A Lesson for American Evangelicals from the Global Church

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Trevin Wax
Chris, one of the things that I’ve been really passionate about in the last few years has been the need for Christians, American evangelicals in particular, to have more of a perspective, globally and a perspective about church history. And as someone I’ve done cross cultural, you know, missionary work and Europe and have come back to the United States and recognize that there’s a lot of benefit from being in contact with Christians and believers in other parts of the world. You look at American evangelicals as an outsider looking in. And just be curious, what would you say, looking to the global church, what would you say are some things that American evangelicals could learn and could take away? Yeah,

Christopher Watkin
I look, I mean, that there are certainly things that that I can say, I just, I just wonder whether the sort of evangelicalism that I come from isn’t actually quite close to American evangelicalism in a lot of ways, you know, so we often focus on the differences, but I think that the really incisive comment would probably come from people who come from neither of our Christian Heritage’s, I got a friend who was doing some ministry in far north Queensland in Australia, recently working with Aboriginal communities that, and the vibrancy of their faith, I think, has a huge amount to teach both of us. So he was preaching on a Sunday, and he would get stopped in the street by people saying, Can you please pray for me? And he said, Yeah, of course I can. No, they said, No. Now, I want you to stop right here in the street, and I need your prayer now. And then they met in each other’s houses in the evenings to discuss the sermon, they say, Hey, preacher, come here, I’ve got something about your sermon from Sunday, there was such an organic way in which the Word of God and and discipleship was just woven into the whole of life that really impressed him and really impressed me when he told me that story. So I think both of us would have huge amounts to learn from from that sort of expression of Christianity. Me being a lot closer to us Christianity than that. I guess. There’s always a danger in this isn’t that like, I’m sort of pointing one finger at us Christians, the three are pointing back at me. So I’m not you know, by any means suggesting you’re not saying

Trevin Wax
that there isn’t a lot for Christians in other parts of the world to learn from America. We would definitely say it’s a back and forth.

Christopher Watkin
Absolutely. And it has to be done. It has to be back and forth. But if you you know, put my my hand to the fire and say, Tell us what you think is is probably problematic about us evangelicalism, I guess. I mean, look, I’m not gonna say anything that’s, that’s new and hasn’t been settled up before here. But there is and it did strike me coming over here, an assumption that the individual is the basic unit of Christianity sometimes over here, and therefore a failure fully to grasp and to rejoice in that the biblical fullness of community and being the body of Christ and Christ Temple and the bride of Christ and so forth. And I guess and this is a problem that I think British evangelicalism shares as well, there’s, there’s a tendency to get pulled in by a certain managerialism. You know, what, what are the problems that need solving? What are the steps we need to solve them? And what resources do we need to bring to bear on them, which is not, of course wrong, you don’t ever, you don’t want to say we must never think in those terms, but I think there’s a danger of that filling the horizon of Christians and losing, you know, the, the enjoying being with God, the spontaneity of fellowship with God, sometimes that, you know, ruining churches such that if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up, nobody really notices and it’s okay. You know, when it gets to that point, I guess that then there’s a there’s an issue with it all becomes procedural and whatnot. There’s a danger, isn’t it for for people, I guess, yeah.

Trevin Wax
I think it’s interesting that you mentioned the individualistic impulse, which is not only American evangelicals, that would be huge articles in Australia, Great Britain anywhere, really, in the West. That’s something that really struck me as well, when I was doing mission work in Eastern Europe. We would have American evangelist come over and they would, you know, they would occasionally they would do a an evangelistic sermon, and they would call people to faith in Christ. And they would sometimes say things like, I’m not calling you to, to become a member of this church, or I’m not calling you into this church. I’m calling you just to, you know, give your heart to Jesus. And it was always fascinating to listen to the Romanian interpreters who would tweak that just a little bit in the way that they and I remember in a conversation in class with some of my Romanian colleagues and Russia and Moldova and colleagues and they, and they were asking why, why this emphasis in the United States and then why this sort of tweaking or the correcting of the theology from the Romanians, and they would say, well, because it’s not exactly true that we say we’re not inviting someone into the church. When we call someone to faith in Christ. We are calling them into the family of God and So yes, it’s a call to an individual. And so there’s something right about the individualistic impulse. But then at the same time, there’s there can be and sometimes in the American context of downplaying of the church, as a community as the family of God in a way that is ultimately damaging spiritually.

Christopher Watkin
You know, what would be really interesting? If, if in our translations of the Bible, every time it’s a playable you in the original language, it was translated it I don’t know, y’all are you guys or something like that? Just see how much of the Bible is carpet and how we sort of instinctively individualize it. So I was looking at that verse recently, you know, always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have. Now, I was digging into the Greek and it’s all PLO, and how easily we individualize that. And if it was always shoved in our faces, or if all the plural us were obvious, plural, US, and I think we see Oh, my goodness, like, this is such a corporate vision. And we, we just don’t see that because our default mode is to individualize. So

Trevin Wax
even when Paul says in Philippians, to work out your salvation and fear and trembling, he says, It’s workout, you’re together, y’all salvation. So they’re working together. God is working through them as a body to work together their salvation, which is a, it’s just a different way, I think of thinking of the Christian life, which I just I hope this conversation helps people realize how much we need each other.

Christopher Watkin
And it’s brilliant, isn’t it those those passages in the Bible that make you think, oh, no, no, no, what? No, no, it couldn’t, it couldn’t mean that it couldn’t be that I’m thinking of, you know, when Cornelius gets converted, and He’s baptized, and so is his household. And we individually think, Oh, don’t like that. Like, are they all believing? Have they all made the profession of faith? Yeah. But there’s a sense that there’s a corporate illness there, that I think the fact that we slightly bristle at it shows that there’s something wrong with us now suddenly that run with a text. And if I can’t see the goodness of that, then I need to work on my view of how the gospel relates to community and not simply to sort of isolated atomized individuals interested.

Trevin Wax
I mean, as a Baptist, I do ask the question about believing. But I also but I think there’s something there about, there’s something there about the way we come to faith, we come to faith as individuals, yes. But we also come to faith in groups together, like we belonging to one another. And so I think that’s an important aspect of the, of the whole journey. And

Christopher Watkin
we don’t think as isolated individuals as well, you know, I’m, I remembered something that Tim Keller was very fond of saying that he and Kathy over time would sort of grow so close together, they weren’t quite sure whose thoughts were whose anymore. And I think that’s very intense, isn’t it in a in a lifelong marriage, but it’s it’s also the case that we think corporately, you know, none of us have sort of thinking of vacuum and we’d parachuted down from some some heavenly, pure sort of place and we form our thoughts ourselves, we bowing thoughts from everywhere. And so, if we over individualize that, where we’re not allowing ourselves to interrogate the extent to which you know, is the way that I think my pure invention, or am I actually as moseying ideas from the culture around me all the time.