“To deliver strategic and credible information and insight from an international network of evangelical analysts so that Christian leaders will be equipped for the task of world evangelization.”

A new publication was released today from the Lausanne Movement with the underlying purpose of the statement above. Some of the titles found in the first issue include Where Next for the Arab Spring?, People and Their Religions on the Move and Choosing to be Salt & Light: Can the Church in India be a Model in the Fight for Anti-Corruption?

The Lausanne Global Analysis will be released every other month. Publisher of the LGA and Chairman of the Lausanne Movement Doug Birdsall writes that the LGA is the result of a “gap between the massive amount of information that surrounds us 24/7, and the ability to process that information and access credible analysis from an evangelical perspective.” You can read more about Dr. Birdsall’s publisher’s note here.

After an acrimonious standoff between Hostess executives and the bakery labor union, our worst apocalyptic fears might be realized: Twinkies might disappear forever. Eighty-three years of children’s lunchboxes and Texas Fair fryers might not be enough to rescue the golden little fella from spongecake oblivion. 

But just because Twinkies have always been around isn’t reason enough to keep them there. Nostalgia shouldn’t hijack common sense. 

The church has had its own share of bad products which, like the the Twinkie, have been unhealthy, strangely enjoyable, and made on the cheap. I say it’s time to retire all those evangelical products that made us so happy at the time. Here’s a start:

• Children’s flannel boards with all those Caucasian Bible characters
• Pyramid-shaped photo arrangements of church staff (pastor on top, with his wing men in dark suits in descending order according to seminary degrees and paychecks)
• Padded, mauve sky-box chairs
• The badly-proofed collection of typed praise songs with the plastic curlicue binding
• Round, plasticized communion wafers
• The dual-handled pouch-bag-offering-thingie (passed down the aisle with choreographed wonder)
• My Texas pastor’s clear plexiglass pulpit with the laser-cut cross cutout
• The 3-D silver dove for my bumper
• Big screens that disappear into the big slit in the ceiling
• Hand-made banners with silk tassels
• Powerpoint slideshows (golden wheat stalks blowing? Multi-racial families smiling? Clouds billowing?)
• Black electric keyboards from Wal-Mart with pre-set beats “for the young people”
• Four Words: Bob. Tomato. Larry. Cucumber

“Church is useless.”

I might have expected such a comment from my 24-year-old nephew who insists that living with his parents in the room he’s occupied since birth, whose passion is playing FPS (First Person Shooter) games and whose sole means of gainful employment is a part-time job at a local restaurant. But my nephew, as far as I know, has never said that. Though he was “raised in the church,” he doesn’t attend with any regularity. But as far as I know, he’s never said the church is useless.

Instead, the quote came from a 28-year-old—let’s call him Michael—who has a really good job, is married to a very successful marketing executive and who has nothing in common with my nephew except that he was also raised in the church.

The church has become a master at niche marketing.  From the kind of music style you want in your worship service, to whether you prefer a small church or large.  There are also things like Stephen Ministries, a ministry designed to train people to be good “helpers”, for lack of a better word, in coming alongside a person to help them through a period of grief. 

If you want a small group experience there is one for almost any place you are at in your “spiritual journey”.  For instance, some churches have “seeker” small groups, new believer small groups, high school small groups, single adult small groups, men’s groups, women’s group, recovery groups, motor cycle groups, MOPS, and “young at heart” groups.  One of these options is most likely available to you.  If I have left any group out that you attend or know about, I apologize.

This week I caught Rob Bell’s new video titled “Rediscovering Wonder”.  I’ll save you the suspense and let you know there is nothing wonderful about it.  In fact it has left me to wonder if his message is an attack against those in the church who disagreed with his premise in his previous book, Love Wins, when he put forward that God’s love may be so big, he would allow people who are in hell a second chance at salvation, thus adopting the Universalist views on the afterlife.

To most effectively reach our culture with the truth we must get back to the fact that “true spirituality covers all of reality.” (Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 19)  Schaeffer explains this well:  “When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality-the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal infinite God.  Christianity is not just a series of truths, but Truth-Truth about all of reality.” (Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 19-21)

Sadly many Christians today do not hold this view, but it must be encouraged and taught.  The battle for a biblical worldview is not confined to younger generations.  The evidence is too broad to suggest postmodernism, religious pluralism, or “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” is part of a new generational thing.  Therefore, Christian leaders and pastors must encourage and emphasize how parents need to take greater responsibility for there own spiritual life, and of their families. 

There are greater points of similarity between the Barna Group and what Smith call’s “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”  George Barna himself commented on the results of the Barna Group survey concluding  “most Americans consider themselves to be Christian and say they know the content of their Bible, (yet) less than one out of ten Americans demonstrate such knowledge through their actions.” ( www.barna.org. “Barna Survey Examines Changes in Worldview Among Christians over the Past 13 Years”, March, 6, 2009) 

As for the Millennial generation Smith researched he came to a similar conclusion stating “for most U.S. teenagers, their claims to religion’s importance notwithstanding, religion actually appears to operate much more as a taken-for-granted aspect of life, mostly situated in the background of everyday living, which becomes salient only under very specific conditions.” (Smith, 130) 

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As much as modern day philosophers may try to dispel postmodernism as a rational and coherent worldview, postmodernism has yet to pass from the realm of cultural acceptance.  Perhaps the greatest evidence for postmodernism as a socially acceptable philosophy in America can be identified through purveying our religious landscape.  Some may define America’s general religious beliefs as being “Pluralistic”, but sociologist Christian Smith interprets this phenomenon as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”.( Smith, Soul Searching, 162)  The aim here is to provide analysis for the church regarding this religious perspective which is so pervasive in our culture, and offer some ways to combat it.

Author’s Christian Smith and Barna Group President David Kinnaman, have written and done extensive research on the religious views of today’s youth.  Smith’s book Soul Searching, launched in 2005, targeted the Millennial’s (ages 13-17), also known as Generation Y.  Two years later Kinnaman’s book UnChristian was released.  His research covered those, who in 2007, were between the ages of 16-29, whom he refers to as “Mosaics and Busters”. (Kinnaman, UnChristian, 18)

A year ago I was preparing to travel to Nicaragua.  In the last few weeks I've found myself recalling that trip and the people I met there. This is a reflection I wrote soon after returning:

I am at my writing desk, looking out my window at the bougainvillea and geraniums blooming in my yard. I hear toddlers calling my dog and watch her eagerly look for them, their little bodies and voices hidden behind the rose bushes. The kids in this neighborhood love her. She looks a bit wily right now with her summer haircut. They shaved off all her cute fluffy fur and she looks more like a svelte coyote, not so cute.

It reminds me of the dogs I saw in La Chureca, the dump in Managua, Nicaragua. There were dogs everywhere. They were scrawny and limping, ears drooping and noses rummaging through all the trash.  Right now my dog looks like she belongs there, but she doesn’t. I went with a group to visit the school in this dump community.  We took the kids out on a field trip to the zoo. The kids wore old, faded, stained clothes and shoes that were too big for them. They looked like they belong in a dump, but they don’t.  Nobody belongs in a dump among discarded, old, ruined trash. No one belongs there no matter how they look.