When Values Collide

The heart of this blog is evangelism.

Baptisms have been trending down each year, and churches really are shrinking. Specifically, this blog is about evangelism and discipleship among those who don’t readily fit into a church’s culture. The American church is has been negligent in cross-cultural evangelism. As a result, in many churches evangelism is anemic at best.

It is among those outside of traditional church culture that the fields are white unto harvest. This is where the lost sheep have gone. As Jesus said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

Many Christians think that crossing cultures is a step beyond the general mandate. There is a myth that only select missionaries are called to cross cultures in order to make disciples. The rest of us should only focus on people like us. But, the Great Commission actually commands otherwise! Jesus commanded his mostly Jewish audience to go to a mostly Gentile people and make disciples. In other words, the Great Commission itself is a mandate to cross cultures.  --Joey Shaw via Guy Muse (reposted)

Churches are not transitioning.

One of the great challenges for churches, however, is to make that transition to real evangelism among those who don’t readily fit. Many churches don’t even understand that a transition is needed because they have a skewed perspective of who they really are. These churches readily make bold declarations and purpose statements. “We are a Great Commission church.” “Our purpose is to win the entire city for Jesus.”

But the values a church claims to hold are not always the values a church demonstrates by its actions. A church’s true values are revealed in their behavior, not their mission statements. This is the reason transition is so difficult. Churches try to implement new programs without understanding the conflicting values in the church.

Wayne Key gives a good example.

One church brought in a new youth pastor to reach out to the community. But when he began a skate park initiative, the trustee board stalled action so long that the initiative was killed. We helped the church discover it held an unspoken value—“Protect our Christian kids from worldly kids”—that directly counteracted its stated value—“Reach out to youth.”

When values collide, churches stagnate.

Value conflicts, especially between these unstated, unperceived values and the stated values of a ministry can lead to much dissension. The sad thing is, those on both sides of the issue feel like the other side is completely out of touch with what is really important. This can lead to distrust and disunity. It can kill a ministry and split a church.

The unspoken values of a church, revealed only by behavior will always win out over the stated preferred values of a church, unless they are recognized and brought to light. Only then can a church honestly wrestle through what they really value most. Once they have done that, they can change their actions, policies and perhaps even authority structures.

Help me out here in the comments section by suggesting some of the unspoken values that churches may have that can be barriers to real outreach and evangelism when they are prioritized to an unhealthy degree (or at all in some cases). Here are some that I have thought of.

• Financial Stability
• Cleanliness
• Orderly Church Growth
• Protect our Christian kids from worldly kids
• Control
• Convenience
• Prominence in the Greater Community
• Formality,
• Being “Dignified”
• Being a Pretty or Picturesque Church
• Familiarity,
• Protect our singles from singles of other races
• Entertainment
• Please add to this list and suggest ways of lovingly exposing these values to the church.