When we were in seminary, we got the impression that our job as pastors was to help lessen the gap between the Bible and the “modern world.” Here was the Bible, mired in the first century. Here was the skeptical, critical modern world. The pastor, through preaching and various acts of pastoral ministry, labored to lessen the gap, to bring the gospel close to where modern Americans lived.
Since then I have come to the conclusion that today’s faithful pastor ought to clarify and accentuate the gap between the Bible and the modern world rather than lessen the gap.
Evangelism calls people, not to agreement, but to conversion, detoxification, the adoption of practices meant to save them from the deceits of the “modern world.” In churches, which have for so long called people to adjustment, we need pastors willing to call people to alienation.
It is important for the church as Christ’s witnesses to have something to say which is more interesting than what the world says. Give the world credit, one reason the world mostly ignores us is that we have so little to say that the world cannot hear as well elsewhere. When church becomes Rotary, church will lose because Rotary serves lunch and meets at a convenient hour of the week!
—William H. Willimon is dean of the chapel and professor of Christian ministry at Duke University.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
