Curious Christian

John Drane made this observation in a recent interview with my friend John Morehead:

I did a survey of how churches present themselves on their websites, and one of the first things I noticed was that if you wanted to know how to follow Jesus then for the most part a church website would not be the place to look. Most of them have the sort of information that I guess needs to be available, but would only interest committed members (things like rotas for who arranges the flowers, who staffs the crèche, and so on). Many churches say very little about their beliefs, but among those that do there is a similar internal preoccupation, using buzz words like “Bible-believing” (who are the Christians who would say they don’t believe it?) or “welcoming and affirming” (what Christian would say they are not?) – or offering creedal statements couched in language that doesn’t really tell people what you are about, but constitutes a social marker to distinguish yourself from some other type of church (usually one you disapprove of). All of that only makes sense to an internal market, where you have people who want a church, and their major question is, which one? In a churched culture (such as the U.S. still is, to a considerable extent), you can still grow a church by offering that sort of religious service to the existing constituency, and you might even gain a few new people by offering a bigger or better experience than some other church in the neighborhood. But the real missional challenge doesn’t focus around questions of that sort. Increasing numbers of people know next to nothing about Christian belief, and are completely baffled by internal arguments about interpretation of scripture or theological angles. They are looking for something that will give meaning and purpose to life. In effect, they will say, “cut the crap: just show me that it works”. That invites us to be into what I called the transformation business.

This captures something that has long disturbed me about the emerging and missional church conversations as well: so much of the conversation is inward and buzzwordy. Now I am not playing judge here, I admit to being less than perfect myself, but I am constantly seeking to see how I can open up conversations about Christianity to a wider audience (without loosing my Christian audience!) At times I have thought of going back to authoring 2 blogs but it makes me feel to schitzo. During the break I resolved to tell more stories. But sometimes I think some clearer statements would be helpful. Anyway, this observation of John Drane’s makes me wonder, how could I articulate my beliefs in more accessible ways? What do you think? How would you articulate your own beliefs?