The Bible Speaks:The Church in Search of Itself - AFC 1996

Errand in the Wilderness

Matthew 28:19­20; 25:31­46

The American Church: Awakened for a Purpose‹Saving Souls

The Early American Experience
The church came to North America began with a sense of mission. Many of the initial settlers believed that they had embarked on a great experiment or mandate of God to establish model Christian communities.
Evangelicalism dominated the religious landscape and once towns were established, the mission became a drive to bring souls to salvation.
That driving passion expanded to larger domestic and foreign missions.
Large parts of the church saw its task as reforming society and its individuals. The debate begun in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries remains vital at the end of the twentieth century.
1630
The Puritans founded Massachusetts to be a model of what was possible when the principles of the Reformation were followed to their conclusion.
1700
There were propagation problems; the assumed standardization did not follow. Second- and third generation members of the community did not automatically share the values and faith of the founders. There was no room for dissenting churches in the colony.
mix:
breaking ties to the "old country"
uneasiness with encroaching rationality of the Enlightenment
distaste in the dynamic "new world" for stagnant formalism
changing economics of churches (no more tax support)
1734 Great Awakening
North American Christians were experiencing that formal confession of belief was not sufficient. God moves in and through the emotions, the heart, to convict the unman of sin and to gain the blessing of the unaccountable joy of grace. This was to be the mission of the church: the conversion of souls.

The idea of saving souls was, historically, not a basic concept of the Christian faith. It came into use only in recent American history.

Fervor for individualistic, experiential piety‹an evangelical tone‹produced a remarkable consensus in North American Protestantism and shifted the church's understanding of itself in a new direction.

What do you think?
€ Does the church exist to do mission? If so, how would you best describe it?: to save souls, reform society, care for the sick, poor, and/or weak...
€ Have emotional experiences been important turning points in your life?
€ Should a church close if it has failed at it's mission, or has completed it?

We stand on the shoulders of those who have worked out their faith with pain, joy, confusion, blood, sweat, tears, careful thought, and grace.