Review: A New Evangelical Manifesto

This collection of essays by notables such as Brian McLaren, Richard Cizik, and David Gushee hopes to lay out a new vision for the evangelical movement. At first glance, the title made me wonder the essays would simply rehearse familiar emergent church themes. And when I saw that Brian McLaren, patriarch and chief spokesman for emergent, had written the opening essay, my first thought was that I was right.

But as I read, I realized I was only half right. Whereas emergent is primarily concerned with theology and ecclesiology, A New Evangelical Manifesto expands on emergent’s concern for social justice. In that sense, its contents are predictable: against the death penalty, against nuclear energy, concerned about global warming, human trafficking, healthcare, race, abortion, nuclear weapons, war and global poverty – themes that will certainly resonate with younger evangelicals.

There is no question that we are witnessing a seismic shift in the American church, a shift we haven’t seen since the 1960s. Young Christians -- hyper-connected, socially concerned and cynical about polarizing ideological squabbles -- are either leaving the church (ala Gabe Lyon’s unChristian) or leaving the faith altogether (“spiritual but not religious”).  What we are seeing in response to this exodus of the young is a whole slate of bold new initiatives, including not only the emergent church movement but also the backlash of the “young, Reformed and restless.” 

McLaren’s introductory essay, “The Church in America Today,” outlines the cultural shift we are witnessing, and he correctly identifies the problem. The old intramural debates that used to occupy the church -- sequence of end-times events, role of sign gifts in the contemporary church -- those debates are simply irrelevant to the young evangelicals. Those old doctrinal questions have been supplanted by more basic questions of apologetics, soteriology and evangelism. They want to know how it is possible to insist on the uniqueness of Jesus in a multicultural environment and how Christians can insist on salvation through Christ when Muslims and Buddhists are not just exotic characters in movies but devout and kind-hearted next door neighbors. “The question isn’t, ‘Are we saved by faith alone or by faith plus works?,’ says McLaren. “The question is, ‘What is salvation in the first place? What are we being saved from and for?’” 

I have seen the same transformation in the students in my Christian high school classroom over the past three decades. Time was when students would get into heated arguments at lunch over sign gifts or eternal security and come steaming into my classroom needing mediation. Now they scarcely even know what their churches teach about such doctrinal niceties and care even less.

McLaren labels the old evangelicalism “nostalgic,” “nativist” and “negative.” Although his summary applies only to the worst of evangelicalism, it is true that this is largely the perception of the many young Christians fading from our churches. And the cliche is true: perception is reality. The new evangelicalism, says McLaren, is characterized by “hope,” “diversity” and “creative collaboration.” He paints a rosy picture of the alternative to the straw man, and it is an attractive vision for many young Christians looking for something to believe in.

Richard Cizik, formerly Vice President for the National Association of Evangelicals, offers a fascinating story of his forced resignation from the organization in his essay "My Journey toward the 'New Evangelicalism.'" His understanding is that he lost his post because of pressure from the Religious Right. In essence, he says, the NAE told him that they will do whatever it takes to avoid criticism from politically connected conservative groups.

Some readers will be provoked and disturbed by Scott Claybrook's essay, "The Dying," which explores euthanasia and medically assisted suicide. In language that might be channeling the Hemlock's Society's Derek Humphry, Claybrook suggests that "uncritical rejections of assisted suicide and euthanasia for the terminally ill fail to accurately comprehend the multilayered experience of pain and suffering as one with a terminal illness begins the walk toward death."

Other essays, “Where the Church Went Wrong” by Steve Martin and “A Disenchanted Text: Where Evangelicals Went Wrong with the Bible” by Cheryl Bridge Johns, take aim at weaknesses in the evangelical subculture. 

While I understand their critique, I do wonder: If they are talking about the old models of the Moral Majority and Religious Right, they are right. Those movements have seen their better days, and there were problems in their perspective and methods. (I never did understand, for example, what support for the B1 Bomber had to do with a Christian/moral political stance.)

But I don't believe these same criticisms could be made of the resurgent new voices leading evangelicalism today: John Piper, Tim Keller and Albert Mohler, for instance. An evangelicalism that follows their lead would look very different from McLaren's vision for our future. And therein lies our choice.

The deeply entrenched ideological debate we see today is nothing new. Protestantism has been divided for decades, ever since the Great Divide of the 1920s, when the modernists and fundamentalists went their separate ways, and the social justice v. doctrinal purity wars were born. Those wars have scarcely let up over the past nine decades. A New Evangelical Manifesto proposes to point the way out of these paralyzing debates, but it looks to many as if the new evangelicalism is not, as it claims to be, more faithful to the entire biblical witness. It seems instead to merely compromise biblical truth in order to pursue a more robust social justice.

So what does the future of evangelicalism look like? Does this manifesto describe the third way forward, or does it merely rehash old liberal diatribes against the right? Or perhaps Mohler, Keller, et al provide the new way forward for evangelicalism? Both movements are robust, both are more thoughtful and more socially engaged than the old evangelicalism, but both cannot lead us forward. They are not going in the same direction. 

It's clear enough that we are witnessing in American evangelicalism the death of something old and the birth of something new. What that new thing looks like remains to be seen. A New Evangelical Manifesto does provide a clear articulation of one possible future for the American church. This reviewer would love to see a comprehensive response from the other version of the new evangelicalism.

Viral Jesus by Ross Rohde

I serve as an elder at my church, so I occasionally read books on church and church leadership. The title of Viral Jesus caught my eye. It’s hip and catchy. And it raised questions for me right away.

The title made me think of an emergent church approach to evangelism and doing church, low on hierarchy (I was right there) big on cultural relevance (not so much). But as I read, I realized Rohde’s approach was far more familiar to me than I could have guessed.

Rohde’s thesis is that the church has borrowed too heavily from Roman Catholic and early Reformer ecclesiology. As a result, we are hide-bound and traditionalistic, and we hinder rather than cooperate with the movement of God’s Spirit in the world. We’re too cautious, we’re too hesitant to embrace the supernatural, we’re too dependent on organization and technique and not sensitive enough to the leading of God’s Spirit to see the kind of wild-fire (“viral”) growth that the early church saw. Rohde even finds fault with the way the church is growing in Latin America and Korea. (China, he says, is a different story. They’re following the first-century model more closely.)

This is all familiar to me because I grew up in the Assemblies of God, one of the old Pentecostal denominations that traces its roots back to the Azuza Street revivals of the early twentieth century. The AG long resisted any self-identification as a “denomination,” with all those overtones of hierarchy and structure, but the charismatic and Jesus People movements of the 1970s recast the AG in the role of counterbalance. With its decades of organizational experience and its growing scholarly reputation, the AG and other classic Pentecostal denominations provided a stabilizing influence in those heady days.

So Rohde’s themes were familiar to me. Viral Jesus read like a defense of AG doctrine, almost like a YWAM handbook: be open to the supernatural, listen for the leading of God’s Spirit, expect the unexpected. 

And he’s right. We evangelicals are too fond of organizational models (which may be, as our emergent critics say, more due to our affinity for corporate hierarchy than traditional ecclesiology), we are far too cautious (almost certainly the business background there) and we get spooked by the mystical and the supernatural, both of which clearly have their place in God’s work.  

But this AG boy got his seminary training at Dallas Theological Seminary, so I am familiar also with the opposing view. At Dallas I was exposed to the heavy emphasis on the study of Scripture and theology, a cautious if not prohibitive stance on the supernatural in Christian ministry and opposition to women serving in official church leadership over men. 

So there was another part of me that said Rohde had gone too far: he didn’t say much about the study of Scripture, except to cite examples of the model he recommends. (He says Luke 10, where Jesus sends the disciples out, is the paradigm for ministry.) As he would have it, study of Scripture, theology and church history are really not essential for a Christian leader. Really?

Rohde argues that church hierarchy was far simpler in the early church and that over the centuries it became the “old wineskin” that we see today. Again, I think he goes too far. Paul wrote three pastoral letters, and in two of them he discussed at length the kind of organization and structure he wanted to see in the churches. Peter certainly had a hierarchy in mind when he wrote about elders, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews urged readers to submit to those in authority in the church. No, authority and submission were part of the church from the beginning.

I remember a fellow Dallas grad telling me once that he wished the church had the mind of Dallas Seminary and the fire of the charismatic movement. Rohde recommends the fire part. His book is not intended to be a balanced treatment of church-planting ministry philosophy, but it provides a needed voice in the discussion of what evangelism, discipleship and church planting should look like.

Every other year I get to have the last word with the graduating seniors at Dayton Christian High School, my alma mater and the school where I have taught since 1977. Below are the words I gave to the Class of 2012 right after they moved their tassels.

Congratulations! This is a most significant achievement in your life. In fact, graduating from high school is a lifetime achievement award.

Do you remember how old you were when you first recognized the importance of the year 2012? You’ve been working toward this night for more than a decade, and tonight you can finally breathe a sigh of relief: you’ve done it. Most of you will go on to further studies, but you will never again work for this many years to get a diploma. The next time you finish something that takes you eighteen years to complete will probably be when your own child graduates from high school. And you will feel a great sense of accomplishment that night as well.

I'm going to speak frankly now. If you go on from here to get a good education, get a good job, find a good person to marry, settle into a nice neighborhood, find a good church, be a good mom or dad, a good neighbor and a good employee… and if you’re satisfied with behaving yourself well and living comfortably… we will have failed you miserably.

I haven’t given the past 35 years of my life to help teenagers learn to behave themselves. Your parents haven’t sacrificed so much for so long just so that you would turn out to be a well-adjusted and productive member of society.

It was my mother who first coined the phrase “Educating for Eternity.” And that’s not just a slogan. It’s what we’re all about at Dayton Christian School. I love my work. I love the fact that I get to spend all my professional energy creating in people’s lives a change that will matter not just for decades but forever. I may not see some of you again in this life, but I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next life and hearing how God used you to build His Kingdom.

Between now and then some of you will live comfortably, some of you will suffer terribly, some of you will be called to professions and ministries that will be difficult and discouraging, as teaching sometimes can be.

But none of that matters. It doesn’t matter whether you make a lot of money or a little; it doesn't matter whether or not you live in comfort and security.

All that matters is that you follow Rabbi Jesus, that you discover your role in God’s Story, and that you play it well. Everything else is details. Don’t get distracted, don’t get discouraged, by the details.

You often heard me thank God for letting me have a part in what He has been doing in your life. I meant those prayers. I really am grateful for that opportunity to make some small contribution to His work in you.

Thank you, parents, for your sacrifice and your commitment, for entrusting your children to us, to my classroom.

And now, my blessing, from the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The Family Is In Trouble

The family is in trouble.

Family life is changing, and the changes are troubling. There’s no question that the nuclear family – the social unit of dad, mom and the kids – is showing signs of decline. No matter which metric we use – out-of-wedlock births, abortions, divorce, single-parent families —the numbers are depressing.

Or not.

There are two ways of looking at the dramatic changes we’ve seen in family life over the past several decades. Many people think of the family as an evolving social institution. In this view of the family, different isn’t worse, just different.

Take, for instance, divorce. Once rare, divorce is now commonplace. Since we all know someone who has been divorced or who has grown up in a family that has experienced divorce, the break-up of a family just isn’t the grand tragedy that it once was. The adults move on. Kids cope. Enough with the lamentations already.

The other way of looking at these changes in family life is that they constitute a kind of deterioration, a slipping away from the ideal. While only the most naïve would argue that there ever was a golden age of family life (nostalgia has a way of painting everything in a rosy hue), there is no question that family life now is far more fractured than it used to be. And this is not good. Family, says this view, is the one place where stability and support ought to be the norm, and when families fail, everyone loses – the kids, the exes, the in-laws, even society in general.

So what kind of social institution is the family? How much does it matter that family life is changing in these ways?

The origin of the family, as the story is told in the first chapters of ancient book of Genesis, begins with God creating all things and declaring His work to be “very good.” What God had created was wonderful and marvelous, “very good“ indeed.

That is, until He looked more closely at the man. Then God said something new, “It is not good that man should be alone.”

So God resolved to make a companion for the man. Oddly, God’s next act was not the creation of that companion but the creation of a felt need. The man, Adam, was alone, but he didn’t yet realize that he was alone. He became aware of that need only after God brought the animals to him, “to see what he would name them.”

So Adam became the world’s first scientist, classifying and naming the animals. As he named the animals, though, he slowly became aware of two things: first, they all came to him in pairs, they all had mates. And second, none of them was like him. There was a vast gap of quality between the man and all of the animals, even the most intelligent among them. And the man at last understood that he was, indeed, alone. There was no creature anywhere that he could call a companion.

That’s when he fell asleep. Weary and discouraged and lonely, he fell into a profound sleep.

When he woke up, he beheld a creature he had not yet named. She was clearly his equal, like him in so many ways. Yet – and he didn’t need long to perceive this – she was clearly not like him at all. (And that was before they had exchanged a word; after they lived together for a while, they both came to understand what every husband and wife discover. The internal, psychological differences between a man and a woman are even greater than the external, physical ones.)  

In other words, God’s design included diversity from the outset. God didn’t make another creature exactly like the man; He made someone intriguingly different.  

So which version of the family -- the social evolution model or the biblical model -- which model corresponds most closely to our experience? Which version of family life works best in the real world?

Conventional wisdom used to hold that the children of broken homes are resilient. They’ll adjust, find some way to cope. But long-term studies of children from broken homes are telling a different, darker story. The titles of books based on those studies are uniformly bleak: The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of our Parents’ Divorce (Stephanie Staal), The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (Wallerstein, Lewis and Blakeslee), and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s The Divorce Culture. The statistics are grim: as a group, children whose parents split up are more likely to have problems later on – problems with substance abuse, academics, emotional issues and, most distressing, long-term relationships.

If you ask the children, if they get a vote, they’ll tell us that the changes in the family are not just benign social evolution. Children know from personal experience that the more dysfunctional the family, the harder life is.

What is true on a personal level is even more true on a sociological level: family life matters not just to individuals but to society. It’s not politically correct to make this observation, but it is obviously true nonetheless: Life in a community in which families are highly functional is better than life in a community in which families are dysfunctional. Statistics like divorce rate, out-of-wedlock births, abortions and teen pregnancies have social as well as personal impact. Everyone suffers when families suffer.

It’s true that people survive the loss of family; some even thrive despite a difficult and painful family background. But the exception only proves the rule: people have a basic, undeniable need for the kind of life that only a family can provide. This basic need for community and diversity isn't just incidental; it's how God made us.

So does it matter that the family is in distress?

Yes, we need family. We need family desperately because that’s how were designed.

Just ask the kids.

The Believer's Job Description

What does God want from me? He and I both know it’s inevitable that I will fail. So here’s the question: if my ultimate destiny depends not on me but on Christ’s finished work on the Cross (and thank God that’s so), what does He want from me here and now? If I want to do His will (and I do), what is it?

That was the question answered by Micah, one of Israel’s ancient prophets, and his answer is famously succinct:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:6-8, ESV)

“He has told you” (in other words, this isn’t news; we already know this) “what is good” and what God requires of His people. Micah lists three verbal phrases, three items in the believer’s simplified job description:

1. “to do justice” James warns us repeatedly that so-called “faith” that doesn’t manifest itself in an ethical life is a dead and useless thing, really no faith at all (James 2:14-17). Sound doctrine is empty and hypocritical if I don’t “do justice.”

2. “to love kindness” If sound ethics must characterize my private life, compassion should characterize my dealings with others. There’s no extra credit in compassion, even with the most annoying person in my life. Compassion is no more than “paying it forward” for God’s extraordinary kindness to me. I express my gratitude for God’s compassion by “loving kindness” in my dealings with others.

3. “to walk humbly with your God” After addressing our ethical life and our social life, Micah turns to our spiritual life, our relationship with God. And his job description is again succinct: “walk humbly” with God.

• It is a “walk,” not an episode. My relationship with God is a part of who I am, not an accessory to put on or take off according to the occasion.

• And it is humble, a consistent recognition of who He is (God) and who I am (not God) in the relationship. I am dependent on Him for wisdom, provision and protection. Because He’s God and I’m not, I don’t negotiate with Him, I adore and obey Him.

It’s only a three-item job description. It takes a moment to say, but a lifetime to fulfill.

The Death of Dreams

I know this isn't a Christmas meditation. Actually, I wrote it in my NIV Noteworthy Bible last spring, on Easter Sunday, and I ran across it this past Sunday, when our pastor was preaching from John 19. But this isn't an Easter meditation; it's about trusting God, now.

The death of Jesus was the final destruction of a dream, of many dreams: of Messianic deliverance from the brutal rule of Rome, of the presence and charisma of a mighty prophet. It was, as we can see now, two millenia hence, the birth of a new Dream, a dream that was inconceivable to those hopeless mourners in those first few bitter hours, those first two days.

Without the death of Jesus those old dreams, which had to die, couldn't be laid to rest. So he gave himself up to the brutality and treachery of his enemies. He was "obedient [to his Father's will] to the point of death." All hopes had to die -- hopes of rescue, of justice, of divine intervention -- in order for God's Plan to be set in motion.

Once Jesus was well and truly dead, once all those old dreams and hopes were abandoned, God's people were ready consider God's Better and Bigger Plan -- Jesus not just alive but resurrected to a new kind of bodily life. Jesus at work not just in first-century Palestine but God's Spirit at work throughout history all over the world. A people of God made up of not just of Jews but a people "from every tribe and every language" -- all of this inconceivable so long as the Rabbi Jesus was kept from the hands of his enemies, so long as he was treated justly and humanely.

What This Week Made Me Think About

In my nearly forty years of involvement with my alma mater -- four as a student and now 35 as a teacher -- I have never seen a week like this week.

This week marked a sad anniversary for two of our high school seniors. One lost her father in a car accident nine years ago; his birthday was this week. Another lost her sister who, as a senior in high school, was killed in another car accident; that was four years ago this week.

Two school families are dealing with brain cancer and surgery. And grief and anxiety and confusion.

Two students lost their fathers within the past two months, one of them this week.

A local pastor died of a massive stroke at age 69. Many of our students attend his church. His funeral is today.

And young man who graduated from our school last year will be buried tomorrow; he died of heart problems last week. His funeral -- the memorial service and burial of a boy who walked across our platform to receive his high school diploma just four months ago -- will take place tomorrow.


I feel so helpless to know what to say to these students in their grief. Cliches and platitudes come readily to mind, of course, but we all know how useless they are. So do I say nothing because I don't know what to say? Or is it worse to say nothing at all? After all, isn't that the one thing Job's comforters did right? They sat silently with their suffering friend for seven days before they opened their mouths and made a mess of things.

I realize that one thing this week has done is make us all think about death. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since we're all going to face death some day. If a doctor were to deliver a devastating diagnosis to me, if I were to learn that I have not decades to live but months, that would change things dramatically for me and my family. But in some ways it would change nothing.

A man with a terminal diagnosis isn't different from other men because he knows he will die. We all know we will die. It's not even certain that he will die sooner than his healthy friends. What's different about the man with the diagnosis is only that he has some idea when and how he will pass from this life into the next. The man with the diagnosis is forced to consider a reality the rest of us want to avoid.


In class the other day one of my student prayed that maybe we might come to understand why such a young man would have to die. I've walked with God long enough to know that it is more likely we'll have to live with not knowing why such things happen. I think we'll have to be satisfied with not knowing the plan, so long as we know the Planner.

Regardless of what we ever come to understand about all these things, one thing we can know is that this week in the Valley of the Shadow is not the worst-case scenario. The worst thing that could happen on earth has already happened. Two thousand years ago we killed God; He became a man and we killed Him, even though we knew he was innocent.

I remember watching The Passion of the Christ and wishing that Jesus could somehow be rescued from his tormentors. It happens all the time in movies: someone speaks up for the innocent man and persuades the blood-thirsty mob to relent, or someone rides into the last scene and executes a daring rescue and the victim is saved. But then I remembered that no, I don't want Jesus to be rescued. He had to die; it was His Father's plan, and Jesus agreed to go through with it, and His death was the only way I could have peace with God. I must conclude that it is a good thing that God allowed the worst thing that ever happened.

If the worst thing that has ever happened took place within God's sovereign plan, if God was involved in that cruel injustice and actually planned for it to happen, I can be sure that even the suffering of this week is ultimately an expression of God's wisdom and compassion. I cannot know the plan, but I know the Planner.


I read recently of a missionary family living in the jungle who discovered a giant snake in their kitchen. They ran out of the house to get help. A machete-wielding neighbor strode into the kitchen and decapitated the snake in one stroke. He walked back outside in triumph, but he had one piece of bad news: the snake wouldn't know it was dead for some time.

The missionaries had to stand outside for hours as the headless snake thrashed about smashing furniture and windows in its death-throes. Standing there in the heat while their house was being destroyed, the missionaries had a sudden insight: that snake is like Satan. He's defeated and his end is certain, but he still is doing lots of damage.

The point of the snake-story? Two points, actually: 1) Watch out for that Enemy; he can still injure and destroy. But 2) don't worry about the eventual outcome. The outcome was determined long ago, when the worst thing that could happen did happen.

You can see my thoughts are jumbled. It's hard to string together any coherent string of thoughts. The grief and anxiety keep knocking my focus off-kilter.


I suppose the important thing is to keep steadily in view the few things that we know: that God is wise and good, that our view of things is limited and cloudy, that in the end God's wise and good purposes will prevail. Beyond that, we wait and we pray and we try to comfort one another as best we can.