Evangelism & Ministry: Having the _________ of Christ

I have blogged before about the postmodern church culture and how it seems (in it's "seeker sensitiveness") more focused on emotion as opposed to truth. In other words, we are much more focused on not offending a non-believer in hopes that his/her salvation might be won, than we are with focusing on truth and letting the truth offend where necessary and leading to repentance where spoken. It’s focusing less on the offending holiness aspect of God and focusing more on the friend and buddy aspect of God. There is a huge mentality difference here – one that I think is critical to the proper conveyance of truth – a truth that is “holistic” as opposed to “slanted” or “skewed”.

That being said, I completely understand the lack of evangelical involvement by the majority of those attending church. It’s not happening to a large degree. The question is why? And the unspoken answer that seems to be coming from the pulpit is “because we are not preaching it often enough and emotionally enough, we are not emphasizing it enough, because if people heard us preaching it enough and emotionally enough and emphasizing it enough, they would be moved to action.” What’s the old saying about trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

I heard a speaker at an Urbana convention sponsored by IVCF some (20) odd years ago talk about the need around the world for Christ. This was a missionary who had travelled the world evangelizing. She uniquely depicted the need around the world - not by describing individual accounts of pain and suffering that would evoke and well up emotion within us (that may last or may be fleeting), but rather she systematically laid out factual, statistical figures that were irrefutable and stood on their own regardless of what you thought about them: 800,000,000 million Muslims in the world who didn’t know Christ, 12,000,000 Hindus in the world that didn’t know Christ, 6,000,000 atheists who didn’t know Christ (these numbers are not exact – I cannot remember the exact figures, but you get the idea). And then so many millions of people who called themselves evangelical Christians who do nothing, go to church on Sunday, don’t engage the outside world, and seemingly turn a blind eye in the comfort of their own churches. Keep in mind that this sermon was given in a point in history where the postmodern evangelical movement was just getting its legs in reaction to the majority of American churches that remained (to that point) inwardly focused and, to a large degree, did not engage the world outside.

So what do you think her ultimate conclusion was as to why most evangelical Christians did not engaged the outside, unbelieving world? I was struck both by what her answer WAS and what it WAS NOT as well as how the answer relates to how we try to get the laity involved in ministry today! Her final conclusion as to what will move us into engaging the world around us in need:

“Having the __________ of Christ!”

Now, I am not going to fill in the blank for you yet. I want to see what your natural proclivities are here. What is the first thing that comes to mind here that would properly fill in this blank? Be honest!!! I could even give you a 50/50 multiple choice and I’ll bet most of you would still not guess correctly (but I can’t do this because now the 50/50 option would give the answer away). But seriously, shouldn’t the obvious answer be having the heart of Christ? It’s so obvious isn’t it.

Well, that’s not the answer. Her final conclusion was that we must have the mind of Christ – not the heart of Christ. The Scripture she used by the way was I Corinthians 2:10b-16 - "But we have the mind of Christ." And doesn’t this really make sense? Not that having the heart of Christ is not important, but rather that it comes and goes as our emotions come and go. Emotions are the basis for nothing. But truth – truth resides in the mind and is irrefutable. All proper actions must be based on truth. It is only when we completely comprehend this truth that we will act. Doesn’t sound very spontaneous does it? But rather like cold, calculating love (if it can be called love at all - right?). But is love an emotion? I don’t see where in Scripture it says that we are to feel good about His commands for evangelizing the world and caring for the poor, merely that they are the true Word and we are to obey. I’m not saying that emotions do not play a part, but they are a by-product and not the impetus by which we act.

Now, how do we typically try and get people involved in ministry today. I don’t know about you, but I hear sermons that are designed to draw and evoke emotion. A sermon that talks about little Mtubu in Africa that has to walk 20 miles a day to get to a well just to get water and he has no shoes. The pastor’s voice probably gets very pleading and weepy at this point. The intent is to engage people on an emotional level so they will become involved and care. But that emotion doesn’t last and is fleeting because, well….emotions are exactly that: fleeting and they do not last!

So it almost seems to me that when people do not become engaged that we try and preach to them more and more and emphasize more and more the need to do this, but again, all based on emotions. I see this appeal to emotion throughout the church service – not just for trying to get folks involved in ministry, but for evangelizing the unbelievers attending – that’s what we call being seeker sensitive. What seems to have happened is that the entire worship service has tended to become more of a vehicle for stirring emotion rather than speaking truth. So we are more prone to gain converts based on emotion than we are truth and we leave them right where they started – trying to constantly reproduce this emotion rather than discipling and training folks in truth to spiritual maturity. Sunday becomes a emotional recharge of one's batteries rather than a worshipping of the Almighty God.

So we seem to focus more on trying to give people the heart of Christ as opposed to giving them the mind of Christ.

It just seems that we are going about this the wrong way. Yes, more people should be involved in evangelism, but preaching this over and over again in my mind is a short term approach based on emotion. It seems we need a long term approach of teaching and discipling – basing what we do on what Christ commands and thinking the way Christ thinks. We need the foundational work of teaching and discipling before we can move people further down the line to evangelizing. It is more important for people to understand "why" they are doing "what" they are doing rather than "how" this should make them feel. Same with their Christianity. How God makes us feel is much less important than what God is trying to do and how. Proper acting and proper Christian living (this includes ministry and evangelism) will only come from a proper understanding of one’s faith and not how that faith makes them feel, and it just seems that there is a lack of Christian education being pursued which will enlighten the laity to what God is thinking.

Are we focusing way too much on people having the heart of Christ rather than them having the mind of Christ, and in doing so, really nurturing emotionalism? Are we neglecting our minds and proper thinking and theology that will lead to sustainable action? What is biblical and holistic here?