Claver Lessons - Engaging Culture and Embracing Brokenness

Christianity is shrinking and losing influence in America and in Western culture in general. Eighty percent of the world's Christians are now non-Western, non-white, and the majority are poor (over fifty percent of the world lives on less than two dollars a day). This global shift in the make up of Christianity is disorienting, sometimes even shocking, for many American Christians who sometimes believe that the Christian world still orbits around us, and our churches, and our growth models, and our preaching, and our trendy books, and our seminaries, and our movements. On our way to religous "success" I believe that we may have blown right past the message of the gospel, so much so that we are rapidly declining. Why is Christianity declining in America and growing explosively elsewhere? And, what can we learn from Pedro Claver in this area?

American Christians are comfortable. Americans make up less than 5% of the world's population, but we use up over 25% of the world's resources. The Christian culture in America largely reflects the values of the nonChristian culture in this country (just check the divorce and charitable giving rates... Christians are the same or actually a little bit worse in both areas). American Christians love to do programs where we all hang out with one another once or twice a week in order to grow spiritually. We like to talk about going to heaven. We read fiction books about escaping this evil world. Our churches compete with one another over who has the best worship, the best teaching, and the best kids ministry. Christians church shop in order to find the best fit for themselves, and they can just leave if things get too uncomfortable. Big, beautiful church buildings are built in growing suburban areas while churches in down and out neighborhoods are abandoned. We just throw away entire churches, or neighborhoods, or people groups, because they weren't meeting our own all important needs. Many Christians in America are actively insulating themselves from as many nonChristians as possible and as much brokenness in society as possible. How so? We develop relationships with only Christians. We send our children to Christian school (or home school them). We build big homes in the suburbs, and if we're lucky enough we might even make our way up into a gated community one day where no messy people can ever disturb us. We go shopping at the Christian book store so that we can read Christian books and listen to Christian music and buy Christian breath mints to follow up our Christian coffee so that we have good Christian breath. Our faith becomes private... it's all about us and how we can improve ourselves. The goal of a good Christian in America seems to be who can make the most perfect Christian bubble.

The problem is... as comfort grows, Christianity declines. Christianity actually declines for all of the reasons listed above. We become marginalized in the world. We give up the most powerful, transformational, subversive, countercultural message of all time for the sake of building our own selves up in order to be more comfortable. The American Dream has no glass ceiling, and we'll do whatever it takes to get there. American Christianity falls nicely in line with those wordly goals, and we don't realize that we've lost the point.

Pedro Claver showed us how to live as a sold out follower of Jesus Christ. He understood the power of the gospel message when others around him did not, including the mainstream Christians who were busy doing church in the area. In the 1600s in Latin American, the powerful Christians of that society would have been busy forcing the Indian population to choose between becoming a Christian or being tortured, put into slavery, or killed. They would have been busy forcing slaves to build bigger church buildings for the glory of God. The mainstream church back then was all about better programs and bigger buildings. Enter our friend Pedro Claver, who arrives on the scene and starts doing some strange things. When slave ships arrive, he actually runs out to meet them so that he can start caring for them. He gives the dead a proper burial. He seeks out the sickest of the sick in order to treat them in the makeshift hospital he has set up. He brought fresh fruit, clean clothes, and water into the slave barracks where no other good Christians were willing to go. He hugged people with leprosy. He personally cleaned the sores of slaves who had smallpox. His heart broke. He entered the most excruciating pain that human beings could possibly endure when most Christians in his day were ignoring it or actually helping to perpetuate that suffering. He ran right into the brokenness and the ultimate expressions of evil being played out in the world right before everyone's eyes. He built authentic community with the slaves, and the gospel message of Christ grew among the slave population as a result. Almost all of the other Christians there thought he was crazy and stupid. They made fun of him and kept on doing what they were doing, which was building bigger buildings and better programs for themselves.

Claver is not alone in his willingness to live out the true gospel message. When the plague hit Europe in the middle ages, wiping out one third of the population, Christians would have been found actually going into cities to care for the sick and dying in order to care for them and share the message of Jesus. Many Christians actually got sick and died. What happened? Christianity took hold and grew like crazy in Europe as a result. Another example is the early Christian church, specifically the first three centuries following Jesus' life. Christians did what nobody else in mainstream Roman society was willing to do. They sought out the sick and the poor in order to care for them. When an outbreak of disease broke out, they would have some nursing moms sit at the city fountain, and then others would walk around the city to pick up abandoned babies. They would bring the babies to those nursing moms at the fountain in order to keep them alive. Then they would adopt the outcast babies into their own families. As a result of the Christian work among the poor and broken, Christianity grew exponentially all over the Roman Empire.

Fast forward to today. Where is Christianity growing exponentially? Among the poor, in places other than America, where Christians are willing to go where others won't go. Like Claver, they are willing to sacrifice comfort in order to reach others with the transformational love of Jesus Christ. They build authentic community with one another by caring for one another and meeting each other's needs, just like the early church in the book of Acts in the Bible. At this point, most of the Christians in the world would have no comprehension of the American Dream. Most Christians in the world do not understand the need to arrange for a more comfortable lifestyle, or insulate ourselves from nonChristians, or work towards retirement, or build bigger buildings, or have better programs. The church is growing fastest in the places where there are no actual church buildings, and there are no programs. There are just Christians willing to live with one another and sacrifice their own lives, if needed, for the sake of others... especially including nonChristians.

While many American Christians desperately search for authentic community and real religion, the Christians in the rest of the world are modeling for us what those things should look like. We should learn from them. We should learn from Pedro Claver. Are we, as American Christians, willing to humble ourselves for the sake of the gospel message of Jesus Christ? Are we willing to give up our comforts? Are we willing to serve others? In our own country? In our own cities? The hurting and lost are right there in from of us. Right under our noses. Right here, right now, in America, in our cities, in our neighborhoods. What will we do?