Sermon from June 20, 2004

I love a good story. Last summer, I picked up a book I had never heard of before and started to read it. It was such a sad story, but it was so well written, that I read a hundred pages before I refused to go further.

Even better than reading a good story, I love to be part of a good story. It is great fun to be part of a championship sports team. It is deeply satisfying to work with other people on a difficult task and succeed. It is icing on the cake, if someone then tells the good story you have been part of.

The New Testament book of Acts satisfies both criteria. First, it tells a great story. In a nutshell the story goes like this. Time was when Christianity belonged exclusively to a small sect of Jews that went by several names: the Nazarenes, the Way, and the Christians. Acts tells the story of how that small, exclusively Jewish sect expanded beyond its Jewish origins and became the faith for all mankind.

The story began in Jerusalem and ended in Rome. In between its messengers found themselves in many of the Empire’s major cities, on perilous roads and in hurricanes, jails, synagogues, teaching halls, public squares, private homes, kings’ courts, sharp debates, and glorious successes.

I said the story ended in Rome. That is because all written stories must come to an end, and this one ended in Rome. But life can do what books cannot. The story Luke wrote ended in Rome. But in life the story Luke told did not stop in first-century Rome.

It continues in fact to this day. We are still living the story of Acts. So, we can love this good story, and we can love being part of this same story that goes on and on. Our circumstances differ from those of Peter and Paul, but, as we shall see, some things never change. A mystical, divine union joins us with them across the ages.

So, today and next Sunday I would like to add another chapter to the book of Acts. Today, I’d like to focus on the Church’s continuing journey to the ends of the earth. Next Sunday, I’d like to focus on the Church’s continuing suffering for the sake of Christ. I’ve called this new chapter Acts 29, but the actually number of chapters that extend Luke’s account has passed out of memory and therefore beyond numbering.

A Jail in Cajun Country
There is a state penitentiary in Louisiana called Angola. It used to be the most dangerous prison in the United States (All citations in this section come from Chris Frink, “Breaking into Prison,” CT, May, 2004, 36-39). It is big: 5100 men call it home, many of them on death row, and most are serving a life sentence. At Angola life sentence means life sentence. You don’t get out. Over the years many inmates have died at the hands of other inmates. The movie, Dead Man Walking, starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, was filmed there.

Burt Cain, a Southern Baptist Christian, became warden of the prison in 1995. Not long after that, he brought in a program call Experiencing God, based on the book by Henry Blackaby and Claude King. 1600 prisoners went through the program. Cain said, “It helped the prisoners accept they’re in prison and that it’s God’s will that maybe they don’t get out – and that while you’re here you do your best for him.”

In 1997 the federal government cut off funding for college education for prisoners. New Orleans Baptist Seminary, Mark and Denise Smith’s seminary alma mater, provided a four-year course designed to graduate ministers. Oprah Winfrey highlighted the need for a library, and the books came in. That made it possible for the school to be fully accredited.

The first seminary class graduated in 2002. One mother came to Cain and said, “I can’t understand my emotions. My son came to prison and found Jesus, and he’s graduated from seminary. He had to do this terrible crime to get to here.” Cain told her that maybe her son’s victim had not died in vain.

They’ve graduated 80 prisoners from the school, and some of them have become missionaries – to other parts of Angola Prison and even to other prisons across the state of Louisiana. They serve as missionaries for two years and then return to Angola.

I chose the Angola Prison story from among dozens of other examples of the power of the Gospel in America. It is as exciting as anything in the book of Acts. It is the book of Acts, extended to the 21st century and still empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Children Greater Than Parents
I started with an American story, because God planted us here, and it is important for us to be aware of the enormous energy of God that has been released through the Church in this country. But we also need to look beyond our borders and become aware of the enormous energy of God that has been released in the Church throughout the whole, wide world.

In 1910 a missionary conference was held in Edinburgh, Scotland. “Fourteen hundred delegates gathered, only eighteen of whom were not from Europe or North America. There was not one African. The assumption, understandably, was that world evangelization meant the expansion of Western Christianity to the rest of the world” (This and all quotes and data in this section from Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, April, 2002, 81-82).

Professor Mark Noll of Wheaton College made some observations on what has happened in the 90+ years since the Edinburgh conference. Consider the following.

“‘Last Sunday it is probable that more believers attended church in China than in all of so-called Christian Europe.

“‘Last Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Episcopalians in the United States combined – and the number of Anglicans at church in Nigeria was several times the number in these other Africa countries.

“‘Last Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and more were at church in the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa than in the United States.

“‘Last Sunday more members of the Assemblies of God in Brazil were in church than the combined total of the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ in the United States.

“‘Last Sunday more people attended the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul (Pastor Paul Young-gi Cho) than attended all of the churches in significant American denominations like the Christian Reformed Church, the Evangelical Free Church, or the Presbyterian Church in America.

“‘Last Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France had mostly black congregations.”

“It certainly isn’t what the folks at Edinburgh in 1910 expected, writes Noll, but ‘what actually happened was much more unexpected, much more intriguing, much more threatening, much more complex, and much more an occasion for praising the Lord who sent his witnesses ‘to the ends of the earth.’”

Christianity in India
Christians make up a small minority of India’s one billion people. India has more Muslims than any other country, except Indonesia. Northern India has fewer Christians than southern India. Tim Stafford, an American writer, tells the story of the birth of a church in Bangalore in South India (All quotes and data that follow come from Tim Stafford, “India Undaunted”, CT, May, 2004, 28-35).

Pastor Jayankanth came to Bangalore with an electric utility company in 1997. He was a Christian and a member of a thriving Assemblies of God church in his home town. In Bangalore he found no other Christians and no churches. “Local people said they had murdered the last Christian who came to win converts.”

Stafford says Jayankanth found other Christians whose jobs had brought them to Bangalore, and they began to worship together. Their breakthrough to the native population came first through prostitutes whom Pastor Jayankanth witnessed to on the streets at night.

Then, his wife gave birth to premature twins, each weighing less than two pounds. The prognosis was death. “Pastor Jayankanth fasted and prayed for three days, the children survived, and word of a miracle spread.” As a result the church grew. Altogether 400 people have been baptized, and seven new churches have been started in neighboring towns. Pastor Jayankanth still works for the utility company.

At a Good Friday service, “a mob interrupted church services and forcibly dragged Jayankanth to the (Hindu) temple. He estimated that a thousand people gathered, shouting insults and cursing him. He was beaten and threatened, then hauled to the police station. Police officers accused him of disturbing the peace.” And of course he continues to preach. It sounds like something right out of the book of Acts.

The Church in India is still a small minority. So was the Church described by Luke in the book of Acts. Most foreign missionaries were expelled from India in the 1970s, but the Indian Church has sent out 44,000 of its own. The Church in India numbers about 3% of the population. But 3% of one billion is about 30 million people.

The Lamb and the Dragon
Tim Stafford reported on a weekly newspaper named Tehelka, whose first issue came out while he was in India. Its lead story ran to eleven pages and was called “George Bush Has a Big Conversion Agenda for India.” It tells you something about the newspaper, but it also reminds us of the legacy of Western Colonialism.

That legacy gave rise to the propaganda that Christianity is white, Western, Capitalist, racist and oppressive. The reality is that the majority of the world’s 2.5 billion Christians are black and brown and yellow. But the Church has become that in the face of such propaganda.

The Three Self Patriotic Church of Movement (TSPM) of China came into existence in part to declare its independence from foreign powers. It is called Three Self, because it professes to be based on three principles: “self-support, self-propagation, self-governing” (All quotes and data in this section come from David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing. Here, p. 51). It was also the Communist government’s way of trying to control all Protestant churches in China. In that purpose it must be judged to have failed terribly.

David Aikman, former Time Magazine Bureau Chief in Beijing and himself an evangelical Christian, has written a moving account of Christianity in China called Jesus in Beijing. Aikman gives the following, startling assessment of Christianity in Communist China.

“China is in the process of becoming Christianized. That does not mean that all Chinese will become Christian, or even that a majority will. But at the present rate of growth in the number of Christians in the countryside, in the cities, and especially within China’s social and cultural establishment, it is possible that Christians will constitute 20 to 30 percent of China’s population within three decades. If that should happen, it is almost certain that a Christian view of the world will be the dominant worldview within China’s political and cultural establishment, and possibly also within senior military circles” (ibid, 285).

“Early in 2002, China’s then president and Communist Party leader, Jiang Zeming, attended a dinner party in the private home of another senior Chinese political figure in the heart of Beijing. The conversation turned to the party’s upcoming sixteenth congress, a momentous, once-every-five-years gathering. . . .

“‘Comrade Jiang,’ a guest asked, ‘if, before leaving office, you could make one decree that you knew would be obeyed in China, what would that be?’ Jiang put on a broad smile and looked around the room. ‘I would make Christianity the official religion of China’” (ibid, 17).

Aikman concludes his remarkable book by saying, “China’s moment of its greatest achievement – and of the most benefit to the rest of the world – may lie just ahead. That moment may occur when the Chinese dragon is tamed by the power of the Christian Lamb. The process may have already started in the hopes and works of China’s house church leaders” (ibid, 292). The underground, persecuted congregations of China are bringing about this Christianization of Communist China.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I have only scratched the surface. The mustard seed power of the gospel has reached into the peoples of the earth to an extent we hardly dare to dream. Here is one effort on my part to respond to this drama, which has unfolded in my lifetime.

I hear a lot of American Christians say, “These are the last days. Jesus is coming again soon.” He certainly may be coming again soon. That is the great hope of the Church. But let’s be sure we say that out of joyous hope, not out of weariness with our Western world. Some of the greatest days of Christian influence may lie just ahead for the billions of people in Asia and Africa. We don’t want to be down in the dumps, wringing our hands, when we need to be asking what part God wants us to have in the next great advance of the gospel throughout the wide world.

Faced with the spectacle of hundreds of millions of Christians emerging from the nations of Asia, Africa and South America like stars seen from a dark ship at sea, I am awe-stricken at their sheer numbers and the brilliance of their faith. I am awe-stricken, and I feel strangely cut off from them, as I feel cut off from distant mountain heights.

Yet, I want to keep faith with them with whom no exchange is possible. They are called to suffer persecution. We are called to suffer freedom. I want someone now, I want someone on the day the secrets of the human hearts are laid bare, to tell them we kept our end of the bargain. We fought the dragon of indulgence, while they fought the dragon of cruelty. Across the miles, across impenetrable cultural barriers, together, we kept the faith, we fought the fight, we finished the race. Some day, please God, we will talk.