Professions of Faith and Hanging Out Around Fire-pits

I want to talk about the danger of evangelism and community. I know it sounds crazy, maybe even sacrilegious, to call them dangerous. But they can actually destroy spiritual vitality in the life of a Christian and a local church. Let me explain.

There are some substances that are not dangerous to men but are made up of a variety of substances which, when isolated by themselves, are quite toxic or poisonous. There are also some tools that are quite helpful but, when you remove a component from them, become too dangerous to be helpful. Such is the case with the old circular saw in my garage that doesn’t have a guard on it any longer. This is the sort of idea I’m getting at with evangelism and community. They are part of a whole. And when they’re removed from that whole, they become dangerous. They actually become something they’re not.

Take evangelism. Over the last 150 years or so, it’s really been reduced down to getting individuals to verbalize a profession, often without any definite future view toward discipleship. They go to some sort of rally, walk up front, pray the sinner’s prayer, and then maybe are told to go find a church the next Sunday. Someone preaches the gospel to them on a street corner, prays with them, and does the same thing. They go to some sort of college ministry. Once again, there’s a sinner’s prayer, and maybe they plug into a Bible study, but there’s no emphasis on the centrality of the local church in discipleship.

So, in a weird way, evangelism becomes about a momentary profession instead of a life of being discipled in the whole counsel of God’s Word. This can also happen in churches where every Sunday is an evangelism Sunday, or where the content is kept thin and crafted to appeal to so-called seekers or new believers. Everything becomes about mere numbers and not the overall quality of discipleship. So while these people do actually attend a local church, the church has built everything around what it thinks is conversion, and it is all excused and called praiseworthy in the name of evangelism.

But evangelism was designed by God to lead into a life of discipleship with other believers in a local church. And when it doesn’t, it leads people to think they can simply float to and fro as disconnected individuals who never develop any real depth. In this way, evangelism, which, of course, is not biblical evangelism because it has been removed from the whole, becomes dangerous.

A similar thing happens with community. I was adjacent to the emerging church movement in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and I also have lots of friends and a lot of interaction with the house church movement. Both talk about community incessantly. And they often use the words community and fellowship interchangeably. But if you listen carefully, what they really mean by community or fellowship is hanging out together and talking about your life.

Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. But Christian community is organized around the public worship of God and the living out of His truth in service to Him in all if life. So fellowship is not just about hanging out. The idea of fellowship in Scripture is more like a business partnership. It is mission-focused. Fellowship isn’t merely about sitting across from each other, talking about your doubts and feelings, and opening up about your childhood. It’s about the pursuit of God. It’s about repenting of sin and growing in Christian virtues together through the means of grace.

And often what passes for community is nothing more than a clique of people organized around some shared secondary affinities with a thin layer of Christianese terminology. Again, there’s nothing wrong with some of the things these people are after. But they are wrong to think of this as Christian community in the sense of biblical fellowship. And when you allow this idea to reign, people spend their whole lives chasing a wish dream of community. Of course, they are always dissatisfied with the church that has true biblical fellowship because they don’t understand true community. This is how it becomes dangerous.

There are many other things like this. When you remove something that is part of a whole from the whole, you change the nature of that something. Holding all these things together in tension is the hard work that Christians, particularly elders and deacons, must tirelessly work toward.

Painting: Frederic Remington