I follow a number of prominent evangelicals on twitter and Facebook.
I read their books. I love much of what they have to say. And then today I read
this.
And it made me mad. Here's an excerpt from Mark Driscoll's letter to the churches:
“Christians are being ostracised. Gay marriage has been
legalised, the bandwagon has stopped carrying us and has begun rolling over us.
The church is dying, and no one is noticing because we’re wasting time
criticising rather than evangelising..”
“...stand firm in God’s grace, hold fast to the word. Jesus is
alive. Quit licking your wounds – stand up, dust yourself off, and get to work”
And here is the punch-line. What do we do about this?
Driscoll says:
“My friends Rick Warren, Matt Chandler, Greg Laurie, James MacDonald
and Crawford Loritts are some of the men leading this charge, and all will be
speaking with me at this year’s Resurgence Conference”
“Join us”
“God is faithful, he has called you. It’s your move”
So let me get this clear. We need to get to work. We spend
too much time criticising rather than evangelising. The solution? God is calling
you to attend our conference.
All over social media we are being told that we need to subscribe
to this or that blog or webinar and attend this or that conference which hold
the answers to how we can be more effective for God. Each group seeks to gain followers, enabling their ministry to propagate. Granted, they may not be
seeking to line their individual pockets but do we not risk slipping into
peddling the Gospel with this approach?
What if we spent less time with our heads in our phones and
more time evangelising?
What if we spent less time at conferences and more time
evangelising?
Why don’t the Resurgence and other groups do a free webcast
if their message is REALLY important?
Why don’t these leaders call only our local church leaders
to hear them, and trust them to disseminate this information into the everyday
lives of their people? Could it be that their conference would be smaller and
less visible? Could it be that their brand might not be as successful?
What if we look up from our limited view of the church in
our culture and see that worldwide the church is growing? And maybe even seek
to learn from our majority world brothers and sisters rather than North
Americans and Brits?
Of course I need to improve my evangelising, of course I
need a kick up the backside sometimes. I am sure the Resurgence Conference will have excellent content and speakers. But this approach by so many of our evangelical
leaders seems to be dangerous and the wrong one. I would rather go and find those who are doing it and soak it up from them. My real heroes
are those who DO it rather than TALK or WRITE about it.
Let’s get off our computers, out of the conference centres,
into the real world where real people are who need to hear and see the Gospel
in our lives.
(To Driscoll's credit he has previously blogged about the danger of conferences here which brings some balance to his letter)
(To Driscoll's credit he has previously blogged about the danger of conferences here which brings some balance to his letter)
