food4thought

As I’ve reflected on the mission and chatted to one or two people I’ve begun to formulate a considered opinion on how things went. I think I’ve waited until I’m far enough away from it to be objective but close enough to it not to have forgotten what we did. You’d be surprised at how quickly my attention passes to the next thing and overwrites what’s just happened! It’s been a useful process to try and evaluate an enterprise in which many have been active participants and which has occupied a good deal of our time, energy and resources. We’re work in progress and it’d be arrogant to think that we’ve already hit on the winning formula and that there’s nothing left to improve. We intend to talk about our evangelistic life and church programme at the Church Council. I expect this will be a productive discussion and much will flow from it. These are my initial thoughts on The God Confusion.

1. it was a bit of a stretch

When we last ran a mission we had a series of three talks on two Sundays and midweek on a Wednesday. That was two years ago. It would be fair to say that the schedule of events this time around was a little more ambitious! Excluding the Sunday talks for a moment we had a film night, an education evening, a pub quiz, a school assembly, a Women’s Bible Study colours morning, a women’s breakfast and a charity dinner. That’s a packed programme! In addition we had the Cornhill team traipsing up and down Balham High Road conducting a survey the results of which we hope will be printed in a local newspaper. But more importantly they sought to engage people in gospel conversations and were successful in doing so. Behind the scenes many people were ‘flat to the boards’ making things happen. Lots of people made the mission a priority and invited their friends. Many others turned up at events to express their support and provide the all important ‘rent a crowd’! And many were occupied with that essential unseen work of asking the Lord to do His work of bringing people to faith in Christ. All in all, this was a busy week and I’m sure I’m not alone in thanking God for getting us through it. A few of us may have got to the end of the week and thought it was a bit of a stretch!

2. it was a qualified success

Although we may have stretched ourselves a little more than we have done before, we achieved the following things.

The quality of the events was high. We must never be duped into thinking that style trumps substance but neither must we think it’s acceptable to run shoddy ill prepared events. We wanted to pursue excellence in all our events and make sure that they were as well organised as we could manage given the resources we had available. We did that. I can say that because I had nothing to do with their organisation and implementation! I think there’s now widespread confidence amongst the church and amongst our guests that when we put on an event it’ll be well run and worth coming to.

The range of events was varied. We wanted to provide a diverse programme of events to which everyone at church could invite someone to something. I think we managed that. It’s well nigh impossible to devise a mission programme designed to suit everyone. We’re not all the same and neither are our friends. That’s why we went for different approaches. Whilst some might get excited by the pub quiz others are more drawn to the notion of a commentary at a film night and still others want a thorough treatment of an objection to the Christian faith. It’s heartening to have received numerous approving comments from other Co-Mission congregational leaders about the composition of our mission week.

The number of guests was encouraging. I think there was only one event where we failed to persuade lots of our friends to attend. That was the education evening. And we always knew that this was a bit of a punt! Sadly the parents from Telferscot were not drawn to an event where the issues of faith and educating their children were discussed. I won’t pretend not to be disappointed. But apart from that the proportion and numbers of guests at events was hugely encouraging. This is reflected in the number of people who’ve signed up for Christianity Explored.

The level of participation was high. I got the impression that throughout the church people were really onboard and excited this year. In small groups, after church and in general conversation people were praying for friends, talking about the events and handing out invitations. The level of engagement far outweighed anything we’d done before. Lots of people had friends for whom they were praying and specific events in mind.

The idolatry of unbelief was exposed. The main talks sought to prosecute unbelief. We took as the main foil a recent, popular and influential book by the antagonistic atheist Richard Dawkins. Our intention was to identify, evaluate and critique his main assertions about the case for atheism. We did that in a number of ways. The other events sought to engage with culture from a Christian perspective. That’s a legitimate exercise for a church and a relatively new thing for us. It doesn’t mean that we’ve given up preaching the gospel. We do that frequently throughout the year. It means that we took a step back to engage the culture and expose the futility of idolatry. This assessment prompts the question ‘why then consider the mission only to be a qualified success?’ The success of a mission can only really be measured against its goals. Under God, I think we can say that we met the goals that we set. The question is whether those were the right goals.

3. it was just a start

This was not the mission we wanted to run. The mission we wanted to run would have been a series of Bible talks where the gospel was clearly expounded and applied to a heaving mass of unbelieving friends. But I’m not sure we get to run missions like that any more. This is not 1950s Cambridge where Billy Graham could explain a Bible passage and thousands would flock to hear him.

The culture is not where we’d like it to be. Christianity is regarded as an irrelevance and the gospel has been sidelined. It’s not easy to get guests to come along to an event at which the single biggest selling point is a clear gospel declaration. The advantage of event driven evangelism, such as we’ve employed for the mission, is that the event can be an inherent pull. For example, what’s not to enjoy about a pub quiz. Responding to Richard Dawkins was clearly attractive for many who came to the Sunday events. All of the events we ran provided alternative ways to connect with an otherwise sceptical and dismissive culture. In part I’d want to suggest that the increased attendance by unbelievers was due to the nature of the events themselves. But I fear we may have too readily sacrificed explicit gospel preaching in order to bolster our numbers.

Our church is not where we’d like it to be. Two years ago we ran a mission called Christianity Explored. Over the two Sunday mornings we had one guest, a lady who travelled from Walthamstow because she received a flier at the station. In the evening we managed a combined total of half a dozen guests over the three evenings. There was no Christianity Explored course. We promoted the idea of evangelistic supper parties to which we could invite friends to hear a short gospel presentation and then talk about it. We had one supper party. There were no unbelieving guests. And so we need to put this mission in context. When we planned the mission we were aware of our track record. How can I put this? We’ve not set the world alight with our evangelistic prowess! Even though this wasn’t the mission we didn’t want to run it was the mission we felt we could run. And we ran it really well. I wonder whether we’re a little disengaged from our unbelieving culture. We need to ask some questions of ourselves about how involved we are with unbelieving people. Many of us have found welcoming Christian relationships at CCB. That’s a great blessing. We must never deride the new community into which God has placed us. On the contrary we must invest in our Christian friends and recognise that in God’s hands this is a powerful apologetic to a watching world. Jesus anticipated that people would know we’re his disciples because of the way we love one another. If we don’t love each other or people don’t experience that, we’ve missed a massive opportunity to make inroads into unbeliever’s cynical preconceptions. But interestingly, as a result of the attention paid to the mission, a number of people have expressed the realisation that they’re disconnected from non-Christian friends. Some have begun to address this in characteristically adventurous ways. I’m all for that. Many may not be aware that throughout the week South Thames College runs an adult education programme at Chestnut Grove School. You and a friend could join up for the wine tasting course together. Rather than join a gym and run on your own why not join a sports club. The opportunities are endless. This mission was just the latest in a long line of events that we seek to provide to bring unbelievers under the sound of the gospel. It’s just a start which means that there’s more to come. And we’ll get better. But we’re going in the right direction.

Conclusion

We need to see this week of events in the context of the church year and the programme of preaching. We need to recover the idea that Sunday is a great day to invite a friend along to church to hear the gospel. It’s worth asking when the last time you invited someone to church was. Every sermon is prepared in expectation that someone will be there who is perhaps hearing this for the first time. Wonderfully God keep bringing new people to us and so it’s often the case that unbelievers are present. In addition, we need to keep feeding people into our termly Christianity Explored courses. That’s where some of our best evangelism happens as we clearly expound the personal implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This course is excellent but it’s really for people willing to invest in exploring Christianity. Many of our friends aren’t there yet. Lots of them need to have their presuppositions and their faith commitments to alternative philosophies and ideologies challenged and undermined before they’re willing to hear the alternative. The God Confusion was a good attempt to do that with the issue of atheism.

But we should have made more of the gospel. With hindsight there were one or two events where I regret that the gospel wasn’t more prominent. That was a mistake. I hope that it’s not going to be a mistake we make again. Though it was heartening to run well attended events I’d want to suggest that the increased attendance by unbelievers was due in part to the nature of the events themselves. We may have sacrificed explicit gospel preaching in order to bolster our numbers. Next time round we need more events at which the gospel is front and centre. And we’ll need to make it obvious that we’re doing that. We can’t advertise an event and then slip the gospel in by stealth. I know we’d like to do that because we know that the gospel is God’s powerful way to save sinners. But I think people will feel misled and manipulated if it’s not what they were expecting. We need to have the courage to make it clear that’s what will happen.

But lest we become too disheartened, let’s remember that though we’re not where we should be, we’re not where we were. And that’s a good thing. God has enabled us to make significant strides forward in the last two years. But it’s no reason to rest on our laurels. The next mission we run will need to be a step up. If I could only shake this cold I’d already be looking forward to it! Thank you to everyone for their enthusiastic support of The God Confusion. And well done. To God be the glory.

An extract from the 2008 God Confusion Mission Handbook

Dear Friends

Welcome to ‘The God Confusion’ mission handbook! We hope that you find it useful. It’s a collection of news, reviews, resources and articles to help us get involved in the range of events that we’ve planned. As you’ll have worked out by now, the mission is named after Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. We’re aiming to interact with some of the material in that book and especially the case for atheism.

According to Wikipedia, as of November 2007, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 1.5 million copies and been translated into 31 languages. It’s a popular book. And the passage of time has not lessened its influence. If anything this book has led to an avalanche of impassioned hostile attacks, on Christianity in particular. It’s been in the Sunday Times best selling list for hardback non fiction and paperback non fiction for as long as I can remember. It’s fiction. But that’s a rant for another time! And even if people haven’t read it, many are proud to own a copy. It’s their atheistic Bible. They assume that because it’s a big book written by a clever man it contains all the reasons they need to justify their godless lifestyle. David Robertson in The Dawkins Letters, his collection of letters written in response to The God Delusion, accuses Dawkins of colluding with an anti-God addiction when he writes, ‘when someone like you comes along and provides what seems to be a cast-iron intellectual justification they seize it like an alcoholic seizes the bottle’.

Richard Dawkins’ own web site says of his book,

‘A pre-eminent scientist – and the world’s most prominent atheist – asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigour and wit, Richard Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favoured by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, forments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe’s wonders than any faith could ever muster’.

Heady stuff. And it’s possible that in the face of such vitriol many of us just want to run for cover, curl up into the foetal position and wait for it all to go away. Just me then! But we can’t. We have an obligation to our friends to tell the truth and to Christ to defend His honour. Wonderfully we don’t have to do that alone. Ultimately the Lord stands with us and we’ll know His presence as we ‘speak up for Him’. But He’s also raised up a horde of able writers and apologists to help us out. We’ve been able to recruit some of them for ‘The God Confusion’. One of the resources that will help is the little book by David Robertson. If you read nothing else in preparation, read that. Throughout his book Robertson provides a rationale for response. His major contention is that Dawkins appeals not to people’s intelligence but to their ignorance. Most people do not understand the case for God. And so when someone like Dawkins tells them it’s a delusion they assume its non existent. But that’s where we come in.

I’m no expert in inviting friends to events. I’ve had some success in the past. More often than not I chicken out and end up feeling guilty; as I should. But it seems to me that the success of any invitation is a combination of at least three factors.

First, there’s the quality of friendship that we enjoy with the person we’re trying to invite. The better the friendship the more predisposed they’ll be towards listening to what we say and sharing in the things that define us.

Secondly, there’s the enticement provided by the talk itself. The more tailored the talk is to where the person is coming from the more likely they’ll want to pitch up. In other words if my issue is atheism and there’s a talk addressing specifically that issue I’ll be keen to hear what’s said. That might especially be the case if the speaker is also someone who can speak with authority and ability on those issues.

Thirdly, there’s the unseen work of God preparing someone’s heart to consider spiritual issues. If God is at work behind the scenes then there’ll be a divine impulse attracting someone towards the truth. They might not know it and they certainly won’t be able to explain it. But when God irresistibly draws us to Himself we’ll find ourselves wanting to consider things that we used to think were irrelevant or worse!

Rarely will we be able to get all three working in symbiotic perfection! We might get two out of three, which isn’t bad. But sometimes we just have to work with one and pray that’s sufficient. But take heart because that’s all God needs.

Sometimes we can persuade someone to come to an event even if we don’t know them that well and the talk isn’t quite their cup of tea simply because God has been preparing the ground. But if we don’t ask we’ll never know!

On other occasions even though the talk is not obviously relevant and our friend has shown no particular interest in spiritual things they’ll come to something because they so value our friendship. Friends like that are hard to find and we should return their commitment to us by trying to put them in the way of the gospel.

It might be that our friends show no few signs of an interest in Christian things and we’d only regard them as passing acquaintances but nevertheless they’re mustard keen to come because the issue is right where they’re at. The simplest way to find that out is to talk to them about what makes them tick and what they’re objections to Christianity are. Apologetic talks are ideal at helping people think these things through.

In other words, all of this is an encouragement to get involved in the mission not simply by praying, not simply by volunteering but by inviting the very people this week of events is intended for; namely those who don’t agree with us!