Give the People Something Timeless
Evangelicals, History and Eternity
As you may know, this year marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. This church council clarified the biblical teaching that Jesus is the “same substance” as the Father. In other words, Jesus has the same God-nature as God the Father. He is fully God. Christian leaders, following Scripture and empowered by the Spirit, taught the church how to best talk about Jesus.
There is much more to this story, but I’ll pause there. I want to approach the topic through the lens of my own conversations and experiences over the last year. Last week, I spent 7 days grading AP history essays with some amazing teachers from all around the nation. As we graded, we talked (more than we were supposed to), and I was reminded of how many people of my generation are “exvangelicals.”
Some of these new friends, like several of my old friends, have forsaken the church. There are a lot of reasons for this that I can’t get into, but for the most part, these once active church members have rejected evangelicalism and its support of Republican politics for a 21st-century gospel that focuses on social justice toward those marginalized by their race, sexual orientation, or gender identity. I’m sure there is more to it than politics, but in my conversations, politics looms large.
On the other side, I have friends who have rejected evangelicalism for more traditional forms of Christianity. They convert to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. In case you don’t know, this is a rapidly growing trend. Again, I can’t deal with this in detail (see Gavin Ortlund’s book if you want more on this), but my short take is that my friends detest the market-driven, consumeristic ethos of the modern evangelical church. To them, the thin ecclesiology and lack of sacramentalism make church irrelevant.
Coupled with bad experiences in evangelical churches, they desire God, but they want to find him in a different way. Catholicism or Orthodoxy gives them something that seems timeless. They get ritual and liturgy that have been around long before they were born and will be around long after.
From my vantage point, these are opposite reactions to the same problem. With good evangelistic intentions, evangelical Protestant churches have sought to make their message relevant. They have brought in “cooler” music. They have become more casual. They preach very practical sermons. They speak to pressing cultural and political topics. They focus on greeting newcomers and making people feel comfortable.
These are not evils, and I’m not even arguing that they should be stopped. Yet, the reality is this—when our worship is more outward-facing than upward-facing, people will learn the lesson. We taught them to care about what the 21st world thinks, and many of them did just that. We tried so hard to be relevant that we left out the eternal. We were timely and forgot about the timeless.
This is why my generation seems to be going in two different directions. Some replace the gospel with social justice and are now exvangelicals. Others saw how trivial that perspective was and rejected the outward-facing ethos of evangelicalism. These may walk into an Orthodox Church, and their eyes will be drawn upward to an icon of Christ ruling the universe in the church’s central dome. As the incense rises, they will feel like their soul is finally in communion with God. They will feel like they have found something truly timeless.
Are biblically faithful evangelical Protestant churches doomed? Not at all! Global Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in its vibrantly evangelical manifestations. The future is bright, even if it’s a little bit dimmer in the USA. We have good reason not to bow to current cultural and political fads. After all, one can never be woke enough. We also have good reasons to reject Catholic and Orthodox theology. Unbiblical teachings about Mary and the veneration of icons would have been appalling to the earliest Christians. We don’t have to reject evangelicalism, but we can do it better.
How do we do it better? I suggest that we have the courage to be Protestant. We are a reform movement in the one true universal church that seeks to restore apostolic Christianity by focusing on the teachings of Christ and his Apostles as found in Scripture. Own this. There is nothing to be ashamed of here. We are rooted in something much bigger than our moment. More than anything, people need God’s transcendent word.
Protestants also have the wonderful doctrine of the “invisible church.” This is the idea that the true church is not an institution but rather is seen only by God. (Catholics and Orthodox reject this.) While we manifest the invisible in our local congregations, God sees that there are true believers in different churches.
Why does this matter? Importantly, it allows us to be charitable to those of other traditions, even ones that we seriously disagree with. Secondly, it allows us to drink deeply and broadly from the wells of church history. We can rejoice in the faithful apologetics of Justin Martyr or the biblical orthodoxy of Irenaeus and Athanasius. We can deal critically and respectfully with the theology of Augustine and Aquinas. We can be overwhelmed by the truth bombs coming from Luther and Calvin, even if we aren’t beholden to everything they teach. We can also be encouraged by our own evangelical trailblazers like George Whitfield, John Wesley, and early Baptists.
Being Protestant should make us proud of being part of God’s invisible universal church. There is a lot to learn from the church throughout the ages.
At the same time, church history informs us of an ugly but all too real truth—God uses “jars of clay” to deposit his overwhelming power. In other words, he uses flawed people. (We should have learned this lesson from every book of the Old Testament.)
John Henry Newman, a famous convert to Catholicism, said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” Newman was a very intelligent man (although a terrible mailman), but I am convinced that the opposite is true. To be deep in history is to see both the beauty and the ugliness of God’s people. We are, as Martin Luther taught, “simul justus et peccator,” saints and sinful at the same time. If you are looking for the perfect local church or denomination, you will be disappointed.
In being Protestant, we can offer our people something that transcends our time—the truths affirmed by the church throughout time. Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries did not shy away from the Ancient creeds. Even many early General Baptists (a more low church movement than most) sought to show that their doctrine was in line with the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.
As Protestants, we are always looking to Scripture first as the rule of faith and practice, but we can also rejoice in the faithfulness of God’s people in time. We can see that the Nicene Creed faithfully expresses scriptural truth about the nature of Christ. We can rejoice that the church got this right despite persecution against Athanasius and the pro-Nicene crowd.
Pastors and church leaders, give your people things that our bigger than our time. Give them Scripture first, give them a history that goes deeper than our nation, give them the history of God’s people warts and all, and give them the Nicene Creed. Recite it in unison as God’s people have done for the last 1700 years. Do so with vigor! Make them feel like they are part of something bigger than this 21st-century consumer culture, because as God’s people, they are exiles in this land. Make sure they are rooted in something transcendent. Make sure their roots go all the way up.
- Nicaea: A Primer - June 27, 2025
- Give the People Something Timeless - June 13, 2025
- “Taught by God: Ancient Hermeneutics for the Modern Church” – A Review - December 6, 2024
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David, thank you for sharing this. An antidote and a balanced and nuanced response to the two extremes you pointed out.
Bless you, David. I would like to forward this and I don’t see how?
At the bottom of the article, just below the Author bio, there are various icons to share on different social media platforms.
Thanks for reading!
Excellent read David! Thank you!
“Pastors and church leaders, give your people things that our bigger than our time.“ – YES