Don’t Be Bashful: Most People Are Still “Lost In America”

“I am not ashamed of the gospel…” Romans 1:16

Back in 2001, Tom Clegg and Warren Bird gave us great encouragement with their book, Lost In America. The subtitle was “How You And Your Church Can Impact The World Next Door.”

Before you change channels because I’m reviewing an “old book,” give this post a chance to bless you.

Lost In America explained just how post-Christian our nation has become…but you knew that.

The refreshing distinctive about Clegg and Bird’s book was the upbeat tone and the encouragement for all Evangelicals in the United States to be Apostle-Paul-bold in a world that has trained us to be ashamed of the gospel.

In a nutshell – get the book for the full treatment – here’s why we should be fearless and excited about proclaiming the good news about Christ in 21^st century America:

People have three great needs that the gospel-carrying Church (or the “Church-carrying gospel”) is powerfully positioned to meet. This is hardly something to be ashamed of!  

Here they are:

Transcendence.  U2 still hasn’t found what they’re looking for.  As far as I know, Neil Young still hasn’t found a “Heart of Gold.” People are looking for something more than a secular, hedonistic, materialistic life. Solomon poured out his longing for transcendence in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Transcendence is something more; it’s something beyond the ordinary.  It’s something “out of this world” and everybody wants it, because every one of us was made in the image of God, who is both in this world (immanent) and out of this world (transcendent).  We are all “ET” trying to phone home.

Sci-fi is about transcendence.  A lot of drug abuse (not all of it) is about transcendence.  An obsession with romantic love is about transcendence. Interest in the paranormal and the occult is about transcendence. The search for extra-terrestrial life is about transcendence.

Why should we be bold in sharing the gospel?  Because the gospel of Christ promises the transcendence that our hearts are longing for.  The Psalms are full of this truth:

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” Psalm 73:25

In the context of Biblical Christianity, we’re not talking about a self-obsessed mysticism that leaves us sitting in our rooms in a lotus position while the world goes to hell.

A Biblical, Christian version of transcendence gives our hearts the heaven-sent joy they need to leave our quiet places and go out into the noisy world with the incredibly good news of the gospel.

Significance. Designed in the image of our creator, our hearts are also longing for significance, purpose, meaning in life.

When America was a Christian culture with a Christian consensus, one could pretty much assume a belief in the “imago Dei,” the idea that – with or without evolution – human beings are not animals.  We are not content to live like Fido and then lie down and die without any concern for who we’ve affected or what we’ve achieved.

While the “specialness” of humankind is now broadly rejected, the longing for significance hasn’t gone away.  It won’t and it can’t. People still want something to live for, a mission, a calling, a cause.

As a lost young college student, my heart – by God’s grace – screamed for significance. You couldn’t tell it from looking at my pathetic life, but beneath the hippie-wannabe exterior, I longed for a cause worth giving my life to.

I didn’t want the Christians I was encountering to be right; but I knew that if they did turn out to be right that I definitely was going to have a cause worth giving my life to. 

Community.  Again, we return to the fact of our creation in the image of God.  Our love and need for community, for deep, intimate connections with other people, is directly related to our creation in the image of a Triune God, the persons of whom have been communicating in perfect love since eternity.

No one can explain this.  Many try to refute it, claiming to be “rocks” or “islands” (like Simon and Garfunkel) who need no one and are happiest when left alone.

But it’s interesting how even those who flee from society and try to live blissfully alone in the wilderness can’t resist writing, film-making, song-writing or sending missives (or bombs) to “society.”  They really can’t do complete “alone-ness” after all, can they?

We need people.  We long for loving fellowship with people, including with groups of people.  We need to win with the team, sing with the choir, dance with rooms full of strangers, shout with streets full of protesters, pray and praise with the congregation and eat Thanksgiving dinner with the family.

Once again, the church is in a position of great strength and opportunity.  A Christian church, functioning like it can and should, is the greatest venue for true community imaginable.

Oh how we need to pull out all the stops to get good at this and then offer it to all who are driving by our doors!  The crowd is lonely and we can help.

So do you see why this “old” book is so up-to-date and encouraging?

As the Church we are in a strong position to offer Americans transcendence, significance and community like no other institution on earth.

Let’s do it.