Nones

We live in a post-Christian culture. Christianity is no longer the motivating center of the Western world. We are irreligious at best. We are secular, which is a Latin word for one who is divorce from religious sentiment or sensibility. We live in a nation where the most dominant growing religious group on our recent census is a group called the “nones.” (see The Rise of the Nones by James E White)

Imagine this. Many of us grew up in a culture in America where everyone identified with a church, even if you never went. If you wanted to lead someone to faith in Jesus it was like they were already at the five yard line. In the seventies, church was still on the radar for many but inviting someone to attend or leading someone to faith was now like moving them from the fifty yard line to the goal. Today the reality is if you want to invite somebody to church or invite them to know Jesus it’s like they are not even in the stadium.

Nones just don’t think about it

Faith in our culture is now forced into privitization. As Ray Croc, founder of
MacDonald’s put it, “I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s, but when I’m in the
office the order’s reversed.” You can now talk about lesbian politics in public, but
God is no longer an acceptable topic of conversation. The pressure that is forcing our faith underground is turning into outright persecution in many places around the planet. It’s coming here….not a matter of if but of when.

Moral relativism rules America today. Our rule for right and wrong is basically set this way: Right is what you feel good after you’ve done it. Wrong is what you feel bad after you’ve done it. There is no standard apart from how you feel when you’re finished. By that rule a student on a mission trip to work with orphaned children in Haiti could be as right in what they do as a child abuser who molests children.

That’s just a bit of where our culture lies today. And our job is to proclaim an
unchanging Gospel to a constantly changing world in a compelling way. Methods that used to work to do this don’t work in this present age.

My question is….not only for you but for me as your pastor….how do we do this?
We have an unfinished task of reaching the culture and community around us with
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s a God-sized task, and the time is short.