Wesley, charms and church planting (Part III)
Drawing the longest bow yet in this series, I am going to attempt to connect child-raising techniques and the history of word changes in Wesley's ‘O for a thousand tongues’ in order to talk about contextualizing the gospel. If you're as interested as I am in how I'm going to do that, read on.
I was talking to Tony Payne the other day about the changing face of parenting. He had entertained some young, first-time parents in their home over the weekend, and had marvelled at what they were willing to let their crawler do. You see, apparently children now require exposure to germs in order to build immune systems. So as their young 'un roved around the garden, orally sampling whatever she could find, and as long as it wasn't going to perforate anything, they let her go for it. How different from the endless sterilization of Tony's day!
It strikes me that evangelism is a bit like exposing children to germs. You see, as we contextualize the gospel, our desire is to remove hindrances and obstacles to people coming to Christ. But the problem is that we can so sterilize the message, there's no grit left to make people uncomfortable.
However, like it or not, it is not the highly polished message in which we see our own reflection that converts people, but the gritty, countercultural, uncomfortable, first-century Jesus that changes lives.
What does all that mean? It means that if I were using Wesley's ‘O for a thousand tongues’ at a student conference, I wouldn't modernize the words. (If this doesn't make sense, see my first post.) I wouldn't modernize them because I would rather create a culture where people go “That's weird. Why does he say that like that?” than a culture where people go “I get it. That's nice.”
A good evangelist is someone who can leave the grit and mess lying around, and intrigue people so that they want to know why it's there. It's as you explain the grit that people get converted. After all, “Jesus is the Lord you need to answer to” is grit in just about every western materialist's shoe that I can think of!
Of course, creating that culture where people are intrigued isn't as simple as just leaving the rubbish lying around. After all, you don't want people screwing up their nose and walking away! So what are some examples you've seen of people wisely and winsomely leaving grit around for the sake of the gospel?
Some people are oysters who make a pearl, some are Chinese tractors that seize up at the first bit of grit.
Another problem is working out what’s Biblical grit and what’s our own soil.
I never say, “Good Luck” I always say “God Bless” or the like. I’m trying to be gritty. But do I come across as gritty or sanctimonious?
I would argue that a Biblical stance on homosexuality is a bit gritty. But our world has far more Chinese tractors than oysters. Should I change grit?
Isn’t it all gritty?
Wherever we obey Scripture in a world that doesn’t, isn’t that where the rub is.
Sabbath
Sex
Sexuality
Stealing, etc.
The problem with trying to be gritty is that you can make mistakes (who knew Tony’s house was built on a 20 year old toxic waste dump?)
Isn’t grittiness a byproduct of faithfulness?
Michael Hutton
Ariah Park
Michael,
Thanks for this, really helpful. And I couldn’t agree with you more. I think what I have been trying to capture in these series of posts is that the challenge for us all is to be attractive and annoying at the same time. And attractive and annoying in precisely the same way that the Scriptures would call us to be.
Faithfulness to the truth is a great way of capturing this.
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