I’m working through David Platt’s Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Platt begins the chapter by describing a series of classes he taught to Christians in a mission field, to people so hungry for the word that they took two weeks off from their farms to hear Platt teach 12 hours a day for 14 days. Oh, wow. As a teacher, I understand what Platt must have experienced — a preview of heaven.
He decided to try the same thing at his comfortable, wealthy megachurch in Birmingham, Alabama in a class called “Secret Church.”
We set a day — one Friday night — when we would gather from six o’clock in the evening until midnight, and for six hours we would do nothing but study the Word and pray. …
Our first topic of study was the Old Testament. After our first try we decided to do it again, and again, and now we have to take reservations because we cannot contain all the people who want to come. (p. 27).
Platt believes we overly emphasize the aspects of God’s character that are most comfortable — his benevolent love and grace.
The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face. … We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him. (p. 29)
Platt note that this affects our understanding of salvation —
Note the contract, however, when you diagnose the problem biblically. The modern-day gospel says, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.” Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, “You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, and in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that your need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.” (p. 32)
Platt explains that the Cross is not merely a demonstration of God’s love.
What happened at the Cross was not primarily about nails being thrust into Jesus’ hands and feet but about the wrath due your sin and my sin being thrust upon his soul. In that holy moment, all the righteous wrath and justice of God due us came rushing down like a torrent on Christ himself. Some say, “God looked down and could not bear to see the suffering that the soldiers were inflicting on Jesus, so he turned away.” This is not true. God turned away because he could not bear to see your sin and my sin on his Son. (p. 36)
Platt then criticizes the evangelical notions of how we respond to the gospel.
Suddenly contemporary Christianity sales pitches don’t seem adequate anymore. Ask Jesus to come into your heart. Invite Jesus to come into your life. Pray this prayer, sign this card, walk down this aisle, and accept Jesus as your personal Savior. Our attempt to reduce this gospel to a shrink-wrapped presentation that persuades someone to say or pray the right things back to us no longer seems appropriate.
This is why none of these man-made catch phrases are in the Bible. (pp. 36-37)
(Platt almost sounds like a Church of Christer here, doesn’t he?)
But Platt declares that salvation is not about “accepting” Jesus, as though the Christ needs our acceptance. Rather,
Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender. …
We want [God] so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response the revelation of God in the gospel. (p. 39).
A member of Platt’s church, not on staff, was so taken with a lesson learned at Secret Church that he became a missionary to Uganda. He wrote this to Platt —
Pastor, for ten hours a day, I am preaching my heart out by his grace! We have sat for hours talking through the Word, and God has spoken with such a mighty hand of truth that I can’t even begin to tell you about it all now!
It’s a fair question, you know, whether we really hunger for God’s word. Teen classes are dumbed down so the least motivated student won’t complain too loudly, and the students with a deep longing are left unsatisfied. Pleasing the crowd is more important to us that feeding the hungry, it seems.
Just so, adult Bible classes are often dumbed down the same way. If we make the material mindlessly easy to teach, then plenty of people will be qualified to teach! And as a result, classes become exercises in sharing ignorance. And while it may be fun to share ideas and interpretations, at some point, someone has to do the seroius work of hermeneutics and exegesis and application, or else we’re wasting our time.
Here’s the test. Do your students become more like Jesus the more time they spend in your congregation’s classes?
Dumbed down ?? Some definitely need Milk…Others do need to be challenged… But, like Jesus said, “Take My yoke upon you….and learn of me…… My yoke is EASY and my burden is LIGHT.” It was the Pharisee’s who would “lay heavy burdens upon the people”…Matt 23…
It is correct that some people need milk, but not people who have been in church for many years. Eventually you have to get to solid food. Jay the ultimate purpose of bible study is personal transformation. There are a bunch of folks in our assemblies that have been Christians for a long time. Many longer than I have been alive and their personal transformation is not commensurate with the years they have spent studying the bible. Conversion and salvation must go hand in hand. Conversion is also an ongoing process of repentance and transformation. The problem is we don’t teach God’s word in a prophetic transformative manner. We have spent years and hours studying the bible to establish the “pattern” of the New Testament, and all the right doctrines, what is acceptable outward practice during a one hour assembly once a week, who can and can’t do what in the church, the list goes on and on. You can study the bible this way and never be transformed. Just like Platt says we have now treated the gospel like an eternal insurance policy that we get and then tuck away in drawer at home for safe keeping, rather than a license and empowerment for on going transformation. We in the churches of Christ don’t have people say the “prayer”, we drag people to the baptistery and then leave them there. Paul says “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds”. We may be saved but where is our transformation?
Jay,
First I want to say “Thank You!” for presenting David Platt’s book “Radical” to us. I had been wanting to read it for many months but just never got around to buying the book. Now, I think that it deserves to be added to my collection.
What I will say is that my experience since I became a Christian at 15 is that I quickly realized that most of the other people at my church did not share the “hunger” that I had for learning. I’m not trying to say that I was better than them, no I’m like Paul, O wretched man that I am. But if you think that you can say something, anything positive about the bible study classes in churches of Christ, well, I can’t. We have taken the Holy word of God and have built it around our own personal schedules…we’ll spend all of about 30-45 minutes studying (more like socializing) in a bible class, which is mostly grouped with friends at church. The ones, like me when I was a new convert, really want to learn, but how can we when the church won’t provide that opportunity to learn?
Do we not realize that young, Jewish boys are so well versed in the Torah by the time of their Bar Mitzvah that it would put a Christian to shame? Platt mentions in his book that there were several bible studies that went for 6 hours or more, and to me my heart was yearning and breaking all at the same time. Why was I not provided this kind of biblical study when I was in my formative years? What did happen is that I would spend my own time at home studying as diligently as I could, but without proper guidance I ended up believing things about the faith that really is contrary to the bible. My intentions were good…lots of zeal for learning….but I failed when doing it on my own. I’ve learned since then what my mistakes were and I have been determined not to repeat them.
Anyway, I would encourage the churches of Christ to get rid of the 30 minute “formula” and get back to genuine, spontaneous worship and study of God’s word…hopefully led by those who can REALLY teach, and attended by those who are really WANTING to learn. I don’t want to come across as mean, but the churches of Christ I have belonged to have failed miserably at both. I long for the day when I can sit beside a group of believers who would put six hours of their time at one setting just to learn God’s word!!
Here is a “pattern” to restore, brothers! It took Paul three years of DAILY counselling and teaching (see also Acts 19:9-10) to declare the whole counsel of God.
Let’s speak of only two hours a day – if we take our Wednesday-Sunday scheme, we come to two hours a week (at maximum). This means where it took Paul three years to teach the whole counsel of God, we need 21 years. At minimum, because we (sort of) waste our time with repeating what is very dear to us over and over, while neglecting what is not so dear to us …
And at the end of these 21 years we often forgot what we have learned at the beginning.
Maybe also interesting: The disciples of Christ spent three years of daily fellowship with the Lord before they were sent out as apostles to the ends of the earth. How come, that we think two hours of week are sufficient?
Alexander
Jay,
Toward the end of you post you said the following: “…Teen classes are dumbed down so the least motivated student won’t complain too loudly, and the students with a deep longing are left unsatisfied. Pleasing the crowd is more important to us that feeding the hungry, it seems.
Just so, adult Bible classes are often dumbed down the same way. If we make the material mindlessly easy to teach, then plenty of people will be qualified to teach! And as a result, classes become exercises in sharing ignorance.”
Amen! This may be the best and most accurate stuff you have ever posted on your blog. In Don Wade’s comment above we see a teenager who wants to learn but finds opportunities difficult to come by in the CofC. My experience has been that the teens may well be more interested than the adults.
So many adults, and even church leaders, are not only satisfied with church lite, they actually advocate it should be that way and push against anyone that would suggest otherwise. Seems when one thinks they know all truth, at least all the important stuff, they quit thinking and learning altogether. In short they simply don’t know what they don’t know. May God help you to change that situation.
Hesed,
Randall
Hey Alexander…You forgot about Sunday School…That’s an extra hour…:)….
Cornelius was saved after one sermon…His sanctification was like ours, a life long process… We are being transformed, being changed, being renewed…not all at once…it takes time..
But, thank God, we are no less saved than that very first day.
Having gone through a 3 year study ( one day per week for 2 hours) of Systematic Theology written by Wayne Grudem…I can tell you that it’s a challenging thing to do to set aside time to attend, time to study, time to allow God to play His role in the learning process….but so very well worth the effort… I very much liked the systematic approach to learning what we believe and why we believe it which is much different than what I’ve experienced in Sunday School which tends to be more topically random.