A Place for Hope

In the next couple of weeks we will be launching a capital fund raising campaign- of the home grown variety called, "A Place for Hope." Our goal is to raise $80,000 for a significant remodel of our current facility. But maybe even more important than the money is the opportunity to renew our place in the community as a place for hope.

I just finished reading Philip Jenkins' "The Lost History of Christianity." A fascinating book bringing me up to speed on the history of the spread and decline of Christianity in the East. We are so familiar with the spread of Christianity in the West that we sometimes forget that the gospel spread throughout Asia long before it spread to America! I found his last couple of chapters troubling. While he acknowledges that THE CHURCH continues to exist, he reminds us that there are many places in North Africa, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, even to China and Japan where the gospel flourished and now is nearly extinct. Cultural changes, invasions of foreign powers, migrations due to invasions and natural disasters have radically changed the people groups of some of these areas. Part of the reason for the decline, according to Jenkins, was the failure of the church leaders to adapt to changing circumstances and a failure to reach much farther than the cities and commercial centers of those lands.

What troubles me are not his conclusions but the frightening parallels in our own culture. There have been far too many studies, surveys, and other research projects that have documented the fact that most Christians live just like their non-Christian neighbors. Without some sort of major shift in the way we 'make disciples' we are likely to find ourselves extinct in the very near future. Perhaps this is God's judgment ( an idea that Jenkins explores in his last chapter); perhaps it is part and parcel of the decline of the nation-state as a social and political grouping that seems to be occurring in our post Cold War world. But perhaps, and maybe this is better left to younger leaders, the real message is we who believe need to refocus our energy and effort on developing disciples who are truly willing to follow Jesus all the way. In a recent email article Ruth Haley Barton quotes Barbara Taylor Brown saying, "I want to stop about a day short of following Jesus all the way!"(see Holy Week: An Invitation to Walk With Christ(www.thetransformingcenter.org)).

If we hope to stay vibrant and alive, we need to be ready to stay with Jesus all the way- and discover a richer, more meaningful, and more productive way of 'making' disciples!