A Book Review
An Agenda for Change is the beginning of a conversation. While it has a primary audience - the evangelical family across the world - it will also appeal to Christians everywhere who want to be part of the great unfolding Christian story: the church sent out to advance the Kingdom of God as servants of transforming good news .
In the global west or north it is difficult to any longer think of the Christian church as transforming. Christian faith in Europe, and even to some extent in America, has lost most of its political control. Church attendance is plummeting. And yet God is at work in the midst of this western desperation. Denominations are undergoing structural reviews. Visions and missions have been overhauled. Sacred cows have been dragged to the altar of modernisation. Fresh expressions, emerging churches and even painful discussions about the atonement are all part of an active and vibrant Christianity. It’s agonisingly bewildering, but a pain that must be embraced.
Contemporary evangelicalism is faced with an array of challenges. What is to be done? Joel Edwards presents a three point agenda for change.
Firstly the church must present Christ credibly.
For too long evangelicalism has offered a distorted version of Jesus to the world. It is time to rediscover his humanity, his storytelling, his love for the outlaws and his life-giving and generous nature. It is time to recognise that in a pluralist culture (which is nothing new) Christ must be presented with boldness and confidence amongst the gods. He must be allowed to speak for himself and not shoe-horned into a restricted moral agenda. The church must put more if its energy into lifting him up than denigrating the other gods of our age. In all of this the miraculous and supernatural must be given space to speak to a culture weary of rationalism. And Christ’s conversational model of engagement must be the template for interaction with societies moving beyond the argumentative, win/lose spirit of modernity. Questions and dialogue should be the norm. The church has a vital role to play, despite its flaws, and needs to rediscover a passion for the bible. Intelligence, prayer and moral integrity in all areas will be critical. Social action must become the inevitable outworking of faith.
Secondly the word ‘evangelical’ needs to be rehabilitated as good news.
It has become tainted by association with bigotry, fundamentalism and narrow moral agendas and party politics. There is movement to abandon the label but this would be a mistake. The word has to be reclaimed so that it can once again be synonymous with anguish rather than anger, grace rather than opposition, action rather than argument. The left, right and centre parties within evangelicalism need to see the value in the other and recognise that unity is a biblical truth not an optional extra.
Thirdly evangelicalism must recognise that the good news is for spiritual and social transformation.
It starts with the individual but never ends there. Social change is part and parcel of the gospel. Christians need to adopt citizenship mindsets which see their churches as agents of positive change in society, starting with the square miles surrounding them. The church will become part of the solution to the numerous ills afflicting western culture. This is a long-term project, a cathedral building exercise. It will require strategic and intentional thinking. Many of the benefits will be seen by future generations. The job of the church now is to lay the foundations.
