[CS-FSLUG] Where Do You Start?

[Ed Hurst]

Where Do You Start?

We call it "the Gospel Message." That's taken from a couple of Old 
English words that mean "good story." That's how they translated the 
Latin word evangelium. Naturally, the best story we could tell would be 
the story of Jesus Christ. By the grace of God, I was born with a gift 
for story-telling. What about those who have no such gift? How do you 
tell the story?

Growing up, I came early to the calling to preach, when I was 16. I had 
been hearing that call since I was born-again at age 9, but never quite 
knew what that relentless urge meant. While trying to figure it out, I 
came quite close to insanity. At age 15 I could have been committed to 
psychiatric care, but I did a great job of hiding my misery, my 
self-destructive desires, the constant fear of being found out. That 
demon was tossed out when I finally realized it was the call to ministry.

Why did it take so long? Frankly, I blame the churches where I attended. 
Not each individually, but the whole bunch of them. Not one of them 
offered anything that resembled a discipleship program for kids. Now we 
have such things, thankfully. Back in the 1960s and early 1970s that was 
pretty rare. Suddenly it became all the rage. Why? I strongly believe it 
was the direct result of the so-called "Jesus Movement." For all those 
decades, there were established churches that reached their various 
constituencies. Right in the middle of social protest and sky-rocketing 
drug use and illicit sex -- hippies finding Jesus without the Church. 
While the public school system was borged by a plan specifically 
designed to turn kids into mindless robots, servants of the state, 
socialists by instinct, there was a bright light burning in the 
darkness. This light wanted nothing to do with pure tradition, that 
says, "That's the way we've always done it."

In the midst of a social rebellion that attacked the very middle class 
lifestyle that made it possible for all these kids to have leisure to 
read up on communist theory and play protest music, a small segment of 
them actually knew what they were rejecting. I've written plenty about 
the foibles of the middle class. The Protest Generation were little 
wiser, foolishly rejected everything without examining the clear 
historical record of consequences of such silliness. It was a revival of 
Romanticism, a philosophical orientation that somehow the light of truth 
would simply dawn on everyone who was seeking, and all would be love and 
peace. Who knows if it could have ever happened, since most of them had 
no idea what they were rejecting, and everyone followed some handful of 
messianic visionaries, who could scarcely enunciate the content of their 
alleged revelations. In the midst of this storm of idiocy, there was a 
quiet place of bright light. There was a small group that really did 
have a vision -- a vision of God.

This small group rejected the materialism that had crept into so many 
churches, and seized them with a reactionary suspicion of anything that 
had not been done in the past. Wearing their hippie fashions, they met 
in the open, baptized in public water fountains, and grasped the Truth 
with both hands. They wrote their own hymns of praise, putting Scripture 
to this new musical style, and took their gospel mission to the streets. 
Most of all, they began teaching that there was a matching change in 
behavior that should arise from this free and enthusiastic religion. 
That change did not come dressed in a suit and tie, with proper 
haircuts, and a predictable pattern to life. It came with a mighty 
effort to cut through all that window dressing and follow the real 
historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Naturally there were excesses and failures, long chases down dead-end 
paths. Plenty of folks mindlessly jumped on the Jesus Bandwagon, just 
like they did with Flower Power and all the other fashions of the day. 
Any excuse to try and be cool. Those fell away in due time. There was 
too much cost in discipleship, too many situations that demanded real 
sacrifice. As society at large changed to meet them half-way, most of 
these folks found themselves in churches sooner or later. Many churches 
had gotten a clue to reach the new generation where they were, to some 
degree. Sure, there was a bit of fakery and crass commercialism in that, 
too. Still, it breathed new life into the church, brought a new 
dynamism. The Lord uses whatever vessels are available, and He used the 
vessel of social revolution to shake His Body.

It's not that a genuine life of Gospel power dressed in a suit and tie 
couldn't reach them in the first place. It's that there were so few 
living that genuine life. Far too many had been sold into the slavery of 
assuming Jesus demanded a suit and tie, with brick walls and colored 
glass windows, before He would meet with them. So the Lord gave that 
life to a new generation of seekers and disciples who sought it. They 
brought that life back into the churches that would receive them, made 
room for them. But then that generation was itself compromised by 
building a collection of elements from that revolution into the 
organization. The revolution was institutionalized, and became "the 
Establishment." It was dissected, analyzed, and pretty much drained of 
life. Slowly, discipling became the Discipleship Movement. While that 
eventually took criminal extremes in some cases, the mainstream churned 
out dozens of neatly packaged discipleship programs. Much good was in 
it, but too much of it was just another sales gimmick, a market to be 
exploited. So the suit and tie became the slacks and polo shirt.

The Great Commission was also exploited. "Don't have the power to live 
and speak the gospel? No problem! We have here this great new kit of 
canned evangelism; just send check or money order. Monster Dowtown 
Church uses it, and Pastor Ambitious reports they had 2000 new converts 
and 1700 baptisms last year!" While a few weak souls did indeed find the 
courage to tell the good news that Jesus saves, most were entirely too 
wrapped up in keeping the list of steps memorized. They stored up great 
piles of Scripture passages, logical presentations, and convinced any 
number of people to say the right words at the right time in the 
outline. Then the newly saved soul asks how to deal with a homosexual 
son and the trained lay evangelist melts into the carpet. Oh, yes! We 
have discipleship. Yet, for some reason we haven't taken the time to 
make folks think like Jesus.

How wide is the gap? How far do we have to go, from the world in which 
we now live, to the world where Jesus reigns? It was hard enough for 
Jesus to break up the fallow ground of Jewish belief. At least there was 
a great deal of common ground in Eastern mystical orientation, in spite 
of the corruption of Alexandrian Pharisaism. However, the difference was 
still enough to get Him killed, as well as several of His closest 
friends. How far different that Gospel Message is from our cultural soup 
today! In every generation, our Enemy raises yet another barrier to 
prevent people from even grasping the message, much less accepting it. 
Where do we start in reaching alien hearts and minds?

We start from the same place Jesus started with each of us: the Miracle 
of Grace. Let the modern culture follow Satan ever so slavishly; whom He 
calls will truly be able to hear. He uses your voice as His, your hands 
and feet as His -- if you have taken the time to recognize when they 
aren't acting for Him, and seek His power to change. It's not necessary 
to catalogue all the ways we can fail Him, but to have some clear idea 
what it looks like to obey. Study the real thing, and the counterfeit 
becomes obvious. You start where you are, walk in the light you have, 
and move where He points, one step at a time. Strip away all that is 
merely the window dressing of the age, and simply see that sacrificial 
love in action everywhere you look.


cc'd to my blog

-- 
Ed Hurst
-----------
Software Freedom Day - 28 August 2004
Got freedom?
http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/
---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]