Tuesday Review: UnChristian – Chapter 4: Get Saved!

A lot of people outside the church view the church and Christians as insincere and concerned only with converting others. There are no deep, rich relationships and/or environments where others can be deeply transformed by God.

What ever happened with discipleship? A lot of failing church programs should flourish, except that those in charge of the programming have forgotten one important aspect of any successful ministry. Discipleship.


Our research indicates that we have let discipleship languish in far too many young lives. Our enthusiasm for evangelism is not matched by our passion for and patience with discipleship and faith formation (77).

We are learning that one of the primary reasons that ministry to teenagers fails to produce a lasting faith is because they are not being taught to think. This gets to the core of the get-saved perception: young people experience a one-size-fits-all message that fails to connect with their unique sensibilities, personality, or intellectual capabilities (81).

Conversing about Christianity with these individuals is, for them, is like being served leftovers. They may be spiritually hungry, but the menu is not appetizing (78).

Some people contend that Christians should not talk about Jesus at all or send missionaries anywhere, since that might somehow offend people. This is a serious threat to Christianity because it essentially says evangelism can be traded for the path of minimal resistance.
The opposite reaction is to become more vocal and “in your face” about decisions, but then the critique of outsiders has even more traction. Why should the most important message in human history be perceived as a cheap marketing gimmick? If outsiders stop listening, we cannot just turn up the volume.
The middle ground between these extremes suggests that we focus on cultivating relationships with people and developing environments that facilitate deep spiritual transformation (84).

The church grew because Christians were doing the gospel and had a community—a local church—where people really loved each other. During the great plagues that swept Rome in the second century, all of the doctors fled, but the Christians stayed and took care of the sick. They embodied what Christians are called to do. Although many Christians died because they took care of the sick, pagans were drawn to Christ because they saw both the love of Christians and Christianity itself as a better way of life. When Constatine declared Rome the Holy Roman Empire, people thought he did that for political reasons, but he didn’t. It was already Christianized; he just recognized the realities of what really happened.
One of the things I do when I meet people is ask them, “What is Christianity?” Undoubtedly half will respond, “A relationship with Jesus.”
That is wrong. The gospel cannot be merely a private transaction. God didn’t break through history, through time and space, to come as a babe, be incarnated, and suffer on the cross just so you can come to him and say, “Oh, I accept Jesus and now I can live happily ever after.” That’s not why he came… Jesus came as a radical to turn to world upside down. When we believe it is just about Jesus and yourself, we miss the whole point (87).

I think Rick McKinly, Donald Miller’s pastor, at Imago Dei says it the best: “If we share the gospel and people reject Jesus, do we quit loving them (90)?”