Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SLIPPING AWAY
For increasing millions of people in the wider culture, Christianity feels like a long list of rules that matter to someone else.
DAVID KINNAMAN AND GABE LYONS, GOOD FAITH
There's a billboard outside the city limits where I live. The canvas is white and in large black letters, it reads, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." Nothing else. No relational investment and no mention of God's immeasurable gracejust Scripture used to insult non-believers.
C. M. JOYNER, WRITING IN RELEVANT MAGAZINE
CHRISTIANS LOVE BEING INFLUENTIAL.
This is not a shocking revelation. Our Christian faith has had a qualitative, positive influence on us, and we want others to experience it too. And with so much wrong out there, with so many people lost and hurting, who can blame us? It's certainly understandable why Christians would want to encourage change in individual lives, in schools, in government, in politics, in culture, in entertainment, and in eternity.
Let's look at the word influence. The dictionary defines it as:
1. The capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.
2. The action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others.
3. A person or thing that exerts influence.
That sounds like us, right? As individuals and as a community, Christians have placed a high priority on influencing the world for the better. So, quick snapshot — how are we doing?
• 75% of employees admit to stealing at least once from their employer.
• 60% of adults can't have a ten-minute conversation without lying at least once.
• 80% of women admit to regularly telling "harmless half-truths."
• 54% of marriages now begin with unmarried cohabitation.
• 90% of Americans believe infidelity is unacceptable, yet 41% of spouses admit to infidelity.
• 68% of women and 74% of men admit they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught.
• Last year, there were 21 billion visits to adult websites.
If these are the indicators of Christianity's influence on our culture's health, then we're flatlining. What in the world happened? We've got "the good news," and we've got the "path to life"— but it seems that people are less and less interested in hearing our message.
MARKETING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
The need for marketing our faith began in earnest in the wake of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Prior to that, churches had for centuries relied on an assumed authority in American culture that didn't require any sort of earnest effort to get people to attend church or pay attention to their message. But by the 1950s, the worrying signs of decades of dry rot were already there.
The early and mid-twentieth century saw the emergence of itinerant revival preachers like Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, who were vastly popular and made a significant impact on American culture.
Once the 1960s hit and questioning authority became acceptable and common, the wheels finally came off, and churches started to lose their implicit right to dictate morality. Marketing to stem the tide became a necessity.
In those ensuing decades, the branding of our faith for the purposes of cultural impact has taken many forms. Most didn't work because they were merely appeals for influence based on the fading-light authority of the church. When the futility of those efforts became painfully obvious, there were "new" awakenings. But really, they were just the same fireworks of influence that tent revivalists have fleetingly lit up the sky with for the last century. That's not to say that many dedicated and committed people haven't worked tirelessly to share the gospel, engage a nonbelieving culture, and work for change. There are churches and Christian organizations doing remarkable work. But any branding that had, at its root, the goal of restoring Christianity's influence on culture has largely failed.
Need more proof?
• We've protested at major movie studios, and the result? Zero.
• We've boycotted television networks, and the result? Zero.
• We've criticized stores who don't encourage employees to say "Merry Christmas," and the result? Zero.
• We've publicized lists of corporations that aren't "faith friendly," and the result? Zero.
We could go on and on, but you get it. An honest and critical look at the last fifty years in America reveals that Christians as a community really haven't moved the dial on any moral or cultural issue. Why is that? Why has almost every effort failed?
Maybe it's because we are trying so hard to influence people.
INFLUENCE VERSUS EXAMPLE
"Wait a minute," you might be saying. "Aren't Christians supposed to be influencing culture for the better? Shouldn't we influence our friends, neighbors, and coworkers to consider Jesus?" It's a fair question. Regardless of what your answer is, it's critical to understand that, in today's culture, the word influence has very negative connotations.
We did an informal, casual survey of nonbelievers we work with in the entertainment industry about what they dislike about Christians. The single biggest response was about influence — but it wasn't what we expected. Instead of reporting that Christians were not influencing them enough, they said things like:
• "Stop telling me how to live my life."
• "I'm sick of Christians trying to push their agenda on me"
• "Don't tell me who I can marry."
• "Just leave me alone"
• "Stop shoving your message down my throat."
• "When did you become the lifestyle cop?"
After that experience, we looked it up in several different sources. Here are a handful of the words that could be used in place of the word influence:Power. Rule. Authority. Bias. Direct. Control. Instigate. Induce. Dominate. Persuade.
When the definition of influence includes terms like "a compelling force," "process of producing effects," and "exerts," we can begin to see why the secular world might be repulsed. It's understandable why our good intentions are perceived by outsiders as coercive. We can't just chalk it up to the secular world's hardened hearts. And because of American Christianity's decades-long entanglement in politics, secular people in the United States look at Christian influence and fear that we're attempting to impose a biblically based government in America.
This book began with our frustration over how the Christian community has presented (or marketed) itself over the last fifty or more years. After all, if "marketing" means presenting your product to the largest audience and making them desire it, then by looking at the cultural indicators as a whole, we've done a pretty terrible job. We have to face the fact that much of the time Christians shoot ourselves in the foot by appearing judgmental, indifferent, hypocritical, pushy, and all the perceptions that pretty much kill a marketing campaign.
Surely we can agree that Jesus was the ultimate Messenger of His own message, right? But when we study the life of Christ, we see something dramatically different.
When Jesus could have been the most influential to the world around Him, He kept unexpectedly pulling back. For instance, after extraordinary acts of healing could have easily made Him a household name, Jesus told the people He had just healed not to tell anyone about Him.
Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone.
But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." (Matthew 8:4 NIV)
And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, "See that no one knows about it." (Matthew 9:30) Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, and said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them." (Mark 1:43–44)
Jesus told the crowd not to tell anyone, but the more he told did so, the more they kept talking about it. (Mark 7:36 NIV)
When the crowds grew to an overwhelming size, and it seemed the perfect moment to expand His influence, Jesus withdrew to be alone.
And those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men. Immediately He made his disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. And after He had taken leave of them, He went up on the mountain to pray. (Mark 6:44–46)
Yet the news about Him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:15-16 NLT)
What, no cameras capturing the moment? No Snapchat or Facebook Live to build up His personal brand? Obviously, Jesus didn't have a very good PR team!
In fact, as the gospel of Mark notes, early in His ministry, it was demons who tried to proclaim Jesus to the public. Theologian R. C. Sproul points out that demons were the first to declare His true identity as the Son of God. But it was Jesus Himself who shut them up:
Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid His hand on every one of them and healed them. And demons came out of many, crying, "You are the Son of God!" But He rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that He was the Christ. (Luke 4:40–41)
Most incredibly, when His miraculous words and works became widely evident and the crowd expressed a passionate, spontaneous desire for His reign to begin immediately, Jesus bolted.
After the people saw the sign that Jesus performed, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who has come into the world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make Him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. (John 6:15 NIV)
What was going on? It is clear from the New Testament that, while Jesus never shied away from His message, He was a cautious and calculating Messenger.
We haven't been able to find any real proof that Jesus implemented any of the marketing efforts we've used to try to influence the world around us. There's no evidence that Jesus boycotted anybody, released lists of local companies that weren't friendly to His message, used the Jews' buying power to coerce businesses, or tried to intimidate the Romans into not occupying Israel. He never sought to rally people to divisive political causes or went out of His way to avoid the people He most disagreed with. So maybe it should be no surprise to us that, after decades of those kinds of initiatives, modern Christianity has not only failed to turn things around, but we are actually losing ground.
For most people throughout the history of the world, the definition of influence is wrapped up in power and control. Whether the influencer intended to use his influence for good or bad, over and over, the perception of those on the receiving end has been about power, corruption, and coercion. Maybe that's why Jesus clearly worked so hard to distance Himself from any action that might be reminiscent of that reality.
When we chase influence, nonbelievers see us as being exactly like them, only with a thin veneer of religiosity. To them, we have the appearance of modern-day Pharisees, so they reject what we're selling. This is exactly why Jesus wasn't interested in influence as much as He was interested in being an example and showing a better way.
If we're being honest, our real concern over our loss of Christianity's influence in today's culture isn't how it reflects on Jesus or His message.
It's that it reflects badly on us.
CHAPTER 2
THE FAT GUY AT THE GYM
We must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it.
HEBREWS 2:1 NLT
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
BRENNAN MANNING
IN ANTIGONE, Sophocles wrote, "None love the messenger who brings bad news," which is the origin of our modern phrase, "Don't shoot the messenger." But if we Christians — Christ's hands and feet on the earth — are even partially responsible for humanity's rejection of the message of Jesus, then "shooting the messenger" may not be such a bad idea.
"It can't be our fault, can it?" you say. "Not a chance!"
We understand. As we mentioned earlier, when we started this book, we felt the exact same way. As marketing professionals, we were 100% certain this was a perception problem, a messaging problem, a branding problem. Now we're convinced otherwise.
Have you ever been to a restaurant where you ask the waiter about a certain menu item, then he shrugs and gives you a less-than-enthusiastic, "It's good"? Do you believe him? If you had a meeting at the Pepsi headquarters and noticed that everyone at the office drank Coke, what would that tell you? If all the mechanics at American Airlines refused to fly in their company's planes, how inclined would you be to buy a ticket?
Well, that's us. Like the people in these examples, we don't believe in our own product.
Study after study from top-quality researchers like Pew, Gallup, and Barna come back with roughly the same numbers again and again. Most adults in this country say they believe in God (89%). Only slightly fewer call themselves Christians (70%). But what we say and what we do are two different things.
So to quantify between hyperbole and actual habit, we looked at what should be four common practices of active Christians: prayer, church attendance, Bible reading, and tithing.
How are Christians doing when it comes to these four essential practices of our faith?
PRAYER
Prayer is the easiest habit of the four to accomplish and the hardest to measure accurately, since prayer includes everything from intercessory prayers of healing with strangers dying in a hospital to a quick, "Dear God, please let me get a parking space at the mall."
On the whole, you'll be pleased to know that:
• 55% of Americans pray regularly.
That's good news, right? But here's where the yellow light starts flashing:
• Only 63% of Christians say prayer is essential. (Pew Research)
Take note: the corollary means that 37% of Christians don't think prayer is essential. And then there's this little nugget:
• Only 54% of people who pray daily attend church every week.
More on that in the next section on church attendance, but again, look at the inversion — that means that 46% of those who pray daily don't attend church weekly. Hmm ...
CHURCH ATTENDANCE
If we live in a country where 83% of Americans identify as "Christian," then how many would you suspect are darkening the doors of a church on a regular basis? It's a trickier question to answer than you might imagine. The first question to ask is, "What defines a regular church attender?" Let's take this out of the church world for a minute.
Consider the nonwork places we all choose to go on a regular basis — the grocery store, the gym or to the coffee shop, the kids' schools, or restaurants. With most businesses there's no hard-and-fast rule, but a "regular" is someone who stops by often enough to be recognized by the staff or known by name when he or she comes through the door.
In the church world, the rule of thumb now for "regular attender" is three out of eight Sundays. That's right: show up just nineteen Sundays a year, and you're considered a regular!
With that in mind, consider this statistic from Gallup:
• 43% of Americans regularly attend church.
When we start to put these numbers together, we realize that only half of Americans who identify as a Christian show up to church regularly — regularly being defined as around one-third of the time.
In a separate study, the Hartford Institute of Religion found that only 20% of American Christians are in church weekly. That means 80% of American Christians aren't.
BIBLE READING
If that last section depressed you, then just wait.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Way Back"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Phil Cooke and Jonathan Bock.
Excerpted by permission of Worthy Publishing Group.
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