One of the greatest scandals today–at least as devastating as the “scandal of the evangelical mind” that Wheaton historian Mark Noll has lamented–is that vast numbers of evangelicals do not practice what they preach. The polling data is clear. “Gallup and Barna hand us survey after survey,” Michael Horton says, “demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered and sexually immoral as the world in general.” One wonders if the central evangelical belief in a new birth through personal faith in Christ who sends the Holy Spirit to transform us into the very image of Christ is really a farce, fraud or false promise.
This is a powerful, sobering article. Sadly as a pastor, I think his right. And I think this in part is why the emerging church is, well...emerging. Younger evangelicals (post-evangelicals?) are tried of playing church. They want true community, true reconciliation, true transformation.
Before coming to these small rural churches, I worked at 3 large churches. Two of these churches had attendance of over 1000 each Sunday morning and the 3rd was in the neighborhood of 600 to 700. Often I struggled with how much of an impact we were really making on people's lives. We're people really changing, really transforming, really morphing? Sadly often the answer was no.
And it doesn't appear to be any better for small churches either. Many times because we live so close to each other we tend to get sideways with one another. And then we handle the conflict that results horribly! We are passive agressive, we gossip, we deceive, we get even.
This is why I am currently preaching the Sermon on the Mount following Dallas Willard's excellent book, The Divine Conspiracy. In this sermon, Jesus makes it clear that transformation is the rule rather than the exception. Kingdom subjects will change!
The research sited in this article appears to show what Willard calls "barcode" theology. Many believe that if we just get the right belief, the right knowledge, believe the right theory of the atonement, regardless of how we live our lives, then we will avoid hell and go to heaven. Many think that when God scans the barcode, as long as it is right on the outside, it doesn't matter what is on the inside. But even if a sack of manure has a barcode for perfume on it, it's still a sack of manure!
Do we really think God would set up a system, a barcode system that we could beat?
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