As the articles in this issue of Modern Reformation suggest, evangelicalism is experiencing a change in seasons: former evangelical statesmen are passing from the scene, new evangelicals don't seem to rally around the same issues and ideas as their forefathers, and it's increasingly difficult (if it was ever really possible) to identify clearly what an evangelical is. If you have any warm feelings at all about evangelicalism, you want some answers: Where is evangelicalism going? Who better to turn to for answers than the individuals whose lives and work helped create and shape evangelicalism. Modern Reformation is honored to include the reflections of these evangelical leaders, pastors, and scholars as we seek to understand our own time and the future of the evangelical expression of Christianity.
The future of evangelicalism, in my estimation writing as a pastor, involves two important functions: (1) the preservation of the gospel; and (2) living, not just proclaiming, that gospel.
First, as evangelicals, we must make every effort to maintain what is the historic biblical essence of the Christian faith theologically. We live in a consumer era. When I was ordained to gospel ministry in the early 1960s, faithfulness to the faith once delivered to the saints was often evaluated on the basis of what sacrifices a person was willing to make in the avoidance of compromise with theological modernism. Today, in this era of evangelical triumphalism, the criteria tend to be more quantitative than qualitative, with the measurements of success being those of membership size, attendance, and budget. These kinds of consumer pressures encourage a theological amnesia in which we reorient our message to the felt needs of the seeker rather than to a biblical understanding of the Person and work of Jesus Christ and the training of a biblically literate laity. The minimization of the importance of theological seminary education, replacing it with leaders trained within the local congregation, inevitably leads to some degree of cloning the idiosyncratic. The knowledge of church history, theology, and biblical studies is an absolute prerequisite for strong evangelical leadership that is knowledgeable in a way that avoids destructive accommodation to, at the least, the theological fads of the day and, at the worst, heresies that strip us of what is important, threatening the very theological foundations of what we believe. What carefully trained theological liberals do intentionally through the deconstruction and reconstruction of biblical texts using a carefully selected hermeneutic paradigm is inadvertently happening simultaneously by sincere evangelical pastors and lay leaders who so desire to speak a relevant message but end up almost unconsciously compromising that message to the spirit of the times. And perhaps just as dangerous is an instinctive reaction to this tendency that resists such creeping heterodoxy with a rigid partisan fundamentalist approach to doctrine. This can replace the general spirit of a broad evangelicalism that embraces all who hold high the historic doctrines of the faith with a brittle partisan emphasis on particular doctrinal formulizations that deny the very mystery present in any biblical endeavor to adequately define the nature of God and God's workings throughout human history. Even as our vulnerability to theological amnesia can water down the essence of the faith, accommodating it to culture, such severe partisanship can produce fragmentation among brothers and sisters who really deserve the privilege of expressing the uniqueness of their spiritual giftedness under the large umbrella of an historic evangelical faith.
Second, as evangelicals, we must be careful that we do not just proclaim that historic gospel, but that we live it out in our individual and corporate lives. Sadly, recent research shows little difference in the lifestyles of those who claim to be evangelical Christians from those who would make no such profession. In many ways, we American evangelicals have not known how to handle our "success." The biblical mandate that we claim to follow urges us not only to have the right theology but to live it out in our daily lives. Although none of us should claim perfection and all of us are called to lives of daily repentance, we need a greater emphasis existentially on the doctrine of sanctification. We are called to live humble, transformed by the Holy Spirit, Christ-like lives. We dare not minimize our own individual orientations toward sin and particular sins toward which we are tempted, while we are quick to point out the sins of others. We need to be especially careful that we do not redefine what sin is just because a younger generation is coming along that minimizes some of the sins we have historically warned against. Instead, we need to be sensitive to ways in which they point out our hypocrisy, double standards, and minimization of certain justice matters clearly spoken to in Scripture, while at the same time not jettisoning our attention to those sins more personal in nature.
I'm convinced that the future of evangelicalism is bright to the extent that we faithfully preserve the gospel in all the richness of its content and endeavor to graciously live lives that not only proclaim that gospel, but flesh it out in attitude and action. Anything less than this could make its future quite precarious.
