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| Is this a Biblical statement? |
4. The New Pragmatism
One of the defining problems of the evangelical church in our era is “a spiral in loss of confidence in the power of Scripture.” Tragically, evangelicals often openly doubt the attracting and saving power of the gospel, and various forms of pragmatism are the result.
For example, for decades the "church growth gurus" have been telling us that in order to get unbelievers to listen to the gospel we need to attract them first with snazzy entertainment and cultural coolness. Build a bowling alley in your church to attract the unsaved, and then you’ll be able to preach the gospel.
Today, another pressure has been added. After centuries of general acceptance in American and Western European culture, evangelicals today are reeling due to the public scorn being heaped on them by an increasingly hostile world. The radicals of the 1960s have grown up and are now running the culture, and as a result, the Bible’s exclusive and authoritative message is openly detested. Shocked that their fellow citizens are labeling them unloving and intolerant, and naively hoping to regain the cultural acceptance of a generation past, many evangelicals are hitching their wagon to the rising star of social involvement.
Social action is safe. It avoids the scandal of the gospel. It allows churches to be active and to be accepted by the world. Unfortunately, a spirit of pragmatism (and a corresponding spirit of doubt about the power of the gospel) appears to lie behind much of the social justice movement.
Unchurched Harry no longer lusts after entertainment. The new Harry is socially conscious; he has embraced the cause of the disenfranchised. Therefore, Las Vegas-style stage shows are passé. Today’s socially conscious unbelievers will be wooed to Christianity by means of highly visible social relief projects—examples of human caring that they can applaud and endorse even as unregenerate people. Once the social justice agenda has made them fond of the church, then they can be nudged toward Christ. It’s the new pragmatism: the gospel needs a lead-in because it will never succeed by itself.
While we gladly admit that most social relief projects are infinitely more noble lead-ins than the entertainment of the seeker movement, the dangers of pragmatism remain unchanged: (1) the gospel is moved into second place, and (2) the medium becomes the message. And when the church puts the gospel second, the gospel has a way of staying second: eventually it disappears altogether. The following description of a social-justice church plant in Sandtown (a neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland) provides a rather bare-faced example of doubting the efficacy of the gospel and of the medium becoming the message: "Without a holistic faith, there is no gospel in Sandtown. Living out the gospel in this context has meant building a collaborative network of church- and community- based institutions that focus on housing, job development, education and health care. In 2001, the full-time staff numbered over eighty. . . . Seeking the shalom of Sandtown means a concentrated effort to eliminate vacant and substandard housing, a K-8 school that has high standards and an excellent record of achievement, a job placement center that links over one hundred residents a year to employment, and a family health center that serves all residents regardless of the ability to pay. . . . . . . . Simply “preaching the gospel” would have failed."
The gospel in Sandtown includes housing reform, job development, quality education, and health care. In fact, it appears that about the only thing that the gospel in Sandtown does not include is Jesus Christ crucified for sinners. Jesus as Savior from substandard housing and unemployment is highly visible. Jesus as Savior from sin and hell is nowhere to be found, and frankly, isn’t even necessary to most of what is being done. The medium—social justice—has become the message.
5. Adopting the Agendas of Political Correctness
Political correctness is today’s secular piety. But the piety of political correctness does not include things like honesty, sexual purity, and humility. Instead, it values multi-culturalism, economic socialism, a false civility toward philosophical opponents, uplifting the oppressed, enfranchising the disenfranchised, and so on. In postmodern piety, personal sin is acceptable; social injustice is definitely taboo.
It appears that many Christians in the social justice movement have avidly adopted the piety of postmodernism. The result is that, in a subtle way, the world begins to set the agenda for the church. For example, we recently read a church planting plan for a major African city in which the author (a thoroughgoing evangelical) laid out his primary goals. At the same level of importance as preaching and evangelism, the following were included: to help the city change for the better socially, to increase the overall level of civility among its citizens, to encourage better race relations in the city, and to actively advantage the disadvantaged. The author made it clear that if the constituency of the church did not come from racially and economically diverse backgrounds, he would consider the church plant a failure.
While all those things are good to one degree or another, we would contend that on the whole they are not New Testament-identified goals for a church. In fact, they appear primarily to be a rehashing of the agendas of a politically correct, postmodern culture. And when the world sets the agenda, it is no surprise that the gospel, expository preaching, and serious theological training sometimes slip into second place. TO BE CONTINUED-
This series of articles was co-Authored by Joel James, D. Min., Pastor at Grace Fellowship, Pretoria South Africa AND Brian Biedebach, D.Min., Pastor at International Fellowship Bible Church, Lilongwe Malawi. Both authors have served as missionaries in Africa for over 20 years. This article first appeared in the TMS Journal- MSJ 25/1 (Spring 2014) 29–50.
