Make a lampstand of pure gold. Hammer out its base and shaft, and make its flowerlike cups, buds and blossoms of one piece with them. Exodus 25:31

It’s fascinating that God was so particular in giving instructions about how to build the Tabernacle. He could have said, “Build a lampstand” but he didn’t. He said “Build a lampstand using a hammer and be sure to put exactly this ornamentation on it.” God could have finished working on creation when it was made up of things that were only utilitarian. He could have stopped designing when he had the functions he wanted. But he didn’t. He went beyond what was strictly necessary to add beauty to utility and form to function.

Was the artistic detail of the lampstand for his benefit or ours? I think it was for both. Bearing his image, I’m sure we find beautiful what God finds beautiful, so we can both enjoy good art. And since God gives us artistic skills, the church should support the arts. In fact, I think it is more important that we do so now than it has been for many decades.

Why the Church Needs More Art Now

Why now? Because the last fifty years has seen the public frame their perception of the socially conservative wing of the church by what it opposes, not for what it promotes. As you’ll find in upcoming posts, I believe the church must be much more intentional about telling our story – who we are and what we do.

But telling stories is just one way to communicate. The arts, by which I mean everything from architecture to music to literature to dance to visual arts of all sorts, are a great way to convey impressions and messages on a more subtle, emotional level. We can use various forms of art to put a warm and engaging face to our faith in addition to all the other good things we do in God’s name and to make him look good.

Historical Examples

We’ve done this before quite well. Throughout history, the church was the pre-eminent patron of the arts in the Western world. It used the arts to build magnificent buildings which speak of God’s glory. Chancel, nave, and transcepts made the church building itself a cross and meant our worship and prayers were made from inside a representation of the cross. Architects learned how to build higher and thinner walls to give the sacred place a hint of the majesty of God and to allow the stained glass windows to be as large as possible. The many tri-fold arches and windows speak of the Trinity.

Music also speaks of God. The musical scales we use, four-part harmony, and the musical notation system were all developed to facilitate church singing. The pipe organ was developed from a rudimentary set of flutes to an engineering marvel because (until the synthesizer was invented) it was the only musical instrument which could play a note forever with no diminishment of sound. That’s important because the lack of any decay in sound was likened to the eternal nature of God!

When literacy was low and Bibles were scarce, churches portrayed the biblical stories in art, particularly in stained glass windows. Parishioners could ‘read’ the Bible through their church’s art.

Now that we read the Bible itself, art serves to remind us of those stories and help us reflect on who God is and our relationship with him.

Why the Arts Are Important

Tom Wright makes a great case for why the church should support the arts:

“Part of the role of the church in the past was – and could and should be again – to foster and sustain lives of beauty and aesthetic meaning at every level, from music making in the village pub to drama in the local primary school, from artists’ and photographers’ workshops to still-life painting classes, from symphony concerts to driftwood sculptures. The church, because it is the family that believes in hope for new creation, should be the place in every town and village where new creation bursts forth for the whole community, pointing to the hope that, like all beauty, always comes as a surprise.” Tom Wright¹.

Innovative Approaches to the Arts

The Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland & Labrador (PAONL) made a serious commitment to the arts in 2012 when they purchased a commercial theatre. The venerable Majestic Theatre had been a cultural fixture in Saint John’s, NL for 190 years at that point. When it went out of business, the PAONL purchased the building and today they are close to finishing its refurbishment so it can be used again for live theatre. As I heard from PAONL about their plans for the theatre, I got excited about the possibilities. It will be used for church outreach events and for regular theatre productions. This is about the church showing support for its community and accomplishing its mission at the same time.

I recently visited Westside Church in Vancouver which is located in a former live theatre. A group of Christian business leaders bought the building and then dedicated it to the church for its own use and to rent it out for live, secular theatre productions. In fact, the venue is of such high quality that the Vancouver International Film Festival is held in the building. Hollywood producers and stars attending the festival are treated to a beautiful church facility complete with billboards for Children’s ministry and Small Group Bible studies, and of course, a large cross on the stage. Nothing is taken down when Hollywood comes to town!

Christianity and the Arts

If you are interested in the historical details of the relationship between the church and the arts, How Christianity Changed the World is a good overview of how Christian faith shaped art, architecture, music, and literature, as well as science, medicine, education and so on.

And if you would like to explore more about Christian arts through history, there is an excellent coffee table book which surveys great works of Christian art, literature, music, and film through the millennia entitled 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know. The stories behind each of the artistic selections are quite interesting, and you may (as I did) decide to delve deeper into the world of Christian art. This book is a great survey of a wide selection of art in its many forms. You’ll know what to look for and will appreciate its significance when you find it. The book covers everything from Michelangelo to Makoto Fujimura, from Mendelssohn to Bob Dylan, from the windows of Sainte-Chapelle to the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a very engaging read!

How Art Can Be Used

Christian art doesn’t have to have explicit Christian imagery to be considered Christian and useful. It just needs to be created by a good artist who sees the world through Christian eyes.

Art Talks about God

In Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts, Philip Ryken says that art is capable of appealing to our longing for beauty. It communicates to Christians and others a portion of God’s beautiful creation. It draws our attention to parts of God’s creation that we may never personally see, or notice even if we do see it. Art can therefore be a subtle outreach to our culture. A lot of today’s art is created from a pessimistic view of the world and represents values at odds with Christian values. Christian art could have a more positive view based on different values, celebrating the positive world that God created and is re-creating through Jesus Christ.

As I look at the picture of the peacock below, I marvel that God created such a magnificent display of feathers. Why are there so many varieties of birds, as opposed to just one kind? Why are there such dramatic differences between a peacock, a cardinal, and a pigeon? The variety tells us something about God. He obviously likes variety and there are so many beautiful possibilities he imagined for designing a bird that he couldn’t design them all into just one species! So he gave us many. At least, that’s my guess.

Art Talks about Us

But in addition to the beauty of God’s creation, great Christian art can also portray the darkness and ugliness of a world caught in sin and separated from God. We can use art to to enhance our evangelism programs and to advocate on behalf of those who need our help. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a good example of Christian advocacy literature. Images, plays, novels – all can help us understand who we are and our need for God’s love and forgiveness. I think the greatest single piece of Christian literature has got to be Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I love this book! From cover to cover, God’s grace flows liberally through the story! Many people wouldn’t think of picking up the Bible, but they will pick up a novel.

Building Design

Here are two great examples of adding aesthetic value into the design of our churches. The first one is historical and the second is present day. For the best modern-day example that I know of, of incorporating art into church design and decoration, check out Southview Church in Calgary.

The central tower of Wells Cathedral was built in the early 1200s, and in 1313 was heightened by about thirty feet. Unfortunately, the pressure of the extra weight began to buckle the walls of the church and they had to be braced. Additional pillars would have served the purpose and been a utilitarian solution. But between 1338-1348, master mason William Joy designed and built the incredibly beautiful and unique “scissor-arches” that support the tower and add beauty. His solution to an engineering problem became the “trademark” of the Cathedral.

Brandon Malo, pastor of Elevation in Waterloo, ON told me the story of how his church came to meet in a beautiful sanctuary. When he needed a larger space for his church of young families, he visited St. John’s Lutheran church, a gorgeous stone church near downtown Waterloo. He by-passed the sanctuary and looked at the gym, which was what the congregation was used to, and thought it would be great for his church. When he brought his steering committee to see the gym, they never got past the sanctuary. Looking at its beauty, they said to him, “Why would you worship in a gym when you could be worshipping here?” He coordinated service times with the Lutherans and they now share the same delightful sanctuary!

Centre Street Church in Calgary needed a humidifier system for their building. They could have purchased equipment and done a standard job, but instead they chose to design a waterfall for their foyer. Not only do they have a beautiful attraction that doubles as a humidifier, but they also have a pool in which to do baptisms! A great job of bringing ‘living water’ indoors!

Now I’m not saying that we should be building cathedrals today. But could we pay more attention to the arts in the buildings we do have? The examples I’ve given so far come from large churches, but most churches today are small, between 50 to 200 people. However, even a small church can add beauty to its building. Maybe you won’t have a dramatic waterfall, but you could spruce it up with greenery or some artwork. Even just the way you paint your walls might add beauty.

I recently visited Journey Canada in Vancouver and this small office created an immediately favourable impression of their ministry through brightly coloured walls, a bold painting and a decorative brass vase. What a surprisingly beautiful sanctuary of sensory delight inside an old brick manufacturing building that used to house a coffin manufacturer!

Barrhead Church of God in Barrhead, AB has a stained glass picture mounted on a light box, which adds to the visual interest of their foyer.

Art Distinguishes ‘Place’

Art lets people know they are somewhere distinctive. It denotes that “this place is different from other places.” James Davison Hunter writes that “when the physical places we inhabit look alike, place seems to matter even less. What was distinctive about a place [pales] into [an anonymous] space and we end up with what James Kunstler has called ‘a geography of nowhere’ – where every place looks like no place in particular.”² Art can create places of wonder, awe, and mystery.

Art and the Poor

Ray Bakke has said that “The poor need beauty as well as bread.” According to Charlie Self, “It is not too expensive to invite artists and artisans, builders and craftsmen, to adorn the worship locale with color, light, and images that convey the mission, vision, and values of the community. Simplicity does not mean plainness, and good stewardship includes aesthetic leadership.”³

So what can we do?

First, here are three other articles with great ideas for how to support or use the arts:

• Comment magazine: The Church’s Role in Art
• RELEVANT magazine: 5 Ways the Church Can Make Art Great Again
• Faith Today magazine: Artful Discipleship: How the arts can help in spiritual formation

Display Their Visual Art

CCCC invited six young aspiring Christian artists to exhibit their work at The Pursuit ’16 conference. All of them made sales and took away leads for further work. This is an easy way to promote their careers and delight your members.

Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto actually has an art gallery in their church. It’s beautiful and tells visitors they care about the local arts community.

Buy Their Products/Services

Of course, you can directly promote their careers by purchasing their books, music, or visual art. Or hire them for an event. CCCC hired a Christian acting troupe to perform at the conference banquet this year. I personally purchased a painting from one of the young artists exhibiting at the conference. Click on the picture for “Dusk” and you will be taken to the artist’s gallery. And CCCC commissioned another of the artists to do an original piece of art for us: a starling murmuration, a very meaningful image for us. It speaks of community leadership, as I described (with a video) in my community leadership post.

Key Thought: Part of our witness to the world is showing how the beauty of our world reflects the beauty of God. 

“The book, 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know has been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller.”

The post The Church and the Arts appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

“Persecution is the societal marginalization of believers with a view to eliminating their voice and influence.” Paul Nyquist

Dangerously Different

In this series, we’ve seen that the church is at an historical turning point, having lost its favoured status that it held for about 1,700 years. This makes it just as counter-cultural as it was in its first few centuries. We’ve also seen that people of the Christian faith are, metaphorically speaking, living in exile as a minority.

Being a counter-cultural minority puts us in a precarious position. It is particularly problematic for Christians because what makes us counter-cultural is not some minor ‘Christian thing’ related to society’s peripheral values, but something central to Christianity that is  at odds with the two highest priority values that now dominate Canadian society: individual autonomy and tolerance. These are now referred to as “Canadian values” and some people use them as a litmus test for whether or not you are a good Canadian.

What a change from the Canadian values I grew up with, which were peace, order, and good government. For more than a century, these community values clearly distinguished Canadians from Americans, who championed individual values.

We must not, however, make this an either/or scenario. Champions of individual autonomy care about community welfare as well, and the same is true in reverse for champions of community welfare. The conflict is over which value outranks the other when they clash. Currently in Canada, individualism trumps community.

The reason Christians are counter-cultural stems from our belief that God is the creator of everything. This has two major implications that set us at odds with the dominant values of our society:

1. We believe we are not the highest authority in our lives, God is. Our modern society believes we should each be the highest authority for our own lives.
2. Although we highly value individuals, because each one, whether a Christian or not, is made in God’s image, we value community even more highly because the God in whose image we are made is himself a community of three persons. Community therefore is crucial to our self-understanding. The whole point of Christianity is to be in fellowship with God and with each other. Community allows us to express God’s love, selfless giving and other attributes. Secularists believe God had nothing to do with creation. Humanity is nothing but the result of random elements mixing together. Survival of the fittest is the process that got us to where we are today, and this belief leads directly to competitive individualism. For individualists, teamwork and community, rather than being the goal, are merely tools to help them reach their goals.

Christians support personal freedom and tolerance, but not as values that trump all other values.

A great example of what I mean by the clash of values is the Sunday shopping debate that took place in Ontario (the province I live in). In 1963, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Lord’s Day Act based on the Canadian Bill of Rights, which was then in force. The Supreme Court acknowledged that Canada was an overwhelmingly Christian country that had accepted Sunday closings for years.

However, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was passed in 1982, and in 1985 the Supreme Court ruled that the Lord’s Day Act was unconstitutional because of its religious basis. Sunday closings were still okay as long as the rationale was not religious. The Retail Business Holidays Act did just that by justifying closings based on having a common pause day. However, public pressure led to wide open Sunday shopping in Ontario in 1992.

Here’s where we see the clash of values based on differing hierarchies. People who wanted the ability to work or shop seven days a week placed a higher value on personal autonomy than on community welfare. According to them, I should be able to work and shop any day I want. Christians and others who supported a common pause day placed a higher value on the ability of family and friends to have a day in which they could all be together as a community. It also served as public recognition that commerce has its place in society, but doesn’t trump the welfare of family and social relationships. Perhaps you have experienced what I have—family occasions at which at least one person wasn’t able to attend because of work commitments.

From the secular perspective, a different set of priorities makes us dangerously different and a threat (or at least a voice of oppositional conscience) to those who want individual wants and rights to override what might be best from community and social structure perspectives. Those who influence culture (who otherwise think of themselves as paragons of tolerance) are showing that they will not tolerate those who do not agree with them. The first time I heard a radio host say that people who have a limit to their tolerance for personal rights are unCanadian, a shiver went down my spine! I heard another radio host say just this week that someone like this should be punished by losing their job! The leader of a Canadian federal party said in an interview two years ago that evangelicals are “completely against Canadian values.” These are scary and very intimidating words!!

Hatred for Differences

“I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.” John 15:19

Jesus told us that the world would hate us. Paul Nyquist, in his book Prepare: Living Your Faith in an Increasingly Hostile Culture, says the world refers not to people but to ungodly systems (economic, social, etc.). This is a somewhat doubtful interpretation, as it is only people who can hate, not systems, but it is helpful nevertheless. It reminds us that those who hate us only do so because they have bought into a different system of thinking. It’s a fine distinction, but one that prevents us from hating those who hate us, and that is a very good thing.

Persecution and Suffering

Conflict over the clash of values is more and more affecting the daily lives of Christians because governments, courts and tribunals, and socially active employers are all pronouncing on values. As a harbinger of things to come, the language of those opposed to the Christian perspective is getting increasingly vitriolic and bolder as time progresses.

The fact is, living faithfully will become more difficult and we shouldn’t be surprised by that. Jesus told us to expect suffering and persecution.

Don’t Provoke Needless Persecution

But we don’t want to suffer unnecessarily. Ministries should assess their activities and strategic statements to be sure they do not cause needless provocation. John wrote that Jesus’ glory was full of “grace and truth” and that “grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ” (John 1: 14, 17). Our words need to be truthful, but they should also be full of grace, not anger.

And it’s not just what we say that we have to be mindful of. Actions speak louder than words, so doing anything that plays to the ugly stereotype some people have of Christians is detrimental to our cause. Don’t do it. We have enough on our plate. We don’t need to create any more obstacles to our own mission success.

Responses to Persecution

We haven’t ever had to seriously consider what our response to persecution in Canada would be. Life-threatening persecution is hard to imagine, but more subtle forms of persecution are already in evidence, mostly with respect to efforts to eliminate our voice in the public sphere.

So here is some food for thought. Paul Nyquist says in his book Prepare, that there are three legitimate responses to persecution, and one that we must avoid.

The good responses are:

1. Flee as Paul did in Acts 9 and 14, and as Jesus did in Matthew 12. Jesus also advised his disciples to flee in Matthew 10:22. This is the correct option when persecution would prevent your mission from being accomplished.
   • Nyquist says that fleeing to avoid pain is not an acceptable option because persecution is integral to following Christ and a powerful way by which God shapes up into Christ’s image.
   • I understand what he is saying, but it seems a waste of life and its future potential to needlessly stay and suffer, risking life and limb. If you can flee without compromising the cause of Christ, you should do so unless you know, as Jesus and Paul knew at the appropriate times, that your purpose is to stay and suffer.
2. Defend yourself using legal means as Paul did in Acts 16 and 22.
   • We live in a country which provides us with certain rights and freedoms, and it provides the means to defend ourselves when those are threatened. Freedom of religion is still taken very seriously at the Supreme Court of Canada. If we have legal ways to defend ourselves, it is only good stewardship that we do so (unless God directs otherwise). This is why CCCC intervenes in court cases that affect the rights of Christian ministries. If we lost the right to freedom of religion because we chose not to defend an attack against it, it’s our fault and we shouldn’t feel victimized.
3. Stand firm as Paul did in Acts 14, 17 and 19, and as Jesus did in the Garden.
   • In the first few centuries, there were people who went out of their way to be martyrs. This was wrong. Martyrdom is something imposed on you by external forces as you fulfill your mission.
   • If you are called to make a stand that could end badly for you, God will be very clear that this is what you are called to suffer. Jesus and Paul both knew that what they were doing would lead to their deaths and both knew it would fulfill their purposes.

The one bad response? Fear! Nyquist says fear isn’t an option. While there are natural fears of physical and emotional harm, we must not fear persecutors because God is sovereign and our hope is in him. This gives us the courage to stand firm when it is God’s will that we stand firm. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” 2 Cor 4:18.

We never know in advance how well we will cope with suffering. We might quake in fear at the thought of severe persecution, and yet find ourselves able to bear it when it comes. There was a time in my life when, if I had known in advance how bad it would get, I would have been too afraid to proceed. However, in ignorance of what the future held, I proceeded and I’m glad I did. I got through the hard time and came out a much better and stronger Christian. I would have said beforehand that I wouldn’t be able to endure it. But when it happened, God gave me the stamina I needed.

Beyond Nyquist’s list of responses, another inappropriate response to persecution I will add is to assume that God is punishing you. God may be allowing and using a situation to teach you something (think of Jonah), or redeeming a situation or tragedy that occurred because people are evil, but God’s punishment? When Christ has covered your sins? You might be experiencing the natural consequences of something you’ve done, but it wouldn’t be God’s punishment.

Conclusion

This is a sobering topic, and there will be a few more sobering posts. But the point is to address reality and find a way to move forward. This series will transition to positive ideas for thriving and flourishing in our new world.

As we journey on, we are simply acknowledging that there may be suffering on the road ahead. Don’t be frightened. Don’t cave in. Stand firm and stay focused on your mission. Do what God called you to do the very best you can and remember what Jesus said in John 16:33:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

Key Point: Because Christians are now counter-cultural, we are susceptible to possible persecution as part of the cost of following Christ.

The post Living in a Hostile Society appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The purpose of this entire blog is to help Canadian ministry leaders, of both churches and agencies, lead their ministries effectively. In this particular series, my purpose is to encourage you to creatively rethink how you pursue your mission. It’s time to check our assumptions and challenge our paradigms. Is what we are doing working? Is it effectively moving us forward for mission success?

When I look at survey information about religion in Canada (which seems stalled at best) and hear arguments being made about the place of religion in society (which want to relegate religion to the personal sphere only), it is clear that we have a lot of work to do. God said he would bless Abraham, that in turn Abraham would be a blessing to the world, and that all people on earth would be blessed through Abraham. As Abraham’s heirs, we want to see everyone, every human being, experience God’s blessing.

To play our part, many of us need to hit the reset button to adjust to the world that exists today. Many ministries have already done this and are thriving. Others have yet to seriously address the changes in society that have occurred over the last 50 years.

I regularly hear remarkable success stories from ministries all across Canada. These welcome stories inspire me and greatly encourage me, because they show what can be done when we do ministry well and in a way that fits with where the non-Christian world is at today.

Now is the time we need more than ever to hold on to our historic faith and stay true to our mission, but also to adjust to a changed relationship with the world around us that is new to our generation, and almost unprecedented in the history of the church.

So, let’s get started on developing a fresh way forward. Each post will contribute a small but important part to the overall project of helping the church be successful in our times.

Time to Call It as It Is

Almost three years ago, in what is now the first post of this series, I reviewed Mark Noll’s turning points in Christian history, and gave my opinion that the church is either at a new turning point or is at least experiencing a significant new trend:

Not since [before] Christianity became the Roman state religion in 313 has Christianity been so counter-cultural. In a world that worships ‘me’, ‘my rights’, and ‘my convenience’, the church stands out for holding perspectives and values that are most emphatically not shared by general society.

I now believe we are experiencing more than just another major trend. We are indeed at a turning point, and if we do not do something about it now, we leaders will later be found derelict in our duty by the generations that follow us.

The Turning Point

Christianity enjoyed a favoured status in Western society for almost 1,700 years. Both the state and culture reflected, however imperfectly, a generally Christian worldview.

But Christianity has been gradually losing its favoured status for several hundred years, and in the last thirty years it feels like there has been an unprecedented, aggressive, all-out, sustained assault on the Christian faith and its place in the public sphere. In the Western world, faith is being squeezed into a small box of private belief which is not to be opened except in the privacy of one’s home or place of worship. The result is that society is far down a trajectory based on secular values, and orthodox Christianity today is as counter-cultural as it ever was.

What makes this a turning point worthy of historical note is that, unlike the sometimes severe persecution the church has suffered in specific countries in every century, the change in status is not localized but is affecting the faith throughout the Western world. However well or poorly the church deals with it, the ramifications will be felt throughout the Western world for centuries to come.

We’ve Been Here Before

Today, Christianity in the West is in very much the same place as it was in its first two centuries in the Roman empire: it is a minority religion in a society which is a free-for-all for religious thought, competing against an overwhelming state ideology that stands against it. The Roman state ideology was the cult of the emperor; the Western world’s state ideology is the cult of the individual.

Movements have their ups and downs, but our beleaguered situation today is outside the normal fluctuations of fortune. Only once before, in the 700s to 900s when Christianity was reduced to a rump in western Europe and its future was in doubt (from a human perspective), was our faith in as difficult a spot as it is today in terms of its relationship with the world.

Finding ourselves once more in such a defensive posture is a significant turn of events that warrants serious reflection on how the church thinks of itself and does its work. If the church does deep soul-searching, I believe it will emerge stronger than ever. In three or four hundred years, the 20th and 21st centuries may well be seen as another low point, just like the 700s to 900s, from which Christianity emerged as a healthy and effective world-changing agent.

Looking Forward

In the West, we have been travelling for almost two millennia along a pretty straight road through a society that affirms Christianity, a road which is now taking us from one period of history to another. As we cross the bridge between the old and the new, the road ahead travels through a society that does not give any special place to Christianity. The other end of the bridge disappears into the fog of uncertainty, a shroud of mystery. It’s our job now to discern what God has for us in this new place in which we find ourselves. That’s what this series will explore.

The Problem

The problem that has us stuck is that many Christians still cling to the privileges they once had, grabbing hold of them, trying to reclaim them. They are fighting to go back to something that doesn’t exist anymore. The cat’s out of the bag. The horses have bolted from the barn. Even if we wanted to go back, it is too late.

Instead, we need to have the attitude of Christ, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” (Phil 2:6). Jesus Christ gave up his rights and privileges in order to serve humanity, and by making that sacrifice he put himself on a road that inevitably led to suffering and death. We must likewise give up our privileges in order to better serve humanity knowing that God will vindicate us just as he vindicated his Son.

We need some paradigm shifts, three to be exact.

New Paradigms

The three beneficial paradigm shifts we should make are:

1. In the paradigm held by most Christians, the loss of favoured status can only be regarded as bad, as a setback, as a loss. A better, new paradigm is that the loss of status is the start of God doing something new and good. Such a loss could be very good if it forces us to think afresh about the church, how we live out our faith, and how we take our place in society. And if you can’t see the loss of status as a good thing, then be assured that God will redeem our loss in some way for our good (Rom 8:28). Either way, rather than cling to the old, we must let go to grasp the new.
2. Another shift relates to how the church conducts its mission. Instead of expecting institutions of the church to do Christian work for us, we should see Christian work as the collective responsibility of both institutions and individuals. Historians and sociologists agree that in the first few centuries of the church, evangelism was mostly done by individuals in their neighbourhoods and on their travels as they shared their faith. There were evangelists and apostles to be sure, but the driving force behind the spread of Christian faith were the individuals who remain nameless in history. Charitable works were also done by individuals. Lecky, in his History of European Morals¹, wrote that “The active, habitual, and detailed charity of private persons, which is such a conspicuous feature in all Christian societies, was scarcely known in antiquity.” It’s time to reawaken individual Christians to their responsibility and their potential for Christian mission wherever God has put them. Churches and Christian agencies can do a lot of great work, but individual Christians can add significantly to what they can do, because individuals are everywhere.
3. The loss of status could lead to a third beneficial paradigm shift – a redefinition of mission success. There is a tendency to think of success in terms of win/lose, of advance or retreat, We think of success in terms of public life – especially in terms of politics. In later posts I will be exploring what success looks like and therefore what the indicators of success could be in our new world.

Consequences of a Bad Paradigm

As I wrote up above, I travel the country and hear great testimonies of the good things God is doing everywhere in our land, and I rejoice. But then, when I read the stats about what Canadians believe or don’t believe, and even what Christians believe and don’t believe, I have to wonder “Have we really accomplished all that much in the last fifty years?” It sometimes feels as though all the good news reports I hear might be all the good news reports there are.

James Davison Hunter wrote in To Change the World about several spectacular success stories of Christian ministries, but then concludes, “The problem is that these initiatives represent just a fraction of the potential within the church to bear witness to the love, grace, mercy, and truth of Christ.” Why would he think that? Maybe we are distracted from the good work we could be doing, individually and collectively, by fighting too much to preserve what we believe is rightfully ours.

The Prescription

I feel like Dorothy when she first stepped into the land of Oz and said, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

We are at a point in time where we must stop and reflect on where the church is at in relation to our society. We can’t go forward if we keep imagining that somehow we will restore the church to its former privileged position.

I’ve just been asked to join a small group tasked by a ministry that is more than a century old to take its mission and, starting with a green field, redesign everything about the ministry from the ground up. If it assumed it had no history but were starting fresh today with its mission, what would the ministry look like and how would it do its work? This is exactly the bold, radical fresh thinking I’m talking about. This readiness to reinvent ourselves and to allow the Holy Spirit to do something fresh in our generation gives us confidence that we can thrive in our new environment.

The way forward is to reflect on Christ’s Incarnation. When he entered human experience, he relied on no earthly power and did not cling to divine power, yet he changed the world by being obedient to his Father. How, then, should the church go forward? Stay tuned.

Key Point: Our world has changed in a very fundamental and historically significant way

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