RETHINKING SUBURBAN EVANGELISM
In a day when privacy is prized, how can a church reach its insulated neighbors?
Calvin Miller
October 1, 1988
Suburbia: the push-button Zion of those who have made it and therefore have it made. There, amid the water sprinkling systems and lava rock landscapes, rises the new Eden with little need for God: Paradise Found, where churches ulcerate themselves trying to sell self-denial to the pampered. Can the urgency of the Cross ever be made real to those who cocoon in front of an entertainment center and insist on defining hell as dandelions and heaven as the proper side of town? Two women from our church once made a church visitation call to a new suburbanite. They were fearful but brave and wanted to extend the gospel to someone in need of Christ. They were convinced their "prayed up" status would deliver them from the mouth of the lion. They walked up to a door, rang the Westminster chime doorbell, and waited beneath a plywood-goose wreath that said WELCOME. It seemed a good omen. But all too soon they were met by a swaggering young muscle man-body by Nautilus-clutching a can of beer in one hand and a remote TV control in the other. Clad only in bikini briefs, the suburban chieftain spoke brusque Swahili. "Yeah?" "We're from the church," the tentative women offered. They had intended to say something more evangelistic, but as they observed privately to me later, "It's hard to witness to the nearly naked." The young Adonis, framed in his own middle-class doorway, blurted out a string of profanity, telling them that he wasn't interested in "the church." His profanity and near nudity crushed their spirits. There seemed nothing to do but mumble a "thank you" and say good-bye as the door slammed shut. The plywood-goose wreath lied! They returned to their car, sat down, shuddered, and shed tears over the crushing encounter. As they told ...
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