Becoming Missionaries to Our Cities

Rich Nathan

I. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones – “This demon is too deep for your ordinary way of doing
ministry!”

Back in 1959, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave a series of messages on revival. It was the
100th anniversary of the great revivals in the United States that was called The
Laymen’s Prayer Revival right before the Civil Wars, the great revivals of Northern
Ireland, Wales, and parts of Scotland.

In one of Lloyd-Jones’ messages, he looked at the text in Mark 9 where Jesus comes
off the Mount of Transfiguration and discovers his disciples trying unsuccessfully to
perform a deliverance on a boy. After Jesus cast the demon out of the boy, his
disciples asked him, “Why could we not cast it out?” Jesus answered, “This kind cannot
be driven out by anything but prayer.” Jesus was teaching his disciples that their
ordinary methods did not work for this kind of demon.

And so Lloyd-Jones went on to talk about how we need to distinguish between one kind
of demon and another, and between one kind of situation and another. He applies the
text to the problem of contemporary church in attempting to reach our culture. Here is
what Lloyd-Jones says:

“As we look at the expression this kind, I wonder whether as Christian people we are
aware of the real depth of the problem which confronts us in a spiritual sense at the
present time. I ask that question because it seems to me to be so clear, from the
activities of many that we have not even begun to understand it. They are carrying on
with certain methods that were once successful, and they pin their faith to them, and
they do not realize that they are not only not successful, but they cannot be, because of
the nature of the problem confronting them.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones goes on and distinguishes the problem facing the contemporary
church as compared to the problem confronting the Wesley’s and Whitefield’s as well as
the 19th century revivalists. He says in prior centuries the problem essentially was that
men and women were in a state of apathy. They were more or less asleep. If you went
back 100-200 years there was not a general denial of Christian truth. It was just that
people didn’t trouble to practice it. And so all revivalists needed to do was to awaken
them, to rouse them, and to disturb them out of their lethargy.

The problem today, he says, is not apathy. It is not merely a lack of concern or a lack of
interest, although that’s there. It is something much more profound. Lloyd-Jones says
that it seems to be a complete unawareness, even a denial, of Christianity altogether. It
is not just apathy that people have in the back of their heads – what is right and true, but

© Rich Nathan
they aren’t doing anything about it. Rather, people do not have Christianity in the back
of their heads at all.

So, the power that the disciples had to cast out demons was a good power, but it had
absolutely no effect, no value in the case of the boy they were trying to deliver. And
many of the methods that have historically been used to reach people were good
methods in their time, but they have very little power in reaching people today. Simply,
the way Lloyd-Jones is applying the text, Jesus is saying, “This demon is in too deep for
your ordinary way of doing ministry.” What we need is a far more searching, a far
deeper analysis of the people we are called to reach, and a critical evaluation of the
methods that are going to be effective in reaching them.

In a certain sense, Lloyd-Jones was anticipating what Lesslie Newbigin said a couple of
decades later.

A. Lesslie Newbigin was a missionary to India. When he came back to England, he

discovered that in order to reach people in the UK, you needed to think like a
missionary, who was attempting to reach an utterly non-Christian, or in the case of the
Western world, a post-Christian society. Newbigin, in very explicit terms, said that the
Western world was now a mission field again. If you are interested in reading one of
Newbigin’s books, you might want to pick up Foolishness To The Greeks.

But here is the situation we find ourselves in today in the Western world. It is absolutely
unique in the past 2000 years.

B. No one in history has every tried to reach a society that used to be Christian. There
have been times in the past where Ch1043ristianity was in decline, but the larger
society was still nominally Christian. Right now, there has been a significant shift in
much of the Western world. It is different in different places; more advanced in
Continental Europe and along the coast of the United States in the Northwest and
Northeast, than it is in the Midwest. The basic attitude of post-Christian society is that,
yes, we did try Christianity once back in the Middle Ages, back when women were
second-class citizens, and blacks were not citizens at all. But our experience of
Christianity didn’t work out so well for us, so we don’t need to consider it any longer.

C. The Loss of the Mental Furniture of Christianity

Tim Keller, who pastors in New York City and Manhattan in an area that is completely
post-Christian, talks about the loss of mental furniture necessary to bring about
Christian conversions. He said that during the years 500-1500 there still remained in
Europe many pre-Christian pagan groups, barbarians, if you will, who lacked the basic
worldview furniture of the Christian mind. They didn’t have a Christian understanding of
God, or truth, or sin, or the way we Christians do life ethically – the way we marry, the
way we think about sex and truth and divorce and violence.

But eventually, nearly everyone in Europe and in North America was born into a world
that was, at least intellectually, Christian. People were educated in a basic Christian

© Rich Nathan 2
worldview – a Christian view of God, a Christian view of the soul and body, of heaven
and hell, of rewards and punishment. They knew the Ten Commandments; they knew
the Sermon on the Mount. And so churches, when they engaged in evangelism, merely
needed to press home the truths that people already had floating around in their brains,
and personally apply these truths to the hearer. The hearers had some idea of what sin
was, they just didn’t think that they were sinners. They had some idea of the cross, they
just hadn’t personally applied the benefits of the cross to their own lives.

As the mental furniture of Christianity is disappearing from many people’s minds, the
older methods of doing evangelism are proving less and less effective.

1. The Growing Ineffectiveness Of Canned Approaches To Gospel Presentation

So packaged gospel approaches in which you train someone to do a very simple
presentation like evangelism explosion in which you simply ask people the question,
“When you die and go to heaven and Jesus says, ‘Why should I let you in’ what is your
answer?” And typically, in the past, when people have the mental furniture of
Christianity they would answer, “Well, because I try to live a good life.” You could then
point out that being a good person isn’t enough to get you into heaven; that Jesus’
standard is perfection and no one lives a perfect life except Jesus. And so you have to
rely on Jesus’ perfect life, his obedience, and his death for your sins in order to earn you
heaven.

But now, the demon is too deep. And the questions asked by evangelists in explosion
are almost nonsensical to the post-Christian. When I die and my soul goes to heaven?
I didn’t know I had a soul and I’m not planning to go to heaven. And who is it that I’m
going to see when I get to heaven? Jesus? And why will he be there? Why do I need
to answer his questions?

2. The Growing Ineffectiveness of Mass Crusades

Clearly the mass crusade has fallen on hard times in most post-Christian contexts. It is
still effective where there is a remembrance of Christianity. And it is still hugely effective
in Latin America and Africa. But its effectiveness is declining in much of the US. And
certainly we see very little mass crusade evangelism in Continental Europe or in the UK.

3. The Ineffectiveness of Grafting in Other Churches Programs

So people have tried different models – seeker-sensitive churches which help to some
degree; Alpha programs. But simply grafting onto the top of church a program or a style
of doing church doesn’t cut deeply enough. Lloyd-Jones and Newbigin had it exactly
right. Churches in the West need to adopt the mindset of missionaries, if they are going
to reach their communities.

II. The Story of the Bible is a Story of World Missions

Now, John Stott, in his book, The Contemporary Christian, has a fantastic outline of the
entire Bible in which he says that the narrative of the Bible is essentially a missionary
narrative. The Bible is the story of a missionary God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit –

© Rich Nathan 3
who creates a missionary people and who is working towards a missionary
consummation.

A. The Old Testament Is The Story Of Missions

Now a lot of people don’t understand this. They think that the choice of Abraham and
the choice of Israel stand in opposition of God’s heart for the world. But, of course,

1. We Read In The Original Calling Of Abraham These Words In Ge 12:1-4

1The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s
household to the land I will show you.
2“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples
on earth will be blessed through you.”
4So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-
five years old when he set out from Harran.,

And these words, “all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you,” became the
basis for our Capital Campaign when we built our new community center and raised a
few million dollars for world missions. God’s missionary purpose is summarized in this
text in which he promises to bless the whole world through Abraham’s seed, namely
Jesus Christ.

2. The problem in the Old Testament, of course, was that Israel kept forgetting the
missionary purpose of God to reach the whole world.

And instead, they tried to keep God’s blessings for themselves. And, of course,

B. In the New Testament the universal scope of God’s concern is even more plainly
found.
So, in the gospel of Matthew we see even in the genealogy of Jesus, God’s heart for the
world as pagans are included in the genealogy of Jesus. And the Magi visit him when
he is a baby bringing treasures in fulfillment of the Old Testament promises that the
nations are going to come to worship the God of Zion. And Matthew ends his gospel
with the Great Commission in which Jesus announces that he has been given all
authority and that we are to go to all nations.

C. The Holy Spirit, of course, is the missionary Spirit.

You see the Spirit’s activity on Pentecost giving the disciples foreign languages,
dramatically showing the international nature of the Kingdom of God. And so the Holy
Spirit empowers the church for world missions.

D. The Consummation of World History Involves Every People Group

© Rich Nathan 4
And then the great climax of the Bible is found in the Book of Revelation when John is
able to look through the open door and peer into heaven. What does he see? He sees
the great crowd of people standing before God’s throne. Re 7:9-10

9After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of
the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their
hands.
10And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the
throne, and to the Lamb.”

And so the promise to Abraham given so many millennia ago of his descendents being
as numerous as the dust on the earth, the stars in the sky, and the sand on the shore is
ultimately going to be fulfilled. The whole Bible is the story of a missionary God creating
a missionary people looking forward to a missionary consummation. Christianity is the
missionary religion.

But if we are going to be part of this narrative of missions, we Christians in the west
need to more and more adopt the mindset of foreign missionaries as we approach our
own communities. So, let me share with you a number of features of the mindset of a
missionary. And as we go through these, you might want to see where you are in terms
of adopting a missionary mindset.

III. The Mindset of a Missionary

A. Missionaries Must Love The Communities To Which They Are Called

Now, this is not to be taken for granted. Many of us as Christian leaders love our
ministries. We may love to preach, or to counsel, or to lead. We also love our
churches. We love the people in our churches. We love what God has done in our
church’s life. We may even love the church movement that we’re a part of.

But I don’t see that many Christian leaders, who love the communities that God has
called them to. I had to personally go through a conversion regarding the community to
which I have been called. I’ve always loved Vineyard Columbus. But I would say for
the first 10-15 years of my ministry my goal was to build a great church. It was not to
help to create a great city. And I would say for years that I was not in love with the city
to which God has called me. I just found myself in Columbus, but there were a number
of features of the city that I didn’t really like. I didn’t really like the absence of diversity. I
didn’t like the absence of the arts. I didn’t really like the location.

Missionaries have to go beyond their own ministries and their own churches and pray
God’s love for the city into their own hearts. One of my favorite verses in this regard is
Je 29:7

7Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.
Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”,

© Rich Nathan 5
We’re all familiar with Je 29:11
11For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not
to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.,

But missionaries more and more see that the prosperity and future health of their church
is tied to the prosperity and future health of the city to which they’ve been called. If the
city is drowning in immorality, then the people in your church will drown in immorality. If
a city is having a hard time financially, the people in your church will have a hard time
financially. If the city is having problems with crime or education, so will the people in
your church and the children in your church.

B. Missionaries Understand The Changing Context In Which We Find Ourselves

There are features in our community which make the community either responsive to
the gospel, or resistant to the gospel. Missionaries are able to put their finger on what
the issues are concerning gospel resistance or gospel responsiveness.

To give you a really simple example, Kevin Fischer, who pastors the Miami Vineyard,
when the Miami Vineyard started, it was entirely an Anglo church – a white, Anglo-
Saxon Protestant church. It was growing and Kevin is a good communicator. But
Miami, Florida is now only 15% non-Hispanic Caucasian. 85% of Miami, Florida is
Hispanic coming from the entire Latin American world and African American. Kevin
Fischer adopted the mindset of a missionary and over a 10-year period his church
changed from being virtually entirely an Anglo church to 70% non-Anglo. And if you go
to Kevin’s church you will find just the most eclectic style of worship – with Latin
rhythms, Spanish songs, rhythm and blues; the way Kevin speaks, the way he dresses.
He understood the changing context in which he found himself.

1. One Of The Changing Contexts That We Find Ourselves In Here In America Is

An Increasing Number Of People, Who Virtually Never Go To Church
According to George Barna, who has the very charitable definition of going to church –
that is “have you attended church in the last six months not including a holiday service
like Easter or Christmas, or a special event?” He just looks at the last six months.
Barna said the number of unchurched people almost doubled from 1991 to 2004. Since
1991 the adult population in the US has grown by 15%, but during the same time the
number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled rising from 39 million to
75 million, a 92% increase.

And an increasing number of students checked the box indicating “no religion” rather
than Protestant or Christian on college campuses. And so in a research study from
2004, an equal number of incoming freshmen checked “none” as claimed “Protestant”
on the question of religious identity.

One of the contexts in which we find ourselves doing church these days is declining
church attendance across the nation.

© Rich Nathan 6
2. The second context, of course, is the increasing ethnic diversity of our city and our
country.

3. A third changing context is the rise of addictions of all kinds.

And we have the incredible increase of addictions of all kinds – addictions to illegal
drugs, addictions to legal drugs, alcohol addictions, pornography addictions, sexual
addictions of all types, eating disorders.

4. A fourth is a decline of what Robert Putnam in his book titled, Bowling Alone, calls
“social capital.” By social capital, he is talking about informal networks of people who
meet together for a common purpose like bowling leagues, or PTA meetings, or League
of Women Voters, the NAACP, Jewish Women’s Groups. Virtually every place of
connection between human beings has declined except recovery groups and church
small groups.

5. The fifth feature of our changing context is the massive rise of fatherlessness. We’re
moving towards 40%of all American children being born out of wedlock. This comets the
rise of all the social problems that rise with fatherlessness.

6. The sixth feature is an age wave that is growing exponentially in the Western world
as our population ages and the massive Baby Boom generation moves towards
retirement.

Illustrations of Changing Contexts:

1) Surfing a Wave - Rick Warren
Another way to think about it is the way Rick Warren put it in his Purpose Driven Church
over a decade ago. He said that church growth is like surfing. Being Southern
Californian, of course, that made a lot of sense. But he said that most church growth
books fall under the heading of how to build a wave. He said that the key to church
growth was not trying to build your own wave, but to surf the wave that God has built.
Most great missionaries pay attention to the waves that God is building and capitalize
on those waves. So, for example, if we see God building an age wave, rather than
communicating to your church that the only people who are really valued around here
are young adults, why not communicate to your church that we have an entire strategy
for reaching half-timers, people who are transitioning out of their first careers and want
to move from success to significance.

2) Skating to Where the Puck is Going to Be – Wayne Gretzky

Missionaries understand the changing context to which they are called. Someone once
asked the great hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, what made him so great. He answered
that most hockey players skate to where the puck is. But he skated to where the
hockey puck was going to be. The Bible refers to people like that in 1 Ch 12:32

32from Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do—

© Rich Nathan 7
Great missionaries skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. They move
their churches accordingly.

C. Missionaries Are Always Learning, Always Studying, The Community To Which

They’ve Been Called

1. Always Reading
There are so many different ways for us to learn about where the puck is going to be,
and what the changing context is in which we are doing ministry. Certainly,
missionaries are people who always ought to be reading. And they read widely and
they read eclectically. They are reading business journals. They are reading research
reports. They are reading theology. They are studying what politicians are doing and
saying.

2. Getting Counselors from the Community

But there are lots of other ways to learn in addition to reading. Missionaries get
counselors from the context that they are seeking to reach. There are people who live
in the culture that you are trying to reach. So if you want to learn about that particular
segment of the culture, then you make friends with those people. Take the time to get
to know them and to understand the community. I’ve seen Marlene do that as she’s
made so many deliberate efforts to make friends with women who live in Cooper
Colony. She’s read so many books on race and diversity. Its by being friends with
people and by listening to them that you begin to understand someone else’s world.

3. Becoming Friends with Experts

Missionaries might become friends with the experts in certain areas – in education, in
government, in community service organizations, in health care.

What are the basic questions? We might ask the experts questions like:
• What changes do you see on the horizon for this community?
• What needs are going unmet in our community?
• Which three people really understand the people who live here?
• What are the most significant events that have taken place in this community’s
history?

Ask the right people the right questions.

D. Missionaries Prioritize Evangelism And Church Planting

1. The Status Quo is Unacceptable
Missionaries understand that maintenance of the status quo is not a possibility because
the status quo is seeing a declining number of folks who are connecting with church.
So we prioritize evangelism and church planting. And there is no one approach to
evangelism that is going to work in every context. Missionaries understand that there is
no one size fits all approach, or the key approach to reaching one’s community.

2. Do Something!

© Rich Nathan 8
I love David Parker’s statement. He said that for the first year or so when he got to
Lancaster, the church had simply stopped evangelizing. They were seeing very few
people come to know Christ. He was asking the Lord what method to use; what was
the key to reaching the community; what should he do? He said he felt the Holy Spirit
say something really profound to him one day as he was seeking and begging the Lord
for insight regarding what method to use. The Spirit of God said, “David, do something.
It doesn’t matter what you do, just do something.” And so the church could certainly
equip people in personal evangelism. The church could use Alpha. The church could
have moms’ groups, and singles’ gatherings.

3. The Church Must Become Outwardly Focused

But I think any program is basically doomed to failure, or at least to very limited success
unless the entire church becomes outwardly focused. So many churches have become
religious clubs in which members pay their fees. They are like golf country clubs, only
the interest of the members is not golf, it is God. You pay your subscription and you’re
entitled to certain benefits. You concentrate on what positions the club members have.

I love what Archbishop William Temple said a century ago when he said, “The church is
the only cooperative society in the world which exists for the benefit of its non-
members.” Certainly there is a little bit of exaggeration in this. There are lots of one-
another verses in the Bible. We need to practice the one-another texts in the Bible.

4. Whose Preferences Win?

The Tilts of a Leader
But William Temple had it right in terms of what I call the “lean of the church.” And I
believe that the church ought to always be tilted towards outsiders in terms of the way
that we do ministry. The preference that ought to win is not the preference of the
existing members of the church, the already found. But the way we do church ought to
be done according to the preferences of those we are trying to reach.

For years I’ve talked about the Four Leans (Tilts) of a Leader that compare to the
church and certainly compare to most of the church’s staff. The senior leader ought to
be leaning towards the unchurched and the lost. We ought to be leaning towards
leadership development. We ought to be leaning towards growth, constantly having the
attitude, “that’s great, how can we do more of this?” Because the tendency of church,
even church leaders, is maintenance. Gosh, we’re barely keeping up now…

There is never a time, no matter what God is calling you to, when you take your foot off
the pedal of evangelism. God may be calling you to a season of prayer, or fasting, or
holiness, or healing, or raising funds to build a building. But whatever else you are
doing, or being called to, every season is a season of evangelism. That’s what the
apostle Paul said in 2 Ti 4:2
2Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and
encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.

And then in 2 Ti 4:5

© Rich Nathan 9
5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an
evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

We are to preach the word; we are to evangelize. When? The fields are white unto
harvest and when it seems that things are really barren.

5. Evangelical Without Evangelism?

And I also believe that the senior leader needs to model this for everyone constantly
calling people to Christ, constantly having fresh stories of individuals coming to know
Jesus. The sad fact is that most evangelical churches, including most Vineyards, do
almost no evangelism at all. I regularly talk with pastors who say that everything is
going really well except with one notable exception, they are not seeing people regularly
becoming Christians.

The Christian researcher, Thom Rainer, confirmed this fact saying church leaders are
becoming less evangelistic. According to one Thom Rainer survey taken in 2005, over
one-half of the pastors surveyed made absolutely no evangelistic efforts at all in the
past six months. And in the US more than half of our Vineyard churches have seen less
than 5 converts in the last year.

Again, I don’t believe that you can simply graft a program, or do an evangelistic
message and expect it to have any impact in an utterly inwardly focused church. I
believe unless the entire leadership of the church is converted, so that the church takes
on an outwardly focused mindset, and this is a long process of conversion, where we do
some hard looking at where we are and what our stats have been, how many new
converts we’ve seen in the last 2-3 years, how many baptisms, no strategy is really
going to work. This begins with the heart of the church and its direction.

That’s why our church has essentially adopted William Temple’s and Dietrich
Bonheoffer’s view of the church and our vision statement reads: “Our vision as a
church is to be a relevant church that does not exist for itself, but for Christ and for the
world.”

Now, one of the things that churches have to ask themselves is what does their vision
statement actually say? Is there something in your vision statement that says you exist
for others?

6. Changing Our Evangelistic Methods

Tim Keller – Redeemer’s Church
But as Lloyd-Jones says the old methods won’t work in this new context because the
demon goes too deep. And I think the person who has most helpfully explored barriers
to gospel reception is Tim Keller from Redeemer’s Church in New York City. He talks
about four stages that people have to go through from complete ignorance of the gospel
and Christianity to its full embrace. He calls them:

© Rich Nathan 10
 a. Intelligibility
b. Credibility
c. Plausibility
d. Intimacy

By intimacy, Keller means leading someone into a personal commitment. The problem,
he says, with virtually all modern evangelism programs is that they assume listeners
come from a Christianized background, so they very lightly summarize the gospel
jumping from stages 1-3 in a couple of minutes and proceeding quickly to intimacy. So
let’s go through these.

1. Intelligibility means to perceive clearly. He is talking about what others have

called “worldview evangelism.” And if we look at worldview evangelism, it is what the
apostle Paul did on Mars Hill in Acts 17. He was functioning as a missionary to a
foreign context. And Paul spent nearly the whole time on God and his sovereignty. He
offered a God-centered philosophy of history and other basic planks in a biblical view of
reality. He mentioned Jesus only briefly and then he only spoke about the resurrection.

Now many people would say that he didn’t preach the gospel; that every time you
preach, you have to tell sinners that they are going to hell; that Jesus died on the cross
of them; that they need to repent and believe in him.

Bu the problem in this is until people’s minds and worldviews have been prepared,
unless they get the furniture, the worldview furniture, that when they hear the word “sin”
or “grace” or even “God,” they think about it in their own terms or categories, and they
misunderstand what you’re saying. Very often people, therefore, make so-called
commitments to Christ and quickly fall away when a sexual partner comes along
because they don’t understand the gospel furniture, they don’t have an understanding of
truth. For most post-Christian people, truth is what works for them in the moment.
There is no sense of truth that something exists outside of me, something that’s real no
matter what I feel, or what I think. We constantly have to preach and provide people
with an entire Christian worldview.

2. Credibility deals with the issue of gospel defeaters. This is where I think that Tim
Keller is especially strong and I would encourage you to go on his website which is at
www.redeemer2.com. He talks about defeater beliefs. The gospel defeater, according
to Keller, is a widely held belief that most people consider common sense, but which
contradicts a Christian teaching. So people think that if a certain belief, let’s call it Belief
A, is true, then Belief B can’t be true. There are different defeater beliefs in every
culture.

Illustration: But in post-Christian culture, people say “Well, Christianity can’t be true
because there can’t be just one true religion.”

In the Middle East, people have no problem believing that there could only be one true
religion. That doesn’t seem implausible at all. In the Middle East, people assume

© Rich Nathan 11
Christianity can’t be true because the American culture, based on Christianity, is corrupt
and unjust.

So each culture has its own set of defeater beliefs. And it is really helpful to include
some of these gospel defeaters and a response to them as you are preaching. For
example, a gospel defeater might be this notion that Christianity is the only true religion
and people object to the exclusivity of the Christian claim. How would you respond to
that? It is common to hear people say that no one should insist that their view of God is
better than all the rest. All religions are equally valid.

You could respond as Keller points out by saying this could only be true if first there is
no God at all, or second if God were an impersonal force that doesn’t care what your
doctrinal beliefs are about him. So as you speak, you are assuming (by faith!) that a
very particular view of God and you are pushing it as better than the rest. At best, this
is inconsistent; and, at worse, hypocritical since you are doing the very thing you are
forbidding. To say all religions are equally valid is itself a very white, Western view,
based in the European Enlightenment idea of knowledge and values. Why should your
view be privileged over everyone else’s?

Illustration: Christianity is too narrow and exclusive.

And in terms of exclusivity, you might also say that every community is exclusive. In
other words, every community has boundaries, otherwise it wouldn’t be a community at
all. The question is how do we treat people that are at the boundaries?

Let me explain. Here in Columbus we have a gay rights organization called Stonewall
Union. Let’s say a member of Stonewall Union’s executive board stood up and said, “I
have just become a Christian and I have become convinced that homosexuality is
something that can change. And so I am pursuing a process of change so that my
sexual orientation will no longer be homosexual, but heterosexual.” How long do you
think that person will be on the executive board?

Communities absolutely define themselves by certain beliefs and by certain values.

The issue of how we can all get along is not going to be settled by not having beliefs
and not having values. How we can all get along and live at peace is going to be settled
by how we treat people who disagree with us. Now, the founder of Christianity dealt
with people who disagreed with him by sacrificing his life for his enemies. The founder
of the modern Soviet states dealt with his enemies by killing them.

But Keller recommends that every pastor have a list of 10-20 key basic defeater beliefs
and speak to them constantly. Because you have to show people what they really do
believe and particularly that their defeater beliefs are faith assertions. They aren’t
scientific facts.

3. Plausibility is contextualization. Every missionary is engaged in

contextualization. We’re imitating Jesus in this. Jesus was the master contextualizer of
the gospel because he was incarnate and entered the world of the people he was

© Rich Nathan 12
seeking to reach. But contextualization is entering the thought worlds, the feelings
world, the cultural worlds of the people you are trying to reach and communicating the
gospel in a way that speaks to the ultimate issues that are of concern to the people you
are trying to reach. Every missionary contexualizes the gospel. We have the Bible in
English rather than in another in another language. We gather in a church building
rather than under a tree. We choose to sit during a message rather than stand. We
start on time rather that waiting for everyone to arrive. We wear certain clothes, we
don’t wear robes. We pick the kind of music we pick because all of these things
contextualize the gospel for the people we want to reach.

The apostle Paul, of course, was a master of contextualization in 1 Corinthians 9.

Now we need to be careful here.

1) Contextualization is not relativism.

It is relevantism. We are not saying that all truth is up for grabs. We’re saying that the
truth is the truth, but the cultural methods I use to communicate the truth are up for
grabs – the kind of technology I use, whether I use websites, MP3s, or podcasts, or
email, what my building looks like. The problem today is that people don’t know the
difference between relativism and relevantism. Doctrines are thrown up for grabs and
culture is held with a closed fist that we need to avoid as we try to reach the culture.
The one danger is the danger of irrelevant orthodoxy and the other is relevant heresy.

2) Irrelevant Orthodoxy and Relevant Heresy

Irrelevant orthodoxy so equates a certain moment in time, a cultural moment with the
gospel that we hold onto it with a closed fist. You know, Vineyard circa 1985 of the
Southern Californian variety that reaches white Baby Boomers who like soft-rock sound
is irrelevant orthodoxy. Vineyard critiqued traditional church 25 years ago for irrelevant
orthodoxy. We have to have pews; we have to have organs; we have to wear suits.
What cultural features might make us irrelevant?

At the same time, some part of the emerging church are in danger of moving toward
relevant heresy. See, I think there are three stages that people undergo as they begin to
try to be missionaries to our culture. The question is how do we stay on the tightrope of
relevancy and orthodoxy?

a. The Relevants
First of all, some people, you can call them relevants, try to take the existing church as it
is and make it relevant to the culture they are trying to reach. In terms of our worship,
our music, our outreach we just try to contextualize it to the culture.

b. The Reconstructionists
A second more radical group is what we might call reconstructionists. They say the
whole form of the church is irrelevant; the structure is unhelpful. And so we have to go
to a house-church style. We’re concerned about ecclesiology, the form of the church
and whether the old form of the church can reach this culture.

© Rich Nathan 13
c. The Revisionists
The third group is pushing further than this. We might call them revisionists. These are
folks who are not only challenging ecclesiology or missiology, but they are also
challenging basic tenants of our evangelical faith. Some are denying the substitionary
atonement, or the reality of hell, or the exclusive claims of Christ. The challenge of
missionary work is reaching the world without becoming the world. The salt can’t lose
its saltiness.

3. The Best of the Anabaptist and Reformed Movements

And so we have to balance on this tightrope and there is a tension between the holding
on of relevancy and orthodoxy, or in church historical terms having the best of the
Anabaptist movement and the best of the Reformed movement. The Anabaptists were
concerned with preserving the purity of the church. They often adopted a Christ-
against-culture model. The Reformed movement was concerned about transforming
the culture. Somehow we need to preserve the purity of the church, that is the saltiness
of the church, and also penetrate the culture with the salt being both Reformed and
Anabaptist. We need a thick kind of community that preserves the gospel, but also one
in which the walls are easily breached and people included.

E. Missionaries Are People Who Understand The Longings Of Their Communities.

Some for meaning; some for relief from shame; some for escaping the powers that
control them. The apostle Paul understood the longings of the community that he was
writing to. That’s why Colossians is such a different book than Galatians.

And if you were to list the longings of post Christians, what would you say is the heart of
post-Christians that would be demonstrated by a missionary church?

1. A Hunger for Love and Community

Well, certainly, one of the issues is a longing and a hunger for love and community.

a. Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa said that when she looked at the Western world

“People today are hungry for love, for understanding love which is…the only answer to
loneliness and great spiritual poverty. That’s why we [that is the sisters and brothers of
her Order] are able to go to countries like England and America and Australia where
there is no hunger for bread. But the people there are suffering from terrible loneliness,
terrible despair, terrible hatred, feeling unwanted, feeling hopeless, feeling helpless.
They have forgotten how to smile, they’ve forgotten the beauty of the human touch.
They are forgetting what is human love. They need someone who will understand and
respect them.”

Mother Teresa as a missionary to the West said that as she looked to the West, she
saw people starving for love. They were starving for community.

© Rich Nathan 14
It is no wonder because as missionaries to our culture we recognize the epidemic of
broken families, broken marriages, the isolation of people from each other as extended
families have completely broken down. People live all over the country no where near
to their place of birth. One of the questions people are asking as they encounter the
church is “is this a place of real community?”

b. John Stott on 1 John 4.12

John Stott did a lovely job of preaching on 1 Jn 4:12

12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is
made complete in us.,

In other words, God is invisible, no one has ever seen him. All that human beings have
ever seen of him is the glimpses of his glory. Now the invisibility of God is as John Stott
puts it, a great problem for faith. Pagans laughed at Jews saying, “You say you believe
in God, but where is he? We can’t find any evidence of him in your temple. There’s no
statue. We’ll show you our God. They have eyes, ears, and noses, and mouths.”

So, how do we deal with the problem of the invisible God? Well, God solved it in one
way in Jn 1:18

18No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in
closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.,

But the church has solved the problem of God’s invisibility in another way. John starts
his sentence the same way in 1 Jn 4 as he did in John 1, “No one has ever seen God…”
but then he concludes, “We love one another and his love is made complete in each of
us…” People will be able to encounter the invisible God if they see it in our love for
each other.

2. A Hunger for Justice

Now, there is another longing in contemporary culture that I see. It is a longing for
justice. People need to meet not only the God of justification, but the God of justice.

a. The Problems Confronted in the Old Testament

And in the Old Testament, if you asked what were the problems the prophets constantly
pushed against, there were two great problems that showed up over and over. They
were the problems of idolatry and the problems of injustice.

I believe that there is such a longing for justice, a longing to see the world made better
for people, there is such a massive concern for global justice; a billion people on earth
live on less than $2 a day; tens of thousands of people die every day of preventable
diseases, that if we are going to be a missionary to our culture, we have to be a
missionary to our culture, we are going to have to be known in our communities as
lighthouses of justice.

© Rich Nathan 15
b. See, I think that one of the things that make the churches credible in a post-Christian
culture is when the community around us says, “Well, we don’t necessarily share all of
the beliefs of this particular group of people. They take Christ way more seriously than
we do. But I shudder to think of this city without them. This church is such an important
part of the community; they give us so much, if they were to leave, we would have to
raise taxes because other people won’t give of themselves the way they do.”

This is what Peter says in 1 Pe 2:12

12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong,
they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.,

3. A Hunger for Transcendence

And if we were to talk about a third longing of the feature of the contemporary life, we
might say that there is in post-Christian people, a hunger for transcendence.

a. The Spiritual Emptiness of Materialism

Folks have experienced for nearly a century the spiritual emptiness of materialism. No
amount of consumption can satisfy our souls. We not only need bios – biological life,
we need zoe – spiritual life. And so in this quest for transcendence, this quest for
spiritual life, people are going in lots of different directions.

b. The Epidemic of Drug Abuse and the Practice of Eastern Spiritualities

There is, of course, the epidemic of drug abuse and the practice of various Eastern
spiritualities.

c. The Environment as a New Kind of Spirituality

Some people have taken up the cause of the environment as a new kind of spirituality.

d. The Pursuit of Sexual Excess

I think the major way that people see transcendence is through sex. I just want to have
some kind of connection beyond myself. Vineyard is so well-positioned to give people
in the post-Christian world an experience of transcendence through spiritual gifts,
through words, and especially by inviting and going after the awesome presence of God
in worship where we just say that we’re not satisfied with worship that does not bring
about an awesome encounter with the living God.

F. Missionaries Think Through A Process Of Reaching Their Communities.

Very often pastors go to a conference and get excited about a model or method another
church is using and try to import that model back into their church. Sometimes the
model works; often, it doesn’t. Almost always it doesn’t work as well as it did in the
place it originated. Missionaries understand the methods and models that God uses are
going to differ from place to place. The fact that there has been an incredible
breakthrough at Saddleback under Rick Warren using a certain approach doesn’t mean
that we are going to experience the same amazing growth in Columbus Ohio using that

© Rich Nathan 16
same method. Likewise, things that we’ve developed and pioneered here at Vineyard
Columbus may not work quite as well, and certainly will not work in the same way in
Brazil, or London, or Tanzania.

Ed Stetzer and David Putnam, in their book Breaking the Missional Code have
developed what I believe is the simple model for how to learn well from others.

1) Calling from God → 2) Exegeting the Community → 3) Examining Ways that God is
Working in Similar Communities → 4)Finding God’s Vision for Your Church → 5)
Adjusting that Vision as You Re-Learn the Context

1. Notice that we begin with Calling from God, we don’t begin with technique. Our first
task is to listen to God’s call upon us, not to respond to his call to others, or to simply
imitate the success of others. As previously mentioned, the first job of a missionary is to
fall in love with their community. It is God’s call to a certain group of people and the
gaining of the Father’s heart for those people that breaks us from the grip of technique
or mere pragmatism.

2. Exegeting the Community – We need to learn about the community that we’re
trying to reach. What are their values, their aspirations, their needs, their
preferences? And then we develop outreach strategies accordingly. Rick
Warren, as he was planting his church, surveyed his community and discovered
there were four primary reasons that people didn’t go to church:

a. Church is boring, especially the sermons. The messages don’t relate to my

life.
b. Church members are unfriendly to visitors. If I go to church I want to feel
welcomed without being embarrassed.
c. The church is more interested in my money than it is in me.
d. We worry about the quality of our church’s childcare.

So Rick sent out a letter to his community announcing the launching of his new church
and under the section of why people don’t attend church, he listed these four complaints
and then answered them regarding that people might expect at Saddleback. At
Saddleback, folks would meet new friends, get to know your neighbors, enjoy music
with a contemporary flavor, hear positive, practical messages that would encourage
each week; trust your children to the care of dedicated nursery workers.

Rick’s approach worked in a generally churched area where people were open to a
different version of church. It would not at all work in a post-Christian area. But it is not
Rick’s specific method that we need to imitate, rather it is the fact that Rick took an
incredible amount of time to exegete his community; to really understand what made
this community tick, and then to devise methods of reaching the community accordingly.

3. Examine ways God is working in similar communities. Certainly, we can find

commonality in approaches that are being used from one church to another

© Rich Nathan 17
 particularly where we’re attempting to reach similarly situated groups of people.
So, if we see that the Lord is using certain approaches to reach young adults in a
large urban area and we are attempting to reach young adults in a large urban
area, especially if those young adults have similar lifestyles, and similar traits,
then learning from other churches can be extremely helpful.

Or if we are attempting to reach a community of addicts and there is a program that has
been successfully used in assisting addicts to break free of their addictions, we would
be wise to examine those other successful programs since addicts share common
characteristics.

4. Find God’s unique vision for your church. As we examine other programs, we
have to remember as an article in Christianity Today put it, “God’s Kingdom is not
best represented by franchises of McChurch.” In other words, we are not trying
to produce some monolithic kingdom of clones. The Kingdom of God is a great
mosaic of every tongue, tribe, and nation. Not every church is called to reach the
same kinds of people, or worship using the same kinds of music. Not every
church is going to have exactly the same values. We take on the character of
the people we’re reaching. And so Vineyard Columbus is going to necessarily
feel and look different than other wonderful churches both in the city of
Columbus, but other wonderful churches in the Vineyard movement.

5. We adjust the vision as we re-learn the context. The problem of trying to exegete
the community is that the community changes and God’s call on churches
changes. But often the church does not. And so a church can be successful in
one decade and begin to plateau or decline in the next because the church has
not learned to change with the culture. I don’t mean change its fundamental
theology. I’m not talking about changing our view of scripture. I’m talking about
changing the methods by which we relate the truth of scripture to this new
context and new group of people.

And of course at Vineyard Columbus we’ve had to do that massively as the face of our
church has grown, as we’ve responded to God’s call to more intentionally involve
ourselves in issues of social justice. We constantly have to examine and then re-
examine our culture and the segments of our culture – the children that we’re
ministering to in 2008 are very different than the children we were relating to in 1988.
What are the characteristics of these children? Have you exegeted your ministry?

The women we’re relating to in 2008 are very different than the women that we were
reaching in 1988. Likewise, with every population segment of the church, you are
constantly having to exegete and re-exegete the target of your ministry, if you want to
be a missionary to your community.

G. Missionaries Understand The Different Ways That People Become Disciples.

© Rich Nathan 18
One drawing is a picture of a progression from one stage to another, from searching, to
believing, to belonging, to becoming, to serving.

But missionaries understand that discipleship is not always linear. Often, people do not
move systematically from one stage to another. The process is much more organic in
nature. And it is the second chart that really indicates what we’re going to find in
churches that are reaching post-Christian people.

© Rich Nathan 19
1. “My heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” – St. Augustine
Searching means, as Augustine said, “My heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.”
A person may not know that they are searching for God. They may be searching for a
community; they may be searching for justice; they may be searching for
transcendence; they may be searching for meaning or purpose. The person may be
searching for healing from life crises.

We know that ultimately whatever their felt need is, a person’s ultimate need is a
relationship with God through Jesus Christ. But the way they begin to believe is going
to differ. Some people participate in community prior to conversion. Missionaries are
going to be people who engage folks outside the church in authentic relationship before
those people become church members.

I believe one of the great needs of our small group ministry is to figure out how to
connect unreached, unchurched, unconnected people to small groups in a way that
allows people to try Christianity on, especially to try relationships on. Often, people
come to belief through participation and experience.

So the person begins to experience God by attending worship, but they don’t yet
believe. And their participation might include being allowed to participate in some
aspects of service before they are converted. At Vineyard Columbus we would not
have someone on our worship team who was not yet a believer. I know some seeker-
churches differ here. I have a conviction that worship team members are all there to
lead us into the presence of God. They are not there just to play an instrument. But
certainly, participating in outreaches to the poor, and connecting with someone’s felt
need for justice, can assist an individual in being converted to Christ.

Here at Vineyard Columbus, we’ve tried to practice what Wayne Gretzgy said to try to
skate to where the puck will be not to where the puck is. I think we’ve done that with the
building of our community center and our focus on ethnic diversity and our change of
perspective regarding the role of women, and the emphases we’ve taken regarding
social justice. But I think we need a thorough going relook at all of the various programs
of our church from the perspective of being missionaries. Where is the puck now in
2008 regarding men, women, teenagers, children, marriages, single people, sexuality,
addictions? And where is the puck going to be in 5-10 years? What methods are we
going to need to reach people where they will be in 5-10 years and how do we get on
that road of reaching people where they are going to be? These are questions that we
need to ask ourselves as our culture moves further and further away from Christ.

© Rich Nathan 20