2 Complicated Things I Miss from America

Been doing some hiking recently. Taiwan is full of mountains waiting to be climbed!

As I move into my 4th consecutive year in Taiwan, getting into medium to early-long-term territory, the things that I miss from the US become more abstract, and sometimes more complicated. As an INTP (i.e. a very analytical personality), serving in the well-developed East Asian nation of Taiwan, I don't really care about this or that particular thing from the States (food, etc), or anything I could acquire by hopping on an airplane tomorrow. If I really missed them enough, I could get access to them one way or another, and I know awesome people who would send all sorts of things to me if I asked nicely.

As you will note below, what I miss at this point are not really specific tangible things, or places. It's almost misleading to say they are things I miss "from America," as they aren't particular to that nation per se but related to my life there before coming out to the mission field.

What I miss are certain aspects of life which are absent or changed when one's career is that of full-time cross-cultural missionary service, and which I know are not available to me so long as I follow this path. It's simply the way mission work goes, much of the time, but I have found that aside from helping people see some natural challenges of missionary life, thinking through these kinds of things often brings forth ideas of how to adapt more helpfully to this way of life. Also, there's that slight chance that someone else is in the same situation, and will be encouraged by the sharing.

So, here is a bit of unpacking of two complicated things I've found I miss over the longer-term.

1. The Feeling of Productivity

I have long felt that most people don't like being productive so much as feeling productive. Most people don't particularly like having to wake up on Monday and go to work, for example, but the morning ritual of dragging one's self out of bed, with the shower, the coffee, enduring morning traffic with morning news or talk radio or music or whatever, which plays itself out over years for millions of middle class Americans, has become a sort of de facto rite of passage. You know you are an adult because you wake up early like an adult, dress like an adult, get annoyed at traffic like an adult, and go to the office to do grown-up things. (This is more or less what many younger millennials only half-jokingly call "adulting.")

As more of a task-focused type than a people-person, in my time on the field I have realized that this feeling of productivity, of boxes checked and specific things accomplished, of doing what the world expects from a responsible adult, is more important to me than I'd realized. Though I'm an INTP who prefers to work via flow vs. a rigid schedule, and requires adequate time for contemplation/processing to stay mentally healthy, as an adult man with a fairly serious case of oldest-child syndrome, I feel responsible for everything I'm involved in and need that sense of accomplishment to not feel that I've wasted a day.

The question of whether a day has been productive or wasted in terms of ministry can be complicated, but in general our sense of ongoing productivity tends to come through "xiao chenggong", the "little successes." Small accomplishments and specific tasks done well which give one a sense of progressing towards a goal. (or better yet, measurable progress towards an impressively big yet humanly achievable goal)

It's tough to get that feeling on a church plant. There's no "going in to the office," as I do gospel-centric activities scattered across a Taiwanese city district (a room in the local community center this morning, the lobby of a local business HQ after lunch, my coworker's home in the evening, etc). It's a job for which sitting at a computer is often necessary, planning lessons, putting together presentations, etc, but there is never any clocking in or clocking out. Missions is a 24/7 job, not defined by specific locations or hours. You are never off the clock, there is no time divided between "work" and "my free time." Meeting with a non-believing friend to chat over coffee, spending the same amount of time in a missions school board meeting or leading a Bible study, are all part of the gospel work, and there is simply no system or scale by which one can rate them in terms of "kingdomliness."

So there is a sense in which I am unable to gauge how much I've accomplished in a day, because there isn't anything to compare against. Just having a class or activity go well doesn't mean much. It's good, but it's impossible to exactly what extent I've advanced the cause of the gospel here, or to what extent we've drawn closer to planting a church, when we can only do that when people respond to the gospel message, which is something we can't control. My passion is that Christ be glorified in Taiwan, whereas most people are either literally bowing to statues, have a sort of vague TED-Talk religion of personal goals and giving back to the world, or are simply focused on personal success and comfort. But we can't change hearts, only the Spirit can do that, so we're putting years of time and effort into something we're intrinsically incapable of accomplishing alone. If God doesn't move, we don't see any fruit from our efforts. As an incoming missionary, I thought this meant He definitely would move, but I have discovered in the past couple of years that God does not alter His pace to cater to a human need for a sense of progress. (He may or may not move, and where God moves one usually finds His servants hard at work, but there is no contract where He agrees to move in proportion to how hard we work.)

Breaking new ground for the gospel doesn't always look impressive, then, and sometimes its fruits are only seen in the harvesting that follows at some point much later, sometimes one or multiple generations later. It's like a business in which nearly all the profit is continually invested back into the business itself. Everything may be proceeding according to the business plan, and there may come a day of tearfully glorious success, when it is revealed to have all been worth it all along, but workers may or may not be willing to keep investing in the future profit when it can't be seen now. (Sadly, many missionaries have left Taiwan when fruit seemed too slow in coming, or simply nonexistent. It's a constant struggle to balance the idea that one will see God working visibly when one is in His will, with the fact that He yet often calls us to continue in faith when we can't see the visible signs we feel should be there, all in tension with the knowledge that He works according to His own timing. As Lewis reminds us in the last Narnia book, He's not a tame lion.)

We say we walk by faith, not by sight, but it's quite a challenge to work by faith, not by sight. I am committed to learning how to live and work in this way, and Lord willing, can disciple others to do the same. Humanly speaking, however, some days I do still wish I could clock out after a hard day's work accomplishing measurable goals of one kind or another, and feel that I'd earned some leisure time.

2. Resource-based Solutions

A. When hardware is lacking
America is almost ridiculously blessed with resources. You can throw "stuff" at a problem, equipment, money, etc. and accomplish huge tasks with efficient use of manpower. It's seriously great to live in an economy and society where you can have your own shed, garage, workshop, etc. filled with your own tools, not to mention owning the space necessary to store them. If people weren't burdened under national debt and quasi-socialist tax burdens, and enslaved by entertainment media, the American economy would be incomprehensibly strong. A lot of people could do what they do at their job in half the time, spend some of their pay to buy capital goods, and spend the other half actually producing things of value at their home.

In Taiwan, and pretty much anywhere else in the world I've visited, these kinds of personal resources are scarce. The society isn't wealthy enough for lots of random individual people to acquire and maintain a whole supply of tools in support of their individual interests. Instead those resources are possessed by the wider family or community, sometimes in a less satisfactory way. You don't have the wrench, but Uncle Chen works at a shop which has one you can borrow next week. In Taiwan, the average person in a city doesn't have much living space to spare for tools or anything else, let alone the extra money to put into time-consuming hobbies. (America is wealthy in ways it's hard to recognize unless one has lived abroad in various parts of the world, though that's beginning to change as the middle-class is systematically destroyed and all the extra money siphoned out of society.)

So that's the first half of the problem. Much of the world simply doesn't have the impressive hardware and resources widely available to Americans, so there isn't the option to simply swoop in with the right tools to get the job done quickly and move on to the next one. Specific example: Our summer campground is a very old facility that requires continual maintenance as things break. We can fix them, but it requires time spent away from ministry to do so, and people who actually know how to do the work decently well, who are few and far between and typically otherwise employed. It would be a fun task for many American men, who have a pickup-truck-load of tools just waiting for the right chance to be used, and pride themselves on knowing how to use them to good effect. As an engineer by trade, there are times when I really miss problems which can be solved simply by acquiring the right tools and possessing the know-how.

B. When Physical Resources Can't Help Much Anyway
More to the point, however, in the case of missions and really anywhere one can passionately demonstrate a worthwhile need, there are good, generous people who would love to provide those resources. They will give sacrificially, they will go to considerable lengths to make sure the work of the gospel (or of charity, etc) is not hampered by the relatively straightforward problem of a lack of funds, or resources which can be acquired by said funds.

But there is not really any hardware which can be thrown at the challenge of building gospel relationships in the dense concrete jungle of a Taiwanese urban community, where there is no open field to raise a tent or park some cars, barely even space for a cluster of people to stand outside and avoid cars and scooters passing by; where whatever is done is done in your home or someone else's or a restaurant, to which people must accept an invitation. (Our community center is by far the best public area for events in our vicinity, and there is lots of competition for booking rooms)

There is a sense in which a trip to construct an entire new church building from the foundation up is vanishingly simple compared to the task of trying to disciple a single local believer. I've run cranes and tied rebar and welded steel columns and poured concrete foundations and laid tile and run pipe and done all manner of things necessary for constructing new homes or churches. It's hard work, but at the end of the day, it's done, and you have something to look at and feel that great sense of satisfaction.

But working with people is an entirely different challenge, and one which simply can't be solved with a bunch of physical labor, hardware tools, and enough funds to cover the project. You need to speak the local language well, you need people to be willing to connect with you, you need time in your and their schedule to meet, you need them to be spiritually open, and to slowly build trust with people somewhat suspicious that you're being nice to them while appearing to get nothing out of it yourself, etc.

So when people ask "how can I help," it can be a little frustrating that I don't have a lot of answers. I would love to have some specific request ready like "we need funds for our well-digging project" or "we need help building an addition on our orphanage," etc, but none of those apply in our context. We don't "need" anything in the sense of physical resources, and even more funds don't necessarily translate into being able to do more, since we already lack the manpower to comprehensively follow up on the community outreach we're involved with now. A few very specific things could enhance our work, especially Chinese-language teaching aids with traditional characters (much of what is available is in simplified Chinese, what China uses).

But the majority of what must be done is a long, slow process of building bridges with people and establishing trust, to let them experience God's love and joy, and sustain a long-term burden for them, praying that they too can enter the kingdom and know Christ as we have come to know Him. We need more people to do more follow-up, to meet new people in our community and make friends and build relationships for the sake of the gospel, to open new doors and be a living witness shining in a still-dark place.

Basically, what we need is neither funds nor stuff, what we need is you--to come help in the work of being fishers of men.

Overlooked Parts of the Christmas Story

Merry Christmas from Taiwan!

As I teach the Christmas story repeatedly over these weeks, some bits of the story that are often overlooked or misinterpreted based on popular art and tradition rise to the surface. Here are some of them which you may find interesting. Most of this can be found in other articles being circulated, but I thought it would be nice to have it all together in one post.

1. Why was there no room for Mary and Joseph?

It wasn't just a busy night in Bethlehem and Barliman ben Butterbur happened to be all full up at the Prancing Pony--Mary and Joseph weren't the only ones who had to go back to their hometown for the census. The place was packed with travelers, and there would have been other members of Joseph's extended family traveling back to Bethlehem too, since that was their ancestral hometown as well. 

There's no indication from Luke that Mary was in labor as they arrived and Joseph was running around in desperation knocking on doors; it simply says that while they were there (i.e. had already arrived) the time came for Jesus to be born. (Luke 2:6) So the scenario described is less suitable for a dramatic scene in a film, but much more true to life, with the young couple arriving in town with Mary pregnant, yet finding it so crowded due to the large influx of census-takers that they couldn't have their own room and had to make do with a secondary space.

"No room" means no room of their own, then, and not "no units available for rent," since 1) that's based on a medieval idea of inns and is probably the wrong translation of the Greek for such inns as existed at the time:

2. Not an Inn, nor an isolated Stable in a Cave

As is becoming more common knowledge, the famous "no room at the inn" line is not the best translation, and the Greek word used probably refers instead to the guestroom of a family home. 

Some evidence in support of this would be 1) Mary and Joseph didn't have the money for something like an inn for traveling merchants (as evidenced by the fact that they had to use a pair of birds for the dedication sacrifice for Jesus instead of a lamb, only allowed when one is very poor), and 2), given the circumstances and the culture of the time (and lack of phones or internet or effective postal system to let someone know you are coming, it must be remembered), it's much more likely they have first gone to find and try to stay with Joseph's family in Bethlehem. (Some have suggested at that time it was more or less a cultural obligation for them to do so)

With the place packed out with incoming family, however (who would likely have gotten there first before Joseph and very pregnant Mary coming in from up north), there was no room in the house's little guest room for Mary to have a baby, so they moved to the front area of the main room, where the ladies could help Mary. In the cramped and intimate quarters of a 1st century Jewish home, animals often sheltered inside the house in an area by the door, and a stone manger with soft straw would be a secure place to lay a baby to keep him out from under the rest of the family packed into a small house.

A good chart which shows how things might have looked,
obtained from this article which has a good quick rundown
on the reasons why Jesus wasn't born in a roadside inn
or a stable full of animals away from other people.

For more information, see this really good article, which brings up both the Greek translation issues and also the humorous reminder that, at very least, had a bunch of Jewish shepherds found Mary and Joseph in a stable by themselves with a newborn infant, they would have been horrified and insisted the three come back with them so their wives could care for Mary and the baby.

The manger situation was probably about like this.
A secure stone trough in a nook by the front entrance.

3. A Lengthy Stay in Bethlehem?

Mary and Joseph didn't go back up to Nazareth until Mary was ceremonially clean again after 40 days, and they had done the dedication offering for Jesus at the Jerusalem temple, and Luke 2 mentions that only after visiting the temple do they head back north to Nazareth in Galilee. So they must have stayed around Bethlehem for at least 6 weeks.*

This is yet another piece of evidence that they stayed with family, as either being stuck in a stable with a newborn for several weeks or trying to pay for a room in an inn for that long (plus food, etc.) would be highly problematic for the poor young couple.

*- On the other hand, based on the account of the Magi visit in Matthew 2, it can be argued that the flight to Egypt may have occurred very soon after Jesus' birth. That would mean that the time in between Jesus' birth and settling back in Nazareth again after the temple visit would largely have been spent in Egypt instead. (We'll look into this below)

4. Simeon and Anna

Why does the Bible especially mention how old Simeon and Anna were? The two aged prophets at the temple, who rejoiced to see the birth of the Messiah, were old enough to have lived in Pre-Roman Israel. After the Maccabean revolt, Israel was its own nation again for a few generations, until Rome finished defeating/absorbing the old Seleucid Empire (previous rulers of Israel, whose desecration of the Jewish temple led to the revolt and subsequent cleansing of the Jerusalem temple which Hanukkah celebrates).

Thus, for over 100 years between kicking out the Hellenistic Seleucids and being brought into the Roman Empire, Israel was autonomous and ruled by an Israelite king. Both Simeon and Anna grew up in the last days of this temporarily restored Kingdom of Israel, so the idea of their waiting for the consolation of Israel (Simeon)/redemption of Jerusalem (Anna), and God's promise to Simeon that he would not die until he saw the Messiah, the true King who would reign on David's throne, is especially meaningful. They had seen a glimpse of Israel restored, only to be subjugated yet again by a foreign power. They longed for the coming of the Messiah who would bring political and spiritual restoration.

Aslan has come, winter will soon be over.

5. Magi/Wise Men/Three Kings: Not there with the Shepherds, But also not 2 years later?

It's clear that the Wise Men or Magi are not identified by Matthew as kings, but the Greek term used refers to something more like royal alchemists/astrologers. Matthew never says there were three, and they certainly didn't set off across the desert by themselves on camels, but would have been at least a small caravan, probably a rather large one. They must have been at last somewhat impressive because they got to speak directly to King Herod, who was willing to enlist the help of scribes and priests to answer their question.

One theory of their arrival time suggests that they were probably not there on the night Jesus was born, nativity scenes notwithstanding, but became aware of it due to "his star at its rising" and made a long trip to Israel to come pay their respects, arriving when Jesus was around or less than 2 years old, basing this off of Matt 2:16.

One major problem with this view when investigated carefully is that the Magi do indeed find Jesus in Bethlehem, but we know from Luke that his family returned to Nazareth after Mary was ceremonially clean again, about 6 weeks after Jesus' birth. However, the text of Matthew 2 is not written in such a way to suggest that the Magi went to Bethlehem, then the star led them up north to Nazareth instead.

Note that scripture doesn't directly say how old Christ was; it's possible the star/sign appeared early, and part or nearly all of the journey was made before He was born. Matthew does specifically mention that Herod specifies children 2 years old to be eliminated, and does this based on the time he had ascertained from the Magi. So what we know is that Herod believes the Magi to be searching for a very young child or baby in a village with a few hundred people. (WF Albright estimated around 300 people, I don't know if he allowed for an influx due to the census) In this context it's unlikely that 2 years was a precise estimate, but was based on the Magi's inability to be sure of the age of the child they would find, only their knowledge of how long they'd been aware of the star.

One objection to the baby Jesus - Magi view is that Matthew says He was already in a house, not an inn or stable. However as we have seen above, the strongest evidence is that Jesus was born in the house of some relatives of Joseph, in the side area were animals were kept, because there was no place for them in the room for guests. So this is not actually a problem but perfectly in line with what the evidence suggests.

There is also the Flight to Egypt to consider. When did it occur in the context of these other events?

One view I saw reconciled the timeline by having the Magi arrive very soon after Jesus is born, then Joseph being warned in the dream and the family fleeing to Egypt after leave. They are in Egypt for a month before Herod dies (as others have suggested, the gifts of the Magi arrive just in time to finance this excursion), and go to Jerusalem to present Jesus at the temple after returning from Egypt. Luke, with a different focus, in 2:39 simply tells us that they return to Nazareth after this, while Matthew 2:22-23 explains more about Joseph's motivation for doing so.

Another possibility which allows for the young Jesus - Magi view would be that after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the family stayed until it was time to visit the temple and after that went to Nazareth. Back in Bethlehem a couple years later for whatever reason, perhaps visiting the same relatives, the Magi are led to them, and they then flee to Egypt until Herod dies, returning back to Nazareth much later than planned with a very interesting story of why they were gone so long. This requires positing a subsequent visit from Nazareth to Bethlehem which coincides exactly with the Magi visit, something Matthew doesn't seem to indicate, but it would explain why Luke doesn't bother including the Magi-Egypt story between the birth and temple visit, as the entire incident happened later and Luke is focused on the future important temple visit when Jesus is 12 instead.

 (For more on the Magi, here is an article about the history of the Magi as a religious/political order, and how it may have been Daniel's prominence in Babylon that brought Hebrew prophecy to their attention. Some of it is just speculation, but the background information is interesting)

It's likely the Magi were from Parthia. A rowdy bunch.
When not perfecting their horse archery, their Magi were
inventing primitive DC batteries to achieve gold electroplating,
giving rise to the legends of alchemy and gold transmutation
which their European counterparts later tried to re-achieve

6. The Star: A long-term, non-obvious, and highly specific astronomical phenomenon

What exactly was the star that the Magi saw has been the subject of much speculation, but it must have been an astronomical phenomenon that the Eastern star-gazers noticed and saw significance in, yet not so locally obvious that hordes of people descended upon Bethlehem to see what was going on. It was clearly nothing like artistic depictions of a massive "Christmas star," since if a natural phenomenon it would be a supernova of unprecedented magnitude, frying the earth dead with gamma rays, and if supernatural and that obvious, Herod wouldn't have needed to resort to ruthless measures to find the child Messiah, as half of Jerusalem would have turned up wondering why a glowing orb was illuminating that specific house.

Matthew does say that the star that they had seen when it rose (at the beginning of their journey, Matt 2:1-2) later went before them to the house where Jesus was, once they were already in Israel (Matt 2:7-11). It is difficult to imagine what kind of astronomical phenomenon can be described as a star that rises, yet can also come to rest over a specific house, to their great joy and rejoicing. 

The imagination can provide all sorts of images without any way of verifying them scripturally. The trouble with these kinds of images is that they substitute a non-scriptural picture for one that simply doesn't exist, since we lack the information to do anything but speculate:

A group of foreign magi and their retinue, bearing scrolls with the writings of Daniel, one of their honored predecessors, arrive in a splendid caravan coming down the mountain from Jerusalem, after Herod's response from the chief priests and scribes indicates Bethlehem is the right place. They turn west off the main road, as people gawk at their passing. It is evening, and the sun has begun to set. Very familiar with the movements of stars in the night sky, they can see the star they have followed from the East for so many nights, as it drops from higher in the sky, barely visible, toward the dimly illuminated and rapidly darkening horizon. They follow it into the village, and the star becomes increasingly visible as it drops in the sky, nearing the roofs of the low houses clustered together. Feeling they are near the culmination of their quest, one magus dismounts, the others joining him, and they leave the bulk of their caravan behind them, going down the narrow, dirty street on foot. The star is directly ahead of them now, and does not move to either side as they continue on, but remains twinkling steadily over one house at the end of the lane. From the darkness within the small dwelling, the light of a solitary lamp escapes from the doorway. As they draw so near that from their point of view the star seems to descend and touch the roof, among murmuring voices inside they suddenly hear the cry of a baby...

This could be a bit like what happened, or totally off, but at least, let's know to what extent the pictures and popular traditions we have inherited through many ages of artistic license adhere to the truth of God's word. A careful investigation of the birth of Christ is a great way to honor Him in this season when we celebrate His birth, the Divine invasion, the beginning of the final defeat of evil and the restoration of our relationship to God.

By His Grace, and until His Coming, Merry Christmas!

Do you have any more interesting observations or information on the account of Jesus' birth? Did I leave anything out in comparing the Baby Jesus vs. Young Jesus Magi visit theories? Leave me a comment below and let me know!

The Pearl Harbor mistake, and a lesson for Mission

I don't usually post on this sort of thing, but the Pearl Harbor attack 75 years ago today offers an excellent analogy for a danger that lurks in our most sincere mission efforts. As we honor those today who lost their lives while in service to their country, let us also reflect on the important lesson the Pearl Harbor attack contains for those of us involved in gospel ministry.

1. Background: The Attack

On the morning of Dec 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy," over 350 Japanese planes suddenly attacked the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii. The surprise raid led to devastating losses for the US Pacific Fleet. The U.S. temporarily lost all 8 battleships in the Pacific Fleet, and nearly 200 airplanes, in exchange for fewer than 30 Japanese aircraft downed in the attack.

It was a violently successful raid, which by its very success led to strategic danger and eventual defeat for Japan. For most missionaries, if we achieved a "dramatically successful" ministry, we would write to our supporters in excitement. But how much thought would we put into how whether that success translates into long-term strength for the gospel and local church in a given area?

Whether through over-eagerness, by the desire to "see something happening," the decision to capitalize on a current situation, or simply wanting to bring all the resources we have to bear on a given gospel challenge, it's easy to only think of the tactical aspects, the details in how to successfully do a given ministry or activity, and not think past it to the strategic level, the longer-term or wider implications of what we're doing.

2. Tactics vs. Strategy

The Pearl harbor attacks were an excellent example of how great tactics can be poor strategy. In the short term, the surprise attack was a crushing success which severely crippled the US in the Pacific. In the long term, however, it was the event which brought the US into World War II, and led to the defeat of Japan and the other Axis powers.

Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the raid, had strongly opposed the war effort, stating:

“Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields in Texas, knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America.”

As Yamamoto himself admitted, planning the attack was an act of desperation against a powerful nation with a greater industrial base, which he believed would eventually overwhelm Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a tactical strike made in hopes to somehow achieve a strategic victory, to demoralize the U.S. or "end the war before it starts." On that front it utterly failed, however. While America's fighting capabilities in the Pacific were temporarily halted, the vast U.S. industrial capability was now focused into the war effort. As new Allied forces poured into the Pacific, Japan was not able to hold on to all the new territory it had conquered, and was forced back, to eventually surrender after nuclear strikes on the home islands.

It's impossible to know in hindsight, but it is widely suggested that Japan's chances of holding on to much of its captured territory would have been significantly greater if it had done everything possible to prevent or delay war with the U.S., rather than fiercely striking out at U.S. naval forces at their own base, an action sure to infuriate America and maximize popular support for entering the war.

From a strategic perspective, the longer Japan had controlled its conquered territories, the more resources it could have obtained from them, and the more industrial capability it could have developed across its nascent empire. If a direct confrontation with the U.S. eventually occurred, the Japanese could have fought back from a position of much greater strength with a widely distributed and deeper industrial base to support the effort.

3. The Lesson for Great Commission Efforts:

One Ministry's Strategic Failure in Taiwan

A book I once read by a former Taiwan missionary (whose name sadly escapes me, the book is back in the States), recounted a disappointing instance in the efforts to evangelize Taiwan. A large gospel operation was planned, and dozens of local young people were trained in sharing the gospel and sent out into Taiwan's countryside, reaching thousands of people. Hundreds indicated they were interested in following Christ, and it seemed the outreach had been a great success.

Some time later, however, when missionaries returned to those areas to see how things were going, they were only able to find a single person still following Christ. Everyone else, lacking any spiritual support and surrounded by the idolatry that had been all they ever knew, were absorbed back into Chinese folk religious practices. Like the seed in Jesus' parable, the gospel had been snatched away by the Enemy, or else quickly choked out by the weeds of idolatry which flourish so thickly in the Taiwanese countryside.

"Perhaps we should have planned less and prayed more." the missionary sadly concluded, contending that the spiritual darkness of Taiwan was not to be lifted by well-planned efforts alone, but by spiritual battles which had yet to be won at that time. (My own observations here suggest spiritual battles for the soul of Taiwan are still waiting to be fought by Christians and missionaries willing to rise up and fight)

The apparent failure of that effort, and many smaller ones like it, are one reason Taiwan has trouble retaining missionaries. It is a gospel field full of thorny weeds, thin and rocky soil, and watchful birds. I rejoice at the frequent news of the harvest being reaped a few hundred miles to my West, in cities across China. May we see similar things happen on this side of the Strait in days to come. But for now, one labors for years to build relational context, establish trust, understand the complicated variations which run through the subcultures of Taiwanese metaculture, etc. 

Things that work in other places often fail here; there is a spiritual bondage yet to be broken, but also Taiwan is just a complicated place. You have to love it, and possibly be a little crazy, to come dive headlong into the Chinese language and figure out how to share the gospel in an effective way when the majority of people consider ritual more important than truth, tradition more important than logic, and success in prosperity possibly more important than any of the above. Many incoming missionaries begin with enthusiasm, but after struggling to really connect with people spiritually, eventually move on to areas where people are more open to the gospel.

"Why Spend so much Time? Just Preach the Word"

"So then, why spend so much time trying to perfectly understand where people are?" you might ask (and others have asked, in my hearing). "Let's not waste time with all this, we're here to preach the Word, let's just preach it." 

It's true that hesitation or lack of initiative can hinder the work of the gospel, but the ability to "just preach it" in a way that is effective usually comes after the efforts of many other workers and ministers, and it also depends on the people to whom you're preaching having had their hearts readied to receive the truth, and understand the basic concepts you are communicating.

As Acts 14 recounts, Even Paul and Barnabas, going a bit off the beaten track when escaping from Iconium, did not start an instant gospel movement in Lystra with their preaching and even a miracle of healing, but were instead believed by the provincials to be Zeus and Hermes, and sacrifices were almost made in their honor. "Just preaching the word" didn't work for them; there must be spiritual willingness and some measure of basic understanding, both things which the Spirit can provide suddenly in a gospel movement, but often chooses to accomplish through years of labor by kingdom-minded believers in a given area.

Tactics vs. Strategy... Ministries vs. the Local Church

I only have a few years of experience in Taiwan thus far, and I'm sure there was an era in which higher-level strategic efforts were made by mission boards and organizations separately and together to see fruit for the gospel in Taiwan. 

Now, at least, I don't see a lot of thinking at the strategic level; most missionaries are focused on their individual ministries, which as I well know are absorbing enough to occupy all of your time and energy and then some, especially if new missionaries are not coming or staying. At that ground-level, tactics seem to be at the forefront by default, because it's hard to think of anything else.

For missionaries wanting to really have an impact for the gospel, however, strategy can't be ignored to focus purely on tactics; we can't just focus on the impact of our individual ministries without considering the wider effect on the local Church. Just like Japan lost partially by too quickly goading America into the War, whereas waiting would have let them strengthen their industrial base and presence in their new territory, when we seek to capitalize on our own mission opportunities in the short term but do not strengthen the local church by them in the long-term, we have not achieved a strategic success, and may even have made mistakes which will weaken the local church in the long term.

Perhaps you do work directly with the local church, so it seems like this shouldn't be a problem. But are your activities equipping that church to reach its locale and cooperate with other churches for the kingdom over the long term? We should always be investing our efforts in that direction when possible.

Good questions to ask ourselves might look like the following:

"For this new ministry we want to do, are local workers going to interested in continuing it after we leave?" 

"If we come in and make lots of things happen with our resources and motivated foreign missionaries, will this be reproducible for local believers? 

"What will this church we're planting be doing in 10 years? Have we built in a foundation of discipleship and mission from the beginning?"

"If we push to evangelize and disciple based on what we're used to, before we understand the local culture, will future gospel efforts be stunted here by having taught locals to do mission in an American way that's unnatural for them and the culture?" 

"How can we develop partnerships with existing churches to have a greater impact and also give them experience in this kind of ministry?" 

"Is pouring all our efforts into this one church helping the local Church overall?"

Or maybe more localized questions that combine tactics and strategy, like:

"For this meeting, if we do an invitation we might get some people to raise their hands. But by doing at the very beginning will we alienate more people who are just figuring out who we are in this community? Do we know what decision they consider themselves to be making?" 

"If we invite short-termers to get a big boost in the activities we can do, are we able to follow up well on that for long-term benefits to our local effort? Will we create false expectations in the people we're trying to reach with the gospel?"

It's not always possible to consider all that, and having considered it, it may not be possible to always act in a strategically productive way. But asking ourselves questions like this will help keep strategy on the radar, and Lord willing, prevent us from spending years with our heads down in labor, only to look up later and find little long-term progress can be seen after all our work.

There is no Sacred-Secular Divide in your Convictions (Election Series - Part 2)

Hello everyone. While the 2016 U.S. general election is technically not over yet (the electors have yet to cast their votes), we have all already been through the experience of the past year and especially these past few months together. Amidst the celebrating or mourning that is following the surprise (to many) victory of Donald Trump in the election, I can admit that I've closely followed this election with a certain amount of fascination. Today I'll continue my loose series of entries (here is the first) which reflect the many hours of observation and thought that have come out of the unprecedented spectacle of the 2016 elections.

As I have mentioned, I have greatly appreciated one specific thing about the turmoil and stress of these months, as divisive as the season has been, for the reason that it didn't give people a lazy choice (although some, not all, of the third party voters were definitely taking a moral shortcut). People had to actually rouse themselves up and rethink their positions, the dormant, deep-grooved tracks of decades of political thought were broken up and people began skidding around on the rapidly cooling obsidian surface of volcanic upheaval. Some of them fell and hurt themselves, others found their feet after years of lethargy and gained new inspiration.

The Church may never recover in some senses, and I believe it may be a very good thing. Those situations which cannot be sustained must end, and the untenable position the American Church had found itself in-- longing hopelessly that a culture formerly amenable to or at least respectful of scriptural truth could remain so and act like it long after this was no longer the case, and placing that hopeless hope in politicians to "take us back" when most of the country has no desire to do so--is collapsing like a deck of cards in the wake of Trump's election. There is no looking back to half-imagined glory days, Post-Trump. There is only looking ahead to what the Church can do in the future, and that is fertile ground for the Kingdom.

But over the course of the election itself, I watched carefully as friends and acquaintances revealed the ways their political and religious convictions intertwined, often without realizing how they'd gotten them all mixed together. Some were sincere Christians who had, through a process I described in that previous post, learned to look at the world in a secular humanist way, and remained oblivious to the underlying contradictions this produced with some of their other convictions.

But that way political and religious conviction tend to intertwine in one's worldview is something that really came out strongly during this election, and that's what I want to focus on today:

1. Convictions are Convictions

We are taught from an early age to think of our religious convictions as belonging in a separate, sacred category, distinct from secular beliefs we hold important, for example the superiority of capitalism to communism (or vice versa). Over the course of this election, however, I observed numerous people lamenting, or accusing, that this was in fact not the case at all, and people were idolizing politics, putting it in the place of religious conviction.

They were correct, of course, that people were doing this, but misguided in thinking it was only a few people or their opponents that were entangling their convictions in this way. Your convictions all give rise to and are derived from your complex worldview (in a self-sustaining cycle which can evolve over time, either concreting in place or migrating to very different views about the world over time, based on one's experiences and influences), are all held together, and there is no automatic sorting of most to least important going on, though there is a lot of unconscious sorting.

Jumbled all together are your sincere beliefs that Jesus is Lord, that the Green Bay Packers are the best football team, that good people don't dress like that, that smoking is a sin or merely an unhealthy habit, that we ought to love and be loyal to the nation we grew up in (or not), that men ought to treat women in a certain way, that The System is basically fair or basically rigged, and et cetera ad infinitum.

The idea that, as Christians, since we agree on the divine convictions, division with regards to the others is to some extent surface level and not bound up in our identity, sounds very positive and exhortative but doesn't reflect reality. Not because people are just that stubborn and refuse to honor God first, but because of how your convictions don't sort themselves out automatically.

It takes constant effort to raise some convictions to the top, and push others down, especially in the presence of outside influence. You may rationally know that "Jesus is Lord" is infinitely more important than "The Green Bay Packers are the best football team," but on certain big game Sundays you may feel quite conflicted. That doesn't mean you're a terrible person or a lousy Christian, it just means you've relied on the rational importance of a conviction to make it outweigh all the others, when actually the ads you've been seeing, the fond memories of game/buffalo wing nights past, the water cooler conversations, etc, have all slowly promoted that conviction and not others. As the Mark Twain quote at the beginning suggests, you may not really know how that conviction and others became your own, but absorbed them unconsciously from other people or outside influences.

Put simply, however, the way you know which convictions are really on top, is how excited you are about them. Granted, a well-disciplined person can force himself to follow his rational ordering of his convictions, e.g. dragging himself to church when he'd rather be at the football game (but not admitting that to himself, since it feels like a sinful sort of cognitive dissonance). A less well-disciplined person will simply go to the football game and perhaps feel some guilt mixed in with the fun, but probably not so much that he can't ignore or rationalize it to himself.

On the other hand, someone who is truly excited about meeting God together with the saints, that literally would not rather be anywhere else, should he choose for whatever reason to go to the football game instead, will probably not feel guilty about having fun there. He knows the enthusiasm for his convictions matches the order he thinks they ought to be in, and indeed much of the chronic guilt we feel as believers comes from knowing that not to be the case, and some of the cynicism we accumulate is an attempt to justify that it is not, and also perhaps a way to stop short of resenting those for whom it is. On the whole, rather than hate them as living reminders that we lack the conviction we ought to have, we'd prefer to imply they're exceptions we don't need to emulate and live with the cognitive dissonance of knowing deep down it's not true, like smokers who know they should throw the pack away but instead light up one more with slow deliberation, drawn into introspective silence by the paradox of their own actions.

2. Political Convictions

While convictions about sports vs. church attendance are a sort of gentle object lesson for most people to whom they apply, something we can joke about while pondering seriously, the gloves come off when it comes to politics. No one's taxes are going to change as the result of a football match. Bills on abortion and gay marriage do not become law or not based on who wins the World Series. Some lives may indeed hang in the balance based on the results of a big soccer match, but not nearly so many as in a big change to U.S. foreign policy. In a sense, political convictions are the mortal-world version of spiritual convictions; you can't watch where someone goes after they die, but you can watch what happens to the country after an election. The higher the perceived stakes, the more intense the conviction.

Of course many people, not seeing how such things affect their day to day life, do not hold political convictions strongly, or only with regards to certain issues. The stakes do not seem high to them, either through apathy, distance, or even cynicism. On the other hand, those people who perceive the stakes to be very high are often quite willing to jump into verbal wars or personal action with a ferocity which would do credit to any dual-wielding, woad-painted berserker.

And that's important to recognize. It's the duty of every Christian to consciously promote the convictions of our faith until they occupy the highest place, but how high political convictions fall on the scale will vary. It's easy for someone who is very cynical or very apathetic about politics to criticize those who are tempted to make an idol out of them, just as it's easy for me, able to sometimes enjoy a game night but not a follower of sports in general, to criticize those who are tempted to idolize sports.

But since in political struggles the outcome really does touch on geopolitical realities, affecting the lives of people in every part of our world, convictions can be held very closely. With the ravages of communism, the pre-natal death toll of abortion, the observable suffering of communities affected by unfair laws (or the debate on whether they are or not) all a matter of historical record and/or currently ongoing situations, these convictions very easily take on a religious fervor, and become closely intertwined with one's convictions on spiritual matters in a natural way.

3. Politico-Spiritual Worldview - Who Influences You?

It's important to understand that this is indeed a natural and constant process. One's concern for other people may be grounded in a spiritual conviction that they are created in the image of God and ought to be loved, but all it takes is the observation, correct or not (usually both, on some levels), that politics going one way or another will significantly affect the plight of many of those people one is concerned about loving. Immediately, the spiritual and political conviction began to be bound together. One's spiritual conviction about loving others becomes intrinsically linked to one's political convictions about what policies will affect them, and after that it's not very helpful to warn about idolizing politics, because that's not exactly what has happened. It's not idolatry to worry about the outcome of an election that will harm people you care about, except in a few very subtle senses, and accusations on this front rarely get into those subtleties.

Of course, how you end up linking these spiritual and political convictions will depend on who you are allowing to influence your thinking on the matter, just like with any other convictions. If you are a believer who hangs out on Leftist political blogs, you're probably going to link your political convictions to your spiritual ones in a way that has you endorsing Leftist thought and causes with a spiritual fervor, maybe to the point of becoming a social justice warrior. If on the Far Right, you may start thinking in terms of Christendom and wishing we could go back to the good old days of God, King, and Country, even if that meant first kicking out everyone who didn't fit that paradigm.
And your argument may be "factually correct" as far as it goes. Post-modernism is not wrong about everything, and it's true that, from within your worldview and mental framework, with the facts presented to you from sources you consider trustworthy, you may be acting in good faith based on reality as you perceive it.

I studied some linguistic theory while getting my Masters degree, and one important idea we discussed is that when I say "school" and you say "school," we may be talking about fairly different things. Broadly the same of course, so basic communication doesn't fail, but individually quite distinct, leading to hidden misunderstandings, based on our different educational experiences and varying exposure to academic environments. So two people saying respectively "public schools are failing and must be significantly reformed" and "public schools are basically fine, teachers just need more support" may both be speaking correctly from their own experience. There's nothing to argue profitably about (not that that stops anyone!), except to what extent one's individual experience differs from reality in the general sense.

This is one reason why, although I jumped into the fray a few times, over the months of arguing on social media I mostly managed to stay out of things. I recognized that without addressing deeper worldview issues, the foundations that someone's political views were built on, all you're going to do is argue until someone gets tired or people get too angry to keep going. You are trying to convince someone to shift their tower over to your castle without recognizing the true depth of the moat in between.

4. When Convictions Are Challenged

All this is how, sadly, Christians both cultural and genuine have managed to fight and kill each other throughout much of the Church's history, a fact people surprised that the Church could be divided over political candidates seem to miss. There is no careful line isolating "earthly" convictions from "spiritual" ones, with the greatest fervor given to the latter. They are all intertwined, something which happens very naturally and perhaps even inevitably on the political level, and whether in our own time that has happened Rightly or Leftly can not only put people of the same faith convictions on opposing sides of an argument, it can leave them barely able to effectively communicate as their worldviews are shifted further apart.

Seen in the light of this, some of what many found baffling during this election becomes quite clear. How could men like Franklin Graham or Wayne Grudem come out in support of a man like Trump? Because enough convictions were linked together for them, rightly or wrongly, that there was a domino effect: Voting for Hillary led directly or indirectly to an assault on more and more deeply-held convictions than voting for Trump did, and the bigger, more urgent mass of convictions under assault justified risking an adverse effect on some others.

That's how it worked for every #never_____ voter, really, but one special confusion and stressful aspect of this election was that Trump's candidacy did not keep within the familiar boundaries at all. Many Christians on the Right and Left respectively had arrived at similar and comfortable politico-religious convictions, what we'd call "camps" or certain political demographics, and Trump came barging in diagonally and messed it all up. People were forced to rethink and even sever and reattach previously linked religious and political convictions, and the speed and degree to which some did so brought accusations of hypocrisy. ("How come such-and-such an issue was such a big deal for you people in previous elections, but now you don't seem to care at all?")

5. Why the Rise of Ideological Thinking is Dangerous

While it's natural for people to link their convictions in ways where involving one drags in others, ideological thinking greatly exacerbates this tendency. Much more than in someone who merely identifies on the "side" of one major party or the other, an ideology weaves many convictions together in a certain pattern, seemingly more and more of them, so that attacking one more or less means attacking them all. There are no issues to be considered separately, and by the end there are no innocuous comments or actions that are not a statement of some kind. This has been on the rise in America for decades, but especially in recent years. In this situation, a Christian under the influence (knowingly or not) of progressive ideology may respond to a non-religious assertion, for example suggesting a month ago that Trump is the best option in this election, with a degree of moral outrage more like you have attacked the assertion that Jesus is Lord, because in a sense for them you have. The ideology has knotted all those convictions together; the political and spiritual are intertwined, and more and more of the rest has become political as well. Many other people will not respond quite so strongly, but will still feel sad, frustrated, or angry that you've "chosen the wrong side" as a Christian.

So when some Americans blew up in destructive hysteria at a Trump win, as if the world was ending, it is because for them it does seem like that. They have been converged, drawn deeply into a particular ideology, and those convictions they perceived Trump to actively threaten, based on their trusted sources of information, are woven together with all their other most deeply held convictions. For them, a Trump victory comes as an assault not on a few, but on the entire interlinked mass of these convictions. It's an attack on their entire worldview from which little is spared.

Ideology, then, takes all the breathing room out of the culture wars. Whereas before one could agree to disagree on arguments that didn't touch on deeper convictions, now there is less and less that doesn't. C.S.Lewis observed in That Hideous Strength (the final volume in his amazing Space Trilogy) that there is a sense in which heaven and hell are always eating into our world from both sides, leaving less and less room in the middle. People who didn't want to fight on any side, didn't want to fight at all, soon find there is no such thing as not fighting on a side. We are getting to that point in America, which is worrisome: when your opponent is not merely wrong but evil (as anyone who attacks all your deeply held convictions must be), then there is less and less that is not justified in stopping them. Democracy becomes difficult to sustain when what had been a political struggle now increasingly turns into a moral and spiritual one. Whether the conclusion of this election will see things calming down or ramping up remains to be seen. (To be sure, we trust God in the darkest of times, but we also do not hope for them.)

6. What Should Our Response Be?

Jesus brilliantly responded to those who tried to trap Him in a politico-spiritual conundrum, that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's. Among other things (the invalidation of dominion theology, for example), this to me is a reminder to reject ideological thinking, and to be actively and carefully engaged in the process of testing and promoting my spiritual convictions at the expense of the rest. (and those spiritual convictions should be ordered as well--core dogma, necessary doctrine, helpful but flexible tradition, personal opinion, etc. lest churches split over comparatively minor issues that have become unjustifiably crucial convictions to them) In short, with regards to my convictions, He must become greater, they must become less. That does not mean they disappear (one should never ignore one's convictions), but He must reign undisputed. If I see evidence that this is not yet the case, I must continue to lay those other convictions at His feet.

Convictions are tricky things, however. One claim I commonly saw these past few months was that people one disagreed with politically were not putting Christ first over politics (because then of course they'd agree with -your- political views, which were all obviously Christ-sanctioned).
So I think we need to not primarily stress the idea of carefully severing political or other deeply held convictions from spiritual ones, as this is so difficult for we humans and the worldviews we accumulate from our travels and travails in this world. We can't really do it without stepping away from our own worldview, which is not like taking off glasses but trying to remove one's eyes, even when looking for the truth of scripture. If we think we've succeeded, we've probably just blinded ourselves to our deepest convictions, not isolated them.

Rather, we must continually exalt Christ as King, and always recognize that every biblical teacher has their own worldview, their own thicket of convictions grown up together. We can't simply allow our convictions to automatically mirror those of this or that teacher, no matter how sound and godly. When John Piper says God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, we may profit much from reflection on that idea. When John Piper says, as I once heard him say, that sky diving is sinful because it's a pointless risk with no gospel purpose, then he is speaking from a conviction that is linked to a spiritual one, but not one with which I am obligated to agree (and I disagree with him in that particular case).

Let us strive to be not conformed to the pattern of this world, whatever ideological pattern, social gospel, or secular morality, that entails, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then by testing (carefully and wisely, not from this or that blog or famous figure) we may discern what is the will of God; good, acceptable, and perfect.

President Trump, and How the Evangelical Church Could Regain Lost Millennials

[This is the first of at least two blogs I'd like to do on the recent election, which was unlike any we've experienced before, and which revealed many interesting things about America and the Church in the process.]

Many have just been finding out the news: The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election ended in a significant electoral win for Trump, while Hillary retained a slight edge in the overall popular vote. My Facebook wall is covered with people in the various stages of grief, mostly Christian millennials.

Why do millennial evangelicals break so sharply with their elders, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, in not only not refusing to support him but finding it repugnant that any evangelicals could?

I believe there is a very natural answer, and in exploring it we also discover one of the primary reasons churches have had such difficulty attracting or keeping millennials. Let's take a look:

1. How do we "do" our Christian Identity in an Election Year?

As Christians we recognize that our political identity, if we are to have one at all, must be subservient to and interpreted in the light of our Christian identity. We are not voiceless in a democracy as Christians were in the Roman Empire, but are blessed to each have a tiny part and responsibility in self-governance. But without any clear examples in scripture of being a Christian in a post-Christian political climate, there is no roadmap on how to do this. Many people end up with an unsatisfying hybrid that seems open to guilt attacks from both sides.

On the one hand you might hear, "How come you seem to love your version of America more enthusiastically than the Jesus?" and on the other, "If you have the chance to stand against aggressively anti-God forces in our culture, how can you be a Christian and not do that?" My Facebook wall has been full of both sentiments.

2016 has been very eye-opening for me in this regard. I have watched a wide range of people, many with a firm grasp of scripture, promoting opinions and ideas that stem from a secular humanist worldview utterly at odds with that of scripture itself. They do this with the best of intentions and without perceiving anything paradoxical, and indeed often regarding themselves as the prophetic voice of moral authority and justice, crying out in a wilderness of idolatrous patriotism and cold-hearted preference for order rather than chaos.

There are multiple reasons for this unconscious dichotomy, but a primary one begins, I submit, with the unfortunate reality that when it comes to "doing life as a Christian," evangelicalism tends towards the very abstract. A focus on sound doctrine and careful theology attracts abstract thinkers, and without an intentional effort to provide a rich and thorough Christian life, courageous obedience lived out in the flesh and not merely the mind, the whole thing perpetuates itself as a series of propositions. We might have very sound doctrine, but struggle to make that sound compelling to those who prefer to sleep in on Sunday mornings.

2. Leadership: The Vital Missing Element

To avoid the problem above and flesh the Christian life out in a concrete and not merely abstract sense (or really to tackle any difficult task in the world) people need leaders who set examples to follow. So, in a healthy church, younger Christians are led by older Christians, new believers are discipled by spiritually mature and godly men and women, and in this way the Way of Christ is not merely explained but demonstrated to a new generation.

Generally speaking, it can be seen that Millennials especially tend to choose their leaders based on Causes, on shared burdens and passions. When they find leaders setting the pace to address causes dear to them, they follow. Having become followers, how they "do" their faith and how other convictions are ranked will follow the example of those leaders too. Here's an example to show what I mean:

Suffering
It has become widely recognized in recent years that the Church in America lacks any coherent theology of suffering. For generations now, Americans have viewed suffering as inherently wrong and unnatural, vs. a natural and unavoidable part of life in this sin-corrupted world, and indeed something to be bravely embraced on some level by Christians (2 Tim 2:3). Americans on the whole are so suffering-averse, however, that many people consider infanticide by abortion a reasonable decision based on even a high probability that a child's life on earth might involve lots of suffering, or if having the child would result in too much emotional suffering on the part of the mother.
The message is clear: avoiding suffering is considered more important than life itself.

The extreme desire to avoid suffering is a truth of the human condition, of course, not specifically an American problem; a major world religion (Buddhism) is based largely around how to utterly escape it. So one can't expect Americans--who find themselves born into a nation where suffering is remarkably absent, historically speaking--to suddenly rush to embrace it. In 2016 no one can be unaware of just how much suffering there is in the wider world, however, so the question of what to do about it is still urgent and pressing.

Like any generation, Millennials want an enemy to conquer. Born into comparative ease, peace, and plenty, many have noticed all do not equally share in these riches, and have chosen injustice as their adversary. But young Christians in the US who are passionate about alleviating suffering and injustice didn't find much in traditional churches on that topic. Seeking to better educate themselves and get involved in the ministry of alleviation of suffering, they quickly found that the Left 'owns' this topic, though they typically don't think of it as "the Left," only "those voices speaking up about suffering and justice." And especially for younger people, those voices who speak in a way that resonates with their passion on this subject will soon come to have authority for them on other matters as well.

3. Millennial Convictions

So on the political side of things, that's how you suddenly have a generation of young Christians who, for example, largely don't see what the big deal is about socialism. Why should they believe you about the long-term dangers of a particular economic approach, a topic they don't know much about, when you don't speak out for the causes they do care about?
Yet when they find that the people who speak with passion about the things they too are passionate about, also promote socialism, globalism, and other pet topics of the Left, parents and conservatives in general foolishly believe that will then discredit those leaders in their eyes. That is very much not the case, as many people found to their surprise in the 2008 election (where attempting to discredit Obama by explaining his socialist leanings, they were met with a response of "Sounds great, why would free education be a bad thing?").
Passion may initially spring from a child's inherited worldview and education, but the natural teen/tween rebellion against the worldview imposed by parents is augmented and crystallized if they are guided by leaders who raise their voices to support that person's passion in directions away from the traditional values they grew up with.

If the Cause of Christ is Not Exemplified... (Then the World has many Compelling Ones to Choose From)

Some millennials are well-meaning and passionate to a degree that older people have trouble believing. We really want to change the world, in fact we were taught it's our responsibility to do so, to the extent that if we, individually, cannot see that we've significantly impacted the world in some way to make it a better place, we feel like a failure. Like the generation of the American cultural revolution, we're a generation in search of a Cause, but now with the internet there are a plethora of worthy causes clamoring for our time, efforts, and sympathies. When previous generations in the Church failed to present the Cause of Christ in a compelling way--a call to action and not merely assent to carefully worded intellectual propositions that were understood to imply action but somehow tended not to get around to it--then millennials went to find their Causes in other places, and Cause is the native language of the Secular Humanist Left, and now, many Millennials too.

It's truly a tragedy that the Church lost most of a generation who were all geared up to pour themselves into the work of the gospel, because it largely lacked anyone with the maturity, intensity, and willingness to lead them. Outside the Church, this could be blamed on generational tendencies (The materialism of Boomers and cynicism of Gen-Xers were ill-equipped to guide the self-sacrificing passion of millennials), but with an enduring mission from Christ to reach the world, the Church doesn't have that excuse.

Either way, many millennials found that passion and drive to sacrifice oneself to a greater cause in the ideological Left, and that's where most of them have found their worldview home. It's a view that will lead them further and further from the scriptural truth they still cling to simultaneously, and my Facebook wall is a testament to how some will choose scripture and slowly mature out of progressive ideology while keeping its strong points and thereby nourishing the church, while others will slowly take leave of one biblical principle after another to embrace more radical leftism.

For now, they are very much Christians, but they're also very much plugged into Causes under the leadership of both Christian and secular bloggers, thought leaders, and communities, and the local church is always going to fall short of what the combined efforts of online movements can provide. The internet also provides the illusion of impressive perpetual progress, whereas actual people in the concrete world just don't seem to cooperate, a fact I'm all too aware of as I invest tough years of gospel work in a local community.

4. Trump, the Earthquake which Revealed the Fault Line

With a generation of Christians passionate about social justice and understanding that topic from a mix of good biblical admonitions and bad secular humanist ideology, that older evangelical church leaders would support the candidacy of someone like Donald Trump seems less problematic than utterly absurd and repulsive. The reaction is not logical but visceral, an instinctive aversion born simultaneously from Christian-moral disapproval over his legacy of prideful worldliness and from Popular-moral disgust over his white, male, one-percenter entitledness. This hybrid of the latest crowd-sourced morality and unchanging moral standards of scripture is where many millennials are caught, and Trump is the living symbol of everything this hybrid worldview detests and condemns. When they compare Trump to Hitler, that is what they mean: he is not merely wrong, not merely sinful, but he unabashedly commits precisely those biases and sins which are most morally fashionable to hate just now, making him an pariah in their eyes, deplorable and indefensible.

To ally yourself with such a bully-pariah, in their minds, can only result in the destruction of your witness and the grief if not anger of Christ. That Trump is the subject of many grateful testimonies from "the least of these" is totally ignored, along with any other evidence that goes against the narrative about him. Part of this is politics as usual. In an election, all people have voices they listen to, websites they frequent, and narratives that align with their worldview, and are not usually open to persuasion on that front.  (Witness how Wayne Grudem, a good man and respected theologian who wrote a reasonable--if insufficiently articulate and excessively partisan--argument that voting for Trump could be morally acceptable if it were done with certain facts in mind, was absolutely castigated. I rarely saw anyone tackling his arguments, merely the idea that he could align himself with the person their trusted sources told them Trump was disqualified him in their eyes.)

People who seek Causes to which to sacrifice themselves have a weakness in this direction, a tendency toward revolutionary or even fanatical thinking. All for the Cause, We for the Cause, Nothing as important as the Cause. Older evangelicals and traditional churches, weighed in these scales, will be found very wanting.
If discipleship and mentoring relationships been established earlier in the lives of more millennials, there would at least be a deeper level of trust and respect for authority present. The anger toward evangelicalism would be something more like frustration and confusion, which indeed one sees in many millennials as well. A productive conversation between the old, perhaps too cynical or too politically-influenced, and the young, inexperienced in life and dogmatic in the direction of their passion, could have taken place, for the enriching of the Church.

Yet this is not what has happened, instead we see something closer to a schism emerging.

Q: So, What Should Churches Do?

How to get millennials back? I submit the best way is not, at this late hour, trying to belatedly jump onto the bandwagon of Social Justice, as I see churches and christian groups doing now. The American Church is forever missing these big cultural shifts, finding itself several steps behind, resisting, then apologizing profusely and trying to catch up, meanwhile missing the next big shift.

Social Justice as the cause de jour overlaps with commands we already have in scripture, to remember the oppressed, show loving-kindness to the downtrodden, etc. We don't need the Church to join the social justice movement, led by worldly academics and, often, those who profit from the disorder wreaked in the name of justice by well-intentioned but naive young people, but we do need to be the Church to the world, and part of that always involves Christian charity (in the older, broader sense of the word).

In other words, if we do the Christian Life as instructed by Scripture, social justice will result naturally from that. Bringing the Church into a secular movement or being instructed by it will simply give moral authority to those outside the Church. (Much could be written on that particular topic, but this blog is already too long...)

A: Fill the Leadership Vacuum

There is often a statement made in the context of egalitarian vs. complementarian views on marriage, to the effect that someone has to lead in a marriage, and if the man can't or won't, the woman can't be blamed for trying.

Not commenting on that here, I nevertheless think the situation with Millennials, Causes (particularly Social Justice), and the Church is very similar. If the Church is being the Church--which means not merely assent to rightly-constructed theological propositions and proper inductive Bible study methods, but also being the Hands and Feet of Christ--then to whatever extent the social justice movement has biblical elements, they will be happening already. If they don't at all, one can't blame millennials for joining a movement which is providing the secular moral equivalent of that, and simultaneously trying to understand it in light of Biblical truth, which is exactly what we see happening from youth groups to famous seminaries.

But how much better would it be if the Church, like Paul, emphasized discipleship and leadership. I believe trying to bring back disillusioned millennials by appearing to belately embrace their Causes will not produce the results hoped for in any long term or satisfying way. However, if we begin training a generation of leaders, starting with ourselves, to proactively love and disciple students and young believers, then we'll have a generation who will tend not to leave the church.

Speaking from my own experience, growing up attending a number of churches, there was no intentional system of discipleship or Christian leadership training in place at any church I've ever attended. Only two men ever put effort into discipling me, even in an informal sense. (for which I remain grateful to this day)

Changing that massive leadership vacuum would be the biggest step towards preventing the "vanishing millennial" problem from continuing and worsening. As Trump's rise to the presidency has so effectively demonstrated, there is a quiet but widespread thirst for bold leadership in America. Trump won, partly, because he is an effective leader; he is bold, confident, persuasive, not easily daunted, able to cast a vision people want to be a part of, and recruit people to his banner. Many people want to follow such a man.

Few would suggest, however, that he is a model of Christian, servant-hearted leadership. Perhaps one day he will be. Stranger miracles of grace have happened. But that specific kind of Christ-like leadership many Christians were saddened to find lacking in Trump can't be found outside the Church. Christ-likeness can only be had from Christ.

So rather than venturing belatedly into the world of Social Justice or other Causes dear to the hearts of millennials, I submit evangelical churches should begin to train in and practice courageous Christian leadership, and recommit to a culture of discipleship, and see what happens when that leadership is not merely put to use in the business world, as is too often the case, but invested back into the Church. New ministries. Proactive work for the Kingdom. A Cause to be passionate about: the Cause of Christ, not merely as an idea but modeled by leaders who train leaders who know how to reproduce themselves too. Christians of every age, millennials very much included, would come to be a part of that.

And I think we might all be surprised and give glory to God at what would result.

Help First, Cry Later

Imagine a dangerous apartment fire, perpetrated by an arson ring. Some residents have fled but others are still trapped inside, screaming for help, as the flames slowly spread throughout the complex. Several fire trucks rush to the scene, sirens blaring, and a crowd of firefighters approach the inferno, staring grimly into the twisting flames. The situation is dire, but it's still possible to bring the fire under control.

Then, one by one, they gather into a circle and begin to weep.

"I am responsible for this fire,"one whispers, tossing aside her gas mask.
Several firefighters nod and repeat her words, like a mantra.
"It's my fault." "I am just as responsible as the arson." "I am an arson."

"Why must these tragedies happen?" another says, helplessly letting the fire hose fall from his numb hands. "I am consumed with sorrow."

"Again," one mourns. "When did this start happening? When will it end?"

"I am broken," says another. "I feel no anger at the fire, only brokenness."

The emergency response captain nods approvingly. "Stopping fires begins with the recognition that we are just as guilty as the arson, and our attempts to help may be just as destructive as the fire itself, because we too are fascinated by fire. Let us now join our cries with those of the victims, to demonstrate that we are no better off than them, that we don't claim to have the answers either, that we weep with them and feel their pain."

Their voices are then lifted up in perplexed sadness, a cry of confused sorrow, until the screams from inside the apartment are cut off suddenly as a large portion of the building collapses, spreading the flames to the adjoining complex as well.

Seeing the inferno begin to spread, the fire department cries harder, unused high pressure water hoses dampened by their tears.

Later, the arson ring explains to the local news that it would be unjust for them to be held responsible for starting fires, since they were traumatized by fire fighters as children, but the fire department's response falls far short of what they would need for real recovery. "We expect to start a lot more fires before our pain is understood and healing can begin."

The fire department promises to cry more sincerely more next time.

. . .

Real firefighters, unlike those in this story, run into harm's way first; they save lives and do their jobs, and deal with the very real emotional consequences later. As the Church, we are called to weep with those who weep, but a Church emotionally traumatized by tragedy, as if suffering were an unnatural oddity by which to be stunned into inaction and confusion, is not a Church equipped to bless the world. The world is and has always been full of evil, sorrow, and suffering. That's the world the Bible is written to, and the world we're called to love and serve in.

Emotions are part of who we are, but so is logic, and so is action. There is work to be done, plans to be made, victims to assist and workers of evil and chaos to bring to justice. The problems we see on the news every day recently didn't crop up overnight, they're the result of tough long-term problems that require tough long-term solutions, if any exist.

And many solutions don't exist; you can't solve Human Sin with good intentions or even good action, let alone by "raising awareness" on social media. You are stuck in a world with no solution.
That's why the gospel is the good news and not some good news for when your faith in the goodness of humanity falters. (a non-biblical conception if I ever heard one)

But rather than recoiling in stunned helplessness, or navel-gazing and turning the world's problems into fodder for indulging our own guilt complexes, let's roll up our sleeves and engage the world with the Truth that changes minds and the Love that changes hearts. The world can't be saved, but many souls can, and the responsibility of bringing life-saving truth to them is yours and mine. There will be time for tears along the way, but first let's get moving.