Bright and the Missional Church

I was reading a story about Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, who arguably has had as great an impact on Christianity in America as anyone else, including Billy Graham. When Campus Crusade for Christ unleashed “Four Spiritual Laws”, it became one of the most widely distributed booklets in history. In the activist days of the 60’s, CCC learned from campus radicals and seized their platforms. I was a student at San Diego Stat in the early 70’s, when one of Crusade’s voices, Josh McDowell, came on campus and spoke. It was an electric moment. People yelled obscenities from dorm windows, and threw things.

I was not part of Campus Crusade. I worked with another campus organization, but our mission was the same—to reach students for Christ. Sometimes, our training took place at San Diego State, where we typically confronted other radical groups like the SDS. It was a great time to be a new believer, as well as working in a parachurch movement. There was a sense of urgency. In a culture of drugs, Vietnam, protests, and occasional riots, we felt we were in our own war. Things were polarized. You were on one side or the other, for or against. There was little space in the middle. In 1970, Esquire magazine placed CCC at the top of a list of ten movements to avoid in college—ahead of the Weathermen and the Communist Party.

I’m not sure where Esquire would place Crusade today. Christianity doesn’t seem so radical, so dangerous today, on campus or in the community. Not that I necessarily want to go back to the rebellious days of the 60’s, but I do miss some of the passion, commitment that characterized those days. You carried a New Testament with you most of the time, and were intentional about regularly praying for a name in your wallet, a “target person”, someone without Jesus.

In reading books like Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways Handbook, there is a fresh call to be missional, a challenge to the church to go outward into the world and deep into culture. Transformation, as well as multiplication, are critical to survival, and needful if we are to once again be dangerous. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially with the completion of our new worship center. There are lots of emotions I feel when I walk through it, but the one that dominates is this—God is giving us this huge opportunity, as well as responsibility, to use it to reach lost people. Hence, in a strange way, it does not so much invite me in as much as send me out to live in more proximity with those beyond the walls, beyond the faith.

Hirsch’s title comes out of a conviction we have largely lost contact with the memory of what we can be, and ought, to be. We have forgotten the importance and the art of building friendships with those beyond the church. But it is his conviction we are waking up and becoming a movement once again. Voices like McManus and Wells and Carson and Stackhouse and Crouch and Peterson and Viola (an odd mix, I know), are all stirring up the church to be the church. And a huge part of this begins with getting outside of our walls and becoming intentional again, even if it means carrying a name in a wallet.

 

 

Comments

[tony jeffery]

I never took Esquire serious, never bought a copy.
Will you lead Village to sponsor a family of Iraqi refugees?
Will you lead Village to care about farmworkers living in 8'x10' plywood shacks in Scholls?
Will you open Village to the homeless for shelter, showers and meals?
Sorry for bringing it up, but my mood's
a little off, my oldest had a 7 hour brain surgery yesterday, maybe the waiting for the coming of the Kingdom
has gotten too intense.

[Brian Larson]

I am excited to be a part of a church that is commited to being intentional, that sees the cultural diversity of our community and wants to bring Jesus Christ in to those cultures. Although it can be scarry, we are called to live outside the "box" and connect with the rest of the world. We don't have to go far, because the world is comming to us. My prayers are with Mr. Jeffery.