One of my favorite blogs, The Christian Mind, is written by a fellow named Keith Plummer. Keith and the youth pastor of his church got the idea to host a discussion group on Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion — at their public library:
I frequently consider what the contemporary analogues to the first century marketplace are. In what public venues are people willing to hear and discuss ideas of great consequence? I think bookstores and libraries are natural answers because, for the most part, those who frequent them care about ideas.
In a culture that has largely stopped thinking, it takes a sort of missionary spirit to “go where the ideas are” — just like Paul did in the first century.
It seems the project was a success; Keith has posted a recap of the event, concluding with this:
Following our presentation we had some opportunities to talk with a few folks who thanked us for our efforts. The library’s program coordinator sent us a very encouraging letter of appreciation in which she reported that numerous patrons told her how much they enjoyed the event. This, along with the number of people who showed up, makes us optimistic about the potential for offering related talks in the near future. We’ve already started thinking about what other books we might use.
So where can the ideas be found in our community, and how can we take the Gospel there?
Hugh,thanks so much for your encouragement!
Man, I wish I had thought of the title you used for this post. That’s exactly what followers of Christ need to do. It frustrates me that so often when churches consider how they might reach out to their communities, we frequently give little thought to how we might reach their minds. I’m looking forward to seeing how your readers answer your parting question. Thanks for asking it.
Tim Keller writes, preaches and actually lives this. His premise is essentially what you said but his idea is that Christians need to go to live out their Christianity in cities. The place where culture is defined is in large urban areas and by capturing these areas, culture can be transformed. For example, in rural towns we can maybe turn a few lawyers to Christ, but in a city we can transform the legal profession to Christ by being near the places where lawyers are made.
I agree, O’Ryan — but here we are in the shadow of Atlanta. What are we doing to capture the culture? Where are the ideas?
Who sets the intellectual agenda in this town? Neal Boortz? Or maybe that’s too high up the “food chain”… where are the grass roots?
What I want to avoid is getting burned by a variation of the old “dot-com bubble” formula:
1. Start a church near a big city.
2. ???
3. Win the culture for Christ!
So where are the ideas accessible to you and me, and how do we start leveraging that access?
Keller would suggest moving to, living in, working in and worshiping in the city. As a consequence we would serve the city, bring truth to the city, and love the city. What can we do as a bunch of suburban church folks (SBF)s?
The most direct idea would be to to plant churches in the ATL or Athens near GT or UGA. Bortz may set the agenda for the SBFs but how relevant is he to a College kid going to school. Or, dropping out of society.
Also the idea is to think generationally. Things will not happen tomorrow, but with some planning, and a ton of hard work we can in 4 or 5 generations down the road have a positive impact.
Speaking of .com, we need to leverage proprietary access to obtain virally-distributed convergence. 😉
I think the bookstore is a good idea. Borders used to have live music on the weekends — why not discussion groups?
It’s so hard in the age of media not to feel helpless to do anything — all ideas get served from college and reinforced through media. Other than that, not many ideas being tossed around in any type of forum.
It’s more about support groups and local common-interest groups — applying ideas they got from watching fiction on TV (and Oprah).
Churches and sports events seem to be the last places people congregate in larger groups anymore. I’ve often wanted churches to host open, organized debates to let people know that The Church is at least aware of the issues.
(Drawing from my own experience, I grew up in church and was not even aware of “the problem of evil” until Philosophy 101 in college. But our church did have a nice gymnasium.)
Maybe even faster considering other agendas’ progress in the past 10-15 years.
I liked a quote that Greg used during the conference. It was something like:
The world didn’t stop thinking, the Church just didn’t show up when it was going on.
Okay, I’ll say it … public schools. No, I’m not saying “it’s the only Christian education option” but identifying it as a point of access for those who have chosen to public school. I wonder if there was an equipped parent who was able to represent Dan’s point in this situation.
How about community service in Cumming as a start?
Volunteering at No Longer Bound for men struggling with substance abuse, or the Potters House for those needing clothes or furniture; sponsoring a local event for the Cumming Care Center crisis pregnancy center, picking up trash on a strip of road, doing work at a local public park. Even bringing breakfast some mornings to the Hispanic men waiting for work just a couple of miles away from our church.
How can we reach their “minds” if we have not first demonstrated a genuine concern for the local community in a practical and tangable way?
We have had a heavy focus on foreign missions of late, but there are also needs all around us within a mile radius of our own church building. This is something that all of us can be directly involved in, both inside and outside of a church program. No need to promote GF or try to garner any publicity since God’s Fame and His Glory is the motivation in all things.
@CA – regarding your observation “How can we reach their ‘minds’ if we have not first demonstrated a genuine concern for the local community in a practical and tangable way?”
Clearly we need to work toward meeting the practical the needs of the community. But the fact is we live in a community characterized by luxury and self-reliance, where practical needs are seldom expressed.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do the kinds of things you mentioned. I would just caution that if we only go where the palpable needs are, our reach will be very limited indeed. Affluent, self-reliant elites need to hear the Gospel too!
One natural result of serving the local community and being “out there” could be that we would have more opportunities to reach many different people’s minds. Both rich and poor. Do you not think that demonstrating that we really care first on a base level could open more doors than a lot of words up front? Actions speak louder…right?
Hugh is correct that we should be willing to share the Gospel even with the elites who frequent coffee houses and library book discussion groups. 🙂 We know, in fact, from Scripture that God’s plan includes the salvation of some people from every walk of life (I Timothy 2:1-4).
However, I think we need to be careful making something like ‘capturing the culture’ our goal and building an agenda around that. That’s kind of like making ‘church growth’ our goal. We’re not called to transform the culture. Our commission is to share the Gospel with the lost and to disciple the found, wherever they may be found. Transformation of culture is a byproduct of revival which, when it happens by God’s grace, is a byproduct of what Ligon Duncan calls the “ordinary means of grace”, the preaching of the Word, the sacraments and prayer.
When we seek to transform the culture by targeting certain people or places for evangelism because they are influential by the world’s standards, we forget that God chooses to make Himself known much more often through those whom the world sees as unimportant or powerless (Judges 6:15, I Corinthians 1:26). As has often been pointed out, Jesus came to Bethlehem, not to Rome and chose fishermen and tax collectors rather than statesmen and soldiers.
In modern times East German communism was finally brought to its knees by a prayer meeting of common ordinary, unimportant folks that began at a Lutheran Church in Leipzig, not by “capturing the culture” of East Germany. The great Welsh revival of the early 20th century likewise was sparked by the faithfulness of an unknown man and former coal miner who was not even a licensed preacher and Wales was certainly not the hub of the British Empire.
I think one of the things Hugh is pointing out with this post is that we must be more intentional in our evangelism and I wholeheartedly agree. We should be willing to go where the lost are, wherever that may be.
Larry,that is kind of where I was heading with the “base level” community involvement in Cumming. Demonstrating humility by “being the least” is a great starting point IMO, and building from there as God gives the opportunity. Giving a cup of cold water in His name and working our way up to wine. 😉
C.A., You’ve written my thoughts exactly. While it appears that Forsyth County is growing with families that are affluent and living luxurious lives, there are many, many families living on nothing but what the local senior center delivers to their homes each day. There is an amazing drug problem and hopelessness that pervades this county and I can only hope that we’d be willing to be Christ’s hands and feet to them as well.
While I will disagree with the idea that a progression of ministering to particular people groups is required, I will point out that so far it’s all been talk.
Alright C.A., Hugh, Vicki, O’Ryan, and Larry … what’s the next step?
It seems to me we can do both as part of a local missions effort.
We can set up discussion groups at a library of book store, we can be intentional about meeting in places out side our church to discuss the goodness and greatness of our God. I think to get this to work, we will have to have Titus 3:2-7 in our hearts having compassion for the people who will most likely engage, and know there are those around who are watching.
We can also implement mercy ministries. Serving those who need help by going to them and with out asking anything in return giving of what we have.
This to me seems to be the point of global missions to serve and spread the Gospel, and should be the point of local missions. I don’t know if anyone is working on anything like this in our church, if not I would be happy to look into it.
Opportunities abound is this county. Meals-on-Wheels, Alzheimer’s Respite program, Citizen’s Review Panel (a Juvenile Court program for abused/neglected kids in bad homes), our local crisis pregnancy center, and the list goes on. It may be difficult to do these things as a church body but they all can be done by individual christians. Also, because we are volunteers and not employees of these organizations, we are free to share the gospel with each and every one of them.