By Jim Henderson

A few months ago I watched a Bill Moyers interview with Steve Fraser. Fraser has written about the second Gilded Age. The first Gilded Age took place in the late 19th Century when railroad and oil barons made lavish profits while the poor got poorer. On the political front – Congress and the aforementioned business tycoons were essentially in bed together (sound familiar?)

What caught my attention were Fraser’s comments about the part evangelical Christians played in that cultural drama. According to Fraser during the first Gilded Age, evangelicals actually agitated against the rich and advocated for the poor.  He even quotes William Jennings Bryant (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) as saying “we will not allow them (hedge fund operators?) to crucify us on a cross of gold”

The second Gilded Age is WAMU, Bear Stearns, the Bridge to Nowhere, Goldman Sachs, Presidential Debates and Barney Franks. In case you didn’t get the memo, the latest installment payment for the second Gilded Age came due this past week to the tune of $700 Billion.

The difference Fraser notes is that this time Evangelicals are silent. He calls it The Great Silence. If that weren’t enough of an indictment, he also notices that we’re quick to moralize and slow advocate for those who are truly marginalized. Outsiders like Fraser look on and wonder why we’re so busy grabbing power for ourselves. They assume Dr. Dobson speaks for most of us.

Why are we so silent? We come across as being passionately committed to the unborn but practically silent about the living.

As a trained historian, Steve Fraser knows how to read and has discovered that evangelicals have not always been this way. Well known followers of Jesus like William Wilberforce and Dorothy Day blurred the lines between personal and public piety. When it came to practicing what they preached -they knew how to walk and chew gum.

Here’s why we need to be born again - when we (insiders) refuse to critique ourselves God will raise up outsiders to criticize us.

If our own consultants won’t tell us the truth then God will raise up insultants who will.

If we won’t cry out then God will make the rocks cry out.

Learn more at the Born Again Church Tour in Seattle and Denver.

In our continuing series of interviews with the speakers for The Born Again Church Tour 2008, below is my interview with Todd Hunter, past President of Alpha and Founder of Three is Enough. I had the privilege of studying and dining with Todd Hunter this past spring and my life has not been the same since. Todd Hunter’s passion for being a cooperative friend of God for the sake of others is infectious. Currently, Todd has a book slated to be released in early 2009 called, Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others. He is also leading a Conversational Evangelism Conference in Kansas City (November 14-15). He will be speaking at The Born Again Church Tour 2008 in Seattle and Denver this year.

Elizabeth: Todd, why do you care what outsiders think about Christianity, Christians, The Church? (more…)

This week’s interview is with Randy Siever of Doable Evangelism fame. Randy is quite a fun guy, truly a kid at heart, and an amazing conversationalist. It’s always engaging and entertaining to talk with him. I hope you get a chance to talk with him at The Born Again Church Tour 2008 in Seattle or Denver.

Elizabeth: Why do you care what outsiders think about Christianity, Christians, The Church?

Randy: It’s hard to get about the business of helping outsiders connect with Jesus when we insiders have made such a mess of ourselves.  We are, after all, the primary means by which outsiders can see Jesus today (especially our relationships with each other, per Jn. 17).  I suppose the easiest way out would be simply to abandon the word Christian (and Christianity) and abandon the church and just talk about Jesus, and I suppose it could be argued that Jesus wouldn’t have much to do with either if he were to show up today anyway.  But at the very least, if outsiders are our “customer” then we have some kind of responsibility to know our market and how we are doing at connecting with them.  To not care about their opinion of how we’re doing seems reckless and irresponsible to me.  Plus it sort of implies their opinions don’t count or matter, which I have a real problem with from not only a marketing/evangelism vantage point, but also a biblical one.

If there is something we can do as a family (the Christian one) or a community (the Church) to reduce the size of the obstacles between outsiders and Jesus, well, it would seem imperative that we do something.  It’s challenging enough these days to get people to consider following Jesus without creating barriers ourselves.

Elizabeth: If you have a MySpace or Facebook account, how many not-yet-Christians would I find in your group of friends compared to Christians? (Obviously this number will be skewed by the number of people who ask to be your friend because you are a public figure, but this ratio is still of interest.) (more…)

Much of modern evangelism in the 20th century was structured around presenting the “gospel in a nutshell” to strangers on the street, asking leading questions about whether that person thinks they will go to heaven when they die and then presenting a formula to answer that question for them; as if the gospel is only about what happens when we die! The gospel is a far more robust message than can be communicated in a few moments using a small tract. The Gospels - the New Testament stories telling the Good News of Jesus offer a variety of examples of how Jesus called people to a life of faith and following Him. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find the use of “gospel tracts.” This modern invention may have done more damage than we can even begin to discern today. As we the church think about ways we need to be Born Again, one thing we can do is to focus our energies on more holistic representations of the Good News offered in the context of relationship with the expectation of God meeting people individually and uniquely, not according to some formula of our design.

As we get ready to launch the The Born Again Church Tour 2008 in less than a month, here are some questions for discussion: (more…)