I am tempted to respond to a friend who has lost a loved one by giving him the three best books on the problem of evil, rather than to love him by weeping with him.
I am tempted to respond to a friend who has lost a loved one by giving him the three best books on the problem of evil, rather than to love him by weeping with him. Why? Every strength has a corresponding weakness. My training as an educator is a strength, but it has the corresponding weakness that I am too easily convinced that every problem requires an educational solution.
The same is true of Evangelicalism. Two of Evangelicalism’s fundamental strengths are:
Part of the reason why Evangelicalism is vulnerable to external threats are its unacknowledged weaknesses. Why has Evangelicalism been vulnerable to the European unbelief (atheism and agnosticism) that has uprooted Evangelicalism in Europe and is a threat in the Developing World? To answer this, we need to examine Evangelicalism’s strengths and its built-in weaknesses.1
1) EVANGELICALS HAVE A PASSIONATE COMMITMENT TO COMMUNICATE THE GOSPEL
Evangelicalism is the most creative and powerful force for evangelism and missions in the world today. In a speech in Germany in 2011, Pope Benedict XVI said the following about Evangelicalism in the Developing World:
“The geography of Christianity has changed dramatically in recent times, and is in the process of changing further. Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seems at a loss. …This worldwide phenomenon- that bishops from all over the world are constantly telling me about- poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse?”2
The Pope and his bishops were scared. They have seen the Catholic flock moving in droves to Evangelical churches in the Developing World. Latin American countries, strongholds for Catholicism, have seen massive shifts to Evangelicalism. Whereas 94% of Latin America’s population was Catholic in 1910, today only 69% of adults across the region identify as Catholic. During the same time period, the percentage of Protestants increased from 1% to 19%. 3
Figure 1. While this graph shows the overall trend in Latin America, Evangelicalism has progressed even further in some countries. For example, the graph below shows the dramatic shift between Catholicism and Evangelicalism in Honduras.
Figure 2. We see the amazing global growth of Evangelicalism worldwide in contrast to the steep decline of Orthodoxy and stagnation of Roman Catholicism in the graph below:
Figure 3.
Why are Evangelicals so much more effective at missions and evangelism?
Evangelicals have rightly emphasized the core biblical teaching of Jesus and the Gospel as central. J. I. Packer and Thomas Oden7 summarize that Evangelicals:
Evangelicals are willing, and often eager, to tell others the ‘evangel’ about Jesus: He is the Son of God, gave his life as a sacrifice for the world’s sins, is the only Mediator between God and man, and everyone needs to put their faith in Him to receive salvation. The extent to which someone believes in the uniqueness of the Gospel, and is excited to tell others about his belief and conversion, is a barometer of his Evangelical commitment. In short, Evangelicals wisely emphasize the Scripture, the Gospel and Jesus, in contrast to the Orthodox marriage to culture or the Catholic pre-occupation with authority.
Evangelicals are rightly passionate about the Gospel. We are convinced that the biblical story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is the key event of history, the hinge on which the whole of history turns. We know that we are sinners in need of forgiveness and so is everyone else, whether they understand it or not. We are willing to give our time, fortunes, and lives to spread the Gospel. This commitment to the Gospel makes Evangelicalism the most active Christian movement when it comes to world missions.
Evangelicals are also skilled in contextualizing the Gospel without unnecessary cultural baggage. We understand that the Gospel needs to be relevant and use the audience’s language to communicate effectively. We imitate Paul who became a Greek to the Greeks and a Jew to the Jews. We seek to eliminate the cultural trappings that are not necessary for someone to understand and respond to the Gospel.
Because of this passion and ability to communicate the Gospel and our creativity and perseverance, Evangelicals are able to cross national and cultural borders to share the Gospel. The last 200 years of missions is the story of Evangelicals bringing the Gospel across hundreds of national and cultural borders: Evangelicals who love their Lord and are willing to endure enormous difficulties in the pursuit of communicating the Gospel to every man, woman, and child in the world.
What are the weaknesses of this commitment to evangelism?
Biblical evangelism is a central part of the whole council of God that the Bible teaches. But evangelism (like any biblical truth) can be emphasized too much at the expense of other truths. The priority of evangelism is found within the broader teaching of the Bible, and we cannot allow it to be de-emphasized. But Evangelicalism is in danger of emphasizing evangelism at the expense of other biblical priorities: biblical teaching, discipleship, education, relationships and the list goes on. Let me just touch on three aspects of this overemphasis.
a) We focus on evangelism at the expense of loving God and loving people
Is evangelism crucially important? Absolutely, but isn’t loving God and loving others important? Jesus taught us about the two great commandments that “in them all the law and the prophets hold together” (Matt. 22:40). A focus on evangelism can come without prioritizing what Jesus himself taught us is the summary of biblical teaching. If we emphasize evangelism without balancing it with the rest of biblical teaching, we create a lopsided theology like a plane with one wing.
The New Testament teaches again and again that the goal of Christian life is spiritual maturity. Paul writes, “teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28) and “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart” (I Tim. 1:5) and exhorts believers to imitate him as he imitates Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). James even writes that we should receive trials with joy, because they enable us to be “mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:4).
Some argue that the Great Commission means that we should put all of our energy toward evangelism. However, this ignores the biblical text. Jesus teaches us to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). The Great Commission includes evangelism, but it is not the whole of it. The process of cultivating disciples to grow in maturity and love of God and others is crucial to the task of the Great Commission.
By focusing on evangelism – at the expense of other priorities like worship, discipleship, good Bible teaching, small groups, education, etc. – the risk is that we create weak and immature churches. This is just what has happened. Many fast-growing Evangelical churches that focus primarily on evangelism have been accurately described as a mile wide and ½ inch deep.
b) Our prioritization of evangelism without robust biblical teaching is vulnerable to the emergence of false teaching.
What happens when you plant a crop in a fertile soil where it has excellent weather conditions? It flourishes. But what every farmer knows is that without precaution and hard work, weeds will grow alongside the crop at an even more furious pace.
Photo: John Walter (Flickr, CC)This has always been true. Why are so many of the Apostle Paul’s letters confronting various false teachings that were emerging in the fast-growing early church? Because as the seed of the Gospel was spread and took root, various false teachings emerged and grew quickly alongside the Gospel seed. This same is true to today. Many of the challenges facing the fast-growing global Evangelical church are at root theological issues.
Paul’s list of required characteristics for leaders mentions only one non-spiritual or relational characteristic -- the ability to teach truth and to confront false teaching (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:6-9). Paul equates the two ideas of teaching truth and confronting false teaching. You can’t do one, if you aren’t doing the other. J. I. Packer modernizes this vision by describing a theologian or pastor’s task as a water treatment worker who skims away the theological garbage and delivers pure water to God’s people.
The problem is that Evangelicals’ aggressive push for evangelism often creates a willingness to use anything that pragmatically seems successful in getting an increased response to the Gospel. Paul explains this temptation that is built into Gospel ministry in 2 Timothy 4:3-4: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
Without an absolute commitment to consistently teach the whole council of God, there is no protection against false teachings. This is why the second century church was known as the “Age of Apologists.” Yes they persuasively explained to nonbelievers (Greeks, Romans and Jews) why the Gospel is true, but they also confronted and refuted false heresies. Irenaeus’s “Against Heresies” is a rich theological apologetic that summarizes Gnosticism, analyzes it and biblically critiques it quoting almost every book of the New Testament.
Theologically critiquing false teaching is an essential part of biblically faithful ministry in today’s Evangelical church. False teaching always springs up like weeds alongside the wheat of Gospel truth. If Evangelical leaders do not follow the example of the Apostle Paul, they are in danger of allowing the weeds of heresies choke out the seed of the Gospel.
We can see a modern example of this sort of distortion of Christian truth in the heresy of the health and wealth Gospel, and its sister heresy of the idolatry of personal fulfillment. Personal fulfillment is the dominant goal for many people in the world. In this context, it is a great temptation for Evangelicals to argue that Christianity is a means to a more fulfilling life. The Gospel becomes a means to fulfillment, and the church becomes another place that promises to satisfy emotional desires.
But the Lord did not promise the sort of fulfillment in this world that many are looking for these days. In the Garden of Gethsemane, even our Lord himself called out, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matt. 26:38). The goal of a Christian’s life is faithfulness, not fulfillment. It is not wrong to desire happiness. Rather the question is how does this desire for happiness distort how you make decisions? Does it shape how you present the Gospel to nonbelievers? From a biblical perspective, fulfillment is a gift, not a goal.
c) Our method of evangelism often shapes our message
At different times in history, various ideas, methods, and tools were influential in separate cultures. The Christian church has often adopted and used these ideas and tools in its work. Augustine promoted the certain philosophical ideas which were pervasive in his classical culture:
“If those who are philosophers… have said things which are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared; rather what they have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use.” 9
Augustine compared this borrowing of cultural tools to Moses’ Israelites taking the gold and silver from Egypt at God’s command. But the danger of this cultural accommodation is that the Christian church and message has often been profoundly shaped by using popular culture ideas and methods. We see that today Evangelicals are often uncritically using cultural tools in their attempts to communicate the Gospel. An example of this is how some Evangelicals use marketing to communicate the Gospel.
Christian leaders who use marketing identify a target audience and research their felt needs, then teach those portions of biblical ideas which address their target audience’s felt needs. Marketing makes the audience sovereign as it shapes or creates products to satisfy the audience’s felt needs and desires. The difficult or unpopular elements of the Christian message are eliminated by a marketing method.
What gets filtered out? Anything, like the holiness of God, that does not immediately address the audience’s felt needs. In a paradoxical way, by seeking to market the Gospel, the Gospel itself has become distorted. The Gospel becomes spiritual Jello which is molded into the shape of the marketer’s target audience’s felt needs.
An example of this marketing editing is the historic Evangelical understanding of God’s law. Central to the Protestant Reformation was the conviction that law precedes the Gospel. Classical Protestant theologians have emphasized passages like Romans 3:20: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin.” The reformers taught that one was not teaching the biblical Gospel if one did not emphasize how God’s transcendent moral law calls one into account.
Wesley, Luther, and Calvin argued that central to the biblical Gospel is the self-revelation that comes from being confronted with God’s holy law.10 As J.I. Packer writes, “Nobody can see what sin is till he has learned what God is.”11
The law provides this dual vision of God’s holiness and human sinfulness. The law reveals the cellar of our souls and is designed to show us that we cannot live according to its requirements. The law shows our corrupt motives and selfishness and the rationalizations of our reasoning.
The point behind this review of God’s moral law is that many Evangelicals’ Gospel is only about how much God loves sinners. Without a vision of the holiness of God that we get from the moral law, we don’t see ourselves clearly, and we have no reason to repent.
We must reject this picture of marketing the Gospel which views the apostles as those who “opened ‘franchises’ (local churches) to further spread the product.”12 The Gospel is not a Big Mac, and Jesus did not die as the first step in a marketing plan. Lost in this marketing mindset is the compassion and love of Jesus who wept over Jerusalem. God’s love and his holiness are obscured in a global marketing plan. It is a modern distortion of the Gospel.
When we use marketing strategy in evangelism, we neglect other vital areas of the biblical faith, such as discipleship, and we leave the door open to false teachings. This marketing slant to evangelism ties into another of Evangelicalism’s strengths.
2) EVANGELICALS HAVE ENTREPRENEURIAL AND RESULTS-ORIENTED LEADERSHIP
Evangelical leaders tend to be more entrepreneurial and more focused on the local or situational context. We are able to quickly identify needs and to create new strategies and innovate leadership best practices. Moving a top-heavy bureaucracy to respond to a need or opportunity is usually not a quick or successful strategy in business or in ministry. Partly because Evangelicals are not organized by any single organizational structure, we are able to quickly respond to problems and to establish new strategies and even new organizations. Evangelical leaders value results and prioritize stewardship and strategic thinking.
Evangelicals are also able to train and release new leaders more quickly. Evangelicals are able to equip and develop relatively young individuals into significant leadership positions. Evangelicalism is better equipped to identify and quickly train young leaders and release them into an influential place of ministry.
What are the weaknesses of Evangelicals’ entrepreneurial and results-oriented leadership?
a) We measure our effectiveness by numbers
In a previous life, I was the Chief Operating Officer of an Investment firm. To invest in anything, you need to be wise and seek to be a good steward by being effective and strategic.
Both Evangelical leaders and donors are focused on evangelism and counting conversions, baptisms and church plants as the primary means they use to evaluate what they do and where they give. Evangelical strategic and philanthropic thinking is dominated by thinking about numbers and measurable outcomes.
I think this is coming from good intentions. Evangelical funders I know are sincere, gifted, and faithful. They want to be good stewards and invest wisely the resources the Lord has given them. Very importantly, they seek to objectively evaluate their giving decisions and not just emotionally respond to the next charismatic leader or heart-wringing need.
What lies behind this thinking? Most Evangelical donors operate from their professional experience as business leaders. In business, we are taught to evaluate the organization’s “bottom line,” and that bottom line is numbers. We can learn much from a close analysis of an organization’s financial statements. Without reading these documents, one doesn’t understand the organization’s actual efficiency or effectiveness or return on investment.
But there is a limit to the usefulness of numbers. In fact, you can’t measure the most important things in life. You can’t quantify someone’s love. You can’t empirically measure spiritual maturity. You can’t measure the value of someone’s discipleship of another person. Numbers are valuable and important, but they are not the only thing that is important in life or ministry.
Another element of false thinking resulting from this fixation on numbers is the “Great Commission” to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Some seem to turn the Great Commission into the “great equation,” evaluating the effectiveness of a strategy only by the number of conversions or baptisms that take place.
But what was the Great Commission?
Jesus’ call was to “make disciples,” not to “make conversions.” Yes, Jesus taught large groups and had a wider circle of disciples that he spent time with, but Jesus invested three years primarily in 12 apostles. When Jesus called them to make disciples, He was teaching them to do what He did with them – to invest the largest amount of time in smaller circles of intense relationships. But with Jesus’ strategy of primarily focusing on 12 individuals over three years, would Jesus have produced numbers large enough to secure a grant from a typical Evangelical foundation?
Don’t misunderstand me. Numbers are important and one of the tools we should use to evaluate a ministry. But it is only one of the tools we should use.
We do need numbers to help us understand how to give and work, but we also need to use qualitative research methods. In simple terms, we need to get to know people, build relationships, ask questions, and see with our own eyes.
b) We undervalue the importance of Truth in leadership development.
A biblical worldview is ruthlessly honest. Scripture is a mirror which reveals our wrong motives and tears apart the tissues of our rationalizations. One of the ways it challenges us is to make us prioritize teachability so we are willing (and even eager) to learn how to become Jesus’ disciples (learners) in every area. We even need to learn from those who don’t agree with us concerning our core convictions.
Evangelicals profoundly disagree with the Roman Catholic Church on two of the most important Christian convictions – how are we saved (we know we are saved through faith alone) and authority (we know that the Scriptures are the only source of revelation and truth). Some Evangelicals are naïve about the gulf separating Evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism. But even if we do understand how far biblical faith is from Catholicism, this doesn’t mean Catholics are always wrong. In the same speech I quote above, Pope Benedict critiques the growing Evangelical church which is supplanting Catholicism: “This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability.” He is correct. Evangelicalism is weak in its institutions, lacks the full development of its theological thinking and is often unstable. Recently for example, there was a survey in the United States, which documented that atheists had a stronger religious knowledge than Evangelicals.13
Much of world Evangelicalism emphasizes emotions at the expense of the mind. In our emphasis on experiencing the new birth, and a pietistic love for the Lord, we Evangelicals have often not valued the importance of truth, education, and knowledge. In particular we have not learned the wisdom of Christian thought, the history of 2000 years of reflections on the Scripture.
But why did the Lord select Paul to be “my spokesman before the Gentiles and kings”? (Acts 9:15) At least in part Paul was chosen because he was well trained intellectually. Paul was so educated that Festus exclaimed, “Paul, your great learning is driving you mad.” Paul was able to communicate to Greeks as a Greek and as a Jew to the Jews because his training was wide and deep.
In our attempt to quickly develop leadership and address needs, we have often discouraged emerging leaders from pursuing a robust theological education. Many Evangelicals understand “academia” as dry, abstract, archaic, and useless and antagonistic to pragmatic common sense, which is real, down-to-earth, relevant, and practical.
(I should pause in this discussion, to underline that there is a legitimate suspicion in many Evangelicals’ minds about the effect of graduate theological education. Seminaries have acquired the reputation that eager, vibrant young Christians often enter their front doors, only to exit prideful and ineffectual eggheads out the back door. The Evangelical jest about preachers graduating from a cemetery has a biting truth).
Yet Paul was no model of a dry orthodoxy learned in a classroom or an empty academic approach. The best of Evangelicals have imitated Paul and combined a passionate love for God and a love for truth. We are called to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
As we reviewed, the Great Awakening leaders’ priority was evangelism, but they failed to intellectually train the Evangelical leaders. This led to the uprooting of English Evangelicalism by the intellectual movements of the 19th century.
Figure 4.Like a business that delays long-term investment in order to show dividends in quarterly statements, a pragmatic approach within Evangelicalism prizes immediate success. If we want to raise up a new generation of Apostle Pauls to persuasively communicate the Gospel today and defend it against various heresies, it will take an intensive education and mentoring. The development of solid, mature, Christ-imitating leaders who can lead our churches, organizations and denominations is worth the investment of time.
c) Because Evangelicals focus on entrepreneurial leadership, we are often not good in working in partnership and sharing resources.
How often have we seen it? A new leader emerges to start a new ministry or strategy without realizing (or at least caring) that the problem is already being addressed by a half dozen faithful and effective ministries. This replication of Evangelical ministries has no vision for cooperation or partnership. For all practical purposes, such a new ministry is a spiritual business in competition with other ministries.
How does the typical Evangelical ministry establish a strategy? Following classical business strategic thinking it clarifies a need, establishes a vision, and initiates a strategy to achieve the vision. There is no place in a business model to share best practices and encourage and serve others. Each business shaped ministry is a separate silo, a fiefdom, blind to many of the Kingdom’s needs and priorities.
We try to manage our churches and organizations with the best of management principles and tools, and by default we don’t follow the rich biblical model of leadership. What about all the biblical teaching about “serving one another,” “encouraging one another,” and “loving one another”? Our leadership strategies and methods are often only a pale reflection of the world’s management techniques, rather than a profoundly rich biblical understanding of leadership.
For example, Evangelicals typically do not create strategies to foster partnerships, share best practices, or form networks to serve and equip leaders from other organizations. But we should. There is an enormous need for partnerships and coalitions in working together.
CONCLUSION
What can we learn from this overview of Evangelicalism’s strengths and weaknesses?
Evangelicalism is a powerful mission movement across the globe because its leaders are passionately committed to communicate the Gospel and are innovatively leading dynamic and entrepreneurial organizations.
But like John Wesley leading the Great Awakening, the leaders of modern Evangelicalism are focusing on evangelism at the expense of other crucial biblical priorities. The result is a church that is a mile wide but a ½ inch deep. At the same time Evangelical leaders are not typically theologically well trained and do not have the biblical discernment to identify and analyze the European unbelief that is infecting their cultures nor to detect and confront false teaching or false models of ministry. Like the English church in the Great Awakening, the Evangelical church in the Developing World is vulnerable to the waves of unbelief that are infecting their cultures with a deadly spiritual virus.
We began our discussion in this “Global Vision of the Gospel” blog series with a bird’s eye view of Evangelicalism with the stunning news of Evangelicalism’s growth in the Developing World and its simultaneous decrease in Europe. We then described why Europe is so influential globally and how European unbelief is the fastest growing religion and the greatest global opponent to the Gospel. This led us to evaluate why European Christianity was profoundly weakened by unbelief as both a lesson to European Evangelicals and as a warning to Evangelicals in the Developing World. Today we have reviewed Evangelicalism’s strengths, and its accompanying weaknesses, to understand better why Evangelicalism has been particularly vulnerable to European unbelief.
But how should we respond to these global realities? What is the way forward for Evangelicalism globally? What are we to do?
Come back next week and we will examine these vital questions.
1 Some text in this blog is taken directly or developed from my book Willow Creek Seeker Services: Evaluating a New Way of Doing Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996.
2 “Address of Pope Benedict XVI.” (Sept. 23, 2011). http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2011/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110923_evangelical-church-erfurt.html
3 Pew Research Center. “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region,” (Nov. 13, 2014), 26. http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/11/Religion-in-Latin-America-11-12-PM-full-PDF.pdf
4 Pew Research Center. “Share of Catholics Decreasing in Latin America; Protestants and Religiously Unaffiliated Increasing” in “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region,” (Nov. 13, 2014), 26. http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/11/PR_14.11.13_latinAmerica-overview-18.png
5 Pew Research Center. “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region” (Nov. 13, 2014), 14, 27. http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/11/Religion-in-Latin-America-11-12-PM-full-PDF.pdf
6 Barrett, David B. World Christian Encyclopedia: Second Edition, Volume 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
7 Packer, J. I. and Oden, TC. One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus. Downer’s Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, 2004, 162-3.
8 John Walter. “Weeds won’t be gone.”(August 3, 2010). https://www.flickr.com
9 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine. Trans.by D. W. Robertson. New York: The Free Press, 1958, 75.
10 This topic is covered more fully in my book Willow Creek Seeker Serviceson pages 261 through 265. The following sources constitute my original source material for Luther, Calvin, and Wesley:
Ewald M. Plass, comp., What Luther Says, vol. 2. Saint Louis: Concordia, 1959, 757-8.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. ed. John T. McNeil, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, 369.
Outler, Albert C., ed., John Wesley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, 60.
11 Packer, J. I. A Quest for Godliness. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990, 169.
12 George Barna. Marketing the Church. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1988, 33.
13 Pew Research Center. “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey.” (Sept. 28, 2010). http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/
Greg Pritchard earned his MA from Trinity School of Divinity before continuing on to finish his PhD at Northwestern University. The intersection of theology, history, philosophy and sociology is Greg’s primary focus both in teaching and writing. He has taught graduate-level courses on apologetics, theology, history, leadership, the New Testament, ethics, and Christian Thought at American, European, and Asian institutions of higher learning. His book, Willow Creek Seeker Services, has been published in four languages. In addition, Greg has worked as the COO at a Chicago investment firm. Currently, he serves as the President of the Forum of Christian Leaders and as the Director of the European Leadership Forum.
The Forum of Christian Leaders (FOCL) is the sponsor of the European Leadership Forum (ELF), which seeks to unite, mentor, and resource European evangelical leaders to renew the biblical church and re-evangelise Europe. This happens first at the ELF's annual meeting that occurs each May in Poland. In addition to the ELF, FOCL is host to an online media library and learning community for evangelical Christians. Learn more at foclonline.org and euroleadership.org; or join us on Twitter @FOCLonline and Facebook Forum of Christian Leaders.
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