Handel in My Head Meets Swirling UNC Students on the Crosswalk

About a year and a half ago now my battery died in my car. Apparently, this was the first time since purchasing the car used that I'd ever changed the battery because the stereo/CD player is asking for a code that I have no recollection of ever knowing.

So what that means is that I listen to my Ipod while in transit. And last week, given that it's Christmas season, I was listening to Handel's Messiah as I found myself driving through UNC's campus on my way to a meeting with one of my staff.

The resulting experience gave me pause to consider.

In my ears, the London Philharmonic was in full throat, proclaiming the news that "unto us, a son is given." This good news that changes everything. In him heaven has given so much that heaven can give no more (Valley of Vision). God rips open the roof and come to get us himself.

But outside my car, students swirled about in the midst of a class change. They didn't hear the music. This good news that changes everything was perhaps known to some of them, perhaps not.

Either way, it was hot and fresh for me right then...and the thought that this Son given to us might be foreign to the students swirling around my car in the crosswalk, or cause for ambivalence, or even and especially cause for hostility, was crushing.

There are times when I wonder if I did enough while on campus to take this good news out of my head and onto the campus. Nothing specific that I regret doing or not doing. I just wonder.

And there are times when I wonder if in my daily life, I am faithful to get this song out of my head and out to friends, family. Not obnoxiously. Not arrogantly. But winsomely, graciously, boldly, deliberately.

I will continue to crank some Christmas tunes over the next couple of weeks. And my soul, I'm sure, will have moments of pure bliss and joyful worship.

But if it doesn't overflow to bless the people around me, especially folks who don't know, then it's all just further self-centered, self-absorbed, consumer me.

On the Costs of Moving "Mission" to the Center

So this year both on campus and in my own life I've had a growing desire to focus on what it means that God's a missional God who invites us to be a part of his mission of mending broken relationships, first and foremost with himself.

On campus with InterVarsity, that means that we've been un-apologetically focused on calling our community to be a part of God's work in reconciling people to Himself.

Of course, any time you choose to focus on one thing in a Christian community, that means a) other values can get overlooked that shouldn't be and b) people leave who don't like that value.

And so, of course, I periodically want to re-examine and test the call. I'm fine to run people off if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're not running a ministry popularity contest. We are called to serve people but we do not answer to people. But we don't want to run people off recreationally.

And there are other parts to the mission of God. We're 'leading' with this value, but we don't want to miss out on the breadth of God's kingdom. We need to continue to mature in the vision and in how it gets worked out.

So last week I was asking the Lord for confirmation, for clarity. Are we doing what we're supposed to be doing? We're seeing some incredible things on campus, seeing lives change literally right in front of our eyes. But there's still cost, still questions.

Then I read what was simply that mornings Scripture in Proverbs (chapter 24), as I've been working through Proverbs for the past several months:

If you falter in a time of trouble,
how small is your strength!

Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.

If you say, "But we knew nothing about this,"
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who guards your life know it?
Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?

Yep, that about settles it.

Why I'm Not Apologizing for Evangelism

So nobody really likes the “e” word: evangelism. If you’re not a Christian, it’s what annoys you about Christians. If you are a Christian, it’s one of those things you don’t really want to do…and you sort of feel guilty about how little you want to do it.

But at UNC right now we’re on the brink of incredible things happening in evangelism. And this past weekend at our leadership retreat, Adam, a student leader in our ministry, shared a story of a conversation that illustrates why we’re not apologizing for that.

Adam’s been hanging out with a friend who’s very artistic, very spiritual, and not a Jesus-follower for a couple years now. I’ll call her Sarah. Last semester, they had a conversation that went something like this:

Adam: “If you had some sort of knowledge that would unlock the whole art world, if you could give me some insight that would help me to really get art the way that you do, you would give it to me, right?”

Sarah: “Yeah! If I could make you be artistic I would!”

Adam: “That’s kind of how I feel about my relationship with Jesus. It’s the thing that I think makes this whole life make sense. And I wouldn’t really be your friend if I didn’t at least tell you that’s what I thought and share that with you.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much what it’s like. So hear me out—I know that there’s times and ways that evangelism has been done poorly, stupidly, and obnoxiously. I know that there’s lots of different people with different ideas about what works for them.

But this whole Christianity thing claims to have a story that unlocks the mysteries of life: like why we’re here, why is the world a mess (please say a prayer for folks in Haiti today), why we love stories of redemption, forgiveness, overcoming, transformation, grace, hope and mercy, and if there’s any real hope for any of those stories that we love to become reality in our lives.

It’s not an opinion. It’s not personal preference. It’s either right or it’s wrong. And if it’s right, it’s better than getting in on Google on the ground floor. And that’s worth talking about. That’s why I’m not apologizing for evangelism.


And if you're a Christian and you're not doing it...maybe it's time to re-think why.

Why We Must Speak

So there's two very different offerings on the table at UNC for how to deal with the basic problem of human brokenness, pain, and the resulting guilt and shame.

One offer of salvation comes from this secular, humanistic school of thought (including, alas, the extremely liberal "Christian" church). Their response to the basic problem of human brokenness and pain and guilt and shame is to try to remove as much stigma as possible.

Everything is okay. No decision is a bad decision--except the decision to feel bad about yourself or to judge someone else's decision to be a bad one. You needn't feel guilty about anything because you have nothing to feel guilty about.

The solution proposed here is to try to do away with the standards that might induce guilt or shame, to lower the bar, so to speak, so that everyone can clear it as easily as possible.

But the Christian response is quite different. Freedom from guilt and brokenness does not come by lowering the bar but by actually dealing with the problem. Left to ourselves, we are guilty. We do indeed make bad decisions, catastrophic ones sometimes.

And the solution is not a covering-up. It is a rooting-out. The solution is God who has come himself to deal with and abolish all the brokenness and rebellion and sin that destroys our humanity. And he does so at great cost to himself.

Our problem, it seems, is not that we have taken sin and guilt too seriously but that we have not taken the solution seriously enough.

My hope is that those of us who know what God has done to deal with this problem will be way more bold in offering the hope that is ours. Otherwise, what other option is there but to water it down or drown it in anger or escapism?

We weren't made to bear the guilt and brokenness that is innate to the human condition after the fall. And so we invent ways out--and the inventions of our own making just complicate and exacerbate the problem rather than actually addressing it and curing it.

And so we who are Christ-followers must speak. We must speak boldly, courageously, with integrity and gentleness and humility and conviction. God has dealt with our greatest problems in Christ. This is good news. It must be spoken.

Cornelius and Eve

A couple of weeks ago a guest teacher at our church preached from Acts 10. It's one of those watershed stories of the early church: Cornelius is a God-fearing Gentile who is very devout and gives to the poor. An angel appears to him, affirms him for his good actions, and tells him to send for Peter, the head apostle who also happens to be Jewish and very committed to the gospel going to the Jews.

Peter comes, Cornelius and his whole house is converted, and Peter is converted to the work of the gospel among the Gentiles. Fast forward a couple thousand years and you've got me, a Dutch-Scottish Gentile worshiping Yahweh.

One of the teaching points at church that morning was this: good people need Jesus. Cornelius was about as good as they get. And yet the Peter is not sent there to affirm Cornelius' goodness. Peter is sent there to tell him about Jesus, the good news about his life and death and resurrection and the forgiveness of sins in his name. Good people need Jesus.

There was a huge celebration of Eve Carson's life today on campus. Thousands of people came to hear stories about her. And the stories were inspirational. By all accounts she was a tremendous and fantastic leader, person, student body president. You either felt inspired by her seemingly boundless energy and love for people or ashamed for being such a complete slacker and waste of a human being by comparison.

And as I heard the stories, it began to make more and more sense why we sang the alma matter and "Carolina in my Mind" at her services. UNC was her life. She poured herself into the work of making the University a better place for everyone. To make Carolina a better place was her life's work, it was her passion, the thing that she oriented her life around.

So here we are. A tremendous and gifted and wonderful woman who crammed more into 22-ish sleepless years of life than people twice her age...and yet it still all feels so empty. And I'm coming away from this experience more convinced than ever that work, even good work, even good works, even great relationships, even great family...none of those stories is big enough to give our stories the profound meaning that we long for, that we were created for.

Eve was a Cornelius. She was a good person, a great person. She needed a Peter. I have hope that there were inklings of the gospel at work in her life. I'm more committed than ever to developing and raising up leaders, Peters, who will be humble, bold, loving, committed, gracious, passionate, patient, gentle, in the speaking of the gospel...even and especially to the people who don't seem to need it.

Real-Time Gospel Articulation

I was talking with a student some time ago. He had just been summarily dumped by his girlfriend and was trying to figure out what it meant to trust the Lord, to recover and heal.

In the mean time, he had been talking with a hallmate about his faith. His hallmate was talking with him about the recent dumping--nothing too intense, just talking about dating and break-ups and how bad they stink. And the student very wisely and gently said, "And you know, I'm just trying to figure out what it means to trust God with something that I care so deeply about."

Last week I posted on the challenge and the call to live out the gospel in real-time. To actually apply the gospel to getting cut-off in traffic or snubbed by a co-worker or be passed over for a position that you wanted. This is the Christ-follower's call to a life of discipleship.

And what this student did--his real-time articulation of his faith-struggles in light of his break-up--that's real-time gospel articulation. That's the work of evangelism.

For too long evangelism has been seen as the work of experts or of presenting an abstract set of principles. What we're seeing in lots of parts of evangelicalism is an over-correction to an evangelism that serves and cares for people (which is clearly vital and has not always been as front-and-center as it should be) but never actually gets around to doing the articulation: this is what is real, this is the life that I'm living, this is why I'm doing what I do.

What must happen in our communities is that we begin to take Jesus seriously. He's invited us to a life that's recklessly different than our culture offers. It's a life of taking up the cross, dying to ourselves, loving others, living as children of God, not caring what the world thinks about us.

And as we do that in real-time, we must also learn this skill of articulation in real-time. We've got to learn how to articulate our faith as it's being worked out in our lives right now. That's our story. It's the one that God in His gracious sovereignty is working out right now. And in His sovereignty, He's put people in our lives to share that story with. This is our privilege and our joy: that we might tell of His work in our lives, even when we're not sure what it looks like yet.

Is Prayer the Work?

We prayed a lot last week on campus in InterVarsity--24 hours a day, 7 days during that week, in fact. And the discussion came up at one point--is this sufficient to have the type of impact on campus or do we need to do something else? This came up specifically in conjunction with the question of evangelism. Is prayer the work or is it preparation for the work or is it something in between?

Perhaps an analogy might help.

At the end of each semester, students have this glorious season called exams. For many days, they are in exam mode. What exam mode means is not simply that they must go to a specified room and get a specified set of questions to answer or problems to solve. Exam mode means that they are both going to take exams and also that they are engaged in all types of rituals in order to help prepare them for said taking of said exams. They drink caffeinated beverages. They get together in study groups. They pour over notes. They read books. They discuss ideas. They don't sleep.

Now it would be extremely odd if the students did all these rituals and never actually went and took the exam. Indeed, it might be borderline psychotic. It would be a little less disturbing but still questionable if they went to their exams apart from participating in any of these rituals.

And so it is with prayer and evangelism. We must pray, but we must also take a risk. There are many of us who wish it were not so, and that prayer was simply enough. But it's not. God will not allow us to hide behind anything to miss out on the joy of taking risks for the sake of His name--not even to hide behind something as pious-sounding as prayer. Prayer and speaking the gospel is like exam season--it's all one thing, with two separate movements.

And so this Thursday we're taking a risk at our large group. I'm speaking and the title of the night is Christianity is Revolutionary. To a campus full of activists who are passionate about justice, I'm going to argue that God is the first and supreme activist who also has the final word over all of it for our good: Hope Wins. And we're challenging our Christian students to invite friends for whom this would be a good entry point for the gospel.

I'll probably post some core thoughts from my talk over the next few days. In the mean time, please pray, we need it...