As we near the end of the twentieth century and prepare for a new millennium (the third in Christian history), as leaders we need to think seriously and evaluate prayerfully the condition of the church.
How well are we fulfilling the Great Commission mandate of making disciples in every tribe, tongue, and nation?
Trends indicate an alarming decline in the influence of Christian thought and experience in contemporary western culture. During the past fifty years, American Christianity has set the pace for the worldwide work of the kingdom. This was a powerful movement that is now in decline. Today over half of the U.S. population has no religious affiliation. Most churches have either maintained their numbers or declined in the last decade. Overall, church membership fell nearly ten percent while the population grew at almost 12 percent in the same period. Most troubling is the loss of Christian memory and frame of reference. Less than half of the young-adult population, the emerging leaders of tomorrow, has any form of religious training and context.
Internationally, the trends are more encouraging. There are signs of new spiritual life in Central and South America, India, the former Soviet Union, and the Far East. The gospel explosion in central Africa is dramatic; some believe that, if current growth continues, the entire region could enter the new millennium as the most Christianized continent on earth.
Without question, an era of unprecedented challenge is confronting the church. Christian leaders throughout the world, particularly in the West, must wrestle with how a gospel, birthed in a culture of sandals and sails and sustained across time by a focus on ecclesiastical structures and theological orthodoxy, can be effective in a future dominated by moral relativism, self-centeredness, and cyberspace. What will revitalize the gospel for the next generation, century, and, should Jesus tarry, millennium?
Modeling the great commandment---advancing the Great Commission
First and foremost, a gospel fit for the twenty-first century must be anchored to the mission and mandate of the first-century church. Simply put, our unchanging call is twofold: first, to model the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:35-40); second, to advance the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20). Jesus left two clear, unequivocal assignments. The first is to love God with our total being, finding in that love His passion for a lost and hurting world. Having come to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are called to a role in the Father's business, and that is making disciples in every corner and culture of the world.
In embracing this mandate and implementing that mission, we must take our cues from Him who introduced His gospel during the first century. In the encounter with the Samaritan woman at Sychar's well (John 4:1-42), Jesus established a pattern for ministry that works with every person and culture across the face of human history. With this story in mind, here are a few key elements that I believe will be characteristic of the ministry of the church in the twenty-first century.
Persons more than programs
In John 4:4, Jesus interrupts the established plans and program of His culture in order to get from Judea into Galilee by taking a detour for the purpose of engaging people. But He needed to go through Samaria (NKJV). Such a change violated societal norms. Observant Hebrews were willing to endure significant inconvenience to avoid contact with, as they described them, the half-breed, theologically perverse residents of Samaria. He needed to go through this land because people there needed Him.
In an era driven by "Titanic" movie spectaculars, it is tempting to pour increasing amounts of time, energy, and resources into programs, props, and places. If we are not careful, the staging rather than the audience, the sanctuary rather than the seeker, become the unintended end. In a society increasingly depersonalized by systems and cyberspace, in societies overwhelmed by sensation and spectacle, the honest, straightforward witness of individuals changed by an intimate encounter with the Christ will be the most effective strategy. We need a generation of Christian leaders focused on the woman at the well in need of the individualized attention of a personalized Messiah. Christ-centered caring in cross-anchored community will produce a third millennium communion worthy of the Master's name.
Proclamation more than presentation
In Jesus' ministry, content was always more important than costume. His minis try mystified and challenged the people of His day. He taught as one with authority, not as the scribes and Pharisees, who spoke anchored primarily to tradition. At the well that day, Jesus was more concerned about the message than the medium. He wanted to be sure that the woman had her focus on the water and not on the bucket. '"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, "Give Me a drink," you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water"' (verse 10, NKJV).
We are in desperate need of prophetic, heartfelt, life-changing proclamation in the church of the new millennium. How long has it been since a message so burned in your bones that you feared it would consume you? How long has it been since preaching was your greatest passion and preparation to preach your most consuming priority? How long has it been since your people left the assembly so aware of the anointing that they said, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet" (verse 19).
Dr. Julian C. McPheeters, second president of Asbury Theological Seminary and then in his ninety-second year, shared with me a most important insight on effective, anointed proclamation: "Prepare yourself full, pray yourself hot, and preach yourself empty!" While relevance and style are important, the content is the highest priority. How thankful I am for those who preach the Word of God in power, under the anointing and with prophetic conviction whose mes sage brings life because it has first come alive in them. Effective leaders in the next millennium will be those in whom the Word of God dwells richly. Great-Commandment-driven and Great-Commission-focused churches in the twenty-first century will be places of the passionate, prophetic proclamation of the whole counsel of God.
Incarnation more than institution
While the gospel of the next millennium will be more people than programs, more proclamation than presentation, it will be also more incarnational than institutional. Jesus had not gone far into His dialog with the woman until form and institution got in the way. Do we worship on the mountain or in the temple? (verses 20-22), she asked. His answer is one of the most important for the third era of the Christian movement: We worship a person, not a place.
One of the most significant trends in contemporary society has been the abandonment of brand loyalty. This is particularly true today in the historic, denominationally anchored church. The cry of the modern heart is Sir, we wish to see Jesus (John 12:21). Our comfort with what has gone before can be one of the most significant detriments to what God wants to do next. Someone has suggested that the seven last words of the church are We've never done it that way before. Now, I am a traditionalist with a passion to learn the lessons of those who have gone before me. I believe in the value of a connectional church and a historic theology. The danger is making the connection and the theology into the end rather than the means. In many churches the butterfly has gone. We are worshiping the empty cocoon left behind.
While theology and ecclesiology are important, the church of the next millennium will be one where the presence of the Christ is clearly welcomed. The leaders of this next millennium will be anchored to the biblically essential orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the past while ever focused on the challenge to reveal the person of Jesus fresh to the present age. The Incarnation was the answer to the ecclesiastical irrelevance and heartless legalism of the first-century church. It will be the answer to the same in the twenty-first century.
Celebration more than information
In this same dialogue, Jesus refocuses worship from a place of information to a relationship of celebration. "'You worship what you do not know.... But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:22-24).
In the new millennial church there will be a maturing of worship. It will become increasingly a celebration of the One who is redeeming us rather than just a reiteration of what the past reveals about Him. In many places we are guilty of worshiping what we personally do now know. Increasingly the hunger of the human heart is that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10).
Throughout the world today, pilgrims are discovering a deeper relationship with the Savior through both private and corporate worship. There is a dramatic increase in Great-Commandment celebration characterized by an upward, individually-tailored experience with the God who intimately cares and personally calls. Worship-centered, gift-driven, phenomena-punctuated congregations are among the fastest growing segments of Christendom worldwide.
Danger lurks, however, in an overemphasis on personal experience and enthusia. In these settings, the gospel can become that which primarily ministers to me rather than through me. Without the safeguards of a Great Commission reason for being and a Scripture-centered orthodoxy, personal experience becomes the measure of that which is both essential and true. We end up worshiping worship, falling into the same institutionalized hollowness of those who have gone before us. He, the Lord, rather than we, must become the center of worship. The fruit of such celebration will be a renewed and enhanced passion for a world longing to know Him. Effective twenty-first century leaders will be those who, hearing the Father's heart cry, will lead their people into a worship-centered relationship with Him who is both Spirit and Truth.
Intercession more than condemnation
Finally, the church of the next millennium must find itself committed to transformational intercession more than confrontational condemnation. It is interesting that Jesus ignored the cultural arguments and the nonessential theological wars of His day to focus on the act of transforming people. The woman at the well was a Samaritan and an adulteress. He looked beyond what she was to what she could become. He saw a sinner with saintly potential. Jesus wasted no time engaging the disciples in their questions about either His disregard for tradition or her character. She was clearly wrong, but Jesus knew she could be thoroughly changed.
Too many Christian leaders manifest a warlike rather than reconciliation-focused stance. I am troubled by the dramatic in crease in secular rhetorical devices and strategies showing up in the church. The use of irony, sarcasm, and condescending humor from our people and pulpits does not reflect the humility and charity characteristic of the Christ. Separatist and partisan strategies seem far from the model of a Savior deeply engaged with publicans and sinners in thought-provoking and life-changing interaction.
We too often speak and act toward those with whom we disagree in tones that reflect arrogance and anger. While it is important that we stand for righteousness, we must take those positions absent from a language and methodology that contradicts and even negates our message. Jesus calls us to touch and transform rather than defeat and destroy our enemies. If it is true that He is not willing that any should perish, then none are beyond the potential of being reached and engaged by His prevenient grace. Our words and actions must reflect such a conviction.
I believe Jesus was able to relate to a lost world so effectively because He was in intimate conversation with the Father of that world. The deeper my commitment to life-changing, circumstance-engaging intercessory prayer, the more my actions and words are seasoned with the person and passion of Christ. The church of the next millennium will see every sinner with saintly potential. That perspective will only come in intimate, disciplined communion with Him who weeps over a world in pain.
Whom shall He send?
Jesus' closing words to the disciples at Sychar have unusual relevance for church leaders in the era before us. '"Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life'" (John 4:35, 36).
Those same words must be heard afresh by the church and its leaders of to day if we are to know and to do the will of the Father in the next millennium. Let us lay hold of the Great-Commandment mandate, loving God with our total being. Let us rededicate ourselves to the Great- Commission mission, convinced that as we focus on people more than programs, proclamation more than presentation, incarnation more than institution, celebration more than information, and intercession more than condemnation, we can fulfill the plan for every ear to hear that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father!
Whom shall He send to lead the twenty-first century church? Those who, deeply in love with the Savior, will give themselves passionately to the harvest.
