Five Responses to Evangelical Realignment

These simple priorities have been tested by the centuries, and we wisely follow the old paths.

Our family has been touched by multiple incurable diseases in recent years. While we have been thankful to know what’s wrong (diagnosis), we’ve still groaned under the weight of a lack of cures (prognosis). Anyone with a family member afflicted by such a situation can testify. Even with a clear diagnosis, cures can elude us.

I was thinking about this tension in light of my recent piece on the big questions facing evangelical Christians. The piece mainly diagnosed or described the current landscape of evangelical life. I alluded to some active responses, but I didn’t explore them deeply.

So here I want to explore some ways we can respond, offering thoughts on the Bible’s plan for “treatment” in light of evangelical realignment in a hostile culture. The Bible uses different metaphors or “word pictures” to help us understand our calling and God’s will. For Christians in the world, the Bible uses examples from construction, farming, and the military, among others. We build (construction). We plant and water (farming). We fight and defend (military). We build, cultivate, and fight in at least five ways.

1. Cultivate and build a life with God

Some have rightly said, “The best thing you can give the world is your personal holiness.” The best thing you can offer to the world is yourself. But not like the world says. Not “You do you” and “Live your truth,” because “YOLO” (you only live once). Yes, God created you as an individual, not a cog in a machine called the world. He crafted you as a masterwork of his creative glory, in his image. He created you to be you.

Sadly, the “you” that you are has been badly bent out of shape by the sin in your soul and the sin in the world. You have been made as a masterpiece in the image of God, but shattered into a million unfixable pieces—but for God’s grace. You need to be recreated in the image of God in Christ.

In the work of Christ, by the Spirit, God the Father has determined to remake his broken children into ever more masterful works of the glory of his grace. He reassembles the shattered and scattered fragments of our souls as he glues them together with the blood of Jesus. He works the craft like a master of kintsugi pottery, so that those in Christ become priceless, more valuable than their unshattered creative form.

If you have repented of your sins and trusted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for forgiveness, you can now offer yourself to the world. But yourself in Christ.

So offer yourself in Christ to the world, as you practice spiritual disciplines, reading your Bible and praying every day, in community, so that you will indeed grow, grow, grow. In the midst of cultural change and evangelical realignment, your first and most important task has never changed: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

2. Cultivate and build a godly family

God first commanded humanity to build the world through starting families. “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). Families are God’s foundational institution of human reality in the world. Obviously, different cultures struggle to build families differently.

In the ancient cultures of the biblical world, men would marry multiple women. Today in the West we push back against the sexual insanity of the LGBT+ revolution, yet many Christians globally still struggle more against the primal impulse to polygamy. Though God allowed cultural forms of polygamy among his saints in Israel, he always intended monogamous marriage. And he never allowed the radical LGBT+ revisions of “family” that our culture celebrates. No matter where or when we live, the story of creation shows that God intended marriage from a single man and a single woman.

The gospel proves God’s intention, because Jesus doesn’t wed himself to individual Christians as “brides” but a single Church of individuals, “the Bride.” So, we push rightly for the priority of faithful marriage and family in our culture. While some take up the issue in cultural war, most of us are called to a more normal and mundane mission. Faithfulness in marriage, raising our kids, and nurturing the extended networks of family that God has planted in our lives.

So change diapers, play tea party and catch, coach soccer, sing, laugh, eat, yell, apologize, pray, and do all the stuff that families do. As Jimmy Scroggins has said, “I don’t have a perfect family, I have a real family.”

Cultivate and build a real family.

3. Cultivate and build the family of God

For all of its importance, even the earthly family serves God’s purpose of displaying the reality of the gospel: as Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22-33). Jesus has promised to build his church as it storms the gates of hell (Matt. 16:18). The church displays God’s glorious gospel to the universe (Eph. 3:10). The church assembles as the city of God on loan within the city of this world (Heb. 11:22-23). The word “church” shows up 114 times in the New Testament, and well over 90 of those times “church” refers to a local congregation.

So cultivate and build your local church. Do the things the church does. Gather for worship on Sunday. Eat at the Table of the Word (preaching) and the Word of the Table (communion). Volunteer in the kids ministry or on the music team. Set up chairs before the service, or fold them up afterward. Go to the Bible study or small group the church offers. Meet with the pastors, invite them over to your house for dinner. Invite others over, too. Take your kids to youth group, and chaperone for summer camp. Make coffee for the welcome table. Get someone’s number in the aisle after worship, and call them the next Tuesday. Invite people to your church service and to the next men’s cookout. Donate money (“tithe”), investing in the church’s mission to make disciples both locally and globally.

Don’t expect a perfect church, but invest in a real church, remembering that Christ is the one who ultimately builds and grows his people.

4. Cultivate, build, and create things that last

I read a story recently about the cathedral in Cologne, Germany. Construction on the cathedral started in 1248 AD and didn’t finish until 1880. The King’s School in Canterbury, England was founded by a Christian pastor in 597 AD and has continued educating students ever since. A family construction company in Japan, Kongō Gumi, was started in 578 AD and continues its work still. At every point in the story of such institutions, people have invested—years, resources, and lifetimes—into things they might never complete.

We constantly sit between the tension of renovating older institutions and starting new ones. I have seen the inner belly of both, having pastored an older, established Baptist church and having started a new one. We need both starters and restarters, builders and renovators, investors and venture capitalists.

Our culture prioritizes individual expression, often at the expense of institutional health. One of the healthiest ways to engage our cultural moment is filling your institutional roles faithfully, and excellently. Serve within the institution, rather than climbing “on top” of it to use it for your own goals (as Yuval Levin has warned).

I recently finished a beautiful, self-published novel, Theo of Golden. In the story, the author, Allen Levi shows what “Christian” fiction can become. It isn’t preachy, but it tells the true story of the world. We need to create things that last—institutions, artworks, books, songs, and stories. The precious things, “the permanent things” (as Russell Kirk following T.S. Eliot called them).

So if you’re a teacher or a doctor, a banker or a baker, a construction worker or a content creator, a coordinator or a caregiver, a pastor or a painter or a poet—be the best one you can be.

5. Defend and fight for your soul, your family, your church, and the things that last

We can start by looking at the “armor of God” (Eph. 6:10-20). The commands in Ephesians 6 are all plural, because “the good fight” is a team sport. All good teams play both defense and offense. Many have noted that the armor is mostly defensive. We defend the faith, the family, and the church. We speak well of them. We don’t whine about them. We don’t let others abuse them. We write white papers and Facebook posts. We make phone calls and send texts. We go to bat for our kids. We squelch gossip in the church rumor mill. We stick with people and places.

Yet Christians also have a proactive calling, with one obvious weapon: the sword (Eph. 6:17). The sword is the Scripture. We learn it, obey it, and teach it (Ezra 7:10). We apply it to modern life, even as we read ancient theological tomes. But we also have feet and knees. Some expositions of the armor of God miss the active nature of the shoes (or sandals), which were used for a “ready position” in battle (think a lineman in football). We readily speak and act. Likewise, the text implies the “weaponized” nature of prayer in Ephesians 6:18: “Pray at all times in the Spirit.” As the Christian rock band Petra sang years ago, “Get on your knees and fight like a man.”

So defend and fight for the permanent things.

Conclusion

The basic way Christians approach the world and their culture has never really changed. Whether the culture has been hostile or hospitable, the way forward has always been pretty simple: cultivate, build, and fight for life with God, family, church, and world. These simple priorities have been tested by the centuries, and we wisely follow the old paths.

The way forward is simple, but don’t let such simplicity confuse you. The way forward isn’t easy, and it never has been.