Don’t Just Do Something (1 Peter 1:1, 2:11-12)

Every year, Beloit College in Wisconsin releases a list describing those who are entering college and university this year. Here is what's true for those who have just entered college this past month:

• The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
• They have never heard anyone actually "ring it up" on a cash register.
• Smoking has never been permitted on airlines.
• "Google" has always been a verb.
• Text messaging is their email.
• Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.
• Non-denominational mega-churches have always been the fastest growing religious organizations in the U.S.
• Reality shows have always been on television.
• Brides have always worn white for a first, second, or third wedding.
• They have always been able to watch wars and revolutions live on television.
• Green tea has always been marketed for health purposes.
• They have always been searching for "Waldo."
• Michael Moore has always been showing up uninvited.
• They have always had access to their own credit cards.
• Bad behavior has always been captured on amateur videos.
• Beach volleyball has always been a recognized sport.
• Disposable contact lenses have always been available.
• Ringo Starr has always been clean and sober.

Times have changed. These examples show historical and cultural changes. However, the changes we are currently experiencing between eras are much greater.

James Emery White, the new president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, suggests that there have been six distinct eras in the history of the Christian church. According to his research on the writings of Christopher Dawson, each of these ages has lasted between three and four centuries. The church faced crises from both external and internal forces, and had to respond with determination. According to White, we are now living at the start of the seventh, the end of one age and the beginning of another. And we are facing a crisis: a fresh new attack to which the church must respond.

Western society has been going through a dramatic change for the past fifty years, and the process is accelerating. We are now living in a period of radical and discontinuous change, and we are feeling the stress. Someone has described continuous change as being hit in the head hard with an acorn. Discontinuous change is when you face an all-acorn assault. We are not just dealing with one acorn hitting us on the head; it's like a barrage of acorns. We need to figure out how to react to this.

What's Changed

Let me talk a bit about some of the changes we are facing.

• Many of us grew up in a predominantly Christian culture. Although not everyone was Christian, the church was generally respected and seen as the only available religious choice in town.
• The church was stable. Most people went to some kind of church.
• Christians had privileges that we could impose on society at large. You might not be Christian, but you will say the Lord's Prayer at school. You would get a Gideon Bible in grade school. And Ontario's education system would reflect Judeo-Christian values.

Slowly, things have changed.

• Somewhere, society decided there would be no free pass for the church.
• The church is no longer the only show in town – religious or otherwise.
• Only two out of ten people attend church in Canada. That number is even lower in other countries – this Sunday, only 2% of New Zealand will go to church.
• Between 1991 and 2001, the number of non-Christians in Canada increased by 72%.
• Christianity is dying in the West just as it is exploding in parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, leaving behind empty churches and cathedrals.
• You can deny this in parts of North America. Canada's Prime Minister is a practicing Christian, and there are growing churches, although they tend to be mainly homogeneous, suburban, and middle class. But this misses the big picture: it is not so much that we have rejected the idea of God, but that our culture ignores him.
• We in the church are doing the same things with decreasing effectiveness.
• It feels like an all-acorn assault.

The big picture:

• Christendom has ended. It's been dying for 250 years, but it's now pretty much breathed its last. We live in a post-Christendom world.
• Christendom is the religious culture that has dominated Western society since the fourth century.
• Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the State, changing its status from being marginalized, subversive, and persecuted.
• The church that was once viewed with at least grudging respect is now suspected. Novels show the church hiding things to protect itself and its beliefs.
• Religion is now seen as a private matter with no bearing on public life.
• Some people think that our culture has been exposed to Christianity in a weak form, and now it's immune to the genuine experience.
• We are dealing with a demographic of 80% of people who are at best blasé and at worst hostile to us. We are in deep trouble in the next twenty years, because we only have 20% of the market and many of them are elderly.
• We now face a new question: how to live as Christians in a post-Christendom world.

Our Response

Walter Brueggemann writes:

I believe we are in a season of transition, when we are watching the collapse of the world as we have known it… One can paint the picture in very large scope, but the issues do not present themselves to pastors as global issues. They appear as local, even personal, issues, but they are nonetheless pieces of a very large picture.

Brueggemann suggests that the changes happening at a church like Richview are part of a larger transition.

So how to respond?

• We tend to long for a stable past that doesn't exist anymore, especially because pastors like me were trained for a world that no longer exists, and the church seemed to have an easier time.
• We are tempted to redouble our efforts, to work harder. But to work harder at what is not working will not get us there.
• Pragmatic responses are not the answer. If the answer was a new technique or program, we would have solved this already. Strategic plans will not get us where we need to go.
• The answer is more sophisticated, and more theological. It involves relearning who we are, and everything else that flows from it.

Learning Who We Are

So who are we?

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God's elect, exiles scattered throughout… (1 Peter 1:1)

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:11-12)

Peter writes to a group who were strangers in a strange land. They were a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another. Although they lived in Asia Minor, their citizenship was elsewhere — ultimately in heaven.

To solve the situation we face, we don't need a new program or technique. Instead, we must remember our identity as exiles and a colony of heaven in a foreign society.

• God's people have been here before.
• What's more, they have thrived as exiles in the margins of society.
• But it involves some relearning. The Jewish people had to relearn their stories and traditions while they were in Babylon because they had lost many of them by being influenced by the surrounding cultures without even realizing it.
• We can't go back there, because back there no longer exists.
• To understand how to live as exiles, we should learn from other people like the recipients of 1 Peter. They knew what it meant to be marginalized, subversive, and persecuted.
• We should focus on rediscovering Jesus and the ways of early Christians who lived in a similar society to ours, instead of looking for new discoveries.

So what if:

• We stopped saying, "Don't just sit there, do something," to "Don't just do something, sit there – and learn who you are." What if our primary task is to discover our identity in Jesus Christ, rather than focusing on external actions?
• We used to read the Bible for guidance on improving our lives, like marriage, work, diet, and living our best lives now. Now, we read the Bible to find out how we can be part of God's bigger plan, which is greater than our own lives.
• We stopped seeing Christianity as a consumer product to meet the needs of self?
• We refused a boring church and embraced the challenge of representing Christ in a hostile world.
• Should we stop inviting people to church and instead take the Gospel to them, as Al Roxburgh suggested?
• We couldn't afford to treat church like an audience-based service. Instead, we had to live as a colony of heaven in Etobicoke.
• Did we really live in a way that shows we truly believed in the power of God?
• We lived as exiles, seeing the crisis as a chance to rediscover who we are in Jesus and how we should live in the world.

I invite you to do a couple of things today.

First: let go of the past. This includes the core stories, values, and habits learned under Christendom. There is no going back because the days of Christendom are over.

Let's prioritize relearning the stories of Jesus and the early Christians, who lived as exiles and brought about significant change in the world. Let's not just do something, let's sit there first, and learn who we really are.

When we do this, we will be able to bless the community through the Gospel, both individually and with the support of the church. We can live good lives among non-believers and through our good deeds, they may come to glorify God (1 Peter 2:12).