retroject that significance on to the conception and birth itself.”
Crossan denies that Matthew
and Luke can be taken with any historical seriousness, and he understands the
biblical doctrine of the virgin birth to be an insurmountable obstacle to
modern people as they encounter the New Testament. As with Luedemann, Crossan’s
denial of the virgin birth is only a hint of what is to come. In Jesus: A
Revolutionary Biography, Crossan presents an account of Jesus that would offend
no secularist or atheist. Obviously, Crossan’s vision also bears no resemblance
to the New Testament.
For others, the rejection of
the birth is tied to a specific ideology. In The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A
Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, Jane Schaberg
accuses the church of inventing the doctrine of the virgin birth in order to
subordinate women. As she summarizes: “The charge of contemporary feminists,
then, is not that the image of the Virgin Mary is unimportant or irrelevant,
but that it contributes to and is integral to the oppression of women.”
Schaberg states that the conception of Jesus was most likely the result of
extra-marital sex or rape. She chooses to emphasize the latter possibility and
turns this into a feminist fantasy in which Mary is the heroine who overcomes.
Schaberg offers a tragic, but instructive model of what happens when ideology
trumps trust in the biblical text. Her most basic agenda is not even concerned
with the question of the virgin birth of Christ, but with turning this biblical
account into service for the feminist agenda.
Bishop Joseph Sprague of the
United Methodist Church offers further evidence of modern heresy. In an address
he presented on June 25, 2002 at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver,
Colorado, this bishop denied the faith wholesale. Sprague, who serves as
Presiding Bishop of the United Methodist Church in northern Illinois, has been
called “the most vocally prominent active liberal bishop in Protestantism
today.” Sprague is proud of this designation and takes it as a compliment: “I
really make no apology for that. I don’t consider myself a liberal. I consider
myself a radical.” Sprague lives up to his self-designation.
In his Illiff address, Bishop
Sprague claimed that the “myth” of the virgin birth “was not intended as
historical fact, but was employed by Matthew and Luke in different ways to
appoint poetically the truth about Jesus as experienced in the emerging
church.” Sprague defined a theological myth as “not false presentation but a
valid and quite persuasive literary device employed to point to ultimate truth
that can only be insinuated symbolically and never depicted exhaustively.”
Jesus, Sprague insists, was born to human parents and did not possess
“trans-human, supernatural powers.”
Thus, Sprague dismisses the
miracles, the exclusivity of Christ, and the bodily resurrection as well as the
virgin birth. His Christology is explicitly heretical: “Jesus was not born the
Christ, rather by the confluence of grace with faith, he became the Christ,
God’s beloved in whom God was well pleased.”
Bishop Sprague was charged
with heresy but has twice been cleared of the charge—a clear sign that the
mainline Protestant denominations are unwilling to identify as heretics even
those who openly teach heresy. The presence of theologians and pastors who deny
the virgin birth in the theological seminaries and pulpits of the land is
evidence of the sweeping tide of unbelief that marks so many institutions and
churches in our time.
Can a true Christian deny the
virgin birth? The answer to that question must be a decisive No. Those who deny
the virgin birth reject the authority of Scripture, deny the supernatural birth
of the Savior, undermine the very foundations of the Gospel, and have no way of
explaining the deity of Christ.
Anyone who claims that the
virgin birth can be discarded even as the deity of Christ is affirmed is either
intellectually dishonest or theological incompetent.
Several years ago, Cecil
Sherman—then a Southern Baptist, but later the first coordinator of the
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—stated: “A teacher who might also be led by the
Scripture not to believe in the Virgin Birth should not be fired.” Consider the
logic of that statement. A Christian can be led by the Bible to deny what the
Bible teaches? This kind of logic is what has allowed those who deny the virgin
birth to sit comfortably in liberal theological seminaries and to preach their
reductionistic Christ from major pulpits.
Christians must face the fact
that a denial of the virgin birth is a denial of Jesus as the Christ. The
Savior who died for our sins was none other than the baby who was conceived of
the Holy Spirit, and born of a virgin. The virgin birth does not stand alone as
a biblical doctrine, it is an irreducible part of the biblical revelation about
the person and work of Jesus Christ. With it, the Gospel stands or falls.
“Everyone admits that the
Bible represents Jesus as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of
the Virgin Mary. The only question is whether in making that representation the
Bible is true or false.” So declared J. Gresham Machen in his great work, The Virgin Birth of Christ. As Machen
went on to argue, “if the Bible is regarded as being wrong in what it says
about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible in any
high sense, is gone.”
The authority of the Bible is
almost completely gone where liberal theology holds its sway. The authority of
the Bible is replaced with the secular worldview of the modern age and the postmodern
denial of truth itself. The true church stands without apology upon the
authority of the Bible and declares that Jesus was indeed “born of a virgin.”
Though the denial of this doctrine is now tragically common, the historical
truth of Christ’s birth remains inviolate. No true Christian can deny the
virgin birth.
==============================
Peggy Noonan is right. At some point, in some moment,
all of us must admit that something remarkable has happened to American
culture. Mrs. Noonan, a former presidential speechwriter, recalls that this
moment came for her during a high school graduation in the early 1970s. A young
girl walked across the stage to receive her diploma. The girl was obviously
pregnant. Noonan recalls that her first impulse was admiration for the girl’s
grit and determination against social disapproval. “But,” recognized Noonan,
“society wasn’t disapproving. It was applauding.” As she reflected, “Applause is
a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in
the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall
of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed
motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, not
good for us.”
To this the Christian Church would say far more, but
the great danger today is that many Christians are seeing the same evidence,
and saying far less. A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us. The
most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The
so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a
post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very
heart of our culture.
Reflecting on the changes experienced by America over
just the last half-century, John Howard of the Rockford Institute described the
end of World War II as “a half century and a whole civilization ago.” We know
how he feels. Looking back on the America of 1945, it does look like a whole
civilization has passed away.
The evidence is overwhelming. Moral relativism has so
shaped the culture that the vast majority of Americans now see themselves as
their own moral arbiter. Truth has been internalized, privatized, and
subjectivized. Absolute or objective truth is denied outright. Research
indicates that most Americans believe that truth is internal and relative. No
one, the culture shouts, has a right to impose truth, morality, or cultural
standards.
In the courts, revisionist legal theories and
psycho-therapeutic issues have replaced concern for right and wrong. Justice
has become a political argument, not a societal standard. Righteousness is
rejected as a concept, a relic of an older age of a common morality, nuclear
families, and Victorian dreams. The discourse of a revealed morality commanding
right and forbidding wrong is as out of place in contemporary America as a log
cabin on Wall Street.
The most influential sectors of society are allied in
furthering the process of social disintegration. Television and mass culture
have so shaped the American consciousness that many citizens are now
intellectually unable to sustain a serious moral conversation. Those who
attempt to engage the American people in a serious moral conversation are met
with immediate dismissal or—more worrisome still—blank stares.
The arts are increasingly decadent, portraying
violence, pornography, and banality as high culture. In the academy,
deconstructionism and other purportedly post-modern theories have largely
destroyed some disciplines and thrown others into incoherence. The search for
truth has been abandoned in favor of political arguments over rights and
privileges.
Looking within, Americans have adopted a therapeutic
worldview which has transformed all issues of right and wrong into newly
created categories of authenticity, self esteem, codependencies, and various
psychological fads which basically tell us that we are victims, not responsible
moral agents. A cult of self-worship has developed, substituting a search for
the inner child in place of the worship of the transcendent God.
The Church has constantly been perplexed concerning
its proper relation to culture. H. Richard Niebuhr traced five different
patterns of cultural response in his famous work, Christ and Culture. The book
over-simplified the issues and now looks awkwardly optimistic, but some of the
patterns Niebuhr described are still evident. The
Church has at times withdrawn from culture and sought refuge in attempted
cultural isolation. At other times and in other contexts the Church has simply
abdicated to the culture, thus reflecting the culture rather than proclaiming
the cross. A myriad of patterns can be traced between these two extremes. The
fact is that the Church has often exhibited several patterns at once,
capitulating to culture on the one hand and seeking isolation on the other.
In candor, we must admit that the Church has been
culturally displaced. Once an authoritative voice in the culture, the Church is
often dismissed, and even more often ignored. At one time, the influence of the
Church was sufficient to restrain cultural rebellion against God’s moral
commandments—but no longer. The dynamic of the culture-shift marches onward. On
the Protestant left, leaders have simply capitulated to the revisionist
ideologies and surrendered revealed morality. On the evangelical wing, however,
the greater temptation is to affirm biblical morality in principle, and then
wink at infractions as matters of merely individual interest.
The displacement of the Church is characteristic of
the process of secularization, which has now so thoroughly altered the
landscape of American culture. Though sociologists point to continuing high
levels of religious activity and statements of belief-both of these in sharp
contrast to other western nations-the truth is that very little of this
activity translates into authentic discipleship, active church membership, and
bold Christian witness.
The worldview of most Americans is now thoroughly
secularized, revolving around the self and its concerns, and based on
relativism as an axiom. We Americans have become our own best friend, our own
therapist, our own priest, and our own lawgiver. The old order is shattered,
the new order is upon us.
What, then, is the Church to do? At the
onset, we must disallow both optimism and despair. We have no
right to expect, as did a previous generation, that “every day in every way
things are getting better and better.” The same culture that has developed the
microwave oven, the CAT-scan, and the vaccine for polio has also produced
social pathologies which threaten the very existence of the culture. The
operating room and the abortionist’s table are both symbols of our culture. Though
claiming to be concerned with the quality of life, America is increasingly
characterized by a culture of death. At the same time, though the direction of
the culture may be dramatically downward, we have no right to assume that this
slide cannot be corrected.
We must understand that, in the Christian
worldview, culture is important—but never ultimate. Beyond this, we acknowledge
that God is sovereign, and that His providence rules over all.
The mission of the Church in the midst of
this cultural crisis is to proclaim the truth and reach out to the casualties. In the face
of rampant relativisms, the believing Church must proclaim the truth of God’s
Word, the permanence of His commands, and the reality of His judgment. Given
the cultural context, this task is one of the most important tests of Christian
faithfulness. To proclaim biblical truth to this culture is to risk social
isolation, outright rejection, and, in some cases, potent attacks.
The Church which proclaims that adultery, premarital
sex, and homosexuality are inherently and unquestionably sinful will quickly
discover what it means to be cut off from the cultural mainstream. The preacher
who takes on the divorce culture and takes his stand for the enduring covenant
of marriage will run into direct confrontation with society’s attraction to
“open marriage” and what some now describe as “serial monogamy.” The Christian
who stands in defense of the unborn will be told that her voice is unwanted,
unheeded, and unwelcome-and in no uncertain terms.
To contend for Christian truth in the face of this
culture is to discover what it means to be a member of a cognitive minority;
that is, a minority which quite evidently thinks and lives differently than the
larger culture. To confess the truths of God’s Word in twenty-first century
America is to take on a counter-cultural posture; to stand against the stream
and to press against the grain.
At the same time, we must reach out and
minister to the casualties of our cultural rebellion. The Church
of Jesus Christ is comprised of sinners saved by grace. With the message of
grace, we must reach out to those whose lives have been ruined and warped in
the course of our cultural decay. Only the Church has the honest and truthful
answers concerning the most basic issues facing our society. Our challenge is
to match truth to compassion, and mercy to confrontation.
This was true in the first century, it is true now—and
it will almost surely be true until the Lord returns. In our depravity, human
beings naturally rebel against the truth of God’s Word, but it reveals the only
means of salvation. Our charge is to bear witness.
The truths of God’s Word reveal the Gospel of
spiritual transformation, and the proclamation of the truths of God’s Word is
the only means available to us of cultural transformation. From beginning to
end, it is all in God’s hands. We are called to faithful witness and
compassionate ministry. In the context of post-Christian America, our task is
to preach the Gospel and to proclaim the truths of God’s Word. As the Apostle
Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, the Gospel is foolishness to those seeking
wisdom and a scandal to those looking for power. To the redeemed, however, the
Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. This is the only way of genuine transformation—and
recovery.
==============================
Now facing its third
millennium, the Christian church faces a moment of great historical importance
and opportunity. The modern missionary movement is now over two centuries old.
Looking back over those years, it is clear that God mobilized His people to
make great strides in taking the gospel to many parts of the world.
This missionary movement has
seen the evangelization of millions of persons representing thousands of ethnic
and cultural groups. The Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages
and dialects. Over the last several decades, new areas of the world have shown
a remarkable response to the gospel, and the continent of Africa may now be the
center of the world missionary enterprise. In fact, the last half of the
twentieth century saw an enormous evangelistic response throughout the Pacific
Rim and the African continent.
Today, the Christian church
faces new challenges. Without exaggeration, we can point to the twenty-first
century as a new era in Christian missions, and recognize it as a vast new
opportunity.
Looking at Christian missions
today, we may be seeing the birth of a new missiological movement. This new era
in missions will build upon the accomplishments of the last 200 years, but it
must also be adapted to the new realities of our world context.
The most important dimension
of any vision for world missions is a passion to glorify God. From beginning to
end, the Bible declares that God is glorifying Himself in the salvation of
sinners, and that He desires to be worshipped among all the peoples of the
earth. The impulse of the missionary conviction is drawn from the assurance
that God saves sinners, and that He is glorifying Himself by creating a new
people through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have the glad
opportunity to glorify God by declaring the Gospel to all the peoples of the
earth.
As John Piper has stated,
“The deepest reason why our passion for God should fuel missions is that God’s
passion for God fuels missions. Missions is the overflow of our delight in God
because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God.” In missions,
we share God’s delight.
Pioneers such as William
Carey gave birth to the modern missionary movement. It was Carey’s sense of
evangelistic passion, set upon a clear foundation of biblical truth and
confidence in the gospel, that compelled him to leave the safe confines of
England and go to India. The full harvest of William Carey’s ministry will be
known only in eternity. Most Christians are aware that he served for many years
without a single convert. When many missionaries would have returned home or
moved to greener pastures, Carey stayed and invested himself in India. He
translated the New Testament and built bridges to the people of that great
nation.
Since Carey’s time, thousands
of missionaries have left homes and families to take the gospel to the remotest
parts of the earth. Reviewing the history of the missionary movement, it is
clear that great gains were made for the gospel. At the same time, every
generation has left its own imprint on the missionary task, and each generation
is blind to some of the cultural baggage it takes along with the gospel. At the
height of the missions movement in the Victorian era, it often seemed that
missionaries were just as intent on Westernizing native peoples as in
evangelizing them. A new awareness of the global context and respect for native
cultures should lead us to be careful to preach the gospel rather than Western
culture.
The new vision for world
missions is directed toward the reaching of people groups rather than nations.
Missiological focus upon the nation-state is a remnant of the nineteenth
century, when nations were conceived as singular units and national identity
was paramount. This paradigm was long out of date by the end of the twentieth
century. Christians now recognize that there are thousands of distinct people
groups, each identifiable by culture, language, and social structure—and they
are not always divided neatly by political boundaries. Each of these people
groups represents a distinct missiological challenge, and each must be
considered in its own right.
While it is likely that
churches and denominational gatherings will continue to celebrate a parade of
the flags of the nations, the reality is that each of those nations includes a
collective of various people groups desperately in need of the gospel—people
groups often dispersed throughout the globe.
This should bring a new
humility as well as growing urgency to the church. So long as we were able to
count nation-states in terms of missionary saturation, we could see a
tremendous advance and what seemed to be a constant march of progress. When
people groups are taken into consideration, however, we can clearly see that
the greater challenge still lies before us. This means that the Christian
church must develop cultural understanding and sensitivity, as well as
linguistic and cultural dexterity, in the task of preaching the gospel to
unreached persons.
This new vision for world
missions is also remarkable in the fact that much, if not most, of the energy
is coming from grassroots Christians rather than from institutional structures.
Perhaps the greatest missionary advance among American churches is seen in the
widespread participation of Christian laypersons in missionary trips and
short-term mission projects. Churches that encourage and support this hands-on
approach to missions will bear testimony to the powerful impact it has upon the
participants and upon the missionary commitment of the entire congregation.
Today’s Christians are
looking for an experiential participation in the missionary challenge. They
draw great excitement in hearing from missionaries, but even greater commitment
by being participants in the missionary movement themselves. Because of this,
this new vision is also congregational in its focus. Individual congregations
are taking up the missionary challenge, and measuring their own faithfulness by
the number of missionaries sent around the world from among their own members.
Much of this new vision is
flowing out of reports from the 10/40 window—that portion of the world between
latitudes 10 and 40 degrees, where most of the world’s unreached peoples live.
This focus on the Great Commission has led to a mobilization mentality that
holds great promise for the future of the Christian church.
One missionary leader has
defined this mobilization as “all of God’s people reaching all the peoples of
the earth.” That motto sets the issue clearly. This generation must be
committed to see all of God’s people together reaching all the peoples of the
earth without regard to race, culture, economic reality, or geographical or
political obstacles.
Over the past half-century,
America has seen several generational transitions. As the new millennium dawns,
the Baby Boom generation is now in mid-adulthood, and some are heading toward
retirement. The GI generation that built so many of the great institutions and
provided leadership in our denomination and churches is now reaching advanced
years, though many in this generation continue to be active participants and
well-known leaders. Behind the Baby Boomers are coming “Generation X,” the
“Busters,” and the “Millennials.” How will these generations mold the
missionary movement of the future?
This generation demonstrates
a readiness to take on new challenges and to go where no previous generation
has yet taken the gospel. They have been born into a culturally diverse world,
and they are gifted with skills in intercultural communication. They are
impatient with the cultural isolationism of previous generations. They see no
political boundaries to the Gospel. They are ready to cross political borders
and see no limitations on the Great Commission. Where previous generations
wanted to support missions, this generation is determined to do missions.
Incubated in an experience-driven culture, these young Christians are not
interested in missions by proxy.
This new generation holds
great promise, but it also demands urgent attention. The church needs to
mobilize the energy of these younger Christians and deploy their gifts in
cultural translation and adaptation. Nevertheless, this generation has
inherited a dwindling deposit of doctrinal and theological understanding. Our
churches and seminaries must quickly be about the business of grounding this
generation in biblical truth, even as they are mobilizing for world missions.
In all likelihood, these new
generations will establish a missiological pattern of long duration. We may
well see a tidal wave of participatory missions unlike anything seen by the
Christian church since the first century. Finally, it is up to the church both
to release their energy and to ground their convictions.
Our vision for world
evangelization is an important barometer of spiritual and theological health. A
vibrant commitment to Christ leads to a passion for the Gospel. A grand embrace
of God’s truth produces an enthusiasm to see God glorified as His name is
proclaimed to the nations. It is time for a new generation to lead—and to point
the way.
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