Being a Disciple in a Post Christian World
1 John 2:6 and Ephesians 5:1-2
We might as well finally admit it. We no longer live in a Christian culture. We are living in a post Christian world and people today are living like God doesn’t exist or at the very least, as if God doesn’t matter. And the younger you are, the more likely you’re post Christian. The latest research by George Barna shows that 48% of the Mosaic Generation ages 18-28 is post Christian, 40% of the Buster Generation ages 29-47 is post Christian, 35% of the Boomer Generation ages 48-66 is post Christian and 28% of the Seniors ages 67+ are post Christian. The reality of God is fading in our culture today. We may hear words in conversations like “faith” or “spirituality” or “being true to yourself” and we may see evidence of spiritual hunger and search all around us but that search has been divorced from seeking God and Jesus Christ. Most often, spirituality today is focused inwardly on the self and seeking to become all you can be. Our post Christian world has three characteristics which authors David Fitch and Geoff Holdsclaw help us to understand. First is post positional. The church’s place in the world has changed. It is no longer the center of life. There was a time when the church was at the center of society and carried respect and influence in society. There was a time when pastors were highly respected and consulted on civic, cultural and educational matters. Today, the church, pastors and priests are viewed with apathy, distrust and even hostility. Second is post attractional. There used to be a time when people gravitated toward the church on Sundays. Build it and they will come. People could be attracted through advertising, programs, ministries and dynamic worship. No longer because the church in its present form isn’t attractive or meaningful to many people. Third is post universal. There was a time when everyone thought alike and believed alike because they had the common foundation of the Christian faith. No longer. In a time when many people weren’t raised in church, we cannot think we are speaking the same language when someone speaks of God, Jesus or sin. We can no longer expect that everyone knows who Jesus is and how important he truly is. Even more so, we cannot assume that people have a Biblical worldview. So there has been a fundamental shift not only in how people look at the church and the Christians faith but also the role of the Christian faith in society and people’s lives, impacting what it means to be a disciple but also the effort needed to make disciples. David Kinnaman writes, “New levels of courage and clarity will be required to connect beyond the “Christianized” majority,” which is 40% of the population.
Most of the efforts of Christian ministries fail to reach much beyond the core of “Christianized” America. Christian leaders have to realize that many efforts fall short because they imagine the post-Christian population is hanging on its every word. But today, people don’t care about what we know or what we believe, but instead want to see how we live. David Fitch and Geoff Holdsclaw write, “People today expect much less out of our ideas as Christians and much more out of us as people; much less from the truth of our ideas and much more from the truth of our lives. Much less from what we claim to know and much more from the life we’ve experienced.”
In a post Christian world, being a disciple today isn’t so much about sharing the Good News as it is living an authentic life. Before they will ever hear what we have to say, they want to see how we live. Our lives can give people an encounter with the Gospel in ways words can’t. In us they can see and experience something real, humble and authentic in Jesus Christ which causes them to take notice. As we shared in the first message of this series, our God is a sending God because he seeks to find that which is lost. This is the message of Luke 15 in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. And if we are going to reach those lost or far from God, we have to go to them where they are. For too long in the church has tried to get people to come to us which works in a Christian world but in today’s post Christian world, we need to go to them, Out there, where they live.
First, we do not go alone because God is already at work in the world before we are sent out. We don’t bring God into the world but rather join in what God is already doing in the world. We are sent into the depths of our neighborhoods and diverse communities to find those far from God in whose lives God is already working: among the meek, the poor, the hurting, the sick and those who are struggling. This is the nature of the God we worship.
Second, we don’t get people to come to us, we go to them. Jesus didn’t seek to attract people to Him. He went to them. When the people experienced his early success in ministry at Capernaum, they wanted him to plant roots and stay where he was, but Jesus responded, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God to other towns also.” Why? “Because that is why I was sent.” Luke 4:42-43 Instead of trying to get people to come to Him, Jesus went to the people and met them in their lives like the woman at the well, the Gerasene demoniac, Blind Bartemeus, and the criminals being crucified next to him on the cross. Living in the post attractional reality of post-Christendom is to follow Jesus into the world. We have to abandon the security of church and get beyond our comfort zone and involved in the messy, hurting lives of those far from God. Each of us has to enter into our neighborhoods, our places of work, where we shop, eat and play and join in God’s work. We have to see ourselves as sent representatives of the King who has come to serve, listen, minister and share our faith and life in Christ by example.
In Jesus Christ, God has invaded the world. That’s not the way we normally think of Jesus’ Incarnation, God coming in flesh in the form of Jesus. But that’s what he has done. He left the holy place of heaven and invaded our broken and sin stained existence. In Jesus’ baptism, we see the tearing open of the heavens with the voice of God and the descending of the Holy Spirit. But it wasn’t just a one-time event. It was as if the heavens were permanently ripped open and since that time, the Spirit and power of God has been pouring forth into the earthly realm. Our God, the sending God is a dynamic, lavish and excessively risky God who comes crashing in, breaking through the heavens, entering our world and risking everything even his only Son to save us . He announced the kingdom of God, lived a perfect life and invited them to join him.
To join God in His mission, you first have to realize that he is already working in each person’s life. We need to pray to have the eyes to see what God is doing so we can participate with a word, a prayer, laughter or a tear in the life of another, all in step with God’s work. When you do that, you start to change the way you inhabit places: work, the coffee shop, the gym, a neighborhood conversation, anywhere you are. You start to pay attention to things that you would normally miss. You begin to listen for God and to look for how God may be working and moving in all your relationships, activities and interactions in your life. You start to listen and take note of what God is doing around you, no matter where you are or what you are doing. And when you do, you then begin to make yourself available.
Dave Fitch decided that he was going to start going to MacDonald’s each day at the same time to drink some coffee, do some work and try to be present for God and other people. He’d pray before he got there that God would open his eyes and much to his surprise, he started to see a whole world he had been missing where God was at work. So he started to listen, inhabit and take note of what God was doing. Over 2-3 years, he had gotten to know a lot ofm people including John who was hurting financially. One morning, John came into McDonald’s with an impacted tooth and swollen and infected mouth. They had had many conversation over the years but that day, he saw John was in great pain but knew John didn’t have the resources to help. Dave gave John his dentist’s number and suggested he make an appointment. Dave then called his dentist ahead of time to let him know this man would be calling and he had arranged for his church’s missions funds to pay for the dental work. A day later, the dentist calls, and lets him know that John has set an appojntment. A couple of days later, John shows up at the McDonald’s and says thank you. Dave tells John he did nothing. This is just the way God works. And the thing is, the dentist never sent a bill. He ended up doing the work for free. And Dave writes, “This simple episode took 15 minutes of my time. Yet I feel as I had done almost nothing.-just cooperated with God. But in that 15 minutes, God worked. A little slice of the kingdom broke in….I am thoroughly convinced God has been amazingly at work and I have been merely available. I simply began to know God differently, as the God of mission and pay attention. God is already at work in all the placed we inhabit…(we just need to) take the time to pay attention, listen and discern what God is doing in the lives of those around us.”
We are not just sent into the world but into the lives others. Jesus journeyed into the center of our very existence and lives. As such, we are invited to join Jesus’ journey into the lives of others. Jesus not only showed us how to live in the Kingdom of God but also how to engage the culture and others for God’s transformation, just as Jesus has done and is doing today. Jesus was not just present 2000 years ago, he is present here and now. The angel called Jesus Emmanuel, God with us, and then at the end of Jesus’ time here on earth, he says, “Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20 This is not about a solitary intrusion of God into the world and our lives in a particular moment and particular time in history. He comes to be with us always, even until the end of the age. How is he present to us? Through the Holy Spirit. For Jesus said, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth….You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:16-17
We are to be the very presence of Jesus in the world. And so whenever we join Him in mission and enter others lives, Jesus is in us and we are the very presence of Jesus in their lives. When Jesus sends the disciples out to proclaim the Gospel, he says the people will actually be hearing Jesus. Luke 10:16 Following Jesus and doing the work of Jesus is making the kingdom of God present and the very presence of Jesus manifest in people’s lives. Whenever we engage in the ministry of Jesus, we are not modeling Jesus or the way of the kingdom, we are actually extending God’s presence through His Son into people’s lives. And so the world is able to see through us glimpses of the kingdom and experience the presence of Jesus today in their lives as we become disciples and witnesses.
And when we live as disciples in the lives of others, God is truly with us. Each time we enter the world, Jesus goes with us and we journey into the lives of others as we join Christ in mission. As we go with the Son, His reign breaks in and becomes visible for all the world to see. And when this happens, all we can do is stand in awe to what He has done through us.
Fifth, our lives are a witness In a world that is broken and bankrupt, diseased and dying, filled with killing and corruption, it is easy to think that God’s kingdom has not come and that God has failed to deliver. So where is the evidence of this new in breaking of God’s kingdom and where is the witness? It’s in us and the lives we lead in the midst of others. Too many people don’t have an accessible expression of the Gospel by which they encounter the love, forgiveness, hope and renewal that God is working in and around them. The lives we lead can be just that witness when we intentionally live for Christ and as Christ in the world. This is the incarnation model of ministry. God sends us into the local contexts, rhythms and activities of every day life entering into the world of others, getting to know, live and understand their context and live the Christian life in their midst. It’s a commitment to a place and it’s people living humbly in the neighborhood and going to places on the margin to be the presence of Christ. When our Christian life has taken root in the culture and lives of others, redemption can take place. By doing this, we can follow what Alan Hirsch calls “the daring, radical, strange, wonderful, inexplicable, unstoppable, marvelous, unsettling, disturbing, caring, powerful God” into the world and the lives of others. We become intentional witnesses by living as Jesus in their midst. This the example of Christ and what it means to a disciple today in a post Christian world.
