Capturing the Low Ground
by Dr Wade Bradshaw
In this provocative article, Dr Wade Bradshaw of L'Abri Fellowship argues that the way people around us think about the Good News of Jesus Christ has changed for the worse:
This article is based on a talk by Dr Bradshaw called 'Do we still need Apologetics Today?'
Introduction
I did not choose this title, but I frequently give people titles. 'Do we still need Apologetics Today?' I will try to define it for you in a bit, but first I want to say that I will treat that question as if it is not only rhetorical, as if we are not all already in agreement: 'Well, of course we need apologetics.' I am an apologist. That does not mean I am forever saying sorry for things, but I am trying to devote my life, to some extent, to an apologetic ministry. So, of course I think we still need apologetics. However, I am going to treat the subject as if it is not open and closed, and that it is not an 'of course'.
In fact you could ask this question - especially in UK - with many different tones of voices. There are plenty of people within the church who think that apologetics is not a good idea, so I was not sure whether tonight I was going to face an adversarial audience, or whether I was going to be facing an audience that was supportive of what I am trying to do in my ministry.
Ssecondly, I think there may be many questions beneath that question 'Do we still need Apologetics?' Why do you ask that question? What are you trying to get at? I have, in theory, brief material here because what I want to do then is interact with you on it. Because part of the apologetics ministry is that our culture increasingly is unhappy with monologue. So much of our culture thinks of the pulpit as bullet-proof. One cannot ask questions of it. They get to speak; I get to shake their hand at the back of the door on my way out to the car park, and that's the level of interaction. Increasingly, that is not sufficient. People want the ability to dialogue: 'You say that. I want to disagree with you. I want to ask what that means.' I want to symbolise that tonight by doing it with you as well. I want you to hear what I have to say, and then interact with me, asking questions. I am very used to public forums that are adversarial. People are quite frequently unhappy with the things I have to say as I proclaim the Lord Jesus, trying to persuade them of the truth of his gospel. The ground rules are just respect, not agreement. So you can give me a hard time if you wish. I look forward to it.
Apologetics is opposed to preaching the Word
I am assuming that some of you are aware of what apologetics are, but are not yet convinced of its place in the ministry of the church. Some people suspect that apologetics is opposed to preaching and the proclamation, or at least in competition with. Why would someone spend time engaged in apologetics, when they could be preaching the Bible? Are those two in competition with one another? A lot of well-intentioned evangelical Christians today do indeed think that is the case and they come to my office and try to persuade me that I am doing something wrong.
Apologetics sets the temporary over against the unchanging Gospel
Secondly, people suspect that any interest or emphasis on contemporary fads of thought and taste is a distraction. Why should we be interested in things that are obviously 'not of the Lord' - this would be some people's language - and also things that have a very short shelf life? Why should we even be interested in that when we have a gospel 'once delivered' that is true universally, in all cultures and time and for all people? Why not emphasise those things rather than the contemporary?
Apologetics means being polluted by the world's influence
The third suspicion I encounter is that people think that the world's influence is a polluting one. So if someone is interested in contemporary culture and an apologetic to it, aren't they going to be pastorally polluted by the encountering of the ideas?
And those are the three suspicions I quite often hear. It is a waste of time. In fact, some would say that apologetic is wrong-headed theologically. It is a strategic waste of time and effort. Why should the church be doing this, using its time this way? And, lastly, it is dangerous both to me and my priorities. I would have to say that I have seen all three of those things true in people's lives. My own reading habits, as an example: in order to keep up with contemporary non-Christian thought ... it is a special vocation that I would not put on many other people. If we were going to divide everybody into either the 'good guys' or 'bad guys' then I probably read eight 'bad guys' for every two 'good guys'. That is not a healthy diet for most people. But it is a thing that I am required to do, to be able to encounter my students, having read the things that have influenced them. I spend a lot of time encountering ideas that I think are opposed to the Bible. And I do that in service to the church. So I read a lot of the 'bad guys'.
All of the above can be true. I have seen it be wrong-headed theologically. I have seen people waste time and effort, and I have seen it be dangerous to people and their priorities.
Defence of the Faith
Let me talk about apologia. It is a Greek word. It means defence. It does not mean an apology, in the sense of being sorry. It means a defence of the Faith, a defence of the truth. I would divide that in a couple of different ways:
To the unbeliever
First, it is a defence to the unbeliever, in the sense of answering their questions and their doubts, and encountering what I would refer to as the glib, conventional wisdom against the familiarity of Christianity. Most people in UK feel that they have some kind of grasp of what the Christian gospel is, some kind of familiarity with it. And far too many of us think, 'didn't somebody disprove that in the nineteenth century?' When I hear that, I always want to say 'Now, you have to remind me, who it was in the nineteenth century that disproved this?'
Then, secondly, existentially, in our own lives ... 'hasn't this been tried and found wanting?' So I first have to say, 'Well, no. It's still working very well in people's individual lives.'
So it is a defence to the non-Christian in their very serious doubts, but then also into this cultural milieu that sort of just glib conventional wisdom. The gospel is having a very difficult time today that it need not have. That is my feeling.
To the believer
Secondly, it is also a defence to the believer. In other words, apologetics is not just an attempt to persuade people of the truth of Christianity, or the desire to defend it from external attacks upon its truth and trustworthiness. It is also something that one does for Christians. In my work at L'Abri, probably the majority of my students come from a church background and would consider themselves converted and Christian, and yet they have something that is gnawing at them, a suspicion that they need to have their own faith and belief justified. They have to know: 'Now why is it that I believe this?'
If you asked my ten year old son, 'Is the Bible true?' I am confident he would say, 'Yes, it is.' And if you asked him, 'Why? How do you know it's true?' he would say 'Because my papa told me so and papa knows everything.' Now, he is ten. If you ask him the same question at twenty, 'Do you believe the Bible is true?', and he says 'Yes, I do.' 'Why, how do you know that?' and he says'Because my papa told me so,' can you see that it is no longer sufficient? It is not enough any more, at twenty, to answer the questions he is encountering in university. If he does not go to university, it is not enough to answer the questions he is encountering through the media, or just through living in this culture.
So apologetics is also about justifying the beliefs of people who already do believe. 'Now, why is it that we think that's true? How do we know that's the case?'
Apologetics on the offensive
But, lastly, apologetics is not just defence. Apologetics is also offence. You go to someone and ask, 'Well, how is it that ... it is not just that I am trying to answer your doubts and questions. How do you answer these things? How do you answer these problems and doubts?' And you take the offensive. It is a wonderful time to be involved in apologetics because (to some extent, in my own country, even more so here, even further on the Continent) a secular worldview has owned the levers of power for quite a while. It is a wonderful time for us to say 'OK, you were so critical when Christendom owned culture and society, in some ways. Well, now that we no longer do, are you happy with the way things are going?' I can go on the offensive with people. 'Don't you see that the trajectory of our culture is one that is really grim? Is this because of its Christian roots, or is it because it has left its Christian roots?' So that is part of the apologetic task as well. Not just answering doubts but going to people and trying to cause them to have suspicions and doubts about whatever competing world view, whatever thought needs to be taken captive to the Lordship of Christ. It is offensive as well as defensive.
You are probably not even ambitious to be an apologist, but you have next door neighbours that you would love to be able to share Christ with. If I was going to give you any kind of methodology tonight, the first thing I would say is something the church is not very good at, and that is learning to ask questions of people. 'What do you think about this?' (Whatever it is in the news). 'How do you account for that?' Just breaking the sound barrier with people on important topics. Not being ready with an answer, not going over necessarily with a tract trying to get the gospel to them, but finding out, 'What is my next door neighbour thinking?' Most people are eager to give their opinions and less so to hear yours. So I find that people are willing to answer questions to some extent.
A caveat
Here is my great caveat about apologetics: I have a great caveat and a lesser caveat, something that I am concerned about. The first is that, because of less faith, because of greater doubt, in our culture, apologetics is a growth industry. There is more and more need for the church to be involved in some of this. Yet at the same time, the great caveat is that apologetics is temporary. There will come a time when we no longer have to say, 'Know the Lord.' There will come a time when Christianity will be vindicated as the true religion, the actual description of how reality is and so, thank goodness, there is coming a day when apologetics shall be no more. I am only an apologist hesitantly and because I am compelled to be so. I am not in love with beating people in arguments. That is not what apologetics is about.
Previously, when I was a young man in what would be sixth form college here, I was involved in debate, and in debate the goal is to prevail over your adversary. If you do it unfairly with rhetoric, where he does not see your fast move that does not follow, too bad for him. That is not apologetics. Apologetics is a conversation with someone trying to approximate the truth, coming closer and closer to what is really the case. What that means is that in debate if your opponent says something that is true and is a good criticism of something you just said you would not admit it. But because apologetics for a Christian is just talking about the truth, all of which belongs to God, whenever anyone in a dialogue says something true to me, from whatever worldview they say it, I say, 'You know, you are right, and I am appreciative that you have shown me that.' Too often the church acts as if something that is said is untrue simply because of its source. We are thinking in terms of debate rather than apologetics, approximating the truth with one another.
So, it is temporary. I was working at a seminary in the United States where the Francis Schaeffer Institute was, and so a lot of people came there to study apologetics, I found myself horrified by people who have a deep love of apologetics, because it can be motivated for all sorts of false reasons that are really about self and the sense of vanquishing an opponent, rather than about zeal for the Lord and confidence in Him. This would be the basis of my apologetics - zeal for the Living God, confidence in His truth and His trustworthiness. But also respect for the people to whom I'm trying to speak. Too many people who came to my seminary to study apologetics needed to learn to love their non-Christian neighbours first, before they began this apologetic project.
Lesser caveat
Here's my lesser caveat: so much talk about apologetics is about the proper methodology. How do we do this right? I find lots of books written on it, and people talking about it - how is the best way to do it? It is an in-house topic of conversation between Christians. I grow impatient with this, because many people talk about trying to persuade people, the best way of trying to persuade people, but never get around to trying to persuade people. It is like clearing your throat. It is quite natural, and needs to be done before you speak. But sooner or later your audience would get tired if you only clear your throat and never speak. A discussion of apologetic methodology is like that. That is how I feel about the conversations about methodology. They are needed, but really that is not what apologetics is.
The method and motive for apologetics is related to the incarnation. Increasingly, you will find in our culture people not only do not know the facts and do not understand religious words. (Everyone knows that, it's almost a cliché now that non-Christians don't understand the words we use. We all know that now.) But you want people to understand some of the concept you are using, and all too often I find people within the church thinking that people need to learn to think clearly before we can evangelise them. What I mean about apologetics being incarnational is that I think like our God did, when we had a terrible problem of rebellion and alienation from Him. He chose to see that as His problem rather than ours. Too often today, because people find Christianity difficult, incomprehensible, foreign, offensive to them, the church can see those as people's problem. We are telling the truth, they are not interested in it. I am trying to be incarnational in my life. Whenever anyone finds the gospel impossible to understand, I choose to see that as my problem rather than theirs. I am not free to change the content of the gospel, but I will do all sorts of things to try to make it comprehensible, as the Lord Jesus did with his parables.
That is why so much of my talking with non-Christians is about films. Our literature today is largely found in cinema, so I use an awful lot of talking about movies. I don't know if it is true in this country, but Americans, who are so afraid to talk to you about spiritual things, are very happy to talk to you about big ideas that come to them through the genre of film. So I have started lots of film discussion groups where all you do is show a great film and then you ask a series of questions afterwards, and you find yourself engaged in very much a religious discourse and even an apologetic situation. So I use film. I have seen several film discussion groups begin here churches in the UK after a series of lectures about how to do that sort of thing. Because we long to tell our neighbours about the Lord Jesus but it is such a difficult thing to do now for all sorts of reasons. Where can we find non-Christians in a mood to talk? Film is one thing that quite frequently makes that conversation possible.
Contemporary issues
A rock drummer from a group came to me and said
I've got a list of questions here and if you can answer them I'll become a Christian.'
It is a great opportunity, isn't it? Here is someone in the mood to talk. Here is someone who says, 'I am willing to be a Christian. I've got some things I need to know about first.' It is a wonderful situation, isn't it? Now, what questions are on the sheet? You already know them, don't you? Those things you don't want to think about. She has them all there. OK. It is a great opportunity. I take it very seriously.
I begin talking to her about it. I am forty-three, she is nineteen. I am a professional Christian. I have so many degrees it is just not funny. I do this for a living. There is not a question on there I have not tried to answer several hundred times, honestly answer. I have thought about it. So who is going to win this argument? I am, right? So I get through and answer all the questions and she is sitting there just like this. I have answered all the questions, and the deal is still on. Why is she upset? Why is she nervous? She said she would become a Christian. Should I now ask her to pray the sinner's prayer? Why isn't she ready?
Here is what I did: I said
This is silly. Who's going to win this argument? I'm going to win it. Have you never thought about this? I'm so slick you wouldn't know if what I said was true or not. I've just beaten you in argument. Now here's what we can do. What we have going on here is a relationship. OK? I know who you are and you know where I am. Here's the deal. Come back next Thursday, if you want to, because you need to let those answers percolate a while...
I said 'Take your time, think about these things, see if they are not true. You can even come back next week and ask the same questions again.' And then suddenly she just went, 'Really?' She really did this. 'Really?' And now we had real communication with one another.
I still want her to be converted. Heart and soul I want to push her towards that step of faith, but she is not ready yet. I could have, because of the deal, gotten her to pray that evening. And what would have happened? Nothing. That is how apologetics works. She needs some time. I think the apostle Paul is with me in this. He says 'Check and see if these things are not so.' That is just one story.
When I went to seminary as a student, in the apologetics course, what we basically did was to run through a list of questions. We did evolution and of course that has only got bigger now if you know anything of what socio-biology is. We talked about the problem of suffering. We did something about the proof of God's existence, where is God? If he is all-pervasive, how do I know that he is even there? Then the reliability of the Bible. Things like that. But apologetics has moved way beyond that. I am going to tell you how.
A time for sowing
We may be living in a difficult generation. Let me read to you something briefly from John chapter 4:
Jesus said, 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. Do you not say four months more and then the harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest.
I always saw this as an encouragement for us to get out and do evangelism, because the time was ready. That is what I thought the passage was about. But then he says
Thus the saying, one sows and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.
We may be in a period where we are called upon to do the hard work. Perhaps the fields are white for harvest; perhaps they are not. Our task is to be faithful whether we are in an easy generation where all things are ready to be harvested, or whether we are in a difficult, dark time when we are supposed to continue to scatter the seed of the good news whether people are responding or not. Increasingly the culture is becoming darker and darker. The questions are darker, the self-destruction is worse. What is going on in culture is harder and harder. Twenty year olds are more distant from God in their thinking than they were. It is a dark time. But what a great time for us also. We are to be faithful, scattering the gospel, proclaiming it, defending it, persuading, wrestling with people in a dialogue. That is what we are to be doing.
The old story and the new story
Until fairly recently, in culture, we shared something, whether you were Christian or not, and that was the belief that the church occupied the high moral ground, and that its task was to call people out of the mire of sin. If you were a non-Christian you just were not interested in the offer (being called out of the mire of sin) but you knew that if you were interested in being good and learning about God and being more like Him, you would go to church. The church said, 'Come to us. We are the ones who know God's moral will. We occupy the high moral ground.' Most everybody understood it.
Today, nothing could be further from the truth. The understanding of our culture increasingly is that the Christian God is seen as primitive, old-fashioned and immoral. The terrible thing is that non-Christians will say that to you but, increasingly, as I speak to Christians who are going to church, they have this nagging sense that they may be in agreement with them - that God is primitive, immoral and old-fashioned. In other words, that the church no longer occupies the moral high ground. We have a very offensive message. The gospel has always been offensive but this is in a new way. Can you see that as you are talking, or your church is talking, to the culture this explains a lot of bizarre conversations you may have had. It is as if I was talking about something, and I was trying to call them up to what is clearly good and true and right and they kept acting like I was trying to call them down to something. How did that happen? Can you see if the church does not understand this dynamic, that we are proclaiming these people to be sinners in need of reconciliation with the real God and they are thinking, whether clearly or not, 'if there were a God why would I go to yours? Because I already consider myself morally superior to your God.'
Let me give you a few examples if you do not already believe me.
First, a professor wrote a very good book talking about the Biblical doctrine of Hell, arguing with the position of annihilationism. Let us say you come to agree with him that the old-fashioned traditional view of Hell as eternal conscious punishment for anyone who does not know the Lord Jesus and come to faith and reconciliation with God through Him, that this is what the Bible proves. I think it was a wonderful book, 'Hell on Trial' by Dr Peterson. But the thing is, in the hands of my non-Christian friends (and increasingly some of my Christian friends) if you prove that Hell is what the Bible teaches, how it functions is that they say
That's one more reason I don't have to check into the Bible. I would not do that so any God that would do that is inferior to me.
That is a constant theme in Christians and non-Christians - but it is only one.
Consider homosexuality: this is something we are arguing right now about within the church, isn't it? Let us say you are as conservative as I am, and think that the scriptures are clear on that. The response is
Why would God be homophobic that way? Why would he have any sort of opinion upon something like that? And if your God thinks that about the gay community, then I'm more tolerant and better than your God.
Can you see that suddenly you are beneath me? Why would I come down there to occupy the high moral ground? Why would I become a Christian and worship this primitive, old-fashioned God?
Or think about worship: we all know that well-adjusted people do not need to be the centre of attention. Right? But then there's God. Why does he think everything is supposed to focussed around His glory?
Or the atonement: how does the death of a first century rabbi - whoever he is and however innocent he is - work out to be justice in dying for me? The very centre of Christianity is seen as primitive and immoral. Just in the same way we think casting virgins into the gaping maws of volcanoes is.
Then, lastly, the source of moral authority. Whatever your moral opinion on something, previously, if someone said, 'Why should I be this way or do this or not do this or do that,' and the answer was, 'Well, because God says so.' Then you would ask 'Well who is this anyway?' And you'd say 'God' and that ended the conversation.
But in the new story if they say 'Why should I be this way?' and you say, 'Because the Bible teaches so; it's God's will.' 'Well, who is God?' 'Well he's God.' They say, 'so what? Who does he think he is?' Can you see that this is why we have to have apologetics? Increasingly, my job is to not just know the Bible and teach the Bible, but to be able to defend, 'Why would a God with that opinion be right and just, better than me and worthy of my worship and allegiance?'
I spend the majority of my time wrestling on those very issues. You see, quite frequently the Bible does not say why God says that. That is why someone recently in a book on apologetics said, 'An apologist is always just about to give away the gospel.' It is a very dangerous thing. So many of my answers are, Lord willing, biblical, but they are speculative. I have to say, 'This is what the Bible says.' 'Huh, why do I care?' And I have to say, 'Let me talk to you about your world and why I think I can ...'
I talk about Hell quite frequently, give a lecture called 'Why is God Angry?' I have done it in very adversarial situations and have had the wonderful situation of non-Christians saying
I don't yet believe you that he is even there but I can now see that if he is, I want him angry as you say he is.
You see, Hell makes no sense at all unless God is wrathful. 'Why is God angry in the first place? I thought we were supposed to not be angry.' That's the sort of conversation the church is going to have to welcome and be expert in. That's the new story. The new story people increasingly tell themselves is that the God that you worship and is absolutely the ground of being, the source of purpose and meaning, what gives value to anything is his estimation of it. People think that this God is beneath them morally. That's where the church is today. It is a very difficult place to be.
Changing lanes
There are Christian thinkers who are re-interpreting the gospel in order to make it non-offensive to the new story. In other words, they are taking Christian theology and Biblical teaching, and changing it so that it makes sense to this generation. I am willing to make the gospel comprehensible to people, change my language, use new ways of expressing it, take into account modern culture and learning in order to do so. But I cannot change the content of it. I think of things Clark Pinnock is doing in 'The Openness of God'. This is a mistake. I have students read that book and so many of them say'That's how I want God to be.' Then I say, 'Yes, but you don't want to give up everything that it's giving up there.' It is a convenient thing to do now, a convenient move theologically, but it is not the Biblical truth. Let me give you a couple of examples.
The Australian, Les Murray, says:
I cannot understand why a God who is so loving and caring could ever turn someone away just because they do not agree with his beliefs or his way of life. I think it is very hypocritical of God to say 'My way or the highway.' Whatever happened to second chances?
Or John Shelby Spong, an Anglican Bishop in the United States, in New Jersey, in a book with an interesting title 'Why Christianity Must Change or Die' - a liberal theologian, but he has the title right, because he understands the new story very well. His prescription for the answer is mistaken, seriously so, but listen to him. (This man is not odd. He's speaking for lots of people.)
Personal words about God - we must learn to admit - reveal, not God, but our own yearning. So believers in exile today are forced to face the fact that today all Bibles, creeds, doctrines, prayers and hymns are nothing but religious artefacts created to allow us to speak of our God-experience at an earlier point in our history. But history has moved us to a place where the literal content of these artefacts is all but meaningless, the traditional definitions inoperative and the symbols no longer competent pointers to reality.
That's how serious it is. This is a bishop speaking.
The levels of distrust, suspicion and cynicism are very high. The church says all too quickly that people in a post-modern world have a limited view, or a low view of truth. This is not the case. This is how cynicism works: cynicism thinks it can see beneath things, whether they look good or they look bad on the outside. It can see the meaninglessness beneath it. So a cynic today in your youth group or a cynic within your own heart really has a very high view of truth. What that truth is is that you have to be honest and realise that good or bad, it is all the same, and there is no meaning to any of it. That is what people think today. They may have a very high view of what that truth means. You are a coward if you will not recognise that life means nothing. It is too easy to blame it on the loss of truth.
The shift today is from guilt to meaninglessness. Charles Taylor, a philosopher in the United States wrote one of those books that serves as a coffee table rather than just to put on your coffee table, called 'Sources of the Self' It is a very good book. He says that the reason that people were put into psychiatric hospital, the major causative factor would be a sense of guilt. He says that is no longer true, and he can show it. As long as people knew that their problem was guilt they had the sense that what they needed was redemption. This is the world that Martin Luther lived in, and we all lived in until fairly recently. Today I have had young people say to me, 'I would love to feel guilty because that would hint that there's meaning.' Today the reasons for being put into psychiatric hospital, and increasingly what is tearing people apart, is the sense of meaninglessness, not guilt. They would long for guilt. Do not get me wrong, people still feel guilty. The old story and the new story live together. But, increasingly, it is this all-pervasive sense of meaninglessness.
So you come along with the gospel, and you are not aware of this, and you dwell on guilt (which is true, before a holy God people still remain guilty), but people are absolutely immune to it. 'I don't feel guilty.' I quite frequently have people say
I'm not a sinner. What makes me a sinner? Why do you say that? What does it mean? I'm not one.
In the old story, everybody knew they were a sinner. They might choose to remain one. They might want to be healed of it. But everyone knew that they were. It is not true any more. People really do not think so. In order to be guilty you have to have meaning. If you have no meaning you cannot have guilt.
The distrust of mental assent
The Reformation of the 16th Century was the rediscovery by theologians in Northern Europe primarily of the theology of the Apostle Paul, that we are saved by grace through faith. Increasingly, however, a post-modern reformation will be the rediscovery of the Gospel of James. People today are not impressed with the worldview that remains mental, that is just words, that is only assent to propositions. Increasingly people demand practical reality. The wonderful thing is the gospel and the epistles demand this also, the Bible is very clear that real faith always manifests itself. Post-moderns really want that. How would it change anything about your life if I were to tell you that God died last November? Would it change anything at all? Our culture thinks, not at all. That is where we need to show them that James and Paul are both true. Only those who obey believe, and only those who believe obey. Those are both part of the Christian gospel. We Protestants are so afraid of trying to save ourselves by our works that we have truncated part of the gospel, which is that you can always tell if someone loves Christ because they try to do what he has commanded.
So I welcome the attacks we get from outside as people point the finger at the church. I say, 'You are right, we are not living up to what we claim.' That is why, increasingly, it is not preaching, it is not even discourse, it is encouraging people to be included in your life because they must come, because of their level of distrust it takes longer for someone to accept the gospel today. People who, because of the violation of relationships have never been able to trust anyone in their lives, why should they trust you? Why should they trust this gospel message, which patently sounds unlikely and too good to be true? So you need to include them in your life, so that they can see the hope that is within you, so they can watch your family, watch your life, not just on Sunday morning, not just at worship.
This is why at L'Abri, it is so important for the students to come and live with us. We cannot keep up a façade all the time. So they live with us and they see us all the time. They see us arguing, they see us make mistakes, and they see us forgive one another. Increasingly, the church needs to be that kind of community for non-believers.
Apologetics is only part of the church's task. It is not the key. The problem with a talk like this, or any Christian talk, is that we feel 'oh, if I just got my worship life right, if I just got my devotional life right, oh if I could just learn to pray, do evangelism, do apologetics...' But it is just part of what the church is supposed to do. Proclamation, worship, practical community, the transformation by the Holy Spirit.
So this is, I think, a difficult generation but do not long to be anywhere else than where we are right now. This is a great time to represent the Lord Jesus, a very difficult time.