5) DO rejoice over the fact that God is pleased to be in relationship with those outside our churches and doctrinal formulas. This is not a threat to the Christian Church but is in fact the answer to our prayers for revival!

Our problem with ‘out of church’ spirituality stems not only from our failure to recognise what constitutes ‘true revival’, but from the disconcerting fact that this is happening outside of our jurisdiction and control.

The Nottingham University Year 2000 Millennial Survey showed that around 80 per cent of people questioned (and a large majority of these were not practising Christians) said that they had had experiences in their lives where they felt they were in some way helped by a loving power greater than themselves. This was virtually double the figure of a similar survey conducted in 1979. During the same period regular church attendance in Great Britain declined by around twenty percent! This seeming contradiction suggests that God is, and always has been, at least as active (and perhaps even more active) outside the Church as he has been inside.

It is fairly safe to assume that there will be in most people’s lives events and happenings which they have already acknowledged were the result of being ‘strangely helped’ from ‘the man upstairs’ or ‘providence’ or ‘an angel’ or some ‘guiding presence’. People’s histories are full of these serendipitous events. We frequently hear them say things like, ‘Someone was looking after me’, or ‘I was just meant to meet that person’, or ‘What an amazing coincidence’. It is most noticeable that, at least here in New Zealand, it is now acceptable for the non-churchgoing public to talk openly about these personal spiritual experiences. Our television news stories and documentaries increasingly tell, without the embarrassment or snide comments so common a few years ago, of people who ‘prayed’ and/or felt they were helped by God.

The postmodern evangelist more easily does God’s bidding if he or she is able, from the heart, to deeply honour the work of God in the lives of non-churchgoing people. Our task is to help individuals recognise the presence and footsteps of the loving God who is already active in their lives. When we affirm that God is with them after all people are more likely to become increasingly conscious of God’s presence and more proactive in seeking God’s will and purpose for them.

Sadly, the standard evangelical approach has been to belittle or negate such happenings. The usual implication is that these experiences should not be allowed to fool the person into thinking that God actually does walk with them in any ‘saving’ sense. Worse, there may be the implication that these experiences are nothing but satanic counterfeits designed to deceive a person into thinking they have a relationship with God, so keeping them from faith in Christ. Such acts of evangelical ‘disenfranchisement’ are as insulting to the person as they are to God, reeking as they do of the spirit of Pharisaical exclusivism. Not only have they no consistent biblical support, such acts seriously violate the attitudes shown by Jesus towards the publicans and ‘sinners’ of his day.

6) DO be as flexible and ‘non-formulistic’ in your dealings with people as Jesus was.

Trust God and meet people where they are. What is so radical about the way Jesus related to people is that he seemed to have no overt ‘evangelistic salvation formula’ at all, nor any one fixed method of approaching people. Unlike evangelicals, he did not seek to lead people to the Father’s will by forcing them all to accept one particular doctrinal salvation model. While there were, undergirding his ministry, strong basic theological beliefs which he summed up in Matthew 7.12 and Luke 10.25-28, his approach to gaining ‘eternal life’ was still dramatically flexible and individualised.

Some people he told to ‘believe in and follow him’. Others he instructed to ‘keep the Great Command of loving God and others as yourself’, and required no ‘believing in himself’ as such. Still others, like the good Samaritan and ‘the sheep’ in Matthew 25.33ff, he clearly regarded as having eternal life on the basis of their loving self-sacrifice towards their fellow humans, despite their inadequate doctrines and lack of commitment to him. Jesus pinpointed love of money as the thing that was keeping one young man out of the Kingdom of God while, regardless of his obvious violation of the great commandment, the thief on the cross was accepted because of a last minute recognition of both his own sin and the messiahship of Jesus. As for Nicodemus, Jesus told him he had to be ‘born again’ by a radical encounter with the Spirit of God.

Strange, isn’t it, how the evangelical church has fixated on this one instruction to Nicodemus and made it the sole, exclusive and ‘only way’ to God, while ignoring the many other salvation causing responses Jesus taught.