In Deep and Wide, Andy Stanley tells the story of North Point Community Church.  He bares his heart, writes vulnerably, yet passionately sharing his commitment to creating a church that is about the activity of Christ.  People who were nothing like Jesus, really liked Jesus.  Andy Stanley thinks church is supposed to be representing Him to such people today.

I know that this creates tension.  Is church supposed to be for the unchurched?  Isn’t evangelism something we do “outside of church?”  I think these are important questions and worth wrestling with.  But I would share Andy Stanley’s concern that so many churches are functionally antagonistic to people getting saved and growing in relationship with Jesus Christ.  I might agree with the idea that church is primarily for believers, but don’t we all agree that we want to be part of a church that we wouldn’t hesitate to invite a friend to attend with us?

After all, didn’t Jesus teach something about the world knowing who we are because of our relationships with each other?  Actually, didn’t he pray about the world knowing about the love of the Father for the believers and the mission of the sent Son through the Godlike unity of the believers?  In today’s society, I suspect we need to let people look inside the church to see the unity Jesus was praying about in John 17.

Andy Stanley knows that this book will infuriate some, perhaps most, church leaders.  My opinion is that all church leaders should read this book and let it infuriate them (if that is the reaction…some will just be delighted!)  Maybe we will all have issues with some of the prodding and poking that comes through this book.  But if we are prayerfully conversing with God as we read, what do we have to fear?

Here is a quote from Andy in his chapter on preaching:

Okay, maybe we should end with something we can agree on.  Currently, I’ve got two kids in college and one who is about to finish high school.  All three of them love the local church.  If by some freak of chance they should end up living in your town and attending your church, please don’t ruin it for ’em.  Please don’t hide behind your tradition and your “this is how we do it here” habits and preach brown-and-serve messages to my kids.  Please don’t steal their passion for the church because you are too lazy to learn.  Too complacent to try something new.  Too scared of the people who sign your paycheck.

Okay, so my kids probably won’t attend your church.  But somebody’s kids are attending your church.  If you have kids, they are attending your church.  Every Sunday you are either instilling a deeper love and appreciation for the church or you are doing what most pastors do and providing them with one more reason not to attend when they no longer have to.  That’s a big deal.  I don’t want you to preach like me, but I do want you to be part of the solution.  I want the fact that twentysomethings are leaving the church and never looking back to bother you.  A lot.  It bothers me.  I think it bothers our heavenly Father.  Do you?

So if we can’t agree about the importance of preaching to unchurched people, surely we can find some common ground around our passion to recapture the attention and imagination of a generation of kids that is growing up in church but that can’t wait to leave.

In Deep and Wide, Andy Stanley shares his heart, his journey and his strategy for creating churches that unchurched people love to attend.  As part of that, he gives seven guidelines for preaching to the unchurched.  Whether we embrace the whole model of church and approach to the Great Commission that Andy Stanley advocates, the reality of preaching to unchurched folks is one that all of us should be aware of (unless, of course, the unchurched will never come to your church, or be brought to your church).

Guideline 6: Acknowledge the odd . . . it would be odd not to.

Church folks like us have heard the odd bits so many times that it is normal fare in our biblical diet, but people unfamiliar with the Bible and its contents will find things odd.  Floating axheads, animals showing up at the ark in pairs, parting of the sea, etc.  Andy Stanley suggests that breezing past the odd content and heading straight for principles and applications will hinder those who aren’t used to such notions.  Instead, pause and acknowledge how strange it sounds.

For a start, to acknowledge the odd is to increase our credibility with those who are naturally skeptical.  They may already think we have left our brains in the cloakroom, we don’t need to reinforce such notions.  Furthermore, they need to know that it is okay to read the Bible critically.  In fact, it is okay to read it before believing it.  People will do well to question the supernatural aspects of biblical teaching rather than just swallowing something they still assume to be untrue.

Instead of skirting over or around these issues, take the time to offer a brief rationale for believing what is in the passage.  Stanley suggests that this will accomplish three things.  1. It points unbelievers to the real issue (typically the specific incident recorded is just a specific incident, but reinforcing the resurrection of Christ as an access point to the rest of the miraculous gets to the heart of the gospel revelation).  2. This will reinforce the faith of believers.  And 3. It gives believers a mini-apologetics seminar to help them with communicating to their colleagues and friends on such matters.

The list will be finished next time. . .

How can we preach to the unchurched more effectively?  I’m walking through Andy Stanley’s list of seven guidelines.  This one might make you think:

Guideline 5: Avoid “The Bible says” . . . because it doesn’t.

This is the one that stood out to me.  This phrase is an obstacle to faith that is unnecessary.  Do people need to believe in the inerrancy or infallibility of Scripture to be saved?  Actually, no.  People were becoming believers before the Gospels were even written.  In Acts 15 the Gentiles were not given a requirement relating to the Scriptures for their salvation.  They were not even told to read the Old Testament, in fact, quite the opposite in some respects.

I hope that you believe in inerrancy and have a high view of the Bible, but that is not a pre-requisite for faith.  Most unchurched people are bombarded with a very negative view of the Bible in popular media.

So Andy Stanley suggests a fresh approach to talking about the text that doesn’t make it harder than necessary for the unchurched to come to faith.  He suggests not referring to it as a book, since in the minds of the unchurched the Bible is not a book in the normal sense of the term (and God didn’t write it in the way that a normal author writes a book).  Stanley suggests developing terminology that refers to the Bible as the miracle that it is – a collection of documents by over forty human authors written over more than fifteen hundred years and yet telling one coherent story.

A large part of why people think the Bible is full of contradictions and unreliable myths, etc., is because they have only heard Christians refer to it as God’s book (when it is obviously different authors in different times writing in different genre).  If we start to explain the reality of what it is, people are more likely to engage it and realize how good it is, instead of dismissing it based on “insider” terminology.  So Stanley writes, “Don’t talk about it like it is a divinely inspired book.  It’s not.  It is a collection of divinely inspired manuscripts.”

This means citing authors rather than simply, “the Bible.”  So instead of saying “The Bible says Jesus rose from the dead,” why not list the eyewitnesses that saw and recorded accounts of their seeing the risen Christ?  The first statement is a claim dismissible due to the prevailing view of the Bible.  The latter approach draws people into the reality of the evidence that we have in the Bible.

Stanley is not showing a low view of the Bible.  He is arguing that we should do nothing to keep people from hearing the gospel.  Part of that process is making the Bible as accessible as possible so people will hear what it says, rather than creating an obstacle that hinders hearing.  I think he has a point.

Continuing the guidelines for preaching to unchurched folk…

Guideline 2: Begin with the audience in mind… not your message.

Jesus could have launched into theological truth statements in respect to God and sinners.  But instead he began with sheep.  And coins.  Etcetera.  But Jesus didn’t come into the world to say true things.  So Andy Stanley makes a strong case for surfacing a sense of need in the listeners so that they feel compelled to engage.  He suggests that Christians have a lot more in common with the unchurched than we tend to realise.  So if there are not uniquely “Christian” problems, but just problems, then we should be able to engage listeners before we preach answers to them.

I love his confidence in how easy this is to achieve.  In reality I see an almost total lack of creating genuine need for sermons, and I find it difficult to surface need in my own preaching.  Too many preachers think an interesting or funny opening is sufficient to launch a message.  Actually, let me back up.  Too many preachers don’t seem to consider their listeners at all in introductions and just launch straight in.  Then there’s the anecdotal launcher.  Rare indeed is the preacher who has the listeners hungry for what is to follow by the end of the introduction.

Guideline 3: Pick one passage and stick with it… everybody will be glad you did.

Let me quote, “Anything we can say to make the Bible more approachable and less intimidating is a win.  This is why I am such a proponent of focusing the message around one text.  I realize there are topics that demand we draw people’s attention to more than one passage.  My advice is to make that the exception, not the rule.  Jumping all over the Bible illustrates how smart you are.  It rarely enhances an audience’s understanding of or love for the Scriptures.  And it totally confuses non-Christians.  Worse, it sets a terrible precedent for how they should read the Bible.  We don’t want new and non-Christians looking around the Bible for the verse that says what they are hoping it says.  We want them to let the Scriptures speak for themselves.  Messages built around proof-texting accomplishes the opposite.”  (I should stop, or I could keep quoting ’til the end of this section!)

Let me add… amen!