Author: Jonathan Dodson

The Joys and Challenges of Parenting

Posted on April 27, 2008

If you are parent, you probably clicked on this post right away. There’s something about being a parent that is both uniquely joy-giving and challenging. As a result, we often look for honest, life-giving stories to help us grow into our parenthood. As I grow with my two kids, I am steadily challenged to rely on God and his wisdom in raising children that are neither spoiled not straight-jacketed. Above all, I desire that my precious little sinners come to delight in all that God is for them in the Son and the Spirit. I am soberly aware that I can be both a hindrance and a help in this aim.

It was out of my struggles in parenting infants that I wrote much of “Becoming A Parent: Facing your Fears and Frustrations.” As my children grow, new challenges and joys emerge. Their facility with language brings us to tears of laughter. I think of my son’s recent cry, “Daddy, get my dirties off, get my dirties off” referring to his need to take a bath. Of course there are the moments of iron-hard resistance to anything we say; the flaring of the human will to chart his or her own course. Discipline is always hard, especially doing it from the right motives.

At this new stage of parenting, I’m considering writing another article, one like, “Becoming A Parent,” that helped me work through how my children were raising me, as well as how I am to raise my children. So, I thought I’d put a request out, to see what some of my fellow parents would appreciate reading. What topics might be of interest to you?

Reaching the Unchurched or the Resistant?

Posted on April 26, 2008

The term “unchurched” has become quite popular in missional efforts to re-evangelize and re-church North America. To be sure, there are a lot of unchurched people in the U.S. In fact, no county in the US has registered a greater percentage of church persons over the past decade. Church attendance has declined over the past few years by 10%, and the US is the only continent where Christianity is not growing! With these kinds of statistics, I wonder if “unchurched” language and perspectives are falling short of adequately describing the challenges facing the American church (more stats). Perhaps we should pick up the language of missiologists who have used the term “resistant.”

The resistant are those who have or are receiving an adequate opportunity to hear the gospel but over some time have not responded positively (Pocock, “Raising Questions about the Resistant”). The resistant are NOT unreached, though they are often unchurched. What constitutes “some time”? More importantly, should we shift our strategies and discourse to approach unchurched Americans as resistant peoples?

Not unlike the term unchurched, defining the resistant is has its problems; however, Timothy Tennent has helpfully pointed out that peoples can be resistant in at least four ways: culturally, theologically, ethnically or politically (Tennent, “Equipping Missionaries for the Resistant”). Depending on what area or peoples of the U.S we are considering, any one or combination of the four areas may apply.

In Austin, Texas many people are culturally, politically, and theologically resistant. The diverse cultural resistance to the gospel in Austin is unlike the cultural affinity in the rest of Texas. Harvard’s Pluralism Project reveals that Austin’s cultural diversity is due to a combination of factors–immigration, education, and the creative class ethos, and the so-called “attitude factor”. This pluralistic mix has fostered resistance and indifference to Christianity, allowing a wide variety of religions and spiritualities to flourish.

During 2004 presidential election, despite being home to President Bush, Austin was a blue dot in a red state. God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are neither Republican nor Democratic, but unfortunately, there are churches and christianities that are partisan. Austin pushes back against the Republican right, often associated with fundamentalist christianity. The generally Democratic values of the environment, the poor, and so on are big for Austinites. As a result, Austinites are politically resistant to the gospel.

As I see it, a major challenge to reaching the resistant is to approach our christianity with redemptive suspicion, questioning what may in reality be christianity, but in fact is not Christ-like. Perhaps a renewed call to wisely distinguish Christ from culture, while not quarantining the gospel from society. To exegete the cultural, ethnic, theological, and political spheres of resistance, while lovingly engaging the people who inhabit them and depending on the power and sufficiency of the gospel to redeem and affirm people and culture.

By rethinking missional approaches to churching America, we might actually change our methods. Evaulating the areas of resistance among Americans is one way forward in fulfilling the Great Commission. At the end of the day, everyone will bow in worship to King Jesus, some by faith and others by force. It is our job to communicate the heart-renovating, mind-renewing, culture-engaging, city-renewing, community-developing, God-glorifying gospel in a wise and winsome way.