American Gospel: Christ Crucified

You need to understand

that the message of the cross is foolishness

to those who are perishing.

Given that that is the case

there is an immediate temptation

on the part of the proclaimer of the good news

to try then to diminish, if not remove

the difficult parts.

In a sense, you're creating a Christian message

that's warm, kind, and popular

for contemporary culture,

but it's frankly, according to this critic,

"unbiblical and historically unreliable..."

That's true isn't it?

I'm concerned that people today

don't know who God is.

Sometimes when I hear people speak about God

I feel like an atheist.

The God they speak of- I just don't believe in!

People say like, "When did you lose your faith?"

It started fifteen minutes after I accepted Jesus Christ as my

personal Lord and Savior!

Immediately encountered stuff in scripture and was like,

"That makes no sense to me!"

When we say "Christ died for our sins"

do we mean that God required the murder of His son

in order to forgive? No!

That maligns the character of God!

It is frightening to me

that the doctrine most loved by believers through church history

- the only doctrine that gives me complete and solid hope-

so many modern writers today hate!

I had this one experience where

I was in a sanctuary of a big Lutheran church

speaking to their hundreds of confirmation students

and all of the parents in the room,

and I said, "Raise your hand if you've ever been told,

"'Jesus died for your sins.'"

And of course everybody raised their hands.

And so then I said, "Alright, I want all the parents

to explain to their confirmation student,

'How does that work exactly?' Like by what

cosmic mechanism does the death of Jesus

take care of your personal sins?"

And I could hear the groan- like there was a groan

that went across this full sanctuary

of hundreds of people. Because all these adults were like,

"I don't know how it works! I just know its true!"

Progressive Christianity actually changed

my life in a radical way.

I grew up in the church-

grew up in a family that

really had a genuine love for Jesus,

genuine love for the Bible.

And it wasn't by any measure perfect.

My family is not perfect, and the churches I grew up in

were not perfect.

But I didn't really go through any doubt

as a young child or even as an adult I never experienced doubts

about the existence of God,

about the truthfulness of Christianity,

about the reliability of the Bible.

I just believed those things.

And spent some time in the Christian music business

in a group called ZOEgirl.

We toured the country and even certain parts of the world,

singing about Jesus to young girls and to young people.

And that was something that was very real for me.

Every Christian I know sort of

is on some kind of a journey.

I grew up among Christians-my dad is Tony Campolo,

a famous Christian.

And I thought my dad was wonderful,

and I didn't become a Christian until I was fifteen years old.

And it wasn't because like, I hated my father,

or I was a rebellious kid.

It was just that I didn't really believe in God.

So neither my wife nor myself

were raised in Christian homes.

I was raised by a nominally Christian mother,

and an atheist father.

And from a very early age decided that I

was an atheist as well.

When I first became a Christian I was crushed

under the conviction of sin.

And my selfishness was hurting my marriage, hurting my family.

And God opened my eyes to that in a very...

in a very painful way.

I mean I was a nice kid-

I wanted to make the world a better place,

and the church seemed to me to be a vehicle to do that-

seemed to me like-

it felt like the only game in town!

Like if you want to make the world a better place-

this is the way you do it.

And so they kind of had me at "Hello."

I walked in, I was like, "I love this community!"

I was so attracted to it.

And what attracted me more than anything to the Christian faith

was the truth of God's word.

It was the first time I'd ever read His word.

And I had no church community, I had no friends.

I didn't have a positive support group-

I had a Bible that I read in the dark

every night while I put my son to sleep.

I still didn't believe in God,

but I wanted to be part of the community so bad that I sort of

went along.

You know in Alcoholics Anonymous they say you've got to

"fake it until you make it."

And so like, I faked it!

All that supernatural stuff-

that wasn't the attraction to Christianity for me-

that was the price of admission.

I was reading words that had a divine

character and nature that was unmistakable to me

all of a sudden.

The Spirit of God had lifted the veil from my eyes

and I was seeing the words of God on paper.

But at some point I'm up there on a youth retreat.

And there's three hundred kids, and there's candlelight,

and we're swaying to the music and singing, "I love you Lord!"

You know? And I had...

...a transcendent experience.

And I had one of those moments in which I felt something!

Felt God speaking to me!

And that was it! Like, I was like, "This is real!"

And then I was in.

What happened there was a dramatic

change of worldview. I went from

an atheist who held my reason, and my intellect,

and my senses-all of my faculties as the

ultimate standard of reality.

Now all of a sudden I have the word of God

telling me

from God, things about reality

that were different than I believed before.

You know it's funny like I'm totally secular now! So like-

you know I don't believe in any form of supernaturalism so-

like I would have a different explanation for that experience.

But when I'm with secular people and they're like,

"I bet you're embarrassed that you-

that you say you felt the Holy Spirit, or that you heard

God speaking to you." I'm like, "Oh no!"

"That happened!"

Like I felt something, I heard a voice! You know?

People don't believe in transcendent experiences

I always say like, "Haven't used the right drugs!"

"Haven't fallen in love with the right partner."

"Haven't been to the right rock concert."

Because like we've all had these experiences where

we've felt swept up in something bigger than ourselves.

And I think whatever narrative you're in when that happens,

it confirms that narrative.

And so for me I was in a Christian context-

I was like, "This is Jesus!"

Even though my heart was with Jesus,

I wasn't really churched during that time.

I didn't have a pastor during that time. And I think that

made me vulnerable to some things. And-

you know, travelling in the Christian music business

you go to all kinds of different churches.

You go to the big megachurches with the celebrity pastors.

You go to the small little churches that

just have a piano and not much else. And-

you see it all!

And I think I began to become a little bit jaded

I just went, "This can't be the real thing."

Like, "This can't be right."

The Emerging Church movement began

several years ago as a conversation

among Evangelical Gen-X leaders

who were alarmed at church dropout rates among twenties, and thirties.

About the same time, a pastor from Maryland, Brian McLaren,

began writing about what he saw as a growing disillusionment

with the way evangelical Christianity

was being practiced.

The two paths that came together

to form the Emerging Church Movement in the late 1990's

were one, was a group of people who were questioning the methods

of church as big business...

And I wonder about these multi- millionaire preachers who are

fleecing their congregations,

and they watch their own people in dire poverty!

They have this world's goods and they're not

sharing what they have with those who are in need

in their own communities- it scares me!

The Emerging Church movement

actually was right in a lot of their criticisms

of shallow evangelicalism. Pragmatic evangelicalism. The-

entire millennial generation had-

for the most part-those that had grown up as evangelicals-

had grown up in children's church and then youth group

movements where pretty much the emphasis was on fun and games-

not teaching. And so it's a generation of people

who were not taught scripture,

and so they were pretty quick to throw it out!

There's a sort of a comfort in knowing that, one,

I don't have to have the answers

and that there aren't necessarily answers.