The following is an article I wrote for a Phoenix Seminary publication that deals with how to present the gospel in postmodern America:
I knew I was living in a different world when I met her. She was a young woman in her late 20s who seemed to be anything but unusual. She walked into the church reception area seeking some spiritual guidance, and the next thing I knew we were sharing a conversation in my office. Early on I asked her if she was a Christian, and she enthusiastically replied, “Yes!” There was a slight pause, and she added, “And I’m also a Buddhist.”
I panicked for a moment as I searched my mind for the right response, but it wasn’t coming to me. I froze because I didn’t know what to say next. I mean, I had a lot of things to say to a Christian who was sliding back in their faith, and I had a lot of things to say to a Buddhist who was reaching out for spiritual answers, but I didn’t know what to say to a “Buddhist Christian.”
Since that conversation, I’ve had many more of the same. What I encountered that day and many times since is a rudimentary blending of different religious faiths, and that blending is becoming more common today in a world that lampoons the notion of absolute truth and champions the humanist ideal that you can believe whatever you want as long as you’re not hurting anyone else.
When people really do begin to adopt the popular idea that all roads lead to God, then they begin to pave their own spiritual path with whatever seems to be expedient for them. The end result is a world in which religious faith is personalized like a workout routine or a personal diet program. What’s most intriguing is that it doesn’t seem to matter to the person if the traditions they draw from contradict or even deny each other as long as their personal faith suits their own tastes, styles, and preferences.
Ready or not, this is the world we find ourselves living in today. Currently, we are seeing a fundamental shift in how people view the world—a shift away from objective understanding toward subjective experience—and this fundamental shift is forcing us to rethink how we communicate to and share the gospel with people in this new world.
In this new world we live in, spiritual interest is up, but church attendance is down. In light of this trend, we’re going to have to find a way to communicate the gospel in a meaningful way to the emerging generations of people in our culture or else we face the dire risk of becoming marginalized or even obsolete in a progressively humanistic culture—as is already the case in much of Europe today.
If we’re going to survive in and reach out to a relativistic world, then we’re going to have to make a fundamental change in how we present to gospel. Namely, we’re going to have to present the old truth about Jesus in a new way. For the last few hundred years in the modern world, we have emphasized the supernatural power and position of Jesus as Lord in our presentation of the gospel, and in the past those impassioned presentations have persuaded many people to believe, but today people are less impressed by power and position than they are by character and compassion.
We live in a culture that in general distrusts those who are in positions of power and authority, and their distrust has been fueled with all of the recent displays of scandal and corruption in the marketplace and in the church. So, if we’re going to communicate the truth about Jesus in a world that is suspicious of authority and resistant to objective truth, then we aren’t going to effectively win them over with impressive homilies and seasoned apologetics but rather with genuine explanations and demonstrations of Jesus’ character. In other words, in today’s world we need to emphasize and imitate the person of Jesus even more than His position. That doesn’t imply by any means that we don’t passionately communicate the truth about His divinity; it simply means that we must emphasize His humanity.
Interestingly, in today’s world people seem to be drawn more to the character of Jesus than to His power. In my own experience as a pastor in postmodern America, I have found that the more I have tried to convince people with declarations of truth about the power of Jesus, the less responsive they have been. At the same time, the more have I tried to explain and show people the character of Jesus, the more responsive they became. In fact, I used to think that the most convincing proof of the living Christ was in the presentation of the empty tomb, yet I’ve come to believe that the most convincing proof is actually in the personal testimonies of real people. Nothing moves the hearts of people today like a personal story of real life change.
The reason, I believe, that people respond so positively to the person of Jesus is that His character strikes a chord deep inside. Facts about Jesus touch their minds, but His displays of compassion and grace touch their hearts. Today, I have found that people are more impressed by how Jesus fed the 5000, healed the bleeding woman and forgave his killers than they are by how He walked on the water or calmed the storm on Galilee.
Once people are drawn to the character of Jesus, then they begin to investigate His supernatural power. It used to be the other way around. One interesting insight about many people today is that they don’t necessarily need to understand something to believe it. There was a time when people needed to see the logical, argumentative proof for faith to believe, but now people, especially younger people, are able to live with the tension of mystery. In fact, it’s the mystery of the Christian faith that tends to draw people to it. People are not so much looking for an explanation of the trinity or the hypostatic union in order to believe. They are looking for the movement of God in real people’s lives.
Furthermore, if we’re going to present the person of Jesus in a new way, then we are also going to need to present His message in a new way. In the past we have presented Jesus as the Savior who has come to save lost people from their sins. Throughout the last several decades, that message rang true for those who had an understanding of sin and a sense of their own rebellion against God. There was a general ethical code that seemed to govern society, and people knew when they were in violation of it. Today, however, there is little awareness of or even concern about personal sin. People need to feel lost in order to want a savior, and people today do not feel lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien penned the popular phrase: “Not all who wander are lost,” and this phrase has been used to describe a generation of people today who are wandering but don’t feel lost. How can we expect people to want a savior if they don’t realize they are drowning? Gone are the days when we could expect people to turn to Jesus out of personal guilt because guilt has virtually evaporated in our contemporary world. Instead, we need to capitalize on the message of reconciliation in order to reach people today.
In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 Paul writes: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” This is the message we need to spread today about Jesus. As Paul said, we have a message of reconciliation to bring to the world, and this message is meaningful to a world of people who above all else cherish healthy relationships. People today are relationally focused, and they understand clearly what it means to seek reconciliation in a fractured relationship. To present the gospel as the opportunity to restore a broken relationship with the living God through a relationship with Jesus is the message we want to communicate.
Going back to the beginning and explaining how that fracture occurred and then fast-forwarding to our present condition is an effective way to present the gospel. Tell people that Jesus came to the earth to mend a fractured relationship between us and God by dying on the cross and that He proved He was qualified to do that by rising from the dead. People are genuinely interested in hearing that they can live life today in relationship with a holy God because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
People want to know that Jesus came to make life different for them today, and they need to know that their eternal life in Jesus does not begin after they die. Jesus came to bring His kingdom to this earth, and that means that we can experience aspects of that kingdom even now. This all means that Jesus came not just to save us from death but to save us for life! The truth is that the opportunity to experience the supernatural wonders of the kingdom here on earth is simply too appealing for today’s generation to resist.
