We live in a two-story house.  We often find that too much time has passed with the boys upstairs doing their thing while we’re downstairs doing ours.  The computer and video games are upstairs.  We have things to do to get ready for the next day, just relax, watch some television or read downstairs.  If we’re not careful, we soon find that what’s going on downstairs is totally disconnected from what’s going on upstairs, that we aren’t connecting, and, though we live in a house meant for one, we’ve become a split-level family.

Jesus’ words, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . and . . . your neighbor as yourself,’” constitute one of the most substantive descriptions of what it means to be truly Christian.  They speak of the one responsibility we have to keep two levels of living and loving vitally connected to each, our relationship with God and our relationships with each other.  They also describe the impossibility of loving what is “above” without loving what is “below.”  Otherwise, we become split-level Christians. 

George Hunter coined the phrase, “split-level Christianity,” out of his research into the impact of the gospel on Irish Celts in the early 400’s.  The Roman church was expanding westward but its highly structured and rigidly institutionalized methods were out of touch with the more loose-knit lives of the Celts.  While Roman Christianity was adept at explaining some of life’s ultimate issues, such as heaven and hell it did little to address the issues of daily life at the level at which most people lived outside of Rome.  Hunter claims that history is repeating itself.  In a day when people are spiritually sensitive but institutionally resistant, the rigidly institutionalized and highly structured ways of most churches are out of touch with where most people actually live their daily lives in the Western world.  “When Christianity ignores, or does not help people cope with (these very real issues), we often observe ‘Split-Level Christianity,’ in which people go to church so they can go to heaven, but they also visit, say, the shaman or the astrologer for help with the pressing problems that dominate their daily lives (George C. Hunter, III, “A New Kind of Community, A New Kind of Life, The Celtic Way of Evangelism, pp. 30-31).”

This morning’s sermon, the second in a series entitled Sharing Christ Through Caring Relationships, is based on three of our Core Values, Intentional Outreach to All People, Sharing Christ Through Caring Relationships, Initiating Caring Relationships.  It’s about what we’d typically call evangelism or “witnessing,” the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ with those who have not heard or accepted it.  As with last week, I’m preaching out of some basic assumptions. 

First, I assume that most of us believe that it is our responsibility to share the good news of Jesus Christ with others.  Second, I assume that most of us are totally at a loss as to how to go about doing that and that most of us carry around a great deal of guilt about our failure to do it more.  If you grew up in my generation, you may have even found that you were motivated to “witness,” more by guilt or fear than love.  Often, the preacher used a rather obscure Old Testament text from Ezekiel 33 to remind us that, if even one person went to hell because we failed to witness to them, their blood would be on our hands for all eternity.  Of course, he never explained how we’d enjoy heaven, a place of no tears, if we couldn’t wash the blood of unsaved millions off our hands.  But, why bother with trivialities, like biblically sound theology?  We had witnessing to do! 

Would it be an overstatement to say that most of us grew up, at best, stumbling and fumbling with what it means to be an effective and genuinely compassionate witness?  A little girl, who must have been a Baptist, was talking to her teacher about whales.  The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.  The little girl insisted that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.  Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.  The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah."  The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?"  The little girl replied, "Then you ask him."

One more assumption.  By and large, though perhaps well intentioned at one time, most of the evangelistic tools we were given, from Roman Road gospel tracts to Evangelism Explosion and so on, have proven vastly ineffective in reaching this culture.  My question is this?  How can we share the gospel of Jesus with a culture that could care less about our highly institutionalized, highly structured ways of doing church?  Ways that are very familiar, even comfortable, even very meaningful to those of us who grew up in the church, but totally meaningless to those with no Christian memory.  In the past, we approached reaching people by trying to get them to church where’d they’d listen to a sermon, be asked to make a life changing decision on the spot, walk an aisle in front of hundreds of total strangers and join an institution that had no meaning whatsoever to their daily life.  Is there another way? 

Jesus said, love God and love your neighbor, too.  By so doing, we bring together the love of the God people perceive to be “up there” with the needs of their daily lives “down here” in a community of faith called the church.  It’s about far more than getting people to agree to a few propositional statements and pray a prayer.

Chris Seay is the pastor of the radically innovative Ecclesia church in Houston.  A church that is effectively reaching this generation with the gospel.  He spoke at the Texas Baptist Evangelism Conference in Arlington this week.  He said, “past evangelistic efforts have given Baptists a bad reputation.  Trying to convert people by threatening them with damnation . . . may initially have gotten children to pray to Jesus for salvation (but) many have come to resent Baptists for the effort.  That’s not what I love [about] my God.   It has nothing to do with escaping the flames of hell.  That’s a side benefit.  The God I love has a message of love and servanthood.  The church needs to rethink what it means to be a Christian.  True entrance into the faith brings a person into a relationship with Jesus and a Christian community. (John Hall, “Baptist need to rehab image to reach non-believers, Seay says,” Associated Baptist Press, January 30, 2003 - Volume: 03-09).” 

Seay’s words beg the question Jesus’ words answer.  Jesus said that we have two obligations that are inseparably one.  Our very reason for existence, the highest of all human duties is to love God.  The second of our highest, just like the first Jesus said, is to love our fellowman completely.  They are one and the same.  We cannot love God without loving each other.  We cannot fully love each other without loving God.  His words are also the greatest strategy for fulfilling Jesus’ commission to bear witness as we go in this world of his saving grace.  “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind . . . and . . . your neighbor as yourself.’”  To be truly Christian means living in genuine and loving relationship with the Holy God above and also genuinely loving relationships with all his people here below.  It means sharing Christ through caring relationships. 

A good friend was driving through East Texas this past week and picked up a local radio station out of Crockett just in time to hear the “Tell It and Sell It Show.”  One woman had just called in and told the announcer that she had “about two roosters to sell.”  My friend said she wasn’t exactly clear about how many roosters she actually had for sale.  One and seven-eighths or two and one-quarter or what?

Are we clear within ourselves about what we’re trying to tell others about Jesus, about what it means to live in the sacred balance between loving God and loving our fellowman?  For myself, I’m growing less and less interested in only asking and trying to answer life’s ultimate questions, like how to get to heaven and escape hell, to the exclusion of life’s everyday questions, like how eternal heaven has meaning for the everyday hell some people live in.

If you’re like me, you’re in the right church.  I’ve never been a part of a church with a greater social conscience than Cliff Temple.  This church’s involvement in everything from Mission: Oak Cliff to World Changers and countless efforts to address the social needs of our community over the years is remarkable.  Even now, Ministry Teams are forming to expand on that great heritage including one, Carpenter’s Sons, a team of people that will do small home repairs for the elderly needy in our community.  Our own Marcus and Christina Martin, are resident activity directors at the Jefferson Apartments at Kessler.  They’ve found that people there are hungry for a sense of community because community isn’t a location or a crowd but a relationship.  So, they host weekly dinner meetings and discussions on current events, like capital punishment and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and such, and always find the conversation leading toward spiritual issues.  They’ve modeled for us for us what it means to meet people where they live and let them start the conversation there.

We’re also in the process of initiating a new Home Team ministry.  Home teams are small groups, organized through our Sunday School, that meet in homes for prayer and Bible study.  They will be as much about building relationships in which we can learn to love and care for each other’s everyday needs and let people start the conversation where they live.  Recently, at one home meeting, a young couple exploring adoption met another couple that had adopted.  She emailed me to say, “I still find it so awesome of God to have (been invited) into this group and find people that have traveled this path before us!” 

Though we’ll always have far more to do than we’ve already done, Cliff Temple has historically done a marvelous job of caring about people and trying to meet the real and practical needs of their daily lives.  Nonetheless, we must continue to ask what Jesus meant about loving God and loving our fellow man as one and the same so that all we do helps them discover the love of God who cares about their daily needs and wants them to be a part of his eternal family.  Put another way, if we do great social ministries but our baptistery stays dry then we may be inadvertently practicing split level Christianity. 

If we Baptists aren’t good at anything else, we’re good at extremism.  Robert Sloan, who has seen a growing dilemma of student alcohol abuse at Baylor, told me that we Baptists don’t handle liquor well. 

We either condemn those who drink at all or we become stumbling drunk with them.  Moderation in all things is not one of Baptists’ strong suits.  Finding the balance between social ministries that meet the very real needs of peoples’ daily lives and sharing the good news of Jesus without getting over-zealously out of balance one way or the other will not be easy.  But, that is our calling. 

Right in the middle of trying to give birth to this sermon this past week I had to go to the grocery store.  Man shall not live by bread alone.  But, a little bread helps.  I’m standing in the grocery checkout line at Albertson’s wondering yet again how I always pick the shortest but slowest moving line.  It was finally my turn and instead of just standing there like a coupon mummy, I decided to speak to the cashier.  “How’s your day been?” I asked.  In the next 45 seconds Gina went from being a total stranger scanning my food to a mother telling me how worried she was about her 23 year-old daughter who had just gotten out of the hospital after undergoing surgery to correct acid reflux, a condition and procedure which she then began to describe in graphic detail. 

So, I decided to push the envelope and initiate and a caring relationship.  I said, “I’ll be praying for her.”  Gina says, “We’ve been doing a lot of that lately.  In fact, my son said, ‘Mom, we ought to go to church more.’”  Already I’m too conscious of the two ladies in line behind me wondering how, in all the universe, they had to pick the shortest but slowest moving line.  They don’t know I’m a preacher but that I have no intention of preying on vulnerable cashiers because I need another notch in my Bible.  I decide to push it a little further.  Her son advised more church.  I asked, “What do you think about that?”  “Well,” Gina says, “all I know is that since the first of the year it’s been one thing after another going wrong.” 

I don’t know Gina.  What I do know is that here was a lady who was not very focused on life’s ultimate issues, like heaven or hell, but on getting off work on time to take care of her ailing daughter.  And, somehow, she’s making some connection between the Man upstairs and the life she’s living downstairs and wondering if maybe there’d be some advantage to getting the two more connected.  Though I went on to point her in the direction of a good church I know in her neighborhood, I may never know what difference my concern for her may have made. 

What I do know is this.  I couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, that is one way to start toward what Jesus called us to do.  To simply ask those we find crossing our path day to day, “How’s your day?”  Or, “Como estas?”  And, while showing genuine compassion for where people hurt now, as God gives opportunity, to lovingly, point them toward their heavenly Father. 

Maybe that’s one way.  If we genuinely care, to ask people how they’re doing down here, where we all live.  To just start the conversation where they’re already living and thinking. 

That’s the only way I know to make certain that we help people who live down here with us discover the love of the God above who, one day, came to live with us downstairs so that we would live him in heaven above, as one family, forever. 

Amen.