The 10/40 window of the West: Out of light and into darkness

It was night. Two men under a street lamp were searching for a watch one of them had lost. Down on their hands and knees, they searched the pavement all around the light pole.

"Are you sure you dropped it here?" the helping friend asks.

"Well, not exactly here," the watch loser replies.

"What do you mean," his friend retorts, "where'd you drop it?"

The man points out into the darkness, "About twenty yards over there."

Incredulously the friend exclaims, "You lost your watch out there! Then why on earth have we been looking here?"

To which the man replies, "Because the light's better."

The story came from Gary Krause of Global Mission at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Krause then thrust home his point: "For too long the Christian church, including Adventists, has been preaching mainly 'where the light's better.' The Christian church has spent the vast majority of its resources on areas where there's already a strong Christian base where the light is stronger. And we've largely ignored those parts of the world where the name of Jesus has never been heard." ¹

And with that he launched into an impassioned appeal for us to embrace the challenge of the "10/40 Window" an artificial rectangle of earth in which 60 percent of the world's population lives (3.4 billion humans), and where only 1 percent of them believe in Jesus, and less than .001 percent are Seventh-day Adventist Christians.

We must move out into that darkness, he implored. Who would challenge that appeal?

But could it be that in our present preoccupation with the 10/40 Window of the so-called East, we have become blinded to a growing portal of immense darkness what might be called "the 10/40 Window of the West" the burgeoning window of Western postmodern paganism?

Could it be that the greatest challenge facing the church in the West in its third millennium is a postmodern society that has rapidly become post-Christian?

Astonishing figures

I was astounded by the figures I learned on a recent preaching trip to England. In this land of the Wesleys and the greatest revival in the history of Christianity, church closures rose to six a week over the last two decades of the twentieth century, until now only 7.5 percent of the adult population attends church! No wonder in one comparative poll the British were ranked as "the most godless" of European nations.

Americans might take refuge in their 37 percent church-attendance figures. But troubling new statistics released by the American Religious Identification Survey 2001 indicate that last year more than 29.4 million Americans said they had no religion that's 14 percent of the nation, up from 8 percent in 1990.² A no-religion West is on the rise!

How can the church afford to ignore this swelling new 10/40 Window? Our postmodern society in the West is morphing into a post-Christian, essentially pagan reality men, women, young adults, and children by literally millions who have no connection with the name of Jesus or His faith!

Could it be that the most desperate, most spiritually impoverished, cries of this millennium arise not from the traditional "mission" lands such as New Guinea, India, China, or Africa, but from the secular urban soul of the West?

Does not faithfulness to our mission man date of Revelation 14 "to every nation and tribe and language and people" call a growing number of us as pastors and evangelists to undertake the third millennial risk of moving away from "where the light's better" into the postmodern darkness of the rapidly increasing post- Christian segment of our society and cities? Must not those of us pastoring and evangelizing in the secular West find new ways to penetrate our western darkness on Christ's behalf, just as faithfully as our colleagues in the East constantly seek for new methods to more effectively plunge into theirs?

What specifically shall we do, and how shall we do it?

Finding common ground

One reality that must inform any strategy is painfully clear the post- Christian West increasingly is becoming biblically illiterate, which in turn feeds postmodern pluralism, the notion that every truth claim must be valid. In his book, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism, Douglas Groothuis observes that postmoderns have rejected a capital-T Truth in favor of a plethora of little-t truths.

This "truth decay is a cultural condition in which the very idea of absolute, objective and universal truth is considered implausible, held in open contempt or not even seriously considered." ³ Which is why some of us are developing a passion to connect with this growing pagan, post-Christian segment of our society.

The reality of an encroaching secularism is forcing us to reexamine our present evangelistic strategy, which presumes that the hearers (1) believe in God, (2) have a familiarity with the Bible, and (3) are therefore conversant with biblical prophecy. It is painfully clear by the mounting numbers of westerners who stay away from our evangelistic efforts that we will need to find new common ground on which to engage postmoderns.

What is that common ground? In ChurchNext, Eddie Gibbs observes, this generation must first belong before it believes. ⁴ "Among boomers and Gen Xers there is an apprehensive craving for community apprehensive because people are wary of becoming overly committed and because these two [postmodern] generations have already experienced abuse and betrayal. "They do not want to be exposed to further hurt and harm." ⁵ And our post-September 11 anxieties have only heightened this hunger for belonging, for community, for close proximity with others "who care for me" the very longing for community that "the everlasting gospel" of Jesus compels us to fill. But how?

How we can do it?

First. "Christ's method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Saviour mingled with men [and women] as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, 'Follow Me.'" ⁶ Note it carefully: Before the "follow Me" evangelistic appeal there was the "mingling."

"Present truth" must be presented in the context of "present need." And the present need of the secular post modern West is the longing for community. Interestingly enough, while in the last century our modus operand! was that before you could belong you had to believe, in this new century we are faced with the reverse challenge. Third millennials need to belong before they will believe. Now more than ever Christ's method is essential.

While there is a growing corpus of pastoral/evangelistic literature detail ing fresh community-building strategies, a new experimental approach within our Adventist community of faith merits observation and study.

Piloted by the church in Great Britain and Europe, it is called "LifeDevelopment.info" an intentional strategy to reach the postmodern West by beginning with belonging and leading to believing. ⁷ (Many of those writing in this issue of Ministry are involved in implementing this potent plan.)

For the next 12 months congregations across the United Kingdom and Europe will form "cafe groups," small weekly social communities for their secular friends and neighbors enjoying the simple pleasures of food, friendship, and discussion. Following this 12-month community-building process a series of satellite presentations (downlinked from London to every cafe group) will address post modern felt needs (hope, freedom from fear, peace, rest, community, etc.) in the context of the everlasting gospel. "LifeDevelopment.info" will pioneer a new postmodern evangelistic paradigm belonging before believing. ⁸

Can the rest of us afford to wait for the results of this European experiment before we act? How can we? Jesus' passion to "seek and save the lost" postmodern West is not on hold, nor can it be put on hold. Calvary paid too high a price for us to wait until someone else pilots the way.

Instead we must experiment with our own belonging-before-believing evangelistic strategies. We can form our own cafe groups. We can lead our own congregations in the "mingling" method of Jesus intentionally living and moving among lost people as their friends, asking the Spirit to make us "contagious Christians" ⁹ through whom He can reach their hearts.

We need a new generation of pastors, evangelists, and church-planters who will creatively translate the message entrusted to us into the language and felt needs of our postmodern world a new generation unafraid to risk boldly for the gospel and experiment repeatedly, unafraid of "failure," for the sake of loving and saving lost post-Christian people for God.

Old and new

Are the old ways to be banished or abandoned? Hardly. It's just that in this new millennium, faced as we are with the rapidly enlarging 10/40 Window of the post-Christian, non- Christian, un-Christian West it is the right time for us as pastors and evangelists to embrace the ambition of the great prototype of today's postmodern preacher, Paul: "I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named [read, "where the light is better"], so that I do not build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, Those who have never been told of him shall see, and those who have never heard of him shall understand'" (Rom. 15:20, 21, NRSV).

With the ambition of Paul and the method of Jesus, in the immortalized, now well-known, American words of September 11, "Let's roll!"