I am currently reading a book entitled “The Heart of Evangelism” by Jerram Barrs and would highly recommend it. In a chapter entitled “Barriers Between the Church and the World II” he gives several reasons why believers often struggle in interacting with the world.

He notes barriers of. . .

• Intimidation- we are afraid of the hostility of the world and are failing to rest in the promises of God.
• Condemnation- criticizing and condemning the culture and the world in a self-righteous way.
• Retreat- a corporate pursuit by the church of getting out of the world in every way possible. Setting up our own sub-culture with as little contact as possible with the world.
• Separation- the avoidance of any kind of personal interaction and relationships with unbelievers.

Here is a quotation from the section on retreat that references our passage for this week- John 17.

The third response of many of us as believers to the surrounding culture is to retreat from it. Distressed by the world because it is so ‘worldly,’ we try to create our own distinct culture so we can avoid sinful society as much as possible. We have our own separate Christian or even Reformed institutions, so we will be able to avoid the pollution of the world. We retreat in to our churches and all the relationships and institutions associated with them, so that the world will influence us in a minimal way. Then, we think, we will be secure and safe from contamination.

I am not suggestion that all Christian insitutions are wrong– for example, schools and colleges or mission agencies and organizations devoted to social actions. Clearly such institutions are necessary and good. However, we need to ask ourselves what our motivation is for starting a particular Christian institution. Is our purpose to retreat from the world, or is our purpose to prepare believers to serve in the world?

Jesus prayed that we might be in the world as He was in the world, not that we might retreat from it (John 17:15-18). He described us as salt in the world (Matthew 5:13-14). He said that if we fail to influence our society because we have kept ourselves within the saltshaker of the church, on the shelf of our retreating institutions, then we will be worth nothing at all except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. If we sometimes wonder why we Christians do so little in evangelism, and why the little we do is often ineffective, we need to recognize that this mentality of retreat is one of the reasons.

We all need to ask ourselves some challenging questions: ‘Who are our unbelieving friends? Who are the ’sinners’ whom we give ourselves to love? Who are the ungodly who welcome us gladly and enjoy being with us?” There is no other way to be like Jesus and to be obedient to His command.

Yet the reality all too often is that along with fear and condemnation, separation and retreat characterize too many of us as believers. We retire into the haven of the church for our own protection and for the protection of our children. This makes genuine outreach almost impossible. How can we have true communication with people about a gopsel of love, self-giving, and the Word made flesh if we distance ourselves from those who need to hear the message? A friend who is not yet a believer put it this way: ‘The trouble with you Christians is that you wrap yourselves in a cocoon. All your close friends are other Christians. What about pagans like me? Who is going to reach me?’

This entry was posted by Tim Pickard on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.