Today’s post is written by Mark Clark. Mark is Senior Pastor of Village Church in Vancouver, a close friend, and co-creator of our courses The Art of Better Reaching and The Art of Better Preaching.

By Mark Clark

Religious people live, on average, seven years longer than non-religious people.

“Hold on, what?” you might be saying.

Fair enough. Let’s back up.

In his book Think Again organizational psychologist Adam Grant says that we can’t be afraid to be influenced by actual data in forming ideas versus what we thought was the case, or what we feel is the case or what we would rather be the case, in any given scenario.

For example, would we be open to changing our views on something we really believe in if data arose that said our prior conclusions had been wrong? Oftentimes we reject such data for a plethora of reasons, the most powerful of which is that we have become comfortable in our beliefs about things, and contrary data messes with that.

“When it comes to our knowledge and opinions,” Grant says, “we often favor feeling right over being right… we favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.”

This is a scary thought, but is proven over and over again in the realm of psychology, and as a pastor, I have seen it over and over again in ministry – whether that be people who hold hard against a theological conclusion that the Bible is clearly laying out because they have prior ideas, or behaviors that don’t line up, or people who have an interpretation of a passage and can’t stand the thought that maybe that isn’t saying what they thought it was.

We see this right now in our political debates online, whether they be about actual politics or the downstream discussions popular right now about vaccines, COVID orders, church and state debates, etc.

People have their views and they believe and promote data and ‘facts’ that support those views and ignore contrary data. It’s true about all of us.

People have their views and they believe and promote data and ‘facts’ that support those views and ignore contrary data. – @markaclarkClick To Tweet

The lack of humility on one side or the other should be your first clue that maybe the person you are staring at isn’t open to think again or look at an issue from a different angle at all.

You know what they say: to a hammer everything is a nail.

To some people right now every idea, news story, piece of information they receive is only meant to fit into the narrative they have decided is true already, and that’s that. There is no convincing them otherwise. It’s a scary place to be, to be honest.

Jesus warned against people who aren’t so much deceived by others, though of course that is a part of this kind of person’s situation as well most times, but those who are self-deceived. And therein lies part of the problem: we don’t know what we don’t know.

Thus, I would say humility and open-mindedness to data and ideas is central to us as we find our way through this new world.

Which brings us to my point:

I want to turn this idea of ‘thinking again’ and aim it at an idea so rooted in the post-Christian west that I am sure it will mess with our brain a little. It is the idea that religion is good, indeed, great for society as a whole.

Of course the popular narrative of the western world over the last one hundred years or so, and especially the last 30 or 40 has been that religion is ‘poison’ as the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens used to argue. That religion creates war and atrocity, judgmentalism and racism, intolerance and ignorance, across the populace. Images of people denying science, hating others, doing violence against people, rule the day.

I grew up with this narrative. Not explicitly told me by people of course, but by osmosis. Through my education, reading, movies, television, the news, general conversations with friends.

This is the assumed truth of our western story. Atheism, or at least agnosticism, produces a better, more progressive society. Religion, a stunted or even backward trending society. So much so that in Universities and in the public square today it is just part of the unspoken story, and because it is thus, it also in some ways, goes unchallenged too.

This is the assumed truth of our western story. Atheism, or at least agnosticism, produces a better, more progressive society. – @markaclarkClick To Tweet

But what if the data said otherwise?

What if your anecdotal story of that one religious uncle you know, or that one group on Facebook that time, was all called into question by the facts? Would you be willing to change your mind?

I don’t imagine a short blog post like this will do that, but let’s at least start the conversation. I would like to think you are open to ‘think again’ when it comes to this question, and I think you should, and here’s why.

The data tells us we’ve been wrong all along, and that story of the triumph of secularization is just plain false when we ask the question: how religion impacts and affects the cities, neighborhoods, communities, nations and individuals it exists within.

More pointedly, when the question is: does it have a positive or a negative impact on culture, the overwhelming reality is that it has a positive, not a negative one. In fact, it isn’t even close. The atheists are wrong. And by a long shot.

A STARK CONTRAST (see what I did there?)

Rodney Stark is one of the most celebrated and respected sociologists of religion in the world. “He has written over 30 books, and more than 140 articles on subjects as diverse as prejudice, crime, suicide, and city life in ancient Rome, and has twice won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.”

In one of his books which I read recently he sketched out some fascinating conclusions based on detailed sociological data that are so contrary to popular opinion and the assumed narrative of the post-christian west that most will greet them with a filter of suspicion, or outright disbelief, but as we said above, that doesn’t mean they aren’t true – only that we may be victims of our own self-selected confirmation biases, fooled by our own carefully curated news, opinions and information, if not about a number of things in our lives, certainly in regard to the areas Stark explores using America as a microcosm example of the west at large.

So what areas does he explore and what are his conclusions? And what does it mean for us?

HIS CONCLUSIONS

There are a hundred and one things his data concludes which you can read for yourself in more detail, but here are some of the more interesting ones. And again, let’s remind ourselves, his conclusions are based on actual research done by an actual sociologist and his colleagues, not what passes today as research – i.e. a google search, and a scroll of your Facebook feed, and that website which has those Youtube videos by that doctor.

In his rigorous and pointed style Stark shows that the academic literature routinely ignores evidence of religion’s beneficial social effects. He demonstrates that religious people:

Are the primary source of secular charitable funds that benefit victims of misfortune whatever their beliefs
Dominate the ranks of blood donors and other prosocial behaviors
Are much less likely to commit crimes
Far more likely to donate their money and time to socially beneficial programs and to be active in civic affairs. (The impact of religious people on volunteering alone is an estimated $47 billion annually in the United States alone!)
Enjoy superior mental health – are deemed happier, less neurotic, and far less likely to commit suicide
Enjoy superior physical health – have an average life expectancy more than seven years longer than that of the irreligious
Read more than their irreligious friends and neighbors
Are less likely to believe in the occult, UFO’s, Bigfoot, etc.
More apt to marry, less likely to divorce, and report higher degrees of satisfaction with their spouse.
Religious husbands are far less likely to abuse their wives or children. This is of course contrary to the story that religions create systems of oppression in the home because of ‘male patriarchy’.
Religious fathers are more likely to be involved in youth-related activities such as coaching sports teams or leading Scout troops, etc.
Religious couples enjoy their sex lives more, women are more likely to have regular orgasms, and sex happens more often.They are also far less likely to have an affair.
Religious students perform better on standardized achievement tests, are far less likely to drop out of school, obtain better jobs upon graduation, and are far less likely to be on unemployment (the studies for all of these and especially this one and all surrounding crime stats, etc., factor in races/geographies across the U.S.)
In 247 studies done between 1944 and 2010: religion has a positive effect on society in regard to crime, deviance and delinquency.
Crime rates in the US compared to the decidedly less religious countries of Western Europe are glaringly less in many categories, with the exception of homicide rates: Denmark has nearly two-and-a-half times as many burglaries per 100,000 people, and is exceeded by Austria, Switzerland, the U.K., Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. The same is true for theft, and assault rates.
Urban stats going from present-day back to the 1920s shows that the higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower its burglary, larceny, robbery, assault and homicide rates.

Stats going from present-day back to the 1920s shows that the higher a city’s church membership rate, the lower its burglary, larceny, robbery, assault and homicide rates. – @markaclarkClick To Tweet

I point all of this out to not only because it plays a fascinating role in forcing us as individuals to constantly be open to re-thinking what we thought was true and why we thought it was so (a much-needed posture of humility is needed in this regard on both sides of the political aisle), but also to challenge the powerful, overarching narrative of our time – that God and religion have no place in society and that the real hope for us is fill in the blank: education, technology, the arts, science – as if those are antithetical to religion.

Not only is that a simplistic, reductionist narrative to sell the public, it is blatantly wrong.

The data not only doesn’t back it up, it actually draws the opposite picture.

That without religious people and groups, society as a whole, including most importantly, the marginalized, would be far worse off.

Without religious people and groups, society as a whole, including most importantly, the marginalized, would be far worse off. – @markaclarkClick To Tweet

We see this reality play out over and over again. Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times wrote an article years ago wherein he explored the work of an unknown evangelical Christian doctor who ran a hospital in Angola, where the child mortality rate was the highest in the world. He raised his family in one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Kristof writes:

“Most evangelicals are not, of course, following such a harrowing path, and it’s also true that there are plenty of secular doctors doing heroic work… But I must say that a disproportionate share of the aid workers I’ve met in the wildest places over the years, long after anyone sensible had evacuated, have been evangelicals, nuns or priests.”

That of course doesn’t mean that religion is true, that is for another day – but it is to say, importantly, that skeptics need to be careful in their argument against Christianity and religion based on a purely social argument.

They need to tread far more carefully when they want to argue that somehow religion is toxic to a culture. It is not. See even the latest arguments from thinkers like David Berlinski, in his The Devil’s Delusion, a secular philosopher /scientist who sees a connection between many of our social ills and atheism, especially in the realm of the question of meaning, and how people absorb suffering.

Sure, ‘this’ or ‘that’ version of religion could be toxic, admittedly, it could lead to racism, or oppressive attitudes toward women, or minorities, etc. That is still true, and something we need to always be fighting, especially given that the central story of Christianity in particular is its central figure, Jesus, dying and serving to raise others up, not being opposed to any, but loving all.

Bad versions and applications of religion are everywhere, and we need to be weary of them.

Stark’s point is not that we should ignore those proclivities, but that we do need to get a far clearer and fuller picture of the positives of religious impact on the west in a cultural moment when the narrative around it is almost exclusively negative.

Bad versions and applications of religion are everywhere, and we need to be weary of them. – @markaclarkClick To Tweet

CONCLUSION

I am not a sociologist, but I am a pastor which means I have a lot of conversations with people who are opposed to Christianity. A lot of them over the years point out how bad the idea of God is for the world.

That story is popular and well-told over and over again so much so that it lives in our consciousness as a fact.

I share this data to simply ask the skeptic to be willing to stop doing what they ask religious people to stop doing on the daily: spreading false-hood.

The idea that religion is bad for society simply isn’t true and it isn’t true in a hundred different ways. Are you willing to adjust your framework of the world and the question of God and the church around data versus what you have heard, or want to be true?

We all have to be willing to doubt our doubts and at least take a second or third look at the question of God as it relates to the experience of individuals, societies, cities, nations, towns, which of course, include your own communities, and be open to the idea that in the end the God hypothesis may prove to be harder to leave behind than we once thought, or, in the spirit of today’s arguments, we may not want to leave it behind at all, because it may be our only way to accomplish socially what we all desire.

You ever wonder why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., cited the prophets of the Bible in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, versus an atheist manifesto?

Because his larger vision, his dream, could only be accomplished by it being built on a foundation of transcendence.

That is what gave humankind it’s equality. The fact that it was made in the image of God. Not the state, or reasons of the social class, or because it was a more enlightened primate, or whatever other reasons for equality and justice we construct.

His argument, like Wilberforce and so many others before him, was that social good and flourishing was rooted in God. As others have pointed out, it wasn’t that America needed less religion, but better religion.

If we are going to reach the post-Christian west, we need to hold tightly to idea not that individuals alone need to come to know God, but that in knowing him there will be a horizontal impact on the world around it.

A good and flourishing impact that brings shalom even to people who don’t agree with it. Life-giving, not toxic. Serving, not taking. Loving, not judging.

Facts don’t adjust because we feel they should.

We are better to adjust in light of them instead of burying them beneath bias. The truth will set us free, Jesus said. Seems like it is setting others free as well.

Whether they appreciate it or not.

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Is Your Church Ready For Future Evangelism? Take The Free Church Outreach Assessment To Find Out.

Almost every church leader wants to grow their church by reaching more people.

As culture continues to change rapidly into a post-Christian era, though, itu2019s left many leaders feeling like theyu2019re not accomplishing their mission. For too many churches, things arenu2019t going as hoped.

After you complete the assessment, youu2019ll receive a detailed breakdown of your results and get access to a free teaching series that will help you take practical steps forward in each of the five areas.

When youu2019re done, youu2019ll be far more equipped to accomplish your mission.

Donu2019t be discouraged. You can still reach people.

Take the Church Outreach Assessment now!”,”container_class”:””,”element_class”:””,”wrap_styles_border”:0,”wrap_styles_width”:””,”wrap_styles_margin”:””,”wrap_styles_padding”:””,”wrap_styles_float”:””,”wrap_styles_show_advanced_css”:0,”label_styles_border”:””,”label_styles_width”:””,”label_styles_font-size”:””,”label_styles_margin”:””,”label_styles_padding”:””,”label_styles_float”:””,”label_styles_show_advanced_css”:0,”element_styles_border”:””,”element_styles_width”:””,”element_styles_font-size”:””,”element_styles_margin”:””,”element_styles_padding”:””,”element_styles_float”:””,”element_styles_show_advanced_css”:0,”cellcid”:”c8551″,”key”:”the_pivot_ready_cheat_sheet_1602862985838″,”drawerDisabled”:false,”wrap_styles_background-color”:””,”wrap_styles_border-style”:””,”wrap_styles_border-color”:””,”wrap_styles_display”:”block”,”field_label”:””,”field_key”:”the_pivot_ready_cheat_sheet_1602862985838″,”id”:”1023_1″,”beforeField”:””,”afterField”:””,”value”:”

Is Your Church Ready For Future Evangelism? Take The Free Church Outreach Assessment To Find Out.

Almost every church leader wants to grow their church by reaching more people.

As culture continues to change rapidly into a post-Christian era, though, itu2019s left many leaders feeling like theyu2019re not accomplishing their mission. For too many churches, things arenu2019t going as hoped.

After you complete the assessment, youu2019ll receive a detailed breakdown of your results and get access to a free teaching series that will help you take practical steps forward in each of the five areas.

When youu2019re done, youu2019ll be far more equipped to accomplish your mission.

Donu2019t be discouraged. You can still reach people.

Take the Church Outreach Assessment now!”,”label_pos”:”above”,”parentType”:”html”,”element_templates”:[“html”,”input”],”old_classname”:””,”wrap_template”:”wrap”}];nfForms.push(form);

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Want more?

For more on how to interact with the post-Christian west as a Christian leader see our upcoming course The Art of Better Reaching.

If you want more help responding to the skeptics, check out my book, The Problem of God: Answering a Skeptics Challenges to Christianity.

I’d love to hear about 1 thing you’ve had to ‘think again’ about in the last year. While you’re responding below, please be kind. This is no place for outrage or toxic behavior.

The post Think Again: Why Religion is Good for Us appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: Think Again: Why Religion is Good for Us

The post Think Again: Why Religion is Good for Us appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: How to Actually Find God

The post How to Actually Find God appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Tom Planck: The narrative that is unfolding in the Church today is not a good read. There are 355,000 plus churches in the United States and better than 80% of them are either in plateau or decline1. These churches are not only declining numerically, but they are also seeing a decrease in influence and impact in their community.

There is only one hope for the Church today. It is for a remnant of Christ-followers to re-engage with the mission of Jesus to make disciples who make disciples. The Church today greatly needs disciples of Jesus who help an individual walk toward and across the line of faith and then help them become a disciple who does the same for another.

This was and is Jesus’ Plan A for reaching the world and there is no Plan B.

Do you have a handful of people in your life that are far from God that you are intentionally helping walk toward a relationship with Jesus? Do you have a few Christ-followers that you are intentionally helping live with the attitude and posture of Jesus? Are you helping those disciples of Jesus intentionally repeat the process for others?

If you are still reading this blog entry and are a follower of Jesus then the answer to these questions should be a clear yes!

If you cannot answer these questions with the names of real people in your life that you are pouring into then let me challenge you to integrate a few principles into your life sooner rather than later.

1. Renew your commitment to be an obedient follower of Jesus.

Jesus’ words in John 14:15 are simple and profound:

“If you love me, keep my commands.” John 14:15

If you love Jesus, you will live His commands.

This is NOT:

a rule to follow.
jumping through a set of religious hoops.
behavior management or simply adhering to a set of tacit religious behaviors.
about being a good churchgoer.

This IS about:

being in a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus.
having the attitude of Jesus.
having the posture of Jesus.
intentionally living the way Jesus did.

Being Jesus’ disciple is not merely gaining knowledge about Him, but integrating and living what we are learning about following the way of Jesus. He isn’t asking for perfection, but He is clear that His followers live a life patterned after His.

Where do you need to be more obedient to Jesus?

2. Re-engage in fishing for Jesus.

The call on the life of a follower to help people find their way back to God is made clear multiple times and in multiple places in the New Testament. Jesus said it this way in Matthew’s account:

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” Matthew 4:19

My heart grieves over how few people who occupy a spot in a church pew on a weekly basis or serve on the staff of a local church have never helped someone walk to and across the line of faith. I am confident God’s heart breaks for the few numbers of Christians today that have helped someone find their way back to the Father. Know this, there are people in your life right now who God has strategically placed there so you can help them find their way back to God. Will you partner with Him? I hope so!

Walk across the room. Extend a hand. Build a friendship. Throw a party. Go to lunch. Invite them into your golf foursome. Get intentionally connected to those who are disconnected and see what God might do!

Take a moment right now to develop a short list of disconnected people that you will invest in and help walk toward a relationship with Jesus.

3. Refocus your time to be a disciple-maker for Jesus.

When the first followers of Jesus were given the challenge and strategy of making disciples who make disciples of all nations, this was not a foreign concept. They had lived it. It was key to their spiritual formation as His followers.

When Jesus began His public ministry, He called twelve to follow Him. He encouraged the masses but poured His life into a few. He made an even more intentional investment in three: Peter, James, and John. They had some unique experiences with Jesus that the other nine didn’t have. Jesus was preparing them for future leadership in the church. We see this clearly in the person of Peter who would become the foremost voice for spreading of the Gospel in the early days of the birth of the Church.

We also see this lived out in the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul. We see it most clearly in his discipling of young Timothy. Notice how Paul describes that in his second letter to Timothy:

“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”2 Timothy 2:2

I love this verse because we see four generations of reproduction!

So the question to wrestle with is this: Who has God placed in your life that you can help become an obedient follower of Jesus who is fishing for people? How can you invest in them to ensure that the process gets repeated to multiple generations of reproduction?

Do not hesitate. Make the necessary changes. And, go make disciples!

More Resources

Here are a few suggested resources to help you build some intentional next steps.

Read “The Art of Neighboring” by Dave Runyon
Explore disicpleship.org
Hire a discipleship coach with Gravity Leadership

Note 1. Statistics adapted from “The Great Opportunity.” We highly recommend you download “The Great Opportunity” report.

The post Disciples Who Make Disciples appeared first on Healthy Growing Churches.

Source: Disciples Who Make Disciples

The post Disciples Who Make Disciples appeared first on Passion for Planting.