I am speaking to more people who think Christianity is ridiculous.

Their easy dismissal of Christianity is partly an understandable response to the popular portrayal of Christians as fundamentalist, foolish, judgemental and hypocritical. At the same time they are fuelled by the rise of the New Atheists, angered by scandals in the church, and want freedom from the controlling hand of a church. There seems to be growing talk that Christians are dangerous and mustn’t be allowed positions of influence in society.

If your understanding of Christianity came from this culture would you take this religion seriously?

And culture is where they are getting their understanding of Christianity from. 60% of Australians do not have a friend who is a regular church-goer. Biblical illiteracy is on the rise. So I shouldn’t be suprised at the conversations in the pub and the soccer sideline where people ask me: ‘Christianity comes out of Islam doesn’t it?’  or ‘Is Christmas when you remember the death of Jesus?’ These people aren’t stupid (far from it!) but they are ignorant. They simply don’t know the basics of the Christian faith because they’ve never heard them.

The answer might therefore seem simple - just go and preach the gospel. But the problem is deeper than that. William Lane Craig puts it well in ‘On Guard’.

“...the gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the backdrop of the culture in which you’ve been born and raised. A person who has been raised in a culture that is sympathetic to the Christian faith will be open to the gospel in a way that a person brought up in a secular culture will not. For a person who is throughly secularised, you may as well tell him to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ! That’s how absurd the message of Christ will seem to him.

...imagine what you would think if a Hindu devotee of the hare Krishna movement, with his shaved head and saffron robe, approached you at the airport or shopping mall, offering you a flower and inviting you to become a follower of Krishna. Such an invitation would likely stike you as biarre, freakish, maybe even a bit funny. But think how differently someone in Delhi, India would react if he were approached by such a person! Having been raised in a Hindu culture he might take scuh an invitation very seriously”  (p17)

Craig is right - the gospel is never heard in isolation.

It is growing harder for the gospel to get a hearing in Sydney. What should Sydney Anglicans do? Here are some ideas...

• resist the temptation to simply minister to those culturally predisposed to hear the message. If we do that then we’ll just have churches competing for the shrinking ‘market share’ of churched people. Instead keep praying to connect with people who aren’t connected to Christians, churches, or Jesus.
• keep looking to 1 Peter 3.15 - ‘always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.’ As we live in ways that provoke questions about the hope we have be ready to answer. This will mean training in apologetics won’t it?
• in light of the growth of secularism we need to think much harder about what it means for Jesus to be Lord of everything. Ttese conversations need to take place around the proverbial water cooler - how do we move from the preaching to the choir on Sundays to speaking to outsiders around the water cooler?

The Centre for Christian Living and the Centre for Public Christianity are two great local ministries working in this area. Their websites have great resources that will help us.