Several years ago, I watched Glenn Beck interview a pastor named Keenan Roberts about something that’s become an October tradition in many churches: Hell Houses. Roberts sells kits for churches to help them stage Christian versions of haunted houses – complete with scripts and props to show people the horrors that await those who live immoral lives.

There’s a scene depicting a marriage between two men (with Satan himself pronouncing them husband and husband); one of the two men eventually rejects God, dies of AIDS and is carried off to hell. There is another scene showing a partial-birth abortion.

I have never been to one of these Hell Houses, and don’t get me wrong, I am not a supporter of them. But I got a documentary from Netflix about the whole thing, and watched it.  And it really made me think. Hell Houses are staged for a purpose. The people who sponsor these things are sincere. They really do believe what they’re saying, and, for the most part, they practice what they preach. They’re not being hypocritical. They sincerely believe in the sinfulness of humans and the loving justice of God. They do not want people to go to hell, and they see what they are doing as a way of warning people, preventing them from unnecessarily ending up separated from God for all of eternity. There appears to be more love than judgment coming from them.

The people who sponsor hell houses rightly take matters of sin and eternity seriously, while many Christians (and Christian Churches) merely give lip-service to the idea that everyone will one day stand before a holy and just God to give an account for what they did with their lives. We say we’re committed to reaching the lost and partnering with God in his redemptive purposes, but very few of us actually do anything. It is both easy and fashionable for my Christian friends to criticize people who use scare tactics to convert others to Christianity. But I wish we were as committed to reaching those who have no relationship with God as the people I saw in the film.

There are other things I could say about whether or not Hell Houses are the best strategy or the wisest use of resources (I don’t think they are), but that’s not the point. Here’s what I know: I was convicted by the movie. I think we all should be.

I believe in the exclusivity of Christ’s power to save, but does it ever motivate me to do anything bold? I sometimes stumble over myself to avoid having conversations with people about matters of faith. I often find it much easier to talk about my faith to large groups of people than to individuals who live within a pitching wedge of my house.

Those of us who live in glass houses should be careful about throwing rocks at those who host hell houses each year. Perhaps we could all learn something from one another as we each humbly work toward the goal of advancing the agenda of God’s House in our generation.

Every generation, it seems, wants a silver bullet. They want the secret formula for instant church growth. Do this. Say that. Play these songs. Preach those sermons. And…voila! You’ll be doing four Sunday services just like the big boys do!

Yeah…it doesn’t work like that.

The most effective strategy (ironically, it’s the most biblical strategy as well) for evangelism will always, always, always be one on one, one person telling another person what God has done in and through his life.

Sorry.

At North Point Community Church (perhaps the most innovative and techno-savvy church I know) they call this strategy “Invest and Invite”. I know. How lo-tech can you get, right? Regular members just invest in other people and wait for an opportunity to invite them to a church event. That’s it. No smart lights or high-speed internet connection needed.

It’s old school and unsexy, but it works to the tune of, like, 500 baptisms per year at their Alpharetta campus alone.

If any other church had a program that boasted numbers like that, we’d be knocking down their door, begging them to put it in a box and giftwrap it for us. If First Baptist of Podunk, Utah, had a Halloween Trunk-or-Treat Extravaganza that brought in 500 new people each year – if Trinity Presbyterian of East Bumble, New Mexico, came up with a personalized automated email marketing software that got around all those pesky spam laws and guaranteed us one new member for every 25-30 current members – we’d be screaming at the top of our lungs: SHOW US HOW TO DO IT! WE DON’T CARE HOW MUCH IT COSTS!

But this? Invest and Invite? This involves things like people…having conversations…with other people…who don’t go to church. And that might be…uncomfortable.

Give us doorhangers to hang on people’s doors. Give us postcards to mail to people’s homes. Give us clever slogans we can put on our church marquees. Better curriculum. More creative programming. Cooler music. A better website. Give us a spiky-haired preacher wearing his long-sleeve striped shirt untucked with $300 jeans.

But please do not ask me to go next door and ask my neighbor if he needs help with anything. And, if you do, you better pray he doesn’t ask me anything about Jesus or God or the Old Testament or gay marriage or why I voted the way I did.

I know we all want a script here. We all want to know what to say if our neighbor asks us one of those stumpers. But I’m not going to give you one. Instead I’m going to suggest you do something crazy, something radical, something so Christlike that it might actually cost you something.

I want you to go over there and love that neighbor.

That’s right. You heard me. Get over there and just love the daylights out of him. Love him like he’s never been loved before. Love him like his momma loves him. Better yet, love him like Jesus loves him.

That’ll show him!

Odds are, your neighbor knows you’re a Christian. Let’s hope he knows that you attend church somewhere, that he’s seen you leaving your house on Sunday morning dressed in something that looks like churchly attire. He’s seen the kids getting out of the van with refrigerator art. And he knows what you’re up to when you come over.

He’ll be expecting the question about heaven and hell. He’ll be ready with an answer about where he last went to church and what he thinks about the Bible.

But I bet he won’t be expecting love, certainly not a love like this, a love so pure, so fierce and so holy that it expects nothing in return but simultaneously, irresistably, somehow, changes its recipient. Maybe it’ll take him so completely off guard that he’ll forget to ask you one of those ridiculously tough questions he’s got saved up.

Love can do that, you know. It’s happened before.

Love is the ultimate silver bullet.

I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time among the cool churches (you know…Willow Creek and Saddleback and North Point and all their buddies). I’ve gone to their conferences and listened to their pastors. And, while I am not an advocate of all things megachurch, you can’t deny the fact that they’re doing evangelism pretty well. These churches are baptizing hundreds of people each year and creating a safe place for people to bring their spiritual questions and explore their faith. I’ve been in lots of these churches.

And yet…. I’ve never one time heard anyone in a church that’s really evangelizing well say, “It was Vacation Bible School that really put us over the top.”

Can we be honest about something? You may have gotten saved at a VBS in the 1970s, but it rarely works like that anymore. More often than not, VBS is just free babysitting for people who already attend church somewhere.

I’m not saying it’s wrong or bad or evil. I’m just saying it’s not outreach. Or, if it is outreach, it ain’t working because these churches have taught kids the motions to Father Abraham during each of those years during which the number of Americans who identify themselves as Christians has steadily declined. In the last 25 years, the combined membership of all Protestant denominations declined by 10 percent, while the national population increased by nearly 30 percent. In that same time period, the average size of the average church in America decreased by 10 people. In an average year, half of all churches do not add a single new member through conversion growth. Most churches average one new convert per year for every 85-90 regular adult attendees.

I may never ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery or fly o’er the enemy, but I know the Lord’s army (“Yes, sir!”) isn’t making much progress here at home. At some point, don’t you think we ought to look at this honestly and say, “Maybe we should stop doing things that aren’t working and try something else”?

Christmas musicals, Easter pageants, Mother’s Day Out, preschools – these may all be a way of getting people who don’t attend your church to visit your building, but is that really the goal? Is the bar set so low that you’re ready to define success as “butts in the seats”?

A few years ago, a church in California did a summertime, 4th-of-July patriotic sing-a-long. They spent $1,800 renting a tent and sending out mailers to everyone in their zip code. Six visitors showed up. When they told me about it, I remember thinking, “You could have gotten more visitors if you’d just gone to the beach and told people, ‘I’ll give you $50 to come to this thing at my church.’”

Now, if you choose to do these things as a way of blessing your community – because you believe they need a place to sing “Joy to the World” in mid-December or watch fireworks light up the summer sky, then, by all means, continue doing them. If you want to do these things because doing them builds community among those who volunteer and it blesses the community, go ahead.

But don’t pretend this is evangelism. Don’t pull money out of the outreach budget for this stuff. And whatever you do, please don’t let the people in your church feel like they’ve done their evangelistic duty by volunteering for one of these programs or (worse still) simply giving money for them.

They may be good things, but they’re not evangelism.

I understand that the best church programming in the world can’t lead a person to conviction and conversion – people have this notoriously stubborn thing called their sin nature and, when it gets combined with their free will (sorry, Calvin), it makes them so hard to convert that only God himself can do it (sorry, Arminius).

I also understand that the effectiveness of our evangelistic work is terribly difficult to gauge. A lot of good, no doubt, takes place beneath the surface, as the seed of God’s Word penetrates the soil of a human heart, germinates and begins growing long before any visible shoot appears. When a person comes to faith (or when faith comes to a person – whichever you prefer), rest assured much work has been done – seen and unseen – to prepare the soil, sow the seed and cultivate things before any harvest is reaped.

(This is extremely biblical language for evangelism, by the way, and I’m glad my dad brought it up in his comment to yesterday’s post. Jesus taught in an agricultural context, so these are the metaphors he used. I have never been a farmer, so it feels strange for me to use this terminology, but I now live on 10 acres of land & my family has planted a huge garden. I’m learning the meaning of this whole seed and sower analogy. I trust you can understand the word picture.)

So, having said how difficult I know it is to measure the effectiveness of our evangelistic attempts and having said how our best attempts to evangelize others could never make someone get saved, I still believe we ought to be rethinking some things when it comes to sharing the message of Jesus with those who are currently outsiders to the Christian faith.

For example, Dr. Ed Stetzer of the North American Mission Board (who has conducted extensive research on how churches conduct outreach) found that the number one outreach program (used by nearly 85 percent of Southern Baptist churches last summer) is Vacation Bible School.

Eight-five percent. Vacation Bible School. Really?

Of course, having grown up where and when I did, I have fond memories of Vacation Bible School. Puppet shows. Memory verses. Booster, booster, be a booster and all that. But can someone tell me honestly why in the world 85 percent of the 42,000 Southern Baptist Churches in America (that’s 35,700 churches, btw) need to be doing VBS?

And that’s just Southern Baptists. Factor in the Methodists and the Churches of God and the Churches of Christ and every other group of folks buying into the culture of VBS, and what do you have? Tens of thousands of churches all doing the same thing. None of them are really making a dent in the number of unchurched, unsaved people in our world.

Craig Groeschel’s famous quote comes to mind: “If you want to reach people no one else is reaching, you have to do things no one else is doing.”

A few months ago I was asked to write a paper for a prestigious organization that gives money to parachurch organizations. The title of the paper was “The State of Evangelism in America.” It’s not the first time I’ve written for this organization. I’ve also written on such topics as “The Boundaries of Stewardship” and “A Biblical Rationale for Financially Supporting Parachurch Ministries.”

I am such a nerd.

Normally, I approach these kinds of projects with a kind of cool detachment – much like a brain surgeon approaches a patient. Don’t get too attached. Don’t let your emotion get in the way of performing your duty. Better to stay objective and at least a little bit removed.

But this topic got under my skin and refuses to leave me alone. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that the state of evangelism in America is…well…poor.

We’ve got churches on nearly every corner (324,000 Protestant and 20,000 Roman Catholic congregations in America). But those churches are shrinking and dying at an alarming rate. The average size of the average church in America has dropped 10 people in the last 25 years. During that same time period, the combined membership of all Protestant denominations declined by more than 10 percent, while the national population has grown by more than 30 percent. Every year in America, 3,500 churches close their doors for the last time; fewer than 1,500 new churches are planted in their place.

In an average year, fewer than half of all existing churches fail to gain a single new member through evangelistic conversion. In the average church, there is usually one convert per year for every 80 members.

Something’s wrong with that picture. We’re failing at evangelism at a monumental level, and we have to change it. But how?

It’s not as if people don’t know the Christian story. That was the case in the pre-Christian era – when the disciples were going into all the world and telling people about Jesus. And it was the case in a lot of places during the Christian era when missionaries traveled far and wide, taking the message of hope into the darkest corners of the world.

But in today’s post-Christian America, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone out there who doesn’t know at least the gist of the story. Jesus. Son of God. Crucifixion. Resurrection. Christmas. Easter. They know it already.

I’m not saying they’ve really heard the gospel or understood any of its implications. I’m just saying they know the gist of the story.

And they’ve chosen to reject it. They are simply not interested in what we have to offer them at this point.

We don’t like to talk about this much, but it’s true: Americans may very well constitute the largest unchurched people group outside of India and China. As many as 240 million Americans are unsaved, unchurched and unevangelized, and that number is growing.

What does that say about the Church and evangelism?

One of the things many Christians fail to do when having conversations with those outside of the Christian faith is listen. This is a terrible error for lots of reasons, three of which I’ll mention here.

First, if we fail to listen, we may end up attacking an argument they aren’t making. I’ve seen Christians get all worked up to show how false a premise is, only to find out that no one believes that premise anymore – not Christians – not non-Christians – no one. That’s a waste of energy and intellectual capital; it’s like bombing an empty field. We ought to be able to understand another person’s position well enough to describe it and explain it to their satisfaction. We ought to, in other words, seek first to understand, and only then to be understood. Straw men make easy targets, but they make us look foolish – like Don Quixote jousting with windmills.

Second (and this is so similar to the first it almost shouldn’t qualify as a reason of its own), failing to listen can lead us to defend against objections to our faith that no one is actually making. This second reason is similar to the first, but the difference between these two reasons is the difference between offense and defense. When we rebut arguments they aren’t making, it muddies the waters and threatens to cut the lines of communication altogether. After all, very few of us like to talk to people who put words in our mouths – especially when those words are inaccurate. We should listen to objections and treat them as honest objections. That means being respectful, and that requires listening.

The third reason we must listen to people with whom we disagree is because we aren’t infallible. We can’t expect other people to listen to us with open minds if we haven’t demonstrated that same willingness – and that includes the willingness to entertain the notion that our thoughts and arguments may, in fact, be flawed.

Defending our position with bogus arguments is foolish. Our calling is to be humble and gentle – while we are also attempting to demolish falsehood wherever it may be found – even if that happens to be within our own belief system. That’s a tough balance to strike, but strike it we must. Otherwise, we run the risk of appearing to be the biggest fools of all and actually hindering the cause of Christ.

I’m not suggesting we jettison the historical, orthodox Christian faith found in the great creedal statements – those declarations about the godhead as three-in-one, about sinful humanity in need of a savior whose love comes into contact with people through his sheer gracious intent, about the unity of all those who are in Christ. All of that can and should stay. But let’s face it: most of us have added a few lines here and there. And some of that stuff needs to go.

Personally, my commitment is to truth. I believe that the Christian faith isn’t just better than all others; I believe it is true. I don’t think it’s true because I’m a Christian; I think I’m a Christian because I believe it to be true. (though faith is a complicated philosophical notion and cannot be explained away as easily as I have done so here – perhaps we can explore that phenomenon more later).

However, I also understand that I am finite and will never be able to grasp truth absolutely. It is always going to be certain that portions of my understanding are flawed and incomplete. But that doesn’t mean I am going to give up on truth. I am going to continue searching, continue asking and continue learning so that my understanding will grow.

The only way that can happen is if I am willing to listen – really listen – to others.

That might actually mean looking up from the chess pieces and engaging the chess player across from you. He may take your Knight or your Queen, heck, he might even put you in checkmate, but he’s way more important than the game. He’s a person after all.

One of the things I frequently forget while playing chess is that I’m not the only person playing. Because I’m in such a headlong rush to attack, I sometimes have to remind myself that I have an opponent who is not only busy defending but is also plotting counter-moves as well. In chess, you must play offense and defense simultaneously.

Apologetics is similar, and it is necessary for us to try to keep our balance in the midst of the fray. One goal of apologetics is to attack (the idea – not the person). That is to say, one of our primary objectives is to demonstrate how and why false ideas are false. It’s no good to simply say, “Oh, that’s just wrong.” We should have good and reasonable explanations to back up our charges.

But we’re not the only ones on offense. Increasingly, or so it would seem, Christianity is under fire. The New York Times’ Bestseller List has been occupied by books from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and a host of others who seem to have the goal of disproving the very existence of God. Some of their attacks on our faith are thoughtful; many, however, are utterly ridiculous.

Oh, and just in case you ever wonder about how this all might end, remember: This isn’t the first time people have come against the Christian faith like this; and it won’t be the last. The Christian faith is an anvil that has been wearing out hammers for nearly 2,000 years. I don’t think God’s losing any sleep over it.

So, if, on the one hand, our objective is to demonstrate how and why false ideas are false, we must also be prepared, on the other hand, to demonstrate how and why true ideas are true.

Now, in my experience, this is where a lot of Christians muck everything up. Many Christians believe what they believe because it’s what their parents told them to believe. If that’s you, I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but your parents may have told you lots of things that aren’t really true. My mother told me that if I went outside with wet hair, I’d catch cold. She also told me that if I let a dog lick me in the face, I’d get M.S. She swears she did not, but I have eyewitnesses.

Parents tell children lots of dubious things. Do I need to mention, say, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy?

Some Christians simply shrug and are able to muster nothing other than, “I just believe what I believe because I just believe it.” Or, “I just feel like it’s true. It just feels right.”

No one should believe anything without at least doing some checking first. Is there a good reason to believe what we believe? Would I be willing to change my beliefs if someone could demonstrate the falsity of them?

If I hadn’t been willing to change my beliefs based on new information, I would still be avoiding stepping outside with wet hair; my dog would be kept far away from my face, and there wouldn’t be many presents under the tree come December 25.

Suffice to say, there may be some beliefs lurking in our heads that have absolutely no basis in reality. Perhaps they have come about as a result of some beloved authority figure from our past, or a misunderstanding of the facts, or the time and place we were raised. Before we try to set someone else straight, we would be wise to scrutinize our own beliefs.

Let’s use our heads. Let’s think deeply and ask probing questions. Let’s not settle for second-hand faith that cannot withstand scrutiny. Let’s take some time to reclaim the Christian tradition of loving God with our minds again – show the false to be false. Show the true to be true. Those are the two goals of apologetics. That’s the “what” of apologetics.

We still have to figure out the “how.”

Truth be told, some parts of what I’m writing here are something of a departure for me. Usually, I’m the one quoting Peter instead of Paul: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).

But Paul told us to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

How on earth do I demolish someone’s argument with gentleness and respect? That’s a tricky thing to balance, and I’m not sure I’ve got it all figured out. Still, that’s what we’re called to do, and that’s what I’m going to attempt in the posts that follow. We’re not just called to plead or suggest that someone might be mistaken; we’re called to demolish foolish arguments.

Now, I’ve already gone on record here, but let me say it again: Non-Christians are not the only ones proffering foolish arguments these days – not by a long shot! Followers of God should lead the charge against folly wherever folly is to be found (say, for example, in a forwarded e-mail about a sick child whose parents want you to boycott ABC for showing the Harry Potter movie in primetime with only commercials from Proctor & Gamble – which we all know is run by satanic forces – just look at their logo!).

We are to love everyone (family, friends, neighbors, enemies, etc.), but we must love them enough to demolish the lies they believe. And we are especially supposed to police ourselves, to weed our own garden, to shovel our own driveway, to (goodness, how many ways can I say this?) make sure the foolish arguments aren’t actually coming from inside the house.

So, how do we do it? How do we demolish arguments gently and respectfully? How do we wage war in the name of love? Is that even possible?

I wrote about this before on the blog, and one of my good friends offered this penetrating insight: “What if I don’t see the enemy and don’t really think I’m being attacked…wouldn’t I need to see the need before I even try?”

My friend Mike is a thoughtful guy, very aware of the presence of our enemy. But I know there are others who are not. And that is by design. Our enemy is amazingly shrewd, and has lulled countless Christians to sleep with the idea that there is peace when, in fact, there is not.

Perhaps the easiest and cheapest way to influence enemies is through the use of propaganda. After all, if you can convince your enemies that you’re not really at war, that you have no malevolent feelings towards them, that you want to be friends, if you can convince them that both sides share the same interests or that there aren’t even two sides here, that we’re all on the same team – if you can convince them of that, your victory is assured.

This is perhaps the most often overlooked tactic of warfare.

And it is a strategy the devil employs all the time.

We live now in a culture that says tolerance is the highest virtue (though that culture has redefined tolerance in the most dishonorable way). We are told that we must never discuss religion in polite company. We’ve been put to sleep and made to believe that we’re all on the same team. There’s no war going on here.

Ah, but there is. The notion that religion and spirituality are merely matters of preference that have no bearing on the way the world operates is patently false. As N.T. Wright says, “September 11, 2001 serves as a reminder of what happens when you try to organize a world on the assumption that religion and spirituality are merely private matters, and that what really matters is economics and politics instead. It wasn’t just concrete floors, it was massive towers, that were smashed to pieces that day, by people driven by ‘religious’ beliefs so powerful that the believers were ready to die for them. What should we say? That this merely shows how dangerous ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ really are? Or that we should have taken them into account all along?”

These things are serious, and serious things can be dangerous when they’re not taken seriously. Notice what the Apostle Paul said: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

These are abrasive words here, and I do not like them. But I didn’t write them, and I can’t excise them from my Bible.

Oh, and one more thing before we go any further: The previous post used the phrase “our enemy”. You should know that I do not consider any of the following my enemy: homosexuals, liberals, feminists, postmodernists, modernists, vegans, Catholics, Jews, the Teletubbies, the religious right, the secular left, Pat Robertson, Al Sharpton, Hollywood, the Bible belt, red staters, blue staters, purple staters, magenta staters (I think I just made that one up) or you.

You are not my enemy – at least not from my perspective. We all have a common enemy. Call him the devil or Satan or whatever you like; there is a force of evil at work in our world, attempting to undo all of God’s doing.

From time to time, this enemy uses many of the people I mentioned a moment ago. But let me tell you one of my primary assertions for what we’re about to delve into: the biggest problem in our world is not the people who disagree with Christians. The bigger problem is that Christians so often fail to respond Christianly when disagreements occur.

So, in a sense, you can relax. This isn’t going to be one of those diatribes where I systematically tell you what’s wrong with all the non-Christians out there. I will probably poke a few holes in their belief systems, but that’s not what I’m mostly concerned with here.

Instead, I plan on making this a diatribe where I systematically tell you what’s wrong with all these Christians in here….

(Okay, that’s a good example of the rhetorical strategy known as “provocative overstatement”. I only said it to get your attention.)

The truth is, I plan on doing a little of both and a lot of neither. I will interact with people – none of whom were meant to live neatly within a categorical box. I will talk with them. I will listen to them. I will push back some when I disagree with them. I will do my best to show them respect, but I will present a biblical response to the issues raised. Hopefully, that won’t be too off-putting for you.

But where I really plan on coming down hard is with the way Christians so often interact with others. After all, as the apostle Paul said, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside” (1 Corinthians 5:12-13a).

To sum up: There is an enemy. People are not him. He often uses people. Sadly, the people he uses most effectively are often Christians.