This is an article I wrote for our Christian bookstore’s newsletter today. It has been adapted for C201. First, some scripture texts in no particular order.
No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life; he seeks to please the commanding officer. – 2 Timothy 2:4 CSB
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. – Matthew 5:10-11 NIV
If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – John 15:18-19 BSB
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. – Matthew 7:21 CSB
Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her. Ephesians 5:25b NKJV
Someone recommended that the Christian bookstore join some Facebook groups for small businesses. Seemed like a good idea, and our eclectic selection of jigsaw puzzles seemed like a good, neutral bridge on which to build. We joined one group and hung out there for a few days, but when we went to post something, noticed we’d been un-joined. So we joined again and posted a very simple mention of our puzzles with a picture, and within hours it had been taken down. I don’t think they liked the word ‘Christian’ in the store’s name.
If you were to check out that page you might see why. Lots of practitioners of alternative remedies and New Age therapies. In fact, I would argue that the entire page exists primarily for their benefit. Strange how in an age of ‘tolerance’ I didn’t mind being seen with them, but they couldn’t handle being seen with me
In the last census, 49% of people in our county identified as Christian. (Not bad for a mixed urban and rural area just an hour outside of religiously pluralistic Toronto, Canada.) But don’t think for a moment that means ours is a Christian town. In fact, when you compare it to average weekly Church attendance, you quickly realize that means very little, and the next census probably will show a lower number as both demographics and spiritual identification changes.
We are living in a post-Christian era, and finding ourselves increasingly marginalized. Different people respond to that in different ways. Some churches and online ministries teach that we need to capture control of “the seven mountains;” consisting of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business. But others take the opposite approach, believing that we should not engage with the broader culture at all but instead retreat inside church activities involving only church friends being our only form of social contact and where possible establish alternatives: Christian music radio stations, Christian universities, etc. (For the record, I’m not categorically opposed to such media outlets or schools.)
Both represent errors in thinking. We can’t be salt and light if we separate ourselves from everything and everybody, but neither can we expect that we’re going to create a theocracy where every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. That’s gonna happen. But not in the present. Not here. Not now.
Like so many other things in the Christian life, we should expect to find a place of balance. We should be purposefully focused on Jesus, like the soldier described in 2 Timothy 2:4 who doesn’t get entangled in civilian affairs, but we should also be the type of people who have what others want and need, and like what is described in Zechariah 8:23, they will come to us saying something like, ‘We want to be part of all you have and what you are doing, because we see that God himself is with you.’
And that, what I just described, is happening. Three times in the past two weeks I’ve talked with people who are finding their way to Jesus despite rumors to the contrary that God is dead, or that Christianity is irrelevant. And I’ve had a customer tell me about another one.
Everyone I talk to — even those generally pessimistic — sense that despite opposition, something great may be around the corner. (Or perhaps persecution and fruitful ministry will exist side-by-side. That’s a subject for another day!) Three of the 12 evangelical churches in our communities are currently in the middle of a teaching series on church, both the capital ‘C’ worldwide Church, and the local church where we live. We believe in it and all its possibilities. And Christ loved the Church (and loves the lower-case “c” church).
Furthermore, not to diminish the reality of spiritual forces, or the opposition I experienced in that Facebook group; the enemy of our faith right is not overtly ‘anti-Christian,’ but rather apathy. We need to be thinking, speaking, promoting matters of faith, because faith matters. We need to be speaking these things to our children and writing these things on our walls.
49% of the people in our community at least paid lip service to Christianity in the census, which means there will never be a better opportunity to live out real, genuine Christ-following as there is right here, right now.
What about where you live?
Christianity 201 
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