In some cultures and eras, apostates face certain death. In America, it’s the church that’s dying from apostasy.

Apostate — it’s not exactly a common word. But for those doomed to hear its rare pronouncement, it can mean imminent death or serious eternal consequences.

Like repentance, apostasy implies a rejection or abandonment of a practice, ideal, or belief. And one religion’s penitent is another one’s apostate.

This irony became apparent in the first formal court case involving charges of apostasy in Kuwait. The court found Hussein Qambar Ali guilty for converting from Islam to Christianity in December 1995. Since Shari’ah law in Kuwait (and many other Islamic societies) prescribes the death sentence for apostasy, the court called for Ali’s execution, along with the termination of his marriage and the distribution of his possessions to heirs.

“Apostasy in the Islamic world is serious,” said Ali. “Anyone, even an ordinary person, has the right to kill me without any penalty.”

With religious and government leaders clamoring for his death, Ali fled his ransacked home, living on the run for several weeks. Finally, he left Kuwait to seek religious asylum in a vibrantly Christian nation full of healthy churches: the United States of America.

Unfortunately, the apostate Muslim soon became an apostate Christian. Less than two years after his conversion, Hussein Qambar Ali returned to Kuwait and recited the creedal Islamic statement before an official court: “I witness there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” The prodigal Muslim had come home.

Fortunately for Ali and others in the evangelized Western world, turning away from Jesus doesn’t equal treason or provoke an immediate “kill clause.” There are no Christian death squads looking for dropout Sunday schoolers and backslidden believers to behead. There’s no hangman’s noose outside the revolving back door of the modern American megachurch.

And yet, it wasn’t always so. The annals of history — and the archives of CT Library — brim with examples of Christian thinkers, leaders, and rebels who rejected contemporary orthodoxy and became martyrs for their presumed heresy. There’s William Tyndale, strangled and burned in 1536 for rejecting the notion that only priests could read the Bible. Or Patrick Hamilton, burned at the stake in 1528 for rejecting Scotland’s ban on Lutheran literature. There’s also Protestant preacher George Wishart, strangled and burned in 1546 for rejecting Catholic doctrine and embracing the Reformation. And John Rogers, burned in 1555 during the reign of Mary I for embracing Protestantism and refusing to not preach it.

Plus, don’t forget the Crusades, the Cathars, the Inquisition, and the Salem witch trials. When severing ties with apostates (legitimate or otherwise), the church has a bloody history.

But dealing with heresy in today’s church isn’t quite as dangerous or thrilling as addressing apostasy under the laws of Islamic societies, the rule of medieval Catholic potentates, or the dictates of colonial Puritans. Sure, Bishop Carlton Pearson recently earned the label of heretic for preaching the “Gospel of Inclusion,” teaching everyone’s already saved and going to heaven. But he still has a church … and his health. Lutheran minister Thorkild Grosboel of Denmark said, “There is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection”; and his great punishment was only a suspension.

However, while modern Christian apostasy won’t elicit a death sentence, it’s still dangerous. It still leads to certain eternal death. And it’s bleeding the Western church dry.

“Every year, some 2,765,100 church attenders in Europe and North America cease to be practicing Christians,” notes Books & Culture editor John Wilson, citing the World Christian Encyclopedia. That’s five Christians every minute slipping into practical apostasy. Meanwhile, the church in Africa alone is growing by a net result of three new believers every minute.

So while overseas churches become healthier, the American church seems to be infected. Despite aggressive evangelistic efforts, perhaps something intrinsic to the Western church’s theology, practice, or culture is “un-converting” new believers, driving them to apathy, if not outright apostasy.

Research seems to support this idea. In “Closing the Evangelistic Back Door,” Win and Charles Arn cite a study of three groups’ receptions to evangelistic presentations. One group made commitments and were actively involved in local churches. Another group “dropped out” soon after making commitments. And the third group rejected the presentation outright. Of those who remained committed, seven out of ten received a presentation using “non-manipulative dialog.” In contrast, nine out of ten “dropouts” received a presentation using “manipulative dialog.” And of those who said “no, thanks,” seven out of ten received a fact- and theology-driven presentation.

This study’s results indicate the need to revise evangelistic strategy. The Arns recommend abandoning manipulative coercion and viewing evangelism as a process rather than a one-time gospel presentation. They also believe evangelism should be fundamentally relational and tied closely to the church. For if the church community doesn’t befriend and incorporate believers within the first six months of their spiritual life, the church will likely see new converts become apostate dropouts.

Revolutionizing evangelistic techniques is also a concern of Foursquare pastor Jerry Cook:

Part of our problem is this: we’re trying to do the confronting. We’re trying to convert people. Conversion chases after a person’s beliefs, lifestyle, and relationships saying, “We have the answer.” Then we must inform the person what the question is that he should be asking. The whole process is artificial. …

[Unbelievers] are drawn to a relationship. That’s why “sinners” were drawn to Jesus. He never attacked them. He simply said, “You can be forgiven.” …

Until we come to grips with this, we will always be putting off the non-Christian and patronizing the Christian.

This failure of the Western church begs a sobering question: if Hussein Qambar Ali had fled from Kuwait to perhaps Africa, China, or Brazil, would he ever have abandoned Jesus and returned to Islam?

May God help American Christians reject flawed ideas of evangelism to become better disciples, demonstrating his love in order to make disciples — not converts at risk of becoming apostate ex-believers.

—

Originally published at CTLibrary on April 11, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today International.
Used with permission.

(Note: Most of the articles linked above require paid membership at CTLibrary.com to view, but if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading Christianity Today, Leadership, Books & Culture, or Christian History & Biography, it may well be worth it. Also, though I was once employed by Christianity Today, I do not personally benefit from any transactions through these sites.)

[tags]apostacy, apostate, BlogRodent, Books-and-Culture, Carlton-Pearson, Cathars, Charles-Arn, Christianity-Today, Christianity-Today-International, church-history, conversion, CTLibrary, discipleship, Evangelical-Church, evangelism, forgiveness, Foursquare, George-Wishart, heresy, Hussein-Qambar-Ali, Inquisition, islam, Islamic, islamic-faith, Jerry-Cook, John-Rogers, John-Wilson, Kuwait, martyrdom, martyrs, Mary-I, muslim, orthodoxy, Patrick-Hamilton, penitant, Reformation, repentance, Robert-Ali, Salem-witch-trials, Shariah, Shariah-law, the-Crusades, theology, Thorkild-Grosboel, William-Tyndale, Win-Arn, witnessing, World-Christian-Encyclopedia[/tags]

My friend and fellow PneumaBlogger, Frank N. Johnson over at Strategic Digital Outreach, was recently highlighted on GospelCom’s GospelCon blog. In “Flawed Follow-Up or a Flawed Philosophy of Evangelism?” Frank writes:

[T]hose of us involved in Internet evangelism in the West have, in many cases, devalued face-to-face relationships and neglected (or even abandoned) the local aspect of Christian community. … [W]e … are much too quick to assume that virtual community is just as ideal as face-to-face community. …

It is my strong conviction that the unbeliever must be immersed into Christian community prior to conversion in order for the unbeliever to understand that God loves him/her and to understand the purpose of Jesus’ mission on earth (that’s the point, I think, of Jesus’ statements in John 17:21-23). I don’t think that such immersion into Christian community is possible in the worldwide digital realm to the same extent that it is in the local physical realm. …

I tend to think that our basic philosophy of evangelism is flawed. If our approach was to encourage unbelievers to be immersed into Christian community prior to conversion, we would find that our “follow-up” would be much more effective. …

Our goal with the Internet and other digital means should not be primarily to gain new converts, but to facilitate the introduction of unbelievers into local Christian communities, which are the most effective context for outreach.

Touching on issues I’ve blogged about previously (specifically, A/G church growth stats and our discpleship issues), Frank makes a good case for not placing too much value on Internet-based relationships without a face-to-face, meatspace component. In fact, Frank very says that without prior engagement with a local body of believers, conversion and discipleship may not occur at all. And we have our own statistics to demonstrate that without mentoring and discipleship, coverts don’t “stick.”

GospelCon puts a sharper point on it by asking GodBloggers about their online conversion strategy:

[I]f your website or ministry has an evangelistic focus–perhaps even an invitation for visitors to accept Christ and become a Christian–it’s worth asking yourself: what do we do after one of our visitors accepts Christ through our website? Are we equipping them to grow in Christ and plug into a local church community? If it’s not possible to do that (perhaps the convert lives in a country that is hostile to the Gospel), are we doing our best to provide the online equivalent of the community and discipleship that is normally found in a physical church family?

The upshot of all this is really the delicate question that must be asked: do we pursue virtual conversions at the cost of souls?

I’m not a huge fan of online evangelism, just as I’m not a huge fan of bar-evangelism. Solid, healthy decisions to believe in Christ and make him Lord, to follow him in discipleship and obedience, can only be made soberly, with the facts in hand, and in light of the costs of being an apprentice to Jesus.

That said, I’ve witnessed to drunks (“Waiting for the Harvest”). I’ve witnessed in a bar (once responding to the challenge to explain the Gospel in five minutes to a PI who felt he’d never heard a decent Gospel presentation), I’ve witnessed to skeptical co-workers at a housewarming party. I’ve done street-witnessing. I’m a huge fan of witnessing when the opportunity presents itself, but I’m realistic and pragmatic about the call for conversion—sometimes we really only have the opportunity to defend the Gospel, to plant seeds, to call for repentance, to provide aid and comfort, to be hospitable. Every interaction with a seeker doesn’t necessarily have to lead to an altar call. It didn’t for Jesus, and there’s no reason you have to see every opportunity to open your mouth as a call for the Sinner’s Prayer. Being born a second time is a lot like being born the first time: there’s a gestation period, and premature births aren’t always in the new believer’s best interest.

But is it possible to witness online? I mean, is it possible to lead another to Christ online?

Yes. When God orchestrates the encounter.

Let me give you a brief example. In July of 2000 I answered a technical email that had been languishing in a discussion group inbox in my mail client for a few months. I answered it for no better reason than I was compelled to one night before leaving the office— and it was only one call for help out of several hundred emails in my queue. The next day I was stunned to discover that my email had become a direct answer to a prayer uttered by Kathi Sharpe, a fully committed pagan Wiccan. You see, God had been working Kathi over in her dreams, appearing to her, calling her to serve him. When she had enough of it, she asked God to solve this one technical problem that had been plaguing her for months, and that if he would do that, she’d seriously consider his claim on her heart. That next morning, my email was waiting in her inbox. What followed was a year-long series of correspondences and IM chat sessions where Kathi voiced her frustrations, her questions, and her celebrations. She started out a troubled Wiccan, came to faith quickly, and began growing in faith and maturity immediately. Now Kathi leads an online ministry to Wiccans, blogs, and serves faithfully in her local church. (See the transcript log at The Sharpe Logs.)

In this case, Kathi had a local church resource she could turn to immediately after coming to faith, and at several points in our dialog I deflected her questions to her pastor, who could ultimately provide better counsel. In many ways this anecdote only demonstrates the wisdom of Frank’s charge: Successful conversions require (or at least are vastly improved by) a local community of believers for fellowship, instruction, and growth. But in some other ways it also demonstrates that online conversions and discipleship are possible when the seeker initiates the dialog.

I agree with Frank that witnessing and evangelism are inherently relational. I would not recommend that a church just post the sinners prayer online hoping that this will lead to conversions and discipleship. Yes, this practice has a long and colorful history rooted in the covert placement of nifty evangelism tracts on park benches and doctor’s waiting rooms. And, yes, such impersonal presentations of the Gospel can and do have an impact of sorts. But sometimes the impact is negative, and it really is important for people new to the faith to find a local church and get involved. And the person least likely to know this is exactly the person you’re trying to reach.

Rather than doing online evangelism, I suggest we simply focus on being faithful in everything we do, whether it’s online, offline, in-line at Starbucks, or as we recline at home. Our faithfulness and our own personal discipleship will help assure a ready response when a query comes in over the email transom or in the comments section of our blog. It’s not about doing evangelism, but being disciples and making disciples. And, frankly, web pages do not disciples make.

[tags]BlogRodent, born-again, Christianity, conversion, faith, frank-johnson, gospelcom, gospelcon, internet-evangelism, online-evangelism, pentecostal, strategic-digital-outreach, witnessing, witnessing online[/tags]