Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/p>\n
By: D. W. Bebbington<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0always done it this way\u2026 why do you have to challenge it?\u201d This has been the most popular question in my life. For the longest time I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0know how to answer, so I would smile and walk away. Reading though\u00a0Evangelicalism in Modern Britain <\/em>by D. W. Bebbington was refreshing. Seeing how the evangelical church has changed and transformed over the years is incredibly encouraging and gives me courage to answer the \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0always done it this way\u2026 why do you have to challenge it?\u201d question with a bold \u201cNo! We\u00a0haven\u2019t\u00a0always done it this\u00a0way.\u201d<\/p>\n I am someone who doesn\u2019t really like change\u2026 I drink the same white chocolate mocha from Starbucks that I\u2019ve drank for the past 15 years \u2026 I\u2019m on my 10th<\/sup> pair of TOMS shoes\u2026 I replace my old clothes with the exact same new ones\u2026 I don\u2019t like change! However, when it comes to the things of God, change has to happen, otherwise we die\u2026 the church dies. I don\u2019t know where people have gotten the idea that the church needs to stay the same. Yes! There are some things, some core principles that need to stay the same, but everything ales needs to change. The only one that doesn\u2019t change is Jesus. He promises to be the only constant\u2026 the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Humanity on the other hand is invited to not only change but be transformed by a relationship with Jesus.<\/p>\n Edward Gibbon is quoted saying, \u201cReligion has never existed in the pure form in which it descended from heaven. It has always been affected by its surroundings at the same time as influencing those surroundings.\u201d (ix) Isn\u2019t that beautiful? I agree that there are extremes, and lately the church has been more influenced by its surroundings than it has influenced them, but the point is that both are changed. If our faith is living, it must be changing.<\/p>\n The church is afraid of acknowledging its ever changing past because we\u2019re afraid of losing credibility and influence. But it\u2019s not change and transformation that causes us to lose credibility; it\u2019s silence and denial. We need to live in the tension that comes with a human\/God relationship. In this relationship humanity doesn\u2019t always get it right\u2026 but it always has the opportunity to do it over.\u00a0 God is not \u201cless God\u201d if we acknowledge the fact that we, in our humanity, don\u2019t know everything and sometime we need a do over.<\/p>\n The other thing that struck me in reading Bebbington was the fact that every change was started by one person who influenced a group of people, who influenced the larger community, which turned into a movement that changed the face of evangelicalism. It\u2019s amazing to me that one person can have so much power. I think as pastors we sometimes doubt our ability to influence. We often feel inadequate and get discouraged when we don\u2019t see ourselves making a difference. Reading this book reminds me that we are part of a bigger picture. God uses faithful individuals to paint the different parts of the whole picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s By: D. W. Bebbington \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0always done it this way\u2026 why do you have to challenge it?\u201d This has been the most popular question in my life. For the longest time I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0know how to answer, so I would smile and walk away. Reading though\u00a0Evangelicalism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[152],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bebbinngton","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1687,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}