Winning the Values War in a Changing Culture

A.D.

1

The Whole World Is Changing

SERGEI KRIKALEV had convictions, stability, success, fame, and fortune. He was a member of the Communist party, a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a follower of Soviet President Michal Gorbachev, and a highly privileged cosmonaut. He earned a lucrative 500 rubles a month.

In April of 1991 Leningrad native Krikalev was launched into space to orbit the earth for four months. While he was in orbit, however, huge changes collapsed the nation he left behind. Most frightening was the failure of the technical system that was to bring the cosmonaut back to earth. With no means of returning to earth, Krikalev had to stay in orbit for a total of ten months.

Imagine how he must have felt when he finally came home and stepped on solid ground for the first time in nearly a year! But home wasn’t the same. His country no longer existed. Michal Gorbachev had been replaced by a previously marginal politician named Boris Yeltsin who was now president of the new nation of Russia. The Communist party was out of power and in disrepute. Krikalev’s hometown of Leningrad had been renamed St. Petersburg. His 500-ruble salary was significantly reduced by inflation and now was not enough to buy even a hamburger at the Moscow McDonald’s.

There was no turning back to the old ways whether he wanted them or not.

Sergei Krikalev’s true story is a parable for the human race. All of us now living through the beginning of the twenty-first century are experiencing the greatest era of change in human history. Some have chosen to call this time a hinge of history because society as we know it is swinging in completely new directions. Our generation is like the Industrial Revolution, about which Samuel Johnson said, The age is running mad after innovation, all the business of the world is to be done in a new way.[1]

Social analysts and commentators are struggling to describe and explain all that is going on. Some claim that there was more change in the first ninety years of the twentieth century (1901–1990) than in the previous nineteen hundred years combined and that there will be more change in the final decade of the twentieth century than in the first ninety years of the century. Others claim that human knowledge is doubling every two and a half years.

In 1993 there was a television special celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the weekly comedy show Laugh-In, and it included clips from past segments of the show called News of the Future. Comedians Rowen and Martin pretended to be newscasters in the distant future, telling the most farfetched and impossible jokes imaginable. In one of the segments from 1968, their news of the future had included predictions that Ronald Reagan would be president of the United States from 1980 to 1988 and that the Berlin Wall would fall in 1989. We now live at the end of a century when yesterday’s jokes are today’s history.

Our rapidly evolving society is like a large truck slowly increasing speed on a level surface. When the road turns into a downhill stretch so long and steep that the bottom cannot be seen, the truck’s speed doubles with every mile. It’s a thrilling ride for our pounding hearts, but our frightened minds wonder if the truck will not soon be out of control or blow apart because it was not designed to travel so fast.[2]

Yogi Berra, who always cleverly managed to capture the obvious, once said, When you come to a fork in the road, take it! There is a profound sense today that we have come to a fork in history’s road, and one way or the other we must take it.

To pretend there are no changes will not stop change. It is far better to become modern sons and daughters of Issachar. One thousand years before Christ during a tumult in Israel, the people had to choose between loyalty to King Saul, who was on the throne, and David, who aspired to the throne. Both men had been anointed by God. Despite the civil war raging between the two men and Saul’s threats on David’s life, David insisted on remaining loyal to Saul and refused to kill him when he had the opportunity. Imagine the confusion of the average Israelite. How does one choose between two leaders God has endorsed? While we know from the vantage point of later history that David was destined to establish a great dynasty that would eventually lead to Jesus Christ, this was not so clear to David’s contemporaries.

In 1 Chronicles 12:32 it says that the men of Issachar ... understood the times and knew what Israel should do. That’s amazing. Their numbers were small—only 200 of them compared to the national population. That’s often the way it is: only a few understand changing culture and know what to do. However, as inventor Charles Kettering says, We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.[3]

Changes in the World

The list of changes is so long that any description is bound to be hopelessly incomplete. They occur not only in world politics but also in population, religion, and individual lives. These forces of change flow together to produce worldwide complexity, destabilization, and uncertainty.

The most profound political change has been the collapse of Soviet Communism and the end of the Cold War. For nearly fifty years after World War II, the Cold War kept the world in a polarized tension that produced amazing peace. Every nation had carefully defined its relationship to each of the two superpowers, the USSR and the United States. These giant nations moved money, weapons, and diplomats back and forth around the globe to keep loyalties in line. The end of this standoff was a dream come true for most non-Communists, although there has been an unexpected price to pay.

When the Cold War ended, a power vacuum was created that permitted ethnic, religious, and regional rivalries freedom to assert their influence and ideas without fear of being crushed by a superpower. This led to the horrors of civil war in such places as Yugoslavia and Somalia.

In Yugoslavia, where once there had been admired stability, there was now wholesale bloodshed among Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and Christians. Rival factions with animosities dating back for generations erupted into open conflict.

Somalia had previously switched its loyalty between the East and the West. With no superpower to dominate this poor East Africa nation, it succumbed to clan warfare and mass starvation.

At the same time, the largest waves of immigration in world history began. Millions of refugees flooded over borders everywhere in the world. Turks flowed into Germany; East Asians moved into Great Britain; Mexicans and Chinese entered the United States, pushing the immigration rate to 100 per hour in 1993.[4]

In response to these and other redistributions of the world’s population, many nations are redrawing their national boundaries and searching for their place in a new world order. As a matter of fact, the United States has yet to determine its role in a post-Cold War context. Now that there is no rival for military dominance, the United States must decide whether to police the world or let evil forces take over.

Concurrent with the political destabilization, population explosion has increased global numbers from 275 million in A.D. 1000 to 5.5 billion in 1993 and probably 6.3 billion by the turn of the century. Present projections estimate the world population at 11 billion by A.D. 2050.

This portends far more than a mere shift in numbers. Europe and the United States are shrinking in percentage of world population and increasing in average age, while Africa, Asia, and Latin America are increasing in percentage of world population and decreasing in average age.

Another example of redistribution is the worldwide phenomenon of urbanization, which is depopulating rural areas and bloating cities. Rural towns are left with the elderly, while cities are filled with the young. As a result, megacities are unable to cope with the numbers, the crime, the need for jobs, the shortage of basic services, and the expectations of so many citizens. Too often this makes for social instability that risks everything from anarchy to totalitarianism. It is a volatile environment.

Another factor that is becoming more important and powerful is religion. Islam plays a major role in the political and social changes of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, India, and many parts of Africa. And major news events often relate to religion: Arab-Israeli conflicts and accords; the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City; the United States government’s showdown with the Branch Davidian sect outside of Waco, Texas.

Furthermore, many ancient faiths are growing in numbers and influence. Some call it a rise in fundamentalism that affects every religion of the world—Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and even Animism.

World leaders are struggling to understand how to deal with new forces and new rules. The political lessons and procedures of the past often no longer apply or work. As strange as it seems, decisions were easier to make when the center of conflict was nuclear weapons rather than religious and ethnic differences in complex urban centers.

Aside from affecting countries, cultural changes also greatly impact individuals in ways beyond personal control. For example, consider the family wage earner who had a good job in the defense industry. Because of cutbacks in budgets, military bases, and defense contracts, he lost the job that he thought was secure until retirement. Because his skills didn’t easily transfer to a different career with comparable pay, he now earns half of his previous salary. The pay cut has consumed his savings, lowered his lifestyle, strained his marriage, changed his children’s college plans, reduced giving to his church, and lowered his self-esteem. Changes in the world have rewritten the script of his life.

When facing changes, people can either adjust or resist. Those who resist change sometimes desperately seek pieces of their lives that they can control. There is a sense that I may not be able to control my world, my country, my company, or my family, but I can control my exercise, so I’ll run six miles every day. Often this desire for control spills over into the church where members think, We can keep the church the same as it used to be. At least then I’ll have one spot of stability in my life. Not so! The church is also changing.

Changes in the Church

At the end of the twentieth century, the church in the West is facing signs of decline. Many of our largest denominations are shrinking, and the number of Western missionaries is at risk as the average age of career missionaries increases and the number and quality of those entering missionary service decreases. Global democratization has lessened the power and influence of traditional Christian institutions, including denominations, universities, seminaries, missions, publishing houses, and parachurch organizations. Disregard for the traditional teachings of the church is seen in the widespread practice of birth control among Roman Catholics and the reduced influence of the clergy among Protestants.

While the church in the West is struggling, the church in the East and in the Southern Hemisphere is on the rise. As a result, the center of Christianity is quickly moving in that direction. Estimates of numbers vary, but some give a hint of what is happening. Conversions in South America are estimated at 10,000 a day;[5] 20,000 a day in Africa; and 28,000 a day in China. About 50,000 new churches are established each year in South America while about 50–60 churches close each week in the United States.

The People’s Republic of China is a grand example of the growth of Christianity in Asia. There were an estimated one million Christians in China in 1949 when missionaries were expelled and the People’s Republic was founded. That number shrank to around 200,000 by the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1968. Now the most conservative estimates of Christians in China exceed 50 million, and many think the number is more than 75 million and may be as much as 100 million. That represents the greatest growth of the Christian church in human history.

These geographic and demographic changes of the Christian church are significant, for they mean that Westerners, with their deductive and rationalistic ways, decreasingly dominate church life and theological thinking. Third World Christians are concerned about justice, power, poverty, righteousness, and suffering. Millions of non-Western Christians are interested in experiential expressions of their faith rather than in the propositional.

When a group of American Christians, of which I was a part, met a group of young Indonesian Christians, the latter asked us two questions: When did you become a believer in Jesus Christ? and What persecution have you received as a result of your faith? We Americans were quick to answer the first question but had no answers to the second.

At a convention of mission executives in Colorado, we were, at one point, told to divide into small prayer groups. I joined three men sitting near me—all strangers. The last man to pray in our group offered an impassioned prayer for the people of China, the world’s most populous country. What most impressed me was the end of his prayer when he asked God to protect the Chinese church from American Christians. I was stunned. I had been taught that the people of other countries desperately needed us American Christians. But this man was implying that the Chinese were better off without us.

The point of this story is not to debate the relationships between the Chinese and Americans but to illustrate that the church of Jesus Christ is doing better in other parts of the world than in North America. I heard one analyst claim that the Spirit of God is sweeping the world, bringing huge numbers of people to Christ and the church, blessing as never before in world history—everywhere except North America!

Changes in North American Churches

The church in North America has entered a period of crisis in some areas and change in others. True, there are some bright spots of effectiveness and growth, but they are offset by dark areas of ineffectiveness and decline.

Historically, American churches have looked to denominations and seminaries for vision and leadership. Large denominations like the United Methodist Church spread so much that Methodist churches outnumbered United States post offices and more towns have Methodist churches than have post offices. But the United Methodist Church has shifted from growth to decline.

Most American churches are small and rural, and an increasing number are not surviving. One factor is that the average age of members is rising. Also, many rural churches are suffering severely from the decline of rural population and rural economies. It usually takes an average Sunday morning attendance of 125 for a church to be large enough to support a full-time pastor. However, most churches have fewer than 100 in average attendance, and 100,000 American churches have fewer than 50 in average attendance. This makes for hard times and difficult decisions. Churches that have been at the center of community life are closing, not because the church was bad or the people don’t care but because they are caught in the tidal wave of world changes.

Despite the decline in the number of churches, belief remains surprisingly high. For example, according to one poll, 67% of Canadians believe Jesus was crucified and resurrected; 66% believe Christ was the divine Son of God; and 62% believe the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ provided a way for their forgiveness. Only 15%, however, claim to have had a born-again experience.

A fascinating example of the profound changes taking place in North American churches is reported in Maclean’s magazine. One third of the 15% of Canadians who are evangelicals are Roman Catholic.[6] Typically we have defined evangelicals and Roman Catholics as mutually exclusive classifications. Today those classifications overlap.

Major centers of Christian influence are also facing big changes. Seminary enrollments, for instance, are declining as fewer young Christians are considering vocational ministry. In the past, the typical seminarian was a young male beginning his vocation or calling. Today, a large percentage of seminary applicants are women or middle-aged and older adults entering a second or third career. Also, rather than being men and women who are called to ministry, a number of seminarians seem to be there searching for direction and meaning in life.

Many of the parachurch organizations (youth ministries, missions, associations of churches and denominations, evangelistic organizations, radio and television broadcasters) that were founded midcentury or earlier are showing their age. They tend to be controlled by retirement-age leaders and board members who are reluctant to surrender control to a younger generation. Since many of these organizations have elderly donors, there is a fear of alienating them with innovations or newer methodologies. In fact, some of these donors attach restrictions to their bequests in an attempt to control the organizations from the grave. At the same time, these organizations have been slow to recruit younger leaders and contributors. This is a dangerous combination because it virtually assures the death of the organization or, if it survives, dependency on endowments rather than effectiveness. In some cases it is just as well if the ministries die out with the generation they were designed to serve. In others it would be far better if renewal enabled them to effectively serve present and future generations.

Another of the unsettling forces at work in the changing North American church is that the center of influence is shifting from parachurch organizations to megachurches. It’s not that parachurch organizations have lost all their influence or that megachurches have completely taken over. The shift may only be a few degrees, but it is still significant.

Megachurches are comparatively few. Out of the approximately 375,000 churches in the United States, there are probably 300 with an average attendance of more than 2,000 and less than 80 that average more than 3,000. While they