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Preface

The year 1974 was declared the Year of the Evangelical. Apparently no one was listening. The year came and went as our culture continued slouching towards Gomorrah. Fast forward to 2007. Islamic terrorism threatens our borders, our political discourse is shrill and spoken in sound bites, and an epidemic of pornography addiction threatens the very possibility of healthy relationships between men and women. People have to think twice about whether saving aborted babies or snail darters is more important. We can't agree about the sexual makeup of a flourishing family.

Spirituality is in, but no one knows which form to embrace. Indeed, the very idea that one form may be better than another seems arrogant and intolerant. A flat stomach is of greater value than a mature character. The makeup man is more important than the speech writer. People listen, or pretend to listen, to what actors - actors! - have to say! Western Civ had to go, and along with it, the possibility of getting a robust university education. Why? Because political correctness so rules our universities that they are now places of secular indoctrination, and one is hard-pressed to find serious classroom interaction from various perspectives on the crucial issues of our day. The DaVinci Code - I just can't go there.

What are we to do? In 1974, we Evangelicals were not ready to step into the vacuum and lead our culture to higher ground. And because the 1960s revolution had not been around long enough to do its damage, the culture was still living on the borrowed capital of a Christian worldview and could not sense the urgency to return to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Today, we stand at a crossroad in the American Evangelical church. Since the mid 1800s, there has never been a greater window of opportunity for us to seize the moment and, by our lives and thought, to show our culture the way forward. Now is the time for us to stop being thirty years behind the times. Now is the time for us to gather our confidence and lead.

Signs indicate we are gaining momentum and may well be ready to manifest our Lord's true character in a way appropriate to the crisis of our age. Our Christian schools are already outperforming our secular counterparts. More and more churches are recovering our rightful role in racial reconciliation, in caring for the poor, and in being a presence of light in a dark place. There is a growing dissatisfaction with playing church. The Intelligent Design movement cannot be stopped. Christians have substantially recaptured lost ground in the discipline of philosophy in universities around our land. Rumors of miracles are starting to trickle out of our churches. We are figuring out that the Holy Spirit didn't die when the apostle John was martyred. Tools for spiritual formation are available as never before in my lifetime.

But the way forward is often murky to us, and in the pages to follow I want to shed light on the crisis of our age and the way out. I hope to provide an understanding of the times that will give you the courage to believe that a return to Jesus and life in his Kingdom is the only solution to this crisis. I also want to give you eyes to see the worldview issues that underlie the news, the entertainment industry, and the chaos and confusion all around us. Finally, I hope to envision for you and your church what I call the Kingdom Triangle - the essential ingredients for the maturation of the Evangelical community and the profundity of its presence in the general culture.

Because it may appear presumptuous for me to speak on these matters, permit me for a moment to speak as if insane (when Paul boasted to defend his right to speak with authority, he said he spoke "as if insane"; cf. 2 Cor. 11:23). I came to Jesus in 1968 in the midst of the sixties but more importantly in the center of the Jesus movement. I served with Campus Crusade for ten years and planted two Crusade ministries, including opening the ministry in the state of Vermont. Educationally, I was honored to study under Howard Hendricks during my Th.M. studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Subsequently, I studied under Dallas Willard during my Ph.D. work in philosophy at the University of Southern California, and Dallas and Jane Willard have been mentors to my wife, Hope, and me for twenty-five years.

I have been in the ministry for thirty-seven years, I have planted two churches and pastored in two others, and my pastoral duties have ranged from the learning center, to small group leader, to pastor-teacher. I have spoken on around two hundred college campuses and in hundreds of churches in forty or so states, I have participated in twenty-five debates, and I have taught in three different seminaries over the course of twenty-seven years.

I am painfully aware of my inadequacies, and there is a scared little boy in me just as there may be a scared little boy or girl in you. I have been in Christian therapy for three years and know many of my limitations (one of my limitations is that I don't know all of them!). My thirty-nine years of Christian experiences, study, and passion for God, along with countless hours of discussion with non-Christian thinkers and other Christian leaders, have given me enough of a background that I am starting to have something meaningful to say. Of course, you will be the judge of whether this book is among those meaningful assertions! But I cannot in good conscience before the Lord remain quiet about what I am seeing and thinking regarding the health and future of our community.

While I am at bottom an advocate of mere Christianity and, thus, have much in common with conservative Catholics and Orthodox believers, I am also convinced that Evangelical Protestantism of a supernatural kind is the best expression of Christianity available. Besides, no one listens to me outside that community! So I offer my community my deepest reflections on the crisis of our age and the way forward. I have done my best to be faithful to the message exploding out of me, and I regret that there are many things I have omitted. May God have mercy on me and on all of us!

With this in mind, I challenge you to gather into groups of fellow believers, to read and argue about the ideas that follow, and to find ways to put into practice the ideas you judge true and worthy. I hope that entire churches and parachurch groups will take this manifesto seriously. If you discover a more effective way forward as a result, then to God be the glory. After all, I have been mistaken before. In fact, I once thought I was mistaken about something, but later found out I was wrong. That fact alone guarantees that there is at least one mistake in this book.

I want to foment a revolution of Evangelical life, spirituality, thought, and Spirit-lead power. My purpose is to mobilize, inspire, envision, and instruct an army of men and women for a revolution on behalf of Christ. If this book contributes to that revolution, I will be thankful indeed. Make no mistake about it: The crisis of our age requires nothing less than a revolution of those who live in, proclaim, and seek to advance the Kingdom that was not made with hands.