Sharing the Gospel in a Time of Disenchantment
How the Modern World is Aching for Enchantment
The last few decades have been a time of radical change in our world. Many of the basic cultural markers and boundaries we used to take for granted have broken down, and large numbers of people are feeling that we now live in a time of intense uncertainty and struggle. Former believers are “deconstructing” their faith in huge numbers. Recent research shows that forty million Americans have stopped going to church—that’s 15% of the overall US population. Thirty percent of the population is now religiously unaffiliated. We find ourselves in a time of immense anxiety, loss, and disintegration, and we’re not sure what to do about it.
The word I use to describe this state of things is “disenchantment.” We’re living in a time when people everywhere are experiencing a great sense of disenchantment with just about everything. They have lots of questions but not a lot of solid answers, and they’re looking for answers in all the wrong places.
How did we get here? There are lots of complex reasons, but here are four simple concepts that can help us answer that question: distrust, division, distraction, and despair.
We distrust authority and institutions because we’ve seen so many failures of those in positions of power, heard so many stories of fallen leaders, experienced so many broken relationships, especially in the church, that we’re leery of trusting again. We also find ourselves living in one of the most polarized times in history, with political and social and religious divisions pulling us further and further away from each other. And in the midst of that we’re distracted by so much technology, so many choices, so much busyness that we are overwhelmed. We also sometimes use all these distractions to avoid dealing with the difficult issues of life. All of which tempts us toward despair, toward living in a state of what philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, termed “the malaise of modernity,” an uneasiness that permeates our lives but that we can’t quite put our f inger on. It’s hard to navigate all that.
Yet, as Christians we have—or should have—reason for hope even in such uncertain times. But many of us are struggling too. We want to help but don’t know how. We wonder how we can share the good news of our faith when so many around us no longer seem to have even the most rudimentary concepts of morality, or sin, or civility, or God. We need our hearts to be awakened afresh to Jesus and how beautiful he is. We need to catch a glimpse of the sun shining out from behind the clouds and be re-energized, compelled forward with the love of Christ to lean into this world with the gospel—because we have access to the hope that people are looking for.
How do we begin to do this? How can we bring a sense of “re-enchantment” back to a world that seems to have lost its soul? My goal here is to provide some encouragement toward that end.
The CHallenge of “Dechurching” and “Deconstruction”
The first thing we need to know is that there is no “silver bullet,” no easy step-by-step description for how we do this. Rather, I want to provide some basic pastoral counsel that I hope will help us see some pathways forward.
I mentioned “deconstruction,” which, like “disenchantment,” is a big and complicated term that can mean different things. Here I use the term primarily to refer to people who have “dechurched” or “de-converted.” Those are not exactly the same thing. The first refers to people who say they are still Christian but who have stopped going to church for various reasons. The second refers to people who describe themselves as having left the faith altogether. In their book The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? (Zondervan, 2023), Jim Davis and Michael Graham note that the movement away from the church in the United States is greater than the numbers of people who came to faith in the First and Second Great Awakenings, and every other revival in our country, combined. That is a startling statement. And we also see a great surge of de-conversions—people who no longer identify themselves as Christians. In 1989, when Tim Keller planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, the percentage of religious “nones”—those who don’t identify with any established religion—was roughly 5% of the U.S. population and 25% of Manhattan. As of 2021, the “nones” made up 30% of the entire U.S. population. What happened in Manhattan 35 years ago, is now happening in the entire country, and moving more and more in that direction. Some researchers predict that Christians will make up less than half of the population by around the year 2070.
This is a great challenge, and over the last several years, God has put a deep burden on my heart to spend myself doing whatever I can to try to help address this state of things and to pray for renewal in the church and in the culture. I know many others feel this sense of urgency because they have seen it happening at a personal level. Many have seen former pastors and leaders, mentors and friends, children and grandchildren experiencing a crisis of faith and moving away from Christianity. We know that Francis Schaeffer himself at one point struggled mightily with the nature of his own faith, wondering if Christianity was a viable answer for the modern world. He went all the way back to the beginning, looking at the foundational basics of Christianity piece by piece before he was re-convinced by the truth of what he knew and was able to bring that truth effectively to others again through the ministry of L’Abri Fellowship. Another great pastor, G. Campbell Morgan, was raised in a Christian home, but went through a terrible season of deconstruction and doubt. At the worst point of his crisis of faith, Morgan came to a moment where, he said, “I was sure of nothing.” A lot of people are in that position these days. Many of us know people in this position. Perhaps you’ve even been there yourself.
I want to invite us to humble ourselves before the painfulness of this topic and approach it in the most pastoral way possible. We want to have the heart of Christ, who at one point wept over Jerusalem because the people there were like sheep without a shepherd. If we want to help others get past these feelings of anxiety and hopelessness and uncertainty, we have to have a heart to bless and serve them. I’d like to suggest two main strategies for doing this, drawn mainly from the work of Francis Schaeffer, who stressed (1) the importance of personal kindness, and (2) the necessity of honest answers.
THe Importance of Personal Kindness
Schaeffer observed that there were four things necessary to meet the challenges in his own day, and I think these same four things are relevant to our time. He said there are two contents needed and two realities needed. The two contents are sound doctrine and honest answers to honest questions. We’ll look at honest answers separately below. And the two realities he noted, without which the content is incomplete, are true spirituality and the beauty of human relationships.
In his own experience amid a church constantly at war with itself, Schaeffer saw how destructive a loveless orthodoxy could be. If you have sound doctrine but ugliness in your personal relationships, this can repel people from Jesus. That insight is still valid in our own day. One of the most common factors influencing why people have left the church in recent years is relational incompetence by Christians, particularly an inability to listen well and/or to disagree charitably. The person leaves not primarily because he or she did not receive an answer to valid questions, but more frequently because their concerns did not even get a hearing by those in the church.
Often, someone struggling with doubts or anxieties about their faith reaches out to a Christian in the church, but that person may feel threatened by the question or feels inadequate to answer it. Instead of simply saying, “I don’t know the answer to that. Let’s look for it together,” the Christian offers some pat answer that isn’t helpful at all, or worse, ends up making the questioner feel embarrassed or scolded for having even asked the question. Sometimes a loved one is going through doubts and deconstruction—maybe a college student who returns home with questions about their faith—and the parents’ first thought is that somehow they have failed in raising their child. They take the situation personally instead of simply realizing that it’s okay to have questions. Instead of responding with calmness, compassion, and kindness, their own anxiety causes relational damage and the questioner turns away from the faith.
We must acknowledge that these situations can be difficult to navigate, and some of the criticisms leveled against Christians are appropriate. But we must also acknowledge that sometimes the criticisms are not fair and occasionally the person with questions is simply looking for a fight. We must realize that it’s okay to have boundaries; we don’t have to take every situation personally or try to respond to every question with the same level of openness. There’s a complexity here that requires a measure of discernment.
At the same time, we have to be careful that our overall attitude as followers of Jesus doesn’t become defensive. The New Testament calls us to exhibit kindness even when we are being maligned. First Peter 3:15, tells us to answer those who question “with gentleness and respect.” Titus 3:2 speaks of having “perfect courtesy to all.” Colossians 4:6 speaks of “gracious speech seasoned with salt.” We are called, even when being attacked, to have love for the other person. That doesn’t mean we allow ourselves to be abused, but in every situation, the other person must feel the love of Jesus from us. From my own experience, I have seen how time and time again intentional kindness toward the other person can open up doors for gospel ministry.
I believe there’s a hunger for kindness right now, as our culture continues to escalate toward outrage about almost everything. We see this in the enduring popularity of TV characters like Mister Rogers or Ted Lasso—kind people who are non-retaliatory even in situations where they could easily be so. Many in our culture are interested in this. I see the effects of outrage in social media all the time. As one who uses YouTube as a major platform for what I do, I resolved from the beginning to have an irenic disposition, aiming for peace with people and wishing them well even as I debate with them about important issues. I have not done that perfectly, of course, but it’s amazing how an attitude of kindness can clarify a disagreement and open doors for pathways of positive discussion.
Three very simple practical things we can do in this regard are:
1. Pray for people and invite them to church. I am amazed at how rarely people are offended when we offer to pray for them, even people who don’t seem to have a relationship with Jesus. Some are more resistant, but it’s surprising how many are open to it, especially if they have something challenging going on in their lives. Simply committing them to the Lord in prayer can strike a chord that makes a big difference. It’s also surprising how many people are open to being invited to church. One of the main reasons that a large percentage of the population has stopped attending is not that they’ve suddenly become hardcore atheists. Many just got out of the habit during COVID and never went back. Some moved away and never found a new church. Others just drifted away and no one bothered to check on them or invite them back. One of the biggest needs today is simple hospitality. This goes a long way toward building relationships and opening doors for the gospel.
2. Practice intentional encouragement. In the midst of all the emotions we’ve identified already, people are aching for encouragement. A few years ago, I started to practice intentional, deliberate encouragement of others by putting it onto my Google calendar to text certain people and just offer them an encouraging word. I was astounded by how frequently I got responses like, “That came at just the right time,” or “I really needed that today.” It took 15 or 20 seconds for me to send a text, but for the other person that simple message might have gotten them through a difficult morning. People around us need encouragement all the time. We need to be intentional about practicing it more often. This can be a big help to our evangelism as we seek to reach those struggling with confusion and pain.
3. Practice listening. This may be the most important thing of all. It was Schaeffer’s main approach. He often talked about how, if he had just one hour with someone, he would listen for most of that time before responding for a shorter time. We need to be able to hear exactly where people are coming from, give them space to express their anxieties, their struggles, their doubts, before we just jump in with advice or platitudes that won’t really help at all. This often means we need to lay aside our assumptions and have an open mind and an open heart. Someone once said that you’re not really listening until you’re willing to be changed by what you hear. We can’t begin to offer help until we hear what the other person really needs and see how the gospel can address that specific need.
In addition to these practical things we can do, there are three assumptions we often make about those going through a deconstruction process— assumptions that are not necessarily true and that we should be wary of as we enter into these kinds of conversations.
1. All deconstruction is intense rather than casual. Not true. As we have seen, many people who left our churches did so not because of major theological issues but simply as the result of drifting away and not being invited back. We need to be able to distinguish the real reasons behind someone’s dechurching.
2. Someone struggling with doubts about faith must not have been a sincere believer to begin with. This is not necessarily true, and it’s often unhelpful to bring that assumption to your conversation. Many experience such doubts as a complete surprise and a source of pain. True Christians—like Francis Schaeffer and G. Campbell Morgan—can experience real doubts, and the Lord can use this process of questioning to strengthen someone’s faith. We must be careful about making assumptions about the genuineness of people’s belief.
3. Mature Christians don’t experience doubts and deconstruction; only immature Christians go through that process. Again, not necessarily true. We have so many testimonies from church history, and the Book of Psalms itself, which teach us that you can be a devout believer who goes through a period where the clouds cover the sun and you can’t see the light. We must be aware that mature Christians can struggle too.
The Necessity of Honest Answers to Honest Questions
Kindness and a caring attitude will go a long way toward opening doors to deeper conversations, but we also have to have something useful to say when we get those opportunities. This is where Schaeffer’s idea of honest answers to honest questions comes in. Our posture here should be as it is in other areas of ministry: We know we are not sufficient in ourselves but are pointing people to Jesus and the beauty of the gospel.
Here are a few very practical ways in which we can do that.
1. Start with the basic gospel message. One thing we discover when we’re interacting with those who have doubts about the faith is that often they have never truly responded in a personal way to the message of the gospel. They have never come to the point of receiving Christ’s offer of forgiveness. Another thing I see frequently is that people deconstruct their faith because they fail to do what I call theological triage—ranking different theological doctrines by their relative importance. Of course, all doctrines are important in one sense, but not all doctrines are of primary importance for saving faith. Sometimes people will make a second-level or even a third-level doctrine of prime importance, and if something causes them to question that doctrine, they begin to question everything else about their faith as well. One way we can help here is to point people to the Apostles’ Creed and other great historical standards of the church. These expressions of our faith emphasize the matters that are of prime importance for Christians to believe and adhere to. Other matters—like varying views on the end times or church government or other issues not directly related to salvation—are not matters to take so seriously as to deconstruct one’s faith over.
2. Learn some basic apologetics strategies and techniques. The word “apologetics” can have negative connotations for some people, but it is a valid concept that comes straight out of Scripture. “Apologia” simply means “defense,” and we see this used in 1 Peter 3:15, which says, “In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect.” Those words “gentleness and respect” are vitally important, as we have seen. You can have the most airtight apologetic arguments ever constructed, but they will be meaningless and ineffective if you don’t present them with gentleness and respect, with genuine love for the other person. The church has too often done this poorly. One simple and effective way to practice apologetics is to share your personal testimony. It’s a powerful defense of your faith to show how the Lord brought you from where you were to where you are, and it humanizes the process rather than making it about arguments and proof texts. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to offer good arguments based on Scripture, but we must remember Schaeffer’s own concept that “love is the final apologetic.”
3. Pray for open doors of opportunity. Even if you know someone well and have a good sense of where they are spiritually, it can be hard to get around to talking about the gospel. It helps me to remember that three times in the New Testament, Paul prays for an open door or asks others to pray that God would open the door. He did not just speak the same way in every situation. He was responsive to openness. And he was patient. We have to be willing to play the long game; that is, we may have to talk with someone multiple times over a long period before we see any real fruit from the discussion. It takes time to build trust and establish relationships that are safe for honest conversation. It takes time to really care for someone and not see him or her as a project to be undertaken or a victory to be won. In the end, the timing is up to God, not us. Our job is to be open to his leading and to let ourselves be used for his purposes.
Once we have the opportunity to speak, how do we do it? Here are three strong appeals we can make.
1. Christianity has a good explanation for our world. This is a wonderful basic appeal. Why is our world here? Why is it so exquisitely well ordered? Can all of that really be explained by mere chance? One doesn’t always need to get into the nitty gritty intellectual side of classical arguments about first causes or intelligent design in order to pursue this line of thought, but you should definitely know something about those arguments because they can often be useful and helpful to people you’re talking with. Many people today, having imbibed the basic atmosphere of modernity in which we live, have the innate perception that somehow the idea of a creator just makes less sense, given all our scientific advances. Other people posit that we live in one of a multitude of universes where there are infinite possibilities for how things could be and we just happen to live in this one. Everybody has to explain the origin of the universe in some way, whether by some mysterious force we can’t explain or study, or by purely material means that leave out the possibility of a creator. Our own reflection on some of these classic arguments might help us to invite people to consider the real truth, which is that the more you study the world, the more human knowledge grows, the more you see that the idea of a creator makes the most sense of all.
2. Christianity has a good explanation for the human heart and the human experience. Many who doubt Christianity or reject it outright still have a tremendous interest in love and justice. They’re not willing to part ways with the innate perception that love and justice have transcendent value. But in a secular worldview, it’s extremely hard to see where they get that value. They are reductively explained as the products of evolutionary psychology: we value love and justice because they helped our animal ancestors survive. Love and justice have no objective referent in the non-biological world, so they will have no final resolution or significance. That, ultimately, is a very dehumanizing idea. We have the opportunity here for stepping into what Charles Taylor refers to as “the unquiet frontiers of modernity.” Simply put, even unbelievers still long for certain religious qualities. We can press people on this point of inconsistency—with love and gentleness, of course—and move toward getting them to ask themselves, “Can I really live with this kind of worldview? Isn’t Christianity a much more satisfying way to explain the experience of being human?”
3. Christianity has a good explanation of history. Noted atheist Richard Dawkins shocked the world recently when he spoke of being a cultural Christian. Other atheists have said similar things. The reality is that many atheists recognize the tremendous amount of good Christianity has done in the world and that our culture, especially in the West, has lived off the fruits of this largest and most diverse religion in history that was founded by the intriguing figure of Jesus of Nazareth. There must be some explanation for that fact. Most of the time we’re not going to be talking with outright atheists but with people who claim to have at least some sort of spirituality. We can make a good appeal to them both from the claims of Christ and from the claims of his followers, that he rose from the dead, and that the best way to explain this is that he actually was God, he actually did rise from the dead. These are historically plausible claims that explain so much about the modern world.
Let me close with one final thought that addresses an anxiety we experience as we try to make progress in speaking to a world that is not very receptive to the claims of Christ. In addition to expressing kindness and supplying honest answers to honest questions, it’s important to remember that everybody needs God. Everybody is curious about God. Everybody is curious about what happens when we die. These are standard questions about life. Everybody asks them. They are not going away any time soon. No matter how confused the world gets or how anxious we ourselves may feel, these are the most important questions everybody faces. It’s a privilege for us to help others face them, bringing the truth to them in love, with gentleness and respect, and with a whole lot of prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray that the Lord would give us compassion for those who are struggling, and may he use us in his own time and in his own way to draw others to the glorious truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2024 edition of Covenant magazine and is adapted and condensed from lectures Dr. Ortlund (MDiv ‘09) gave at the 2024 Francis Schaeffer Institute Conference at Covenant Seminary.
