Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .
A New Second Work of Grace
A matter-of-fact religion no longer sells. Especially to the university student generation I work with. You know the sort of religious experience I'm talking about: religion without fire and fervor and mostly built on loyalty and duty. Plant a church offering emotion-less matter-of-fact religion and see who comes. You'll preach to empty seats.
What people want nowadays can be captured in a single buzzword: passion. Passion is one of the "indispensable Qualities" of a leader. And we want passion prominent in our religion too. Want that new job as pastor? Make sure you show passion in the interview. Want to be a great communicator? Learn to appear passionate. Want to be a popular college professor? Let them see your passion and your classes will have a waiting list. In today's world passion is highly prized. Indeed, being passionate may be more important than being true or right. People will follow a passionate leader with the wrong answer far quicker than the dry passion-less leader with the right answer.
Same for worship. We cherish passionate singing springing from a passionate relationship with Christ. Some evangelistic speakers have even tapped into this cultural phenomenon and have replaced their traditional invitation with a new approach: altar calls inviting people to come forward to be "filled with passion." Passion has become the 21st century's "second work of grace." People attending services who don't feel passionate while singing wonder what they're missing. Matter-of-fact Christians wonder if they're even saved at all. "What wrong with me?" they wonder. "Why don't I feel the passion everyone else here has?"
Matter-of-fact faith is in bear market decline. Passion is having a dot.com performance. Face it, why do we go to church? We don't go to church primarily to