Scripture never blames preachers when individuals or even entire cities reject the gospel. Evangelicals, on the other hand, question the man or his methods when ministry stalls. They spend millions studying and then trying to replicate "successful" churches. That irony may puzzle some, but it terrifies church planters who are often under tremendous pressure to deliver fast-growing ministries.
Granted, the twentieth century presented compelling challenges to the church. We preach an absolute Word to a visual, hyper-subjective age that is more interested in "indigenous authenticity" than getting saved from, well, whatever. For example, ministry in a city such as Seattle puts us in a culture with its own values and presuppositions. Early in our work here, my family stopped at an intersection and saw three pedestrians standing on the corner waiting for traffic to stop. One was in a beautiful flowing sari, another was pierced and painted in gothic style, and the third was in drag. We are not in Kansas anymore. In fact, not even Kansas is in Kansas anymore.
We can debate the cultural geography of Kansas, but the question remains: Can the church survive outside the heartland? Many believers wonder whether this age might just be too much for us. Struggling ministries and cultural morass peck away at our confidence and drive us to obsess about the only thing we can change-how we do ministry.
Re-examining ministry can be profitable, even necessary, and the tabula rasa of a brand new church makes it ideally suited for thinking creatively. Unfortunately, we almost always do that under a marketing paradigm. We are children of our age who have been well-catechized by Madison Avenue. In a backwards way our biblical commitment can actually work against us. We know that we cannot change Scripture's message, but lingering doubts about its contemporary effectiveness are not easy to dispel. That tension makes us all too ready to believe the promise that marketing can help by changing the package without changing the product.
The only remedy is to regain biblical confidence. Biblical confidence is not simply confidence that the Bible is God's inspired Word. What I am talking about is more difficult to sustain. To put it bluntly, biblical confidence is the conviction that the Bible's message is so true that anyone who rejects it has a problem. That should not be difficult for us to accept. The gospel tells us that we all have a problem! It also tells us that accepting God's work in Christ is the only solution. That alone has always been enough for the church's best sons and daughters. They were confident that the gospel can prevail over any idea in any age.
Although biblical confidence can overcome our market bias, it is not a "shut-up and listen" approach to culture. Instead, it rescues important questions about culture from ecclesiastical marketers and puts the work of crafting relevant ministry back in the context of missions, where it belongs. It leads us from a marketing paradigm to a missionary paradigm where cultural analysis and adaptation can be done from a position of strength and biblical theology rather than from a platform of fears, fads, and focus groups.
Not surprisingly, Christ himself models this kind of confidence. He went further than anyone else to meet people where they were, yet he could still look unbelievers in the eye and say, "You do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:26-27). The steel in those words is our antidote to marketing.
How does a missionary paradigm based on biblical confidence influence church planting in a post-Christian America?
First, we can get out of a contest we cannot win. Frankly, we are pathetic marketers, but we can be good missionaries. Unbelievers may not "get" the gospel, but they know it is not a product. Better to be what we are and speak to the world plainly rather than try to be what we think it wants.
Second, we can do better at applying the gospel to the forms and aesthetics of a post-Christian culture. Biblical confidence could be an excuse to sing the hymns we like while the neighbors we do not like perish-but that is self-righteousness, not confidence. Confidence does not lead us away from issues of context and ministry. It leads us through them by a better road. I cannot chart that course here, but a missionary paradigm forces us to think biblically about the work of planting churches cross-culturally, which is where the church in America now is.
Third, we can reject unrealistic expectations. No church planter wants to be the eighth son of Sceva (see Acts 19:11-17). The demands of the work are difficult enough without the burden of "success" that marketing imposes. Instead of patching faltering faith with stories about "great churches" (read "great" as "got big fast"), we should measure effectiveness in five-to-ten-year segments and by two-to three-hundred-member congregations.
Finally, we can focus on the man instead of his gifts. Of course, the church does not need any more bad preachers, but character compels where gifts only impress. In the world of the marketed church, "gifted" equals "effective" and "effective" equals "big." But that equation does not always hold in biblical math. No doubt we should look for gifted men, but biblical confidence looks past gifts to the heart, as does God, who is not as impressed with packages as we are (see 1 Sam. 16:7).
The New Testament church knew a lot about rejection, but it did not obsess over ministers and methods like we do. Instead, saints pressed on and churches were planted. Along the way, many of those congregations faded into history but Christ's church advanced. In fact, every faithful congregation that lifts its voice this Lord's Day is proof that the gospel is worthy of our boldest confidence.
