Over There,” George M. Cohan’s rousing World War I anthem, captures much of the Western church’s perception of missions over the last century. The field was abroad. And we, the Christianized West, sent the word—through missionary personnel, resources, programs, and institutions—over there. Nowadays, our “here” increasingly resembles foreign territory, as the Western church finds itself on the social and cultural margins. In Exiles on Mission: How Christians Can Thrive in a Post-Christian World, Paul S. Williams, CEO of the British and Foreign Bible Society, calls us to embrace the opportunities this new position affords. Evangelism as Exiles author Elliot Clark, who works with Training Leaders International, spoke with Williams about serving as God’s ambassadors to our own culture.

You have a unique combination of ministerial and marketplace experience both in the UK and North America. How does that background inform your writing on the challenges facing the Western church today?

In my twenties I was wrestling with how to relate my faith to my work. I had grown up in a Christian family, walked away from the faith, gone to university, and grown very ambitious in a worldly way. Then I had a fairly dramatic encounter with God that brought me back to faith. This was the 1980s, and I was caught up in London’s “Big Bang,” a time of massive growth in finance and investment banking. Huge sums of money were being thrown at young graduates like me. Money and power were the worlds in which I’d been formed to succeed through my education.

I knew, as I returned to faith, that if Christianity meant anything at all, it meant the lordship of Christ over all of life, economic and political power included. And I began to comprehend the sacred-secular divide in the modern West, not merely as a conceptual idea but also what it meant in practice.

How do you see the church still operating as though Western culture were basically Christian?

I don’t think we come close to grasping the level of ignorance about Christianity—what the gospel is, what the Bible teaches—in Western societies.

My organization did a survey that found that people weren’t sure if the nativity story was in the Bible. A ridiculously high percentage of adults thought Superman might be in the Bible. You’re talking about a staggering level of ignorance, which completely changes the way you think about communicating with unbelievers. In many ways, Westerners aren’t even aware of the God they’ve rejected. So there is a new openness, a curiosity, that creates new opportunities to educate.

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If we are a church on mission, how do our discipleship practices need to change?

Growing up, the expectation in my church community was a rigorous discipleship program, especially for young people. You made serious commitments to Bible reading and memorization, serving others, public evangelism, and righteous living. You developed accountability relationships with mature believers. It was challenging, but that’s precisely why you wanted to be involved.

What I see now—through the lens of students I talk to, as well as my own children—is that even the best churches take discipleship to mean getting a certain age group together and having a large program with activities and games. Maybe there’s a Bible talk or a time of prayer, but nothing with an edge to it. There’s no challenge, no requirement.

The young people I speak to are fed up with that. They want to get serious. Jesus wanted disciples who understood there was a cost. But we’ve lost confidence that there is such a cost and that it’s worth paying. There’s a timidity in our approach to discipleship that goes alongside a lack of confidence in the Bible itself.

You spend a good portion of the book talking about different societal and cultural narratives. Why is it important to understand these narratives?

A basic principle of good communication is understanding your audience. When Christians are involved in cross-cultural missions or Bible translation, we understand this dynamic well—to make sense to people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, we have to make the effort to learn their languages and ways of thinking.

When we are communicating with non-Christians in our own society, we can easily make the mistake of neglecting this step. But communicating the gospel is always a cross-cultural event, because our culture isn’t the culture of biblical times. So to truly love those around us, we must make the effort to understand how they think and why, so that our communication expresses the truth and grace of the gospel.

A final reason concerns us. We are steeped in the narratives of our own culture, and since those are not fully biblical, we are ever in danger of ideological capture. If we neglect Paul’s instruction to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2), we’ll end up being conformed to the surrounding culture.

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Regarding life in exile, what can believers in the West learn from sisters and brothers around the world?

I don’t want to put the persecuted church on a pedestal as having everything right. They also face the temptation to ally politically with whichever strongman appears most likely to defend them. Nonetheless, I think of the experience of the church in places like Egypt, where I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Coptic believers. They’re very courageous. They’re not political in the sense of getting involved in public policy or trying to control the state. But they’re prophetic publicly. They have a sense of what it means to serve Muslim neighbors. They’re remarkable witnesses.

I’ve had a similar experience in China, another environment where the church faces enormous political pressure. Hearing how some of the house church leaders speak the blessing and favor of God on the Communist Party without compromising their message is quite remarkable. It’s a challenge to the way we handle the vitriolic social media politics of our day.

The church in the West is also under pressure, albeit pressure of a very different sort. There’s a mutual need to provoke and learn from one another. But Christians in the West cannot possibly learn from or speak to Christians in other cultures unless we’re willing to recognize our essential spiritual equality. For me, one of the hopeful aspects of globalization is the possibility of a growing consciousness of the global church.

In the book, you highlight our role as ambassadors. How is it helpful for exiles to see themselves as ambassadors, rather than aliens or visitors?

In each case—as an ambassador, an alien, or a visitor—I am a foreigner in a strange land. But the alien has the feeling that somehow this is happening against my will. And I think that describes much of the church’s mentality at the moment. Culture is moving away from Christ, from the Bible, from the church, and we feel threatened.

A visitor can cope with unpleasant feelings by saying, “I’m just passing through. I have to be faithful in this life, but it’s all going to burn anyway.” This was, in a way, the message of the false prophets during Jeremiah’s time.

But Jeremiah tells the exiles in Babylon to seek the welfare of the city (29:7). Paul and Peter tell us to live as citizens of heaven, conducting ourselves honorably here on earth so that people will give glory to our Father in heaven. That is the spirit of the ambassador who says, “Yes, I’m in a strange land, but I’m here on purpose. I’ve been sent, and I’ve got something to do.”

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