Campus Charade for ?

We have all played the game of Charades. You try and represent what you are without actually telling people what you are or without actually being who or what you are representing. You do this in hopes that your actions will lead people to discover who you are trying to represent but in the end knowing you are in fact someone or something else. Sound confusing even though you have played the game? Well it is.

So is the recent decision of Campus Crusade for Christ to change its name (at the advice of a marketing firm) to cru. The argument for the name change lie in the fact that a minority of people found the name offensive - specifically "Christ" and "Crusade". This evangelically and politically correct way of thinking is steeped in a mentality found in Paul's statement in I Corinthians 9 where he states:

"I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some."

Paul's statements here have been turned into a theology by modern day evangelicals; particularly the emergent church and those who have similar practices whether admitting it or not. Such efforts have obvious shortcomings evident in an unspoken "the ends justifies the means" attitude, but this is not the most insidious problem in my mind. The most insidious and deceptive problem lies in how the modern day evangelical church (which does not consider itself emergent, but does consider itself fully biblical) has such a shallow notion of "save". It seems to me that salvation these days is viewed as primarily a one time spiritual and emotional event. This mentality (whether spoken, unspoken, subtle, overt, admitted, not admitted) leaves us with a definition of winning that is instantaneous at a specific point in time.

But Paul's idea of "saving" or "winning" most certainly encompasses more than this and certainly engages more than just the spirit and the emotions, and I would argue that the emotions are not even primary to his concerns. How many times did we see Paul arguing and debating in his attempts to win Greeks? Indeed, it seems that this was Paul's primary method of "winning" people to Christ. Thus, the winning" or "saving" primarily had a "mental/theological" aspect to it that was not instantaneous, but rather a "process". Paul "won" some to Christ over time through reasoning.

Even if Paul's statement is to be taken at face value and fleshed out as modern day evangelicals do, where is the balancing theology of the church being an institution "set apart" and "a light on a hill". These are not concepts of blending in with society or whomever you are trying to "win", but rather of bring distinct, noticeable, and noticeably different.

So what about the Campus Crusade name change? The first problem is obvious to me: why do you need a marketing firm to make this decision? When I think of marketing firms, I think of an entity who's main purpose is to sell a product, to make a product more "sellable", and to help who it is serving to become more successful. It just seems that CRU is more concerned with "end results" and being successful -and this through subterfuge rather than putting a stake in the ground by stating who they are (which is my second concern). They seem more worried about "offending" a minority of people than with biblically "offending" people with the Gospel.

Has evangelism really turned into a game of charades where you try not to reveal who you really are to those you wish to reach so that they may become someone who will in turn become someone who will not want to reveal who they really are to others? It just seems certain parts of evangelical Christianity have started to become more concerned with being productive and end results than with the unabashed honest truth about who we are as Christians, the process of sanctification, and that salvation is more from God that us. We cannot get sucked into the illusion that we as evangelists are the primary force behind salvation putting techniques and philosophies of reaching the lost ahead of the Almighty God Himself. God told Moses to tell Pharaoh "I am that I am" (Yahweh) sent him. It was meant to offend and fly directly in the face of unbelief. There was no thought as to how Pharaoh would receive the message. I don't think Jonah, who was given the message from God, worried about the approach of his message to the Assyrians.

I am not talking about being completely insensitive to the listener or to the person or persons you are trying to witness to, but I am asking the question - is truth enough to bring about salvation, it is the primary means, or do we really need more than the truth (techniques and marketing firms) to reach people for Christ?