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.