Jared Wilson - Your Jesus Is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior

YOUR JESUS

IS TOO SAFE

Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior

JARED C. WILSON

Your Jesus Is Too Safe: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior

2009, 2011 by Jared C. Wilson

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The pages you are about to read are an antidote.

Those of us in the evangelical church have done remarkably well at practicing, packaging, and marketing our message. We are increasingly creative and innovative. We are relentlessly relevant. And our efforts are paying off in some places: our research shows that the number of large churches is increasing.

Yet, our research also shows that young adults ages 2330 drop out of the church at a rate of 70 percent, that the number of the unchurched is rising, and that 86 percent of the unchurched do not see anything spiritually necessary about the church.

In one LifeWay Research project, we talked to church-going Protestant Christians and only 70 percent agreed strongly in the doctrine of the Trinity. For that matter, only 72 percent agreed strongly that Jesus died on the cross and was physically resurrected from the dead. Those are not debatable doctrines yet less than three-quarters of Christians could muster the conviction to strongly agree.

Furthermore, in American culture, it has often become hard to distinguish between the body of Christ and the culture of society. Consumerism and sensuality have permeated society, and often those of us who claim to be Christ followers struggle to subvert their effects. Advertising gurus have become the official priesthood of this new and pervasive religion, and we are the congregation.

Levis jeans premiered a commercial in 2003 called Born Again. Needless to say, it was not about spiritual rebirth. The commercial portrayed a young lady being baptized into a snug-fitting pair of Levis. Not only are we battling consumerism, but we are also battling a system that will even use our language and symbols to baptize people into a different kind of community.

We might be offended at their use of our symbols. Culture may take our language and values and twist them to sell something, but we have certainly returned the favor.

If the church is going to be the aroma of Christ in society, the body of Christ is going to have to stand for more than the world is offering. The church must realize that we cannot consume our way into discipleship, nor can we get others to consume their way into being disciples. Retail therapy wont cut it in the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus desires to have followers who find their sense of identity, purpose, mission, and community in him alone.

In The Prodigal God, Tim Keller writes:

The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

Perhaps we think we are more successful than we really are. Perhaps weve lost our graspour understanding and our aweof the precious message weve been entrusted with.

The gospel of Mark reports the beginning of Jesus public ministry this way:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:1415)

I am not sure the church has shown it knows what the kingdom of God is. And I know we have lost much of our focus on the gospel. Is it any wonder, then, that the kingdom of the church gets bigger and better while the fields closest to home still lay unharvested?

The gospel of the kingdom is the essence of Jesus message, and if we have lost sight of that message, it is unfortunately possible weve lost sight of the Messenger. Its a terrifying thought: the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the church of Christ is becoming less and less familiar with Christ.

The irony, however, is that our losing sight of Jesus has not come from neglect. On the contrary, we are continually Jesus-fixated, but as Jared Wilson argues in his introduction, we are fixated on myriad Jesuses. For each and every attempt to do the Christian life and the Christian church, there appears to be a different type of Jesus to promote. So on one end of the spectrum, we may find a movement overly fixated on Macho Jesus, while at the other we find Birkenstock Jesus. And there are many other Jesuses at all points in between. We make our Jesus in our own image.

In the same way that we have reduced the gospel to an evangelistic formula, we have reduced the fullness of Jesus Christ to whatever portrait suits our fancy. But as anyone who spends any time with Jesus in the four biblical gospels can rapidly discover, Jesus is not as concerned with our agendas as he is with the Fathers.

What we need now, as we have always needed, is a far-ranging recovery of awe over, and trust in, the sheer power of the gospel, beginning with a return to the dangerously full embrace of the God of the universe present in the saving, interceding, exalted person of Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 3, Paul tells us that good servants of the gospel commit to decreasing themselves while preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ.