To modify our vision of what evangelism is, I have decided to mix two things together.  The first is to draw insights from 2 Corinthians 5 to provide the impetus to do evangelism.  As well as integrating those ideas with Ron Bennett’s proposed paradigm shift in evangelism.  To be effective in our evangelistic efforts we need to build an evangelistic culture within the church.  This requires both a change in our view of evangelism in addition to a positional change of where evangelism fits in the whole process.  The seven paradigm shifts proposed by Bennett to move from an individual to church based evangelistic effort are as follow;

• Event to Process
• Individual to Community
• On Campus to Off Campus
• Gifted to Gifts
• Decisions to Conversions
• “Pass-Through” to “Penetration”
• Enemies to Broken People

Yet this shift isn’t an easy one.  Even discussing evangelism openly and honestly with people isn’t an easy thing because of our current individualistic, event orientated, view of it.  Ron Bennett in Authentic Church-Based Evangelism In a Relational Age states it this way:

I have observed that there are three effective ways to get your heart rate up to a healthy aerobic level.  One is to jog for thirty minutes.  Another is to lose sight of your two-year-old toddler while shopping in a blown-glass retail store.  The third is to raise the subject of evangelism.  On hearing the word, most people look for exit signs, feign headaches, or remember appointments that were never made (Carson, p 270).

I don’t know how you see it but I have a feeling that Bennett hits it right on the money.  Evangelism is a subject that seems to bring welling up in us the worst fears and feelings of inadequacies so that, if you’re like me you would rather avoid even thinking about the subject.  Yet, there is also a part of me that would truly love to see people come to faith.

It is also a subject that is really hard to talk about without making people feel guilty.  I can’t even count the number of sermons that I have heard on evangelism in my life which left me walking away feeling like an utter failure.  Yet, not a single one of those sermons had any lasting impact on my life except for increasing my fear and desire to run from the subject.  That is not my aim!  I think that we need to look at this subject, not through the lens of our failure trying to have guilt motivate us.  Instead, let’s look at where our vision of evangelism is wrong, and strive to set each other free to explore the joy of proclaiming Christ.  My aim is that we will develop a greater understanding of the gospel, and a passion to love people.

Yet, we do still need to wrestle with the problem a bit more to see where our current perspective is failing us.  Apart from the fears that the subject generates another reason that we often set thoughts of evangelism aside is that we feel that it takes specific skill, knowledge or gifting to do it effectively.  The problem with this is that as George Barna reported in 1995;

. . .in spite of the one quarter trillion dollars spent on ministry by the church in America, only one in eight church members feels prepared to share their faith (Carson, p 270).

That was around fifteen years ago, things have to be better now right?  Sadly, that is not the case.  In a 2009 study the statistic was 1 in 10 (Stetzer).  Is it possible to obtain the knowledge and skill to be prepared to evangelize? Or are we looking at evangelism wrong from the outset?

Well at least there are those gifted with evangelism out there, right?  I have run across a few of them in my life.  Most of them are the ones who write books on evangelism, or lead seminars.  Truth be told, most of the times that I have read those books, or gone to those seminars I end up walking away feeling inadequate, guilty, and frustrated.  I may try to act like them for a few days, but it never turns out well and eventually I return to being myself.  Yet, this is often tied with our view of evangelism as an event where we throw the gospel out at someone and hope it sticks like one of those Velcro balls you throw at a target.  We look at it and say I am not that outgoing, or I am not knowledgeable.  We think, I could never answer that person’s questions.  Then we decide that evangelism is primarily for those who are gifted.

After all, you wouldn’t want just anybody to perform surgery on you, would you?  You wouldn’t want your bank account to be looked at at the gas station, would you?  You wouldn’t want to assign the keeping of the family checkbook to your second-grade son, would you? . . . . And then comes the killer conclusion: ‘I shouldn’t share the gospel with others – at least, not much.  And when I do, it will only be with close friends… and maybe only after a long time… and only if they ask me first… and only if I’ve had my quiet time. And only if… (Dever)

I think you get the picture; we are talking ourselves out of evangelism. So we decide to leave evangelism to the gifted and the professional.

Where does this idea that the work should be left to those with a gift of evangelism come from?  There are two places in scripture where there seems to be a connection.  In Ephesians 4:11 the evangelist is listed along with Apostles and Pastors and Teachers.  Also in Acts 21:8 Phillip is called “the evangelist.”  Yet, I think one of the greatest sources for this thinking is the Elmer Towns Spiritual Gift assessments.  They list evangelism as one of the spiritual gifts, and so if that isn’t on your list then we feel ok in leaving it to other people to take care of.  So the question is how many people have this gift.  Twenty years ago when Towns first published his gift assessment he stated that between 10 to 20% of Christians have this gift (Stetzer).  So, even if we go with the lower number and say 10% that sounds good.  So how are we doing?  According to a 2009 study looking at What Christians Say About Their Spiritual Gifts only 1% of Christians feel that they have the gift of evangelism which is down from 4% in 1995 (Barna).

So how many of you feel that you have the gift of evangelism?  I think for myself that I agree with Bennet when he says;  “. . .I find that most people don’t want to be gifted in evangelism.  Moreover, most people don’t even want to sit next to people who are gifted in evangelism” (p 271)!

We live in a world where outreach and evangelism are getting harder because the world is getting more resistant and Christians are getting more timid.  So instead of looking to the gifted to do this work we need to discover a broader vision of evangelism.  We need a way to evangelize which isn’t dependent on the 10% but engages the rest of us in the 90% as well.

Individual to Community

The first step in this change is for us to move from simply an individualistic view of evangelism to one that also incorporates, or even emphasizes, a view of community.  Instead of evangelism being what individuals do, it would be the work of the individuals in community.   Certainly every believer needs to have a growing understanding of the gospel that they can express, but ideally evangelism should be seen as a function of the church community.  This would provide a division of labor and the utilization of diverse gifts to the effort.   We all come to faith individually but part of that is also the incorporation into the body of Christ.   Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (ESV 5:17-19).

I am sure you can see already where these verses have an evangelistic tone.  Yet, I don’t want you to simply jump there yet because there is something that we need to catch first.  In both first and second Corinthians Paul is dealing with problems in the church.  Here in this second of the two letters, Paul is defending himself and his message from, what Paul labels, “the super apostles.”  They have come into the church and are attacking his credibility.  They are pointing to his message and saying that Paul is off and not reliable.  The good that comes out of that for us is that we get to hear what Paul’s teaching to the church was.

Where Paul point us to first in theses verses?  He is pointing to the experience of the Gospel.  What we have been given is not a message of facts to give assent to.  Don’t get me wrong; there are facts in the message, my point is that simply agreeing to the facts alone does not change anything.  We must experience the reality of the gospel in our own life.  When we put our faith in the work of Christ it is meant to be a transforming experience.  Paul here says that any individual that is in Christ is a new creation.

There are several things that should stand out to us in that verse.  The first is Paul’s use of the individual.  We don’t see it so much in our English translations, but most of the “you’s” in the New Testament letters – especially in Paul’s – are plural referring to the entire church.  Not here in the beginning of verse 17.  If “anyone” is in Christ then “he/she” is a new creation.  Each of us needs to experience this reality individually, but Paul quickly changes from the singular to the plural.  In verse 18 and on we see that this individual experience becomes a corporate reality.  And that reality is an expressed reality.

Yet oddly enough evangelism curriculum and evangelism programs focus on the individual.  They do not provide the understanding that the Holy Spirit most often uses a variety of individuals in the process of evangelism.    Also, the dynamic of community life is often a necessary and vital enhancement of that process.  In John 13-34-35 this principle is driven home.  Love within the community of faith is a proof of the reality of our faith in Christ.  We need to create spaces in which seekers can see and interact with our communities as well as a communal evangelistic vision which allows that application of different gifts to the evangelistic process.

Event to Process

In addition to the movement from individual to community, we also need to move from an event orientated view of evangelism to process view.   I think that one of our greatest struggles is that we lose sight of the impact and importance of the Gospel’s continual impact on our own life as individuals and a church community.  John Piper in A Godward Life writes;

One of the reasons our witness to God’s reality is minimal is that our understanding of God’s reality is minimal . . . What we need is a big picture of a great God who is utterly committed to joyfully demonstrating his greatness in doing us good . . . It is not enough to believe that God is big and strong and fearsome – which he is. We must experience this magnificence. . . (30)

I remember a few years back listening to a speaker talk about revival.  To tell the truth I can tell you where I was when I heard these words but I cannot remember who the speaker was.  Still, he said that if you could talk to the people who were impacted in the middle of a revival and ask them what made the difference in their lives they would say “it was the gospel.”  This then would lead you to ask the question, “Didn’t you know the gospel before?” To which they would reply, “Yes, but I didn’t REALLY know the gospel.”  See the difference wasn’t in their knowledge of the gospel, but in the experience of it.  This is what motivates evangelism, not guilt.  As Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:11; 5:11b “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”

Most of us are very aware of the story of the fall, yet for me the Lord has really used it to impact my life in new ways these last few years.  Just think about the story with me.  Adam and Eve are in the garden and they eat of the tree that god told them that they were not to eat of.  Most of the time we breeze through the story because we know it so well, but think about what that tree was called; it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Doesn’t that seem strange to you.  For most of my life I never thought anything of it, but the idea it expresses is that we were not supposed to be the ones judging good and evil.  Humanity was supposed to be dependent on God for judgement of what was good and what was evil.  So Adam and Eve eat the fruit, what happens?  The first thing is that they realize that they are naked.  This doesn’t point simply to the lack of clothing, but to vulnerability.  When they become the moral judge they determine that they are vulnerable and need to be protected.

What comes next?  When faced with what they did and standing before God, they pass judgement on God.  Adam states; “The woman YOU gave to me” (Gen 3:12a).  This then becomes the problem of humanity.  We try to sit as moral judge of what is right and wrong, but the problem is – like Adam – our vision is very limited.  We are like a two year old visiting the zoo.  When the lion is in its place that is a good thing, but when the two year old wants to pet the lion, not so much.  All they can see is a big cat with soft fir and cannot see why you would deny them this pleasure.  They throw a temper-tantrum railing against the injustice of it all.

In our fallen humanity that two year old is wired in.  As we get older our perspective of reality improves a bit and we can see how petting a lion isn’t such a good thing.  Instead we replace it with other things; the love of friends and family, respect at home or at work, having security, being entertained or any number of other things.  Often, like the lion, when they are in their place they are good things.  Yet by declaring them to be the good in our life we are vulnerable.  We have to work to protect our good things from those who would deny them.  These “good things” then become bigger in our life and the gospel reality smaller.  Our amazement with the simple truth of the gospel diminishes.  Then, when people and circumstance don’t comply with our efforts to obtain our “good” things fail, the like a two year old we throw a temper-tantrum railing against the injustice of it all.  Our tantrums may be a lot more sophisticated than a two year olds would be, but they are also a lot more destructive to ourselves and to others.

Therefore, when we see that the gospels impact on our own lives is progressive it opens up possibilities in our view of evangelism as well.   Instead of viewing evangelism as only large event which declare the gospel, we can see the value of the smaller contacts and interactions.   Large event can be important for bringing people to faith, yet consistent and persistent evangelism in small events and encounters are vital in that process.  Just as we continually interact with the gospel and grow in its impact in our lives so too is this true with those who are not yet in the faith.

As Don Everts and Doug Schaupp relate in their book I Once Was Lost, evangelism needs to include the view of moving the unbeliever a step closer to faith.  They discuss it as bringing them over thresholds.  This is done relational connections where the gospel is both displayed and explained in a slow methodical kid of way.

Decision to Conversions

Along those same lines we need to move away from trying to get people to make “decisions” and instead have a view towards conversions.  To come to Christ in faith we must first see God as good and valuable.  We may not realize it but that moves us away from our position of defining what is good for ourselves and once again letting God define for us what is good.  As Paul state in 2 Corinthians, at that moment we become a new creation.  No more are we defined by Adam’s sin but Christ’s obedience.  Christ, the one who always saw what God said as good to be truly good – even the cross.  This change isn’t simply defined by a decision that was made, but instead it is a conversion to a new way of life and think centered on the reality of Christ.

The Gospel is at work reconciling us to God, the Christian life is the Spirit’s work of setting us free so that we can step down from the seat of moral judge and into the trust of a good God.  The problem we face is that we so easily take up the role of moral judge in our lives and put or trust in our “good” things.  When we work to express this reality of a changing perspective we can move people, both saved and unsaved, closer to God.

It is such a vulnerable position to be standing as moral judge.  We are always afraid that we will lose our “good things.”  Yet when we see the value of Christ and allow the Gospel to define what is good we are set free from the things that constrain us.  We see that we can be free to fail, because in Christ we have already succeeded.  We see that we can be free to face financial ruin because in Christ we have obtained riches beyond measure.  We see that we can be free to give because in Christ we have received all the blessings of God.  We see that we can be free to love our family for who they are because in Christ we have been made a child of the living God.  We can be free to die because in Christ we have eternal life.

Just as Christ worked to reconcile us, so too, are we given the job of reconciliation.  It is what Paul is doing with the Corinthians in our passage.  We need to experience the reality in the Gospel personally, but we are also to live it corporately.  We all need each other in this work of reconciliation.  I need to see into your life the struggles you face to be both confronted and encouraged in my own.  Yet, we cannot just simply keep that inside the community.  We need to let unbelievers close enough that they can see what the reality of life in the gospel looks like.   It is from this Gospel experience that the proclamation of the gospel should take place.

On Campus to Off Campus

We don’t often think about it this way, but the declaration of the gospel is intrinsically tied up with the gospel.  In 2 Corinthians Paul relates two out workings of the gospel in the life a believer.  Since we have been reconciled to God, then we have been given the ministry of reconciliation, and been made Christ’s ambassadors.  Both of these are tied with the declaration of the gospel in the world.  When Christ described the gospel to his disciples he tied the declaration of the gospel with the nature of the gospel as well.  We can see this in Luke 24:45-49;

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48   You are witnesses of these things.  And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (ESV).

The two are so tied together that Spurgeon states; “Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor” (Spurgeon).   So if we understand the gospel, we are about the work of proclaiming it.

Our experience of the Gospel is the motivation or podium that we speak from.  Yet, we must declare the gospel.  It is a vitally important part.  Yet, once again it starts with the church.  After making the point about our reconciliation done by Christ, and our part in the reconciliation of others, Paul continues in 2 Corinthians to point to the importance of the declaration of the gospel.  Look at Chapter 5:20 through 6:2;

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.  For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

The last two verses here in Chapter 5 are very powerful.  Do we view ourselves in this manner, as ambassadors for Christ?  Is that how we live?  It is interesting that Paul uses such gospel language when talking to the church at Corinth.  It is something that we would expect to hear in a passage in Acts when Paul is preaching to the lost.  Yet here it is.  I think that this is here for two reasons.  First, as we have already discussed, our need for the proclamation of the gospel doesn’t end the moment we believe.  Instead, it simply begins then.

Each of us needs to have people speak the gospel into our lives and we need to be speaking the gospel it to other people’s lives.  This is why God gives to his church pastors and teachers.  Once again this isn’t a job simply left to the professional and the gifted.  It is the activity that we all have been given.  It isn’t just the pastors and teachers who are Christ’s ambassadors; it is everyone who has been reconciled to God.

We learn how to live the gospel and declare the gospel when it is the topic of our conversations with each other.  Paul is imploring Christians at Corinth to be reconciled to God.  If this becomes the topic of our conversations with each other, in our homes, in our small groups, as well as from the pulpit then our very interactions with each other work to mature us in our faith and dependence on God as well as become the training ground for the proclamation outside of the church.  As Paul states in Philemon 1:6 it is in the proclaiming of the gospel that we gain greater understanding of the gospel.  There Paul states; “I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ” (ESV).

“Pass-through” to “Penetration”

Not only is the declaring of the gospel among us important for our continued growth, it is also important for those who are among us who don’t yet believe.  As Bennet states, there are three broad categories of people that the church needs to reach with the gospel.  The lost within the church, the lost who will visit the church, and the lost that won’t come to the church (272).

Think of it as an outward spreading spiral.  There will always be people in the church who don’t yet have faith.  They may be the children, or other family members of people in the church.  Then there are those whom can be invited to the church.  These may be friends or relatives that we come in contact with.  Or people who have had some positive exposure to Christians or Churches in the past.  The last group are the ones who the only way that they can be reached is by sending someone out to them with the message.

In the past the primary evangelistic method applied to this third circle has been “pass-through” in nature.  This means that efforts were expended to expose as many people to the gospel as possible and then collect those who express interested and spend additional time with them.  The problem with this is that it is easy for people to escape the influence of this kind of method; they simply say “no” to the event.  It also breeds a separation mentality in the church.  The penetration mentality focuses of a more long term presence of the gospel.  It is the view that evangelism is in the small conversations with co-workers over the course of the years a Christian works at a job.  It is a view of a church being involved and engaged in their community to be a faith presence of the gospel.  This approach is more difficult to ignore this penetration strategy of love, relationship, and service (Bennett 279).

Gifted to Gifts

In all of this we need to remember that we are not alone in this work.   When our view of evangelism is dominated by the public gifts of preaching and teaching then those with the non-public gifts conclude that they can’t do evangelism.  Yet, if we view evangelism as communal and a process it makes all of the gifts relevant for evangelism.  We need to see effective evangelism as the work of a team, a community.  As Paul states in 2 Corinthians, first and foremost we are working together with God.  Ultimately the work of reconciliation is His.  It is God who changes hearts and calls people to faith.  Thou he uses us to make his appeal; it is not up to us to make people to believe.

The calling of reconciliation is shared by all of us.  I think that it is the one failing of most of the evangelism curriculum that I have seen.  They focus on giving us as individuals the tools to share the gospel which is helpful and often needful, but it tends to disconnect us from the view of life in community.  Evangelism is truly a communal effort.   Rarely will someone come to faith simply by the involvement of only one person.  Therefore, we should not look at this as something we do alone; instead we have many different people here in different stages of life all with different gift and talents.  Together we need to look at how we will communicate the message of reconciliation to our community.

Enemies to Broken People

Lets’ look one final time at 2 Corinthians 6:3-13;

We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,  but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,  beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.  We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open.  You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.  In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.

How we live does matter to the message we proclaim.  We know that God’s intent in establishing the church was to bear witness to himself and to His character in the world.  As Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:10; “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known.”  In addition, according to John 13, the love that the New Testament community of believers had for each other was to be an integral part of their witness in the world.  So it is with us as well.

How we live, what we are willing to sacrifice; how we face suffering and strife all commends our words to people.  Our experience of the gospel needs to change and impact how we live.  Why do we sacrifice our personal time to gather together with each other individually and in groups to talk about God? Why would we send people around the world to share the gospel with people that most of us will never meet; why sacrifice or money and time to do that work?  Why would we leave our comfort zone to engage in relationships with our neighbors who do not yet know Christ?  The answer needs to be the gospel.

In this passage Paul shows that both through victories and triumphs as well as the way he endures hardship he declares the truthfulness of his message. He is declaring the value of the gospel.  How valuable is the gospel to us?  Would we be willing to give up our TV privileges to share the gospel life with each other?  Would we be willing to endure hardships to see people come to know Christ?  Yet this requires us to view the lost as broken people and not as enemies.  I think that one of the sad results of the “culture wars” is that Christians often start viewing non-Christians as enemies.  When we see them as broken people, then we can act as Paul, enduring hardship with a willingness to remove the obstacles that would keep people from the gospel.

So let’s work to put all of these pieces together in our church.  Each and every one of us who have placed our faith in Christ has received the benefit of His reconciliatory work in our lives.  But we have also been given the call to be ministers of reconciliation as well.  We cannot ascribe the task of declaring the gospel to a select few; instead to the measure of our gifting we are to be taking a part in the effort.  Yet we are to remember that we are not alone in this call; it is meant to be a communal effort.

Work Cited

Carson, D. A.. “Authentic Church-Based Evangelism in a Relational Age.” Telling the truth:  evangelizing postmoderns. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000. 270-292. Print.

Stetzer, Ed. “Church Planting & Ambition.” Church Planters Boot Camp. Acts29 Network. Sojourn Community Church, Lousiville. 11 Nov. 2009. Speech.

Dever, Mark. The Gospel and personal evangelism . Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007. Print.

Everts, Don, and Doug Schaupp. I once was lost:  what postmodern skeptics taught us about their path to Jesus. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2008. Print.

Piper, John. A Godward life . Sisters, Or.: Multnomah Publishers, 1999. Print.

Spurgeon, C. H.. “A Sermon and a Reminiscence.” C.H. Spurgeon’s works as published in his monthly magazine:  the sword and the trowel.. Pasadena, Tex.: Pilgrim Publications, 1998. 389-394. Print.

“Survey Describes the Spiritual Gifts That Christians Say They Have.” Barna Update. The Barna Group , 9 Feb. 2009. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. <http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/211-survey-describes-the-spiritual-gifts-that-christians-say-they-have>.

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© Copyright 2011 Derek Perdue
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The secret [to highly evangelistic Christians/Churches] is really no secret at all. Ultimately, evangelistic churches see more persons become Christians through the passionate efforts of highly evangelistic Christians. More than any programs. More than any church events. More than anything else, we are the instruments God has chosen to use.

So what are these seven characteristics?

1. They are people of prayer. They realize that only God can convict and convert, and they are totally dependent upon Him in prayer. Most of the highly evangelistic Christians spend at least an hour in prayer each day.

2. They have a theology that compels them to evangelize. They believe in the urgency of the gospel message. They believe that Christ is the only way of salvation. They believe that anyone without Christ is doomed for a literal hell.

3. They are people who spend time in the Word. The more time they spend in the Bible, the more likely they are to see the lostness of humanity and the love of God in Christ to save those who are lost.

4. They are compassionate people. Their hearts break for those who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They have learned to love the world by becoming more like Christ who has the greatest love for the world.

5. They love the communities where God has placed them. They are immersed in the culture because they desire for the light of Christ to shine through them in their communities.

6. They are intentional about evangelism. They pray for opportunities to share the gospel. They look for those opportunities. And they see many so-called casual encounters as appointments set by God.

7. They are accountable to someone for their evangelistic activities. They know that many good activities can replace Great Commission activities if they are not careful. Good can replace the best. So they make certain that someone holds them accountable each week, either formally or informally, for their evangelistic efforts.

So how do these match up in your life? I have to say that I found this list to be a little convicting. As Rainer states: “Sometimes we ask the question ‘What is my church doing to become more evangelistic?’ But the better question is ‘What am I doing to become more evangelistic?’”

Be sure to read Thom Rainer’s entire post.

TOP CHURCH BLOGS (as of January 17, 2009)

1. Tim Challies
2. Between Two Worlds / Justin Taylor
3. Stuff Christians Like / Jon Acuff
4. Out of Ur
5. The Resurgence / Mark Driscoll

In addition to their political, national, and familial affiliations, young evangelicals have slowly moved away from identifying with their own theological systems and heritage (the trend of evangelical converts to Anglicanism that Robert Webber first noted has not abated–if anything, it has expanded toward Rome and Constantinople). Such conversions belie, I think, evangelicalism’s failure to articulate its own theological distinctives and advantages and its rich intellectual and spiritual heritage. Few young evangelicals who convert have read–much less heard of–the writings of John Wesley, Andrew Murray, A.W. Tozer or other giants of the evangelical past (one wonders whether the new evangelical leaders like Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Rob Bell and others have read them). And even fewer evangelicals are inclined to give the tradition in which they were raised the benefit of the doubt, to see the errors and problems and remain regardless.

It seem that we are facing the fruit of our disconnect with history.  People either don’t see the need to be a part of anything or they are running to the places where tradition is evident.  Thinking about this brought to mind a prophetic warning by Edmund Burke that always makes me nervous when I look at things today inside and outside the church:

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated… that they should not think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding the leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of an habitation – teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers… No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

You can also catch more from Matthew Lee Anderson at his blog called Mere Orthodoxy.