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What We Learned About Doing Christian Ministry in a Pagan Environment - Part 1
Orginally published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 7:48 AM
by Todd Rhoades
Donald Miller shares some things he learned about sharing the gospel in a truly pagan culture. Today we'll look at 6 of his 13 paradigm shifts he's identified, tomorrow we'll look at the rest of his top 13 shifts. Donald writes...
I have to confess to you for the first year being on campus at Reed College, I came to the realization that I absolutely knew nothing. I mean it took God one year for me to figure out I knew nothing. I knew nothing about spreading the Gospel. I knew nothing about people who didn’t know Jesus. I knew nothing.
It was only in the second year, realizing that I just needed to sit there and listen, that God began to do some great work. The work was not done through Tony or me. He just was able to come and interact with people. There are essentially 13 paradigm shifts, and Tony and I would just write them down as we realized these ideas about taking Christianity into a hostile culture, or Starbucks, or the place that you work, or your community. Here are the first six:
1. Other people exist.
Simply coming to the understanding that the world does not revolve around “me” but that everybody is having an experience, created by God, loved by God, and that we needed to repent of showing partiality.
2. Nobody will listen to you unless they know you like them.
We began to understand that people, subconsciously, merit a religious or philosophical idea not on logical conclusions, but on whether or not the idea creates a “good person.” The definition of a good person being whether or not a person is kind to them, tolerant and understanding, able to listen without arguing and so on.
3. Nobody will listen to God unless they know God loves them.
We came to believe there was usually a hidden pain behind hostility, that many people have been hurt by the church, or people or perspectives they believed to represent God. Many times it’s was simple as an interview they saw on CNN, but an apology and kindness went a long way in helping people understand that God was loving.
4. Other people have morality and values.
We came to understand that Christians do not own morality, that everybody lives by a moral code that is not always informed by an ancient text, and yet it is there. Calling people, or even thinking of them as, immoral was inappropriate. In fact, we often found that people who did not know Christ lived a morality close to his heart in many areas we had ignored, i.e.; community, tolerance, social justice, fairness and equality, freedom, beauty and so on and so on.
5. Find common ground.
Often the morality of others overlapped Christian morality, and we came to understand that in these cases, we would focus on the overlapping issues. We came to see this as kindness, just as though we were on a date or making friends, we did not focus on what we didn’t have in common, but rather on mutual feelings about life. We would not say or do anything to combat people unless they knew we loved them, and this takes a great deal of time.
6. Define terms in their language.
We were careful about Christian sayings and phrases that might be offensive: Crusade, sin, immorality ... we came to understand that concepts were more sacred than terms.
This article courtesy of CatalystMonthly.com. Join us for Catalyst next week in Atlanta! For more information, click here.
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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 9:06 AM
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Posted by Rick
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 9:41 AM
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 10:15 AM
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 10:28 AM
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 10:38 AM
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Tuesday, October 03, 2006 at 10:13 PM
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Posted by Brian
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 at 9:58 AM
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006 at 2:28 PM
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Wednesday, October 11, 2006 at 10:30 AM
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Posted by Matt Stone
Thursday, November 02, 2006 at 6:33 AM
Post Your Comments:There’s good stuff here.
“4. Other people have morality and values.
We came to understand that Christians do not own morality, that everybody lives by a moral code that is not always informed by an ancient text, and yet it is there. Calling people, or even thinking of them as, immoral was inappropriate. In fact, we often found that people who did not know Christ lived a morality close to his heart in many areas we had ignored, i.e.; community, tolerance, social justice, fairness and equality, freedom, beauty and so on and so on. “
I know alot of people who live by a pretty strict moral code but they are not Christians. In fact, they’d do just about anything for anybody. They’re very into their families, help their kids w/ homework, have a devoted loving marriage...etc…
This one really stood out to me. It’s important to remember that whether they want to admit to it or not, people live by a moral code.
Good list but it doesn’t sound different than good teaching from years ago. I don’t know Donald Miller but in reading some of his material (admittedly only one book in its entirety), I sense he was (perhaps is) anti-established Church. It seems he neither was given nor sought healthy christian communities and therefore he thinks he has found something new.
So while I agree with his conclusion on these points, I’m wondering why he is considered insightful.
Number two is HUGE!
BUt I agree with Rick a tiny bit. I’ve read all Don’s books, and he does seem anti-established church to me, too. However, I think that insights from such people are good anyway.
Truth,
Isn’t it funny that those thoughts look a lot like how Jesus did ministry?
With regards to the preveious comments… this is one of the blessings of this new “emerging” generation of theologians… they are looking for truly “high impact” methodology. The danger is that they can sometimes assume that all of the old thought and methods are either false or at least corrupted.
“3. Nobody will listen to God unless they know God loves them.
We came to believe there was usually a hidden pain behind hostility, that many people have been hurt by the church, or people or perspectives they believed to represent God. Many times it’s was simple as an interview they saw on CNN, but an apology and kindness went a long way in helping people understand that God was loving. “
I think the above is huge. Just about every week I meet someone who was burned by a “Christian”.
And we as believers need to own our sin and start apologizing.
I was invited to a park day by a very pagan group. They were homeschoolers and wanted me to teach a theatre class for them. The first day, I sat in my lawn chair, they got into a discussion about Christians. One woman said this “They say they are like Jesus. They say they love people. But when it comes down to it they don’t really. They judge. They dehumanize. And they treat you like crap.”
I knew that I couldn’t just let this go. So, I piped up with “Well, I’m a Christian.” Of course then she was embarrassed and started apologizing, but I interuppted with “And you’re right. I am so sorry for what my Christian sisters have done to you. They treated you badly. We do need to live like Jesus. If I ever treat you that way, would you let me know? And I want to apologize to you for their bad, hypocritical behavior. We’re all at different places trying to learn how to love like Jesus did.”
There was dead silence. But then she thanked me. And from that moment on I was her best buddy. She brought me gifts. She baked me things. She bent over backwards to be-friend me and later told me that she was “fascinated” by my life. This is a woman with a masters degree from UC Berkley. She is as pagan as pagan comes.
Until we recognize that we as a Chrstian community aren’t wallking our talk. The pagans aren’t going to listen. We’ve burned a lot of bridges. We write the nastiest letters, trash our own successful pastors, and fry each other at the drop of a hat.
They will know we are Christians by our love one for another, and beyond!
Just my passionate two cents for the day. LOL
Jan
I see some good points here, but at the same time, I think the paradigm has shifted too much to the other side at times. Jeff made this comment above:
Isn’t it funny that those thoughts look a lot like how Jesus did ministry?
In a way yes, but Jesus didn’t compromise on the “offensive” language. I agree with eliminating the “Christianeze...” However, to remove sin from the conversation removes the very reason why they need a relationship with God in the first place. I would strongly disagree with the “new method” on that point.
I’m sorry I didn’t see this post earlier. I recently read his book, “Blue Like Jazz.” Very challenging, and while I don’t know that I share all of his conclusions, I was convicted in a few areas as I saw myself in some of his comments of how some Christians treat those outside the fold.
4. Other people have morality and values.
Romans 1 talks about those who have the law in their hearts even if they don’t have it in words. To me this is a great place to start conversations - we share a moral code in many ways, and it’s the Creator that Paul discusses in Acts 17 who has put that in us.
Brian
To David’s comment....Jesus certainly pulled no punches, but he didn’t exactly use the religious jargon of his day. We need to be bold in what we say for sure, but we want people’s reaction to come based on the meaning of what we say, not based on some preconceived emotional reaction to a WORD.
We MUST say what needs to be said, and we MUST do it in a loving way.
Jon,
Yes, that’s why I agree that we should eliminate or at least reduce the “Christianeze” - the jargon that most Christians understand. I agree, we need to say what needs to be said, and say it in a loving way.
The problem is that in the article above, rather than saying what *needs* to be said, they want to remove everything offensive - even if it’s something that needs to be said. And that’s where the problem lies. You’re right, we MUST say it - even if it’s offensive - but as you said, say it in a loving way.
“Donald Miller shares some things he learned about sharing the gospel in a truly pagan culture.”
I must say I found this intro quite ironic in view of Donald’s recommendation:
6. Define terms in their language.
I share the gospel in a truly pagan culture, that is, amongst self confessed pagans like wiccans, goddess worshippers and celtic pagan reconstructionists where such identification is truly approapriate. But it strikes me that the word ‘pagan’ is being used here in an purely euphamistic way which I don’t think would constitute ‘defining terms in their language’ for the average collage of Starbucks dweller.
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