Ministry starting at minus five

“Imagine that you want to share the good news about Jesus with someone. Most people start at zero. They might have heard about Jesus a few times in school assemblies or religious studies lessons, a smattering of knowledge picked up by living in a country that sometimes still thinks of itself as Christian. But they’ve probably never really looked at the claims of Christ properly or read the Bible for themselves. When you meet a Muslim, typically they’re not at zero. They’re at about minus five already. Most Muslims already believe that Jesus never claimed to be God and that the Bible has been changed. You’re starting in a completely different place.”

This is the story that we used to tell about ministry amongst Muslims. The part about Muslims is still true. But after Whatsapp group drama ealier this week, the truth has finally sunk in. Many white British people are now in negative territory when it comes to Christians and the Gospel.

In one of the quirks of home educating (homeschooling) in the UK, we end up mixing with a lot of liberal families – mostly atheist or non-religious, with a few Christians, pagans and Buddhists thrown in. When somebody shared that they were going to see the film Lightyear, someone else was quick to poke fun at the Christians who were avoiding the film (for reference, the film features a same-sex family in an “intentional attempt to normalize LGBT+ relationships as just as wholesome and natural as the married couple in Up”). Christians who disagreed with the film were quickly characterised as extremist, homophobic and bigoted. Quite a few messages, another Christian leaving the group, and at least one apology later, the result was clear. It wasn’t that people were entitled to different views. The consensus among those non-Christians who chimed in was that even though a small minority of extremist Christians disagree with the film, obviously most Christians are not homophobic and extremist (read: tolerate, accept and are absolutely fine with the normalisation of same sex families), so let’s not tar them all with the same brush.

The bit that was the most telling was the implicit assumption that if you were a Christian who disagreed with the film, then of course you were bigoted. That part was not up for discussion. The assumption that followed was that while calling all Christians homophobic was to be avoided (because, of course, various people knew many LGBTQ-affirming Christians), if you did disagree with the film then not only were you bigoted, but there was absolutely no problem with labelling you as extremist and bigoted. People were not worried about offending Christians who didn’t want to take their children to see a film that was aiming to normalise same-sex relationships. The only offence to be taken was if you were lumped in the same category as those Christians.

When one Christian mum did choose to leave the group, I considered leaving as well. I think that the Christian mum who left chose a valid option. And in all honesty, it would be easier to leave the group. It would be easier to just hang out with the Christian mums in the area. Ironically, it would be easier to hang out with my home educating friends who are Muslim – we at least have very similar family values and they are more outraged at the relationships education in schools than I am.

In many places and for many years, outreach amongst Muslims was considered uncomfortable. They were just so different. And it was hard to even get to a position where you could meaningfully share the Gospel because of all the assumptions that were already in place.

I feel like outreach into the (mostly white) non-religious, post-Christian groups is now similarly uncomfortable. Just in the last couple of weeks people I know have openly labelled those of us who might identify as conservative evangelicals as extremists and religious zealots. Whereas once our worldviews touched and maybe overlapped, now they feel so far apart that I wonder how they can come close enough that I could even shout the good news across the gaping chasm to them.

But the reassuring news is this: this is not new and God is still at work. The early Christians were just as far apart from the majority Roman view. The Gospel upsets the social order of the day, whether in second century Rome or in twenty first century Britain. And as we know from work with Muslims, it is hard and slow and laborious and it may feel like the starting point is well below zero on the scale, but it bears some fruit. The same is true of the non-Christians who seem so far from accepting the Gospel. No matter how many negative assumptions of Christians they start with, God is mighty to save my Muslim friends and my non-religious friends.

I quit reading the Bible in a year

It's the time of year when the Christian internet is awash with Bible reading plans for 2022 and especially the type of reading plan where you read through the Bible in one year. 

So here's my confession: I gave up on my read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan last year. It was the Murray M'Cheyne plan that works through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice in a year. I made it to the end of November and was basically on track, minus a few chapters in Acts. I only had one month to go and I would have been able to complete it within the year.

Let's be totally clear here: Bible reading plans are great and reading through the Bible in a year is a fantastic way to structure spending time in Scripture. It puts into action the principle that all of the Bible is God-breathed (even the minor prophets) and gives a breadth to reading and familiarity with the whole Word of God. Reading the Bible in this way has helped me to spot connections between books and passages that I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

But completing the assigned reading for the day was becoming more important to me than meeting with the Lord through his Word. When my time was limited, I would prioritise getting all of the reading done and ticking the box than reading less and making time to pray as well. And then the pride started to creep in. I must be doing well - I was going to complete this ambitious reading plan in what had been a crazy year and with three small children at home. These are dangers that Robert Murray M'Cheyne identified and they are real dangers. M'Cheyne thought that the advantages of reading the Bible in a year outweighed the disadvantages. I realised that for me, the disadvantages were outweighing the advantages. (This says more about me than it does about M'Cheyne.) So I stopped my plan and curled up in a Gospel instead.

If you follow Christ, you'll want to spend time reading the Bible. It's literally God's Word! It's our daily bread, it's the story of God's redemption plan, it's how we grow in our knowledge of and love for Christ. It is the authority for the Gospel we speak and the way we live our lives. Please, read the Bible. Read it through in a year if you want to. And as an aside, if you're a mum of small children, don't listen to the lie that you have no time to read the Bible. I'm very grateful to a friend who, several years ago, first showed me it was even possible to read through the Bible in a year when the days are full of small people and the nights are broken too.

But know this: you are not a better Christian because you read the Bible in a year. Jesus does not love you more because you completed your Bible reading plan. He does not love you less because you failed to complete the Bible reading plan, or took longer than planned. Ticking a box every day does not guarantee that you are growing in your walk with God. Reading the Bible in a year doesn't bring some extra-spiritual level of insight. Your salvation was fully achieved through Jesus' death on the cross and no completion of a plan, no streak on your Bible reading app, no sense of achievement at making it all the way through to Malachi, can ever add anything to Jesus' finished work on the cross.

A Bible reading plan is a great tool to read the Bible regularly and systematically. But it's only a tool. Don't make the mistake I did and confuse the tool with the end goal.