A Here and Now Christianity

Posted by David Wayne @ http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2006/11/a_here_and_now__1.html#more

I was in youth ministry for five years and often heard that most conversions happen before the age of 18. I forget the figures that were parroted about, but it was something like 90-95% of those who become Christians do so before the age of 18. So, in other words, if someone is not saved by the age of 18 there is very little likelihood they will get saved later. In recent years I have heard people say that the magic age is now 14, if we don't get them by 14, most hope is lost.

Such figures are wonderful motivators for youth ministry and I and many others have placed a premium on youth ministry as a result.

But I have come to be less and less enamored with those figures. For one, it renders adult evangelism almost hopeless, and I don't think we want to do that. Secondly, I think we have simply accepted those things as a given and we ought to resist them. In other words, if it turns out to be true that few come to Christ after the age of 14 or 18 we ought not just to accept that, but we need to re-examine our evangelistic practices.

One thing seems to be true though, and that is this - 14 or 18 is not the terminal date for conversion for some other religions, particularly Islam. In other words, maybe it is not the case that people inevitably become more and more secular as they get older and that is why they are more and more resistant to conversion. Maybe Christians have just not been able to effectively communicate the gospel to older generations.

A classic short study on this is the Christianity Today article called "The Adult Gospel" where the author, Larry Poston, writes:
In the late 1800s, Edwin Starbuck conducted ground-breaking studies on conversion to Christianity. Ever since then,scholars, attempting either to verify or disprove his findings, haverepeatedly demonstrated them to be accurate. Most observers agree thatwhat Starbuck observed is to a large extent still valid. From thesestudies we learn two significant things: the age at which conversion toChristianity most often occurs, and the motivational factors involvedin conversion.

Starbuck noted that the average age of a person experiencing a religious conversion was 15.6 years. Other studies have produced similar results; as recently as 1979, Virgil Gillespie wrote that the average age of conversion in America is 16 years.

Starbuck listed eight primary motivating factors: (1) fears, (2) other self-regarding motives, (3) altruistic motives, (4) following out a moral ideal, (5) remorse for and conviction of sin, (6) response to teaching, (7) example and imitation,and (8) urging and social pressure. Recent studies reveal that people still become Christians mainly for these same reasons.
What conclusions can be drawn from this information? First, the average age of conversion is quite young. Postadolescent persons do not seem to find Christianity as attractive as do persons in their teens. Indeed, for every year the non-Christian grows older than 25, the odds increase exponentially against his or her ever becoming a Christian.

Poston did some of his own research on religious conversions, but he widened it to include Muslims. He found this:
My research at Northwestern University investigated religious conversion from another angle. Rather than duplicate the efforts of earlier scholars who limited themselves to the Christian experience, I explored the phenomenon of conversion to another missionary religion—Islam. I examined the published accounts of 60 Western converts to Islam and personally interviewed 10 others. The results contrasted sharply with Starbuck's statistics.

The average age of a Western convert to Islam is approximately 31 years, almost double that of the convert to Christianity. Several persons were in their forties, fifties, and sixties. Islam seems to appeal to a much older group of people. This age difference made the subject of motivating factors of great interest as I investigated why Muslims are apparently reaching an age group in Western societies that Christians are not.

He five main reasons for this but the one I am most interested in for this post is the fourth:
Fourth, Islam is practical. It is considered a this—worldly religion in contrast to Christianity, which is perceived as abstract in the extreme. Muhammad left his followers a political, social, moral, and economic program founded on religious precepts. Jesus, however, is said to have advocated no such program; it is claimed that the New Testament is so preoccupied with his imminent return that it is impractical for modern life.

Poston goes on to say that all of the elements that adult converts find so attractive in Islam are present in Christianity, but we have underplayed them to our detriment.

I read Poston's article for the first time years ago and the reason it came to mind afresh today was that I read a post on the OnMovements blog that captured the essence of what Poston was talking about. This blogger quotes Rodney Stark in his new book Cities of God, to the effect that it was indeed the "this worldly" orientation of early gospel preaching that led to the rise of Christianity in the Roman world:
The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. No, the crucial change that took place in the third century was the rapidly spreading awareness of a faith that delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now! The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as “Love one’s neighbor as oneself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and “When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.” These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor; they did concern themselves with the lot of slaves. In short, Christians created “a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.” It was these responses to the long-standing misery of life in antiquity, not the onset of worse conditions, that were the ‘material’ changes that inspired Christian growth.

I'm going to have to take issue with one aspect of the quote here. I have to demur when Stark says that "the truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives." A statement like that evacuates the gospel of all meaning and implies that, at heart, what Christianity offers is a newer and better moral code. In truth, Christianity offers an end to moral codes as a means of justification.

At the same tiime, "what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering" (Romans 8:3). In other words, the law has no power to compel obedience to itself, moral imperatives have no power to enable compliance to themselves (see also Colossians 2:20-23). The moral imperatives that Stark cites were not new and unique to Christianity, they had been present (if not explicitly, at least implicitly) in Judaism, particularly in the Ten Commandments. What the Christian gospel brought was the heart transformation that and indwelling of the Spirit that enabled the desire and obedience necessary to follow through on the moral imperatives already present in the Ten Commandments.

Nonetheless, Stark isn't writing as a theologian, rather as a historian/sociologist and his comment is very helpful. It illustrates that, apparently, for the early church the consequences of regeneration/justification/salvation were more "this worldly," in contrast to later generations which focused on otherworldly consequences.

This is an emphasis that many are recovering today. Some are nervous because a "this worldly" type of Christianity is reminiscent of early 20th century liberalism and the social gospel. Further, this is a theme in the writings of N. T. Wright, whose views on justification are of a concern to many. It is also a major theme of the emerging/emergent church, of which many are suspicious. Some fear that a move to a more "this worldly" orientation to salvation and the gospel is a move toward liberalism.

But such is not the case. The gospel is that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, through Christ alone. This discussion is not over the nature of the gospel itself, rather over it's consequences. It is not a discussion on how one is saved, but a discussion about what is one saved unto.

In that respect it is perfectly reasonable, biblical and orthodox for conservative Christians to give greater prominence to the this worldly effects of salvation in their gospel proclamation.
A few weeks ago Richard Pratt was at our church and this was a major theme of his messages (you can listen to his messages here, here and here). He emphasized over and over again that Jesus did not die for the sole purpose (or even the main purpose) of taking believers out of this earth to heaven. Jesus lived and died to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth and He is bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth through His followers. Not to worry, in salvation our afterlife is secured and we will be in the presence of Jesus Christ for eternity. After all, Paul says in I Corinthians 15:19:
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

The hope of resurrection is our blessed hope, yet it is worth pointing out that Paul didn't offer the hope of resurrection as a replacement for hope in this life, but as an addition to hope in this life. The Corinthians weren't rebuked for having a "this life" hope in Christ, it was those whose "only" hope was in this life who were rebuked.

When Jesus spoke of heaven, His main concern was not in telling His people how they could leave this earth for heaven. Rather His main concern was in bringing heaven down to earth for the sake of His people and showing His people how to take the kingdom of heaven throughout the whole earth.

This, I believe, lies at the heart of what Stark is referring to. There was a greater emphasis on the "this world" effects of the gospel and this transformed early believers into great "this worldly" saints who themselves became the "potent antidotes to life's miseries here and now."
Another way of phrasing this is to see it in terms of the "now" and "not yet," of the kingdom of heaven. A standard formulation for years has been that the kingdom is here now but it is not yet here in it's fullness. Whereas believers in recent centuries have effectively emphasized the "not yet" aspects of the kingdom, early believers more effectively emphasized the "now" aspects and it brought about a changed world.

One final comment to this already too long post. With this I am not advocating any of the common versions of Christian triumphalism which seek to bring the kingdom in through social and political means. The kingdom comes as the gospel spreads. It's just that I think that as the gospel spreads, this gospel of the kingdom will inevitably have many salutary effects in the here and now.