Overcoming Obstacles to Sharing Our Faith: FASHION and FAME

I've been meaning to finish off this series of posts that I started last year for a long time, apologies for the delay. 

There are many things that can get in the way when we seek to share the Good News faithfully. We have already looked at FEAR, FINANCE, FRIENDS, FAMILY and FELLOWSHIPS. This final post will examine ways to overcome the obstacles of FASHION and FAME.

Some of you might be thinking that you aren't that interested in the latest trends or in being fashionable so you don't have to worry about this hurdle. But do you care about other people's opinions of you? Do you want to make sure that you fit in and don't stand out? What about taking a stand on a controversial topic?

Similarly, when we think of fame we tend to think of famous people and celebrity culture but fame can be used to describe many contexts including those more relevant to us as the little people. Are we trying to make a name for ourselves at work or chasing a promotion at all costs? What about in our church, are we known for the right reasons or are we seeking platforms for ourselves?

What do we do if we do become well known perhaps unintentionally. I'm sure many of the church leaders and missionaries of times past didn't intend to create followings, it was just a by-product of their ministry. How did they remain humble and committed to sharing their faith?

So how can we overcome these obstacles?

1.  PRAY: This is always going to be number 1 because prayer is vital in every area of Christian life. If we don't pray we can't expect God to do anything and if we don't pray as we read the Bible, we can't expect God to guide us in our decisions. When seeking advice, it can be annoying to be asked, "Have you prayed about it?" but that irritation is usually because we haven't and we want a more practical solution. 

However, if we believe that God cares about the details of our lives and that he wants us to share our faith, we should have confidence that He can help us in removing obstacles in answer to our prayers.

2. FOCUS ON PLEASING GOD: When confronted with a situation that challenges our commitment to sharing our faith, we should always examine what the Bible says about it. Some things are clear, if we are told to stop doing something that God tells us to do, we should do it anyway. If we are told to do something that God tells us not to do, we shouldn't do it as it then becomes sin. 

We may have to stand against the crowd, we may become unpopular and we may miss out on a career or a promotion in the process. Being a Christian is unlikely to make us popular and is likely to force us into sacrificing things we may have wanted, for our faith: the Bible describes it as taking up our cross and following Jesus. At least in the West we aren't generally being imprisoned or worse...at the moment.

3. MAKE NEW FRIENDS: Peer pressure can be hard to resist and if we are constantly surrounded by people who want to stop us sharing our faith either through negativity, mockery or more subtle persuasions, then we should ask ourselves whether it's worth keeping "in" with these people. Instead, we should find some like minded Christians, who are committed to sharing their faith, to spend at least some of our time with.

4. DON'T EXPECT TO BE CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE: There may be rare occasions when culture aligns with our biblical values and encourages us to share our faith but that's not the norm. We are likely instead to be faced with constant pressure not to talk about our faith. We will be told the message or the method of our outreach is "not for today". 

One well known leader said that on judgement day when our neighbour asks desperately "Why didn't you tell me??" our shameful answer is likely to be "because it wasn't culturally appropriate". 

We should prepare ourselves for these challenges by reminding ourselves of what Jesus and His followers did and how they wouldn't be silenced by the trends of the society in which they lived. One street preacher said that he gave up any and all street cred the minute he took up his post.

5. LIVE IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY: Fashion and fame shouldn't unduly concern us as believers and shouldn't be things we are striving for as they belong to the world. You can read in James about the dangers of loving the world and the things in it. Life is short and then we will be in eternity, we have limited time to reach people with the Gospel. 

A favourite quote from Carl Henry is, "The Gospel is only Good News if it gets there in time." It may help to think about these things and to seek to order our lives accordingly.

6. DEVELOP A LOVE FOR THE LOST: This can be a real motivator to get out and evangelise no matter the cost. If people are heading for an eternity in Heaven or Hell and God has told us that they need to hear the Message in order to be saved, then surely it's worth sacrificing our reputations and friendships to bring them the Good News. 

It may not be fashionable, even in Christian circles, to talk about Hell but it is necessary to warn people of the terrible consequences of rejecting Jesus. The Message of the Gospel is often watered down to try and minimise the unpalatable with an unbalanced focus on the love of God. But God is a God of justice and holiness and we must communicate the whole of the Gospel. You can read Hell's Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort for more on this.

7. REMEMBER THAT YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU: We tend to live as if we will go on forever and are pursuing things that are temporary. Recently, on a mission team we were asked whether we were ready if Jesus returned that day. There was a guilty silence in the room. It's difficult if not impossible to live every moment as if it could be our last as we are distracted by the world around us. 

However, we can make sure we aren't chasing worldly things or accumulating possessions that we can't take with us. Judgement Day is the great leveller where rich and poor, great and small, will all stand before the Creator God of the universe with nothing at all. What will our legacy be?

Read the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12 who tore down his barns to create bigger barns to store his great wealth but instead found himself facing God who took his life that very night. A quote from CT Studd, "Only one life twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last." 

8. LISTEN TO THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN THERE: Those who do chase fashion and fame and make it to the top either through hard work or through handouts usually find that they aren't fulfilled. People who are purpose driven feel empty because there is nothing more to do and no new goals to pursue. People who receive wealth or position without earning it find that it is not what they had hoped for or dreamed about: many lottery winners end up broke, divorced or suicidal within a few years. 

Jim Carrey said, "I wish everyone could be rich and famous, so they would know it is not the answer." Erica Jong warns, "Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are" Vicki Baum's experience, "Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole" Elvis Presley discovered, "Fame and fortune, how empty they can be," and John Lennon cautions, "Fame is a monster that everyone wants to pet until it bites." Learning from these people who seemingly had everything they could wish for can stop us chasing after these things in the first place.

9. KNOW THAT IT CAN ALL BE LOST: People who seek to fit in with the latest fashions and/or who are famous have to spend huge amounts of time maintaining their image to keep their influence. This might be via social media channels or appearing in person for interviews or performances. Yet, they all know that they can go from hero to zero in an instant; one wrong word or poor performance and its all over. 

Robin Williams said, "You're only given a little spark of madness and if you lose that you're nothin." Oprah Winfrey noted that, "Fame is fickle, and I know it. It has its compensations and it has its drawbacks, and I've experienced them both."

This makes it even more difficult for a Christian seeking to be faithful in evangelism. It's unlikely that a Christian will be able to keep this public image and speak the truth without eventually compromising in some area or other. Christians that do manage it often find it very stressful and feel like they are walking a tightrope or on eggshells as they can be de-platformed in an instant. God can and does use people in these positions but it's not something we should seek as the reality is very different to what is presented by the media.

10. CHOOSE SOUL WINNING: Evangelists of previous generations didn't have the pressures of social media or the expectations of the masses created by things going viral on the internet. But, they knew the temptation to conform, the temptation towards a fashionable sermon without the cross and the temptation to please people rather than God. They knew that they were unlikely to be popular or have great material comfort but they chose to focus on winning souls anyway.

We have the same choice today. We can choose to conform, to be fashionable, to seek to get to the top of our career ladder, or even to become famous or we can choose to share our faith with individuals and seek to win them to Christ. 

If we do end up with a platform, we should hold it loosely knowing it can just as easily be removed, then we can use it to share the Gospel without compromise.

God doesn't care about fashion or fame but He is concerned about how faithful we are as believers. Let's overcome these obstacles and seek to win the lost by sharing the Good News of Jesus wherever we are placed.

Why Packaging the Gospel in Cultural Trends is Usually a Bad Idea

I’ve been concerned for a while about the rising popularity of courses like 3-2-1 by Glen Scrivener. The course book seems to be everywhere and many churches are seeing it as a viable alternative to more traditional introductions to the Christian faith like Christianity Explored. There are positive reviews on Amazon and Christians are recommending this course and with it the theology that it represents.

I recently attended an evangelistic seminar on connecting with people using cultural trends. This was based on a survey of non-believers where they had been asked to identity what was missing in their lives. The top answers were not God or truth but purpose, freedom, security, love etc. The thinking is that because the Gospel does offer these things, we should major on them in an effort to attract people to Christ.

Why is this a problem, you might ask. Surely it’s a good thing that Christians are seeking to be culturally relevant as they evangelise. Isn’t it good if people are drawn to Christianity?

Yes it is but only if we are presenting the true Gospel message and therefore drawing them to Jesus and real salvation.

Here are some of the issues I have observed with these approaches:

1. It’s soft on sin

This is definitely the biggest problem with the 3-2-1 course as observed by the only critical Amazon reviewer who with a headline, “Had to look hard to find out that there is sin and that it’s the main problem” notes, “Direction of book tends to weave around, seeming to try to fight shy of explaining that man is in rebellion against God. If you look hard, you can eventually find something of a problem that man has, on page 70…this book seems to me to seek to soft-pedal the real problem and to make the message ‘soft’ and agreeable.”

 In case it seems I’m speaking in ignorance, a few years ago, I did volunteer to help lead a 3-2-1 course. After the first three weeks, I approached the elder running the course and asked if we were ever going to get to the core elements of the Gospel as in sin, judgement or repentance. He responded that he thought it was “eluded to” later in the course. To that point, the way it was presented was more that Jesus came into the world to identify with us in our weakness and help us with our mistakes. I informed him that I couldn’t be part of it and stopped attending.

Similarly, in the seminar, I asked the question about sin and was advised that we shouldn’t seek to skirt around or sugar-coat sin. However, I would go a step further and say that we should seek to convey the seriousness of sin from the outset.

It’s back to the obvious point which is constantly being made by the likes of Ray Comfort and Roger Carswell: we must start by getting people to understand that they have a problem and not just that this is a problem in the world but that they are contributors and personally responsible. People will not be ready or willing to hear a solution if they don’t believe they personally have a problem. You can read books like Hell’s Best Kept Secret or come to the FEW conference in January to learn more.

2. It confuses people

When I took part in the 3-2-1 course, I was surprised that some of the faithful Christians at the church weren’t involved so I asked them about it.  They said that the previous course had been a disaster as the participants ended up arguing about the course content as they couldn’t understand it and didn’t recognise themselves within it. They spent so long trying to unpick this that there wasn’t really a clear Gospel presentation. They had resolved not to be involved in future courses.

What a tragedy for the church involved, for the Christians that have been put off evangelism and for the participants who didn’t have their questions answered.

I was having a conversation with a couple in Bournemouth once and had been there for some time when a young man from a different group also doing evangelism joined the discussion and asked if he could say something. I gave him permission and he launched into this long winded analogy which I thought I’d heard somewhere before. He was relaying the various aspects of this tactic, obviously learned in training, with great enthusiasm as if it would answer all their questions, if they would wait until the end. Eventually, they basically said that they’d had enough, that they’d enjoyed talking to me but didn’t have a clue what the young guy was talking about and walked off. The guy looked devastated and sat down on the wall with a great sigh. I tried to reassure him that the couple would probably have walked off anyway as they had been talking for a while when he arrived. He just couldn’t understand why his analogy hadn’t worked as he had put so much confidence in it. It had just led to confusion.

Not only can some of these approaches confuse non-believers, but they can also confuse Christians. There are some interesting books on evangelism but reading some of them just makes me feel tired. Tactics by Gregory Koukl is one such example. It just felt like there was a script or method for every situation. I can imagine myself getting tongue tied or forgetting my lines if there’s too much of that in our conversations with people. Learning some answers to common objections and something about different beliefs is useful but we must be ourselves. Answering “I don’t know” can be a good thing as it makes us more relatable and stops us coming across as know-it-alls. We are trying to win the person not the debate. If we end up confusing ourselves, we will definitely confuse other people.

3. It’s complicated

This point overlaps with the previous one but is worth considering. In a world where society is growing increasingly biblically ignorant should we be making our Gospel presentations less accessible in an attempt to make them culturally relevant?

We already know that we shouldn’t use Christian jargon or that when we do we need to explain it in everyday language but surely that extends to the content itself. If a little child can understand and respond to the Gospel message, why are we making adults jump through hoops to get to the core principles?

Surely clearer and more concise is better. In the past we used things like sin-judgement-Jesus, the Romans road and A: Accept you are a sinner, B: Believe Jesus died for you, C: Commit your life to Him.

More recently, we were reminded at an Open-Air Mission training weekend in relation to talks being placed on a board that “less is more”. The Gospel message is clear, straight-forward and simple: Through the cross of Jesus Christ,

God

Offers

Sinful

People

Eternal

Life

4. It’s the wrong way round

We may agree that we should ensure the Bible dictates how we engage with culture rather than allowing culture to shape our interactions with non-believers but the enemy is always seeking to undermine this principle. The problem is when we allow culture not only to dictate how we relate to and interact with non-believers, which can be a good thing, but when culture determines what we say. We mustn’t allow the Gospel message to be changed to fit or adapt to our culture.

An example would be the various ways well-meaning Christians have attempted to fit scientific theories into the Bible; theistic evolution, the gap theory, Genesis as poetic language etc etc. Someone recently said to me, “the problem is that when you’re talking to an intelligent scientist or an atheist, you can’t just say that God created everything in 6 days because it’s not credible.” This person had therefore come up with a theory that there were two creations and after the devil interfered with the first, God froze everything (the ice age) before creating things a second time?!

The problem with all of these ideas, other than that they don’t deal faithfully with Scripture, is death before the fall. The Bible is clear that sin leads to death and it can’t be any other way without undermining the Gospel message of salvation. God operates in the supernatural. Much of what He does is miraculous and He isn’t constrained by natural laws or our perceptions of scientific advances.

We must have confidence in the reliability of God’s Word.

5. It can be deceptive

I’m thinking here of the seminar I went to where we were encouraged to show people that the Gospel meets the needs that they perceive they have in their lives. It’s worth considering whether people who said they were missing purpose, security, freedom and love were even thinking of a spiritual purpose, spiritual/eternal security, freedom from sin and God’s love. It sounds silly when stated like this because of course they weren’t.

Likewise, Jesus didn’t die to give us purpose, security, freedom or love. He died to deal with our sin to open the way for us to be forgiven and reconciled to God. The things people are seeking may be a by-product of His sacrifice but they are not the main purpose. Shouldn’t we instead focus on getting people to see that they have a sin problem so they will then be ready for the solution?

In the seminar, someone asked whether this wasn’t just another version of the prosperity gospel. I was thinking that it sounded a bit like “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” or “Easy Believism/Decisionism” where hands are raised in a meeting but not a lot is said about repentance and the need for a changed life.

I don’t think it’s quite as dangerous as the prosperity gospel with promises of health, wealth and happiness. But it can lead to the same place and it’s much more subtle. It’s similar to John Piper’s Christian hedonism, that we must seek satisfaction for ourselves and it’s okay because it’s in God. I just don’t think God wants us to be seeking satisfaction for ourselves, He wants us to serve Him, to take up our cross daily and live lives of self sacrifice to help others see their need of Him. If a by-product of this life of self sacrifice is satisfaction then that’s great but it shouldn’t be our main goal.

What happens to the person who is promised purpose but still can’t get a job, or the person promised freedom who continues to struggle with addiction, or the one who is riddled with anxiety and continues feeling insecure, or someone promised love who is rejected by their church. 

If people are drawn to Christianity for the wrong reasons they won’t stick around when the things they are promised don’t work out as they had hoped. They are then inoculated against it because they think they’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. This is a serious issue.

A preacher that I sometimes work with was having a chat with someone who wanted to join us in the open air. He asked what they thought was a person’s greatest need. She said, “peace” and then added “love”. He said, “What about forgiveness?” Our greatest need is forgiveness of sin and peace with God. We need to keep this at the heart of our evangelism.

6. It majors on things that God does not

When thinking of evangelism, I can’t think of a stranger place to begin than with the Trinity. It’s a difficult theological truth to understand and many Christians only get a real grasp of it as they are discipled and read the Bible. When speaking with a Muslim is might be helpful to try to explain, but even then it’s difficult as all of our analogies fall short.

However, the 3-2-1 course has around 60 pages on the Trinity at the start of the course book and the 3 is obviously the Trinity. The idea is that The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been showing love towards each other in the Trinity in eternity past and that God therefore had somewhere for His love to be directed. Some writers continue this by suggesting that this is necessary as otherwise God would have no experience of love and wouldn’t be able to love us. Clearly this is wrong as God is love and doesn’t need us to limit Him in this way.

Whilst the Trinity is a theological truth found throughout the Bible, the love shown within the Trinity isn’t a major theme and isn’t used by Christians in the Bible when evangelising. Probably, because it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to a non-believer.

I believe this over-emphasis on the love within the Trinity is another attempt to bring God down to our level and to appeal to non-believers with an over-emphasis on God’s love to the exclusion of His justice and holiness.

Mature Christians will often say that some aspects of the Trinity are a mystery and explain that the Trinity is one God in three Persons and leave it at that.

7. It focuses on man’s ideas

The Bible is all about God. From Creation, to the Fall of man, to God’s redemption plan through the Cross, the Resurrection and the Return of Christ. 

We have many examples in the Bible of how to evangelise in different settings. The early Christians may have used things that were around them to connect with different groups e.g. Paul using the statue to an unknown God or Jesus referring to living water with the Samaritan woman. However, the message is consistent. The core of the Gospel- salvation through faith in Jesus- remains the same across all audiences.

The reason sometimes given for seeking a new approach to connect to our culture is that people are not interested in hearing the truth anymore. Indeed, they may say “what’s true for you, isn’t true for me” and believe that truth is relative or that there is no truth.

This is a challenge and I do think we need to avoid answering questions that people aren’t asking. People aren’t as interested in evidence based apologetics; proving the resurrection, creation or the origins of the Bible.  

But, I don’t think we can avoid dealing with the fact that our Message is true, that’s why we believe it! It also stops people thinking there are many ways to God or that all religions are equally valid.

People are more invested in discovering the truth than they realise. We rely on truth being absolute in almost every area of life and it’s easy to prove that truth cannot be relative e.g. if someone believes they can fly and launches themselves off a cliff….

God will still judge people and send them to Hell whether they claim to believe in Him or not. We also know from Romans 1 that people suppress the truth and are without excuse because God has made His existence plain through Creation.

There’s an interesting passage in John 18 where Jesus is talking to Pilate. Pilate asks Him whether He is the King of the Jews and Jesus replies, “Is that your own idea or did others talk to you about me?” Later Jesus says “…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” The dismissive retort from Pilate, “What is truth?”

People may sneer or dismiss us as Pilate did but our Message of Truth can still convict and convert them in the power of the Holy Spirit. The disciples didn’t change their Message when people were dismissive of truth, they continued as they had before telling people to “repent and believe”.

8. It’s not necessary

The intentions behind all of the Christians using these cultural trends are good; they want to see people come to faith in Jesus. Sometimes, though, they seem to be forgetting that the power is in the Message and that the cross preached is "foolishness to those who are perishing but to those who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1 vs 18) and that God chooses to use the "foolishness of what is preached to save those who believe" (1 Corinthians 1 vs 21).

We can have confidence in the simple Gospel Message knowing that God’s Word doesn’t return empty and that people will be saved through hearing it. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our Message on any level or try to obscure or hide uncomfortable truths. People are different, one person might be drawn to Christ because they are attracted to the Message of forgiveness whilst others might come because they are afraid of ending up in Hell. Both are valid responses to the Gospel Message and believing the promises and warnings in God’s Word.

What should we do instead?

Behind some of these ideas is a valid concern that we aren’t connecting with people and meeting them where they are at.  We can address some of these things by:

-using modern analogies and by keeping abreast of current affairs. One Open-Air Missioner said recently that wherever he is, flicking through a magazine, overhearing a conversation, on the bus, he’s always on the look out for new material for open-air talks. 

There is a talk which simply asks the question, “Where are they now?” and has the faces of famous dead people. It’s culturally relevant and always draws a crowd but the question cuts right to the heart of the Gospel Message as the preacher can apply it directly to those who stop and ask them, “What about you, where will you be in eternity?”

-learning from each other by attending training and discussing experiences. If we get difficult questions, others may have an answer.

-using modern language and avoiding Christian jargon. We can explain words that people may not be familiar with.

-talking about the big picture to help people see that they are part of it. Rather than it being something abstract or something only relevant to “religious” people.

-asking questions to learn where people are at

-talking to people rather than at them and by making eye contact

-sharing our own story if it’s relevant but not as a replacement for the Gospel Message

-having confidence in the Gospel Message and God’s power to use it to save people

Finally, we need to pray for a love for lost people as we reach out to them knowing that we have what they need in Jesus!