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Sometimes a mere question can initiate paradigm shifts of seismic proportions. This happened to me after a cross-cultural worker had reported to our mission’s board of directors about an experience he had in the Middle East. The missionary stated that two of the three Muslim men whom he’d recently baptized had been martyred within six months after their baptisms. Later that day I presented my field ministries report when a board member—a seminary professor of evangelism—raised his hand and dropped the big one. Referring to the previous story he asked, “Are we unnecessarily putting new believers at risk by imposing on them our specific forms of initiation in Muslim contexts?”
That was eight years ago, and since then I’ve followed a trail that has led me to learn about many movements in which people follow Jesus as Lord and Savior beyond the contexts of traditional church structures, yet within the bounds of biblical faith. I’ve been in countries where a number of these movements are taking place and met with their leaders. And while initiation into the Kingdom is celebrated in various ways across these movements, it is apparent that the uniqueness of Christ for salvation is understood and maintained.
In his new book A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, Mark Siljander relates that it was a question by a fellow believer on Capitol Hill that rocked Siljander’s world and placed him on a path of research and revelation. The query challenged Siljander’s conventional approach to Christian witness and drove him to a thorough, fresh examination of the Bible and other ancient texts. As a result, Siljander found that his traditional view of Jesus’ mission—the establishment of the Christian religion—was confining, unbiblical, and gave the wrong message to those outside of Christianity.
“Christian” appears in the New Testament only three times in the original Greek, applies only to Gentile believers, and is used for the first time at least ten years after Jesus’ resurrection. None of the twelve apostles were themselves called “Christians,” and many Messianic Jews today follow Jesus sans the Christian moniker. Within a Muslim context, Siljander quotes one Afghan political official as saying, “Jesus is highly regarded here, but Christianity is not.”
If, indeed, the Christian religion (rather than the person of Jesus) is a hindrance to many, then we who represent that institution must be willing to face some challenging questions about how we represent Christ to the world. For example, although I am an ordained United Methodist minister, I must hold my denominational context lightly if it does not enable others to meet Christ. My denominational affiliation is a means. The Kingdom of God is the end. When we do not understand this distinction we will fail to reach the billions of people who have concluded that Jesus can only be understood and followed within Christianity.
There are prophetic voices asking the church to listen. One is Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Hirsch indicates that until the early fourth century, the church was in an “Apostolic/Post-Apostolic” mode in which leadership was organic, structures were decentralized and cellular, and ministry was incarnational and understood as the calling of all believers. However, under the authority of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the early 300s, the church moved into a “Christendom Mode” in which Christianity became more of a religion than a movement. It is in this latter paradigm in which we have come to accept church buildings (rather than homes) as the main location for Christian experience, leadership primarily in the hands of specialized ordained clergy, an institutional and hierarchical system of authority, and mission as the extraction of people from their own familiar religious and cultural milieu into the institution of Christianity.
Former chaplain to the U.S. Senate Richard Halverson has said, “In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe where it became a culture. And finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.” It seems that today the world outside the church is more likely to see the enterprise rather than the face of Jesus.
Are we willing to face the questions that can lead us into a more authentic representation of the living Christ, even if it means placing some of our own “sacred cows”—yes, they exist outside of Hinduism—on the altar?
If we are unwilling to be challenged by probing questions, we are likely to expend our energy bracing the fortified walls of our fine institutions, while those on the outside remain oblivious to the fact that a Savior has come even for them.
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