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How to Reach Secular People

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George G. Hunter III is Dean of the School of Evangelism and World Mission at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and has written such books as "The contagious congregation" and "Leading and managing a growing church". Hunter's stated aim in this book is "to draw together and systematize what is known about effective apostolic ministry to secular people in the West" (p. 18). He combines his own field research with the findings of other "reflective practitioners", a select group of individuals who have both worked at the apostolic task amongst secular people in Western societies and reflected on the process and outcomes in an organised way. Hunter confidently claims that there is sufficient insight contained in his book to help 99 percent of churches to triple the number of people they bring into the Christian faith.

After an introduction in which he outlines the process of secularisation in the West, Hunter goes on to compile a profile of secular people in chapter 1 followed by chapters on themes and strategies for reaching secular people and communication principles and models. The final two chapters outline the kind of Christians and churches respectively that help secular people come to faith. Given that the book is more a compilation of information than a developed argument, the chapter divisions and the extensive use of point form help to organise the data into a somewhat logical and accessible format.

The result is a mine of information, analyses and practical insights, many of which are new and groundbreaking, some of which are not. Almost inevitably though, Hunter is caught between the general and the particular, between limitations of scope and cohesive presentation of data. That his sources are all white, English-speaking males is a limitation Hunter readily acknowledges (p. 17). On the other hand, this cast is sufficiently diverse in time and place to make the attempt to conflate the data into a cohesive portrait appear artificial at times. After all, it is a long way from Soper's soapbox to Schuller's Crystal's Cathedral, from Alan Walker and urban mission to Bill Hybels and seeker services. Approaches which unleash the truly prophetic role of the church sometimes stand alongside those which surrender to the secular world's agenda and values. Many readers will tend to warm to certain "reflective practitioners" and their insights, while downplaying the contributions of others. Moreover, Hunter himself at times presents his Wesleyan theology almost as if it was a common factor.

As is the fate of all such books, "How to reach secular people" has an air of datedness about it. It was published nearly a decade ago and Hunter's sources are often considerably older. More reflection will have to be done on the impact of postmodernism and the New Age in Western society. This book is intensely practical and virtually prescriptive in format but will probably not be entirely successful if applied in a formulaic way. Rather, if it is used to help churches understand the people around them better, to infect Christians with the genuine heart for reaching secular people that Hunter clearly has, and to inspire and motivate congregations to become reflective practitioners themselves and try different things in outreach without reducing the "apostolic task" to technique and management, it will be a successful and valuable book.

Hunter effectively pinpoints and labels the different personality catorgories that "secular people" typically fall into. He then explains where their concerns with the Christian church originated. I was ultimately unsatisfied with his sections that profiled successful churchs. Those sections for the most part seemed to be common sense and lacking in any new important insights. Though something could be said for putting it down on paper. Worthwhile for anyone in ministry.

Hunter's thesis and title is how to communicate the Christian Faith to secular people. Hunter centers his argument on a systematic approach to effective apostolic ministry to secular people in the West (18). After introducing how the Western world became secular through shoddy historical analysis, blaming the Renaissance, Reformation, Nationalism, science, enlightenment and urbanization, Hunter attempts to display the schism between the Church and the secular world. A schism that was pervasive throughout the modern world, but now is able to somehow be bridged since the "Enlightenment is now extinct" (39). In gross oversimplifications and generalizations, Hunter first sets out to present a profile of secular people: the "ignostics," notional and nominal. Hunter provides a particularly negative portrayal of secular people. Ignorant to "basic" Christianity, untrusting and lacking self-esteem are just a few of such traits. Using this portrayal of secular people, Hunter displays "proven models" which are driven by communication and persuasion principles. Aristotle's rhetorical model, the adoption process and missionary principles are all considerations for Hunter in communication and persuasion. These models lead to a discussion of the importance of the type of theology evangelists use and also the attributes effective communicators have.
Hunter then draws a connection to the state of the church today as similar to the apostolic church. Hunter argues that a recovery of the apostolic ministry is necessary to reaching a "distinct population," communicating the gospel, raising converts, developing congregations and equipping and grounding congregations in Christian beliefs (110). Hunter then revisits the attributes of effective communicators, in a section profiling those Christians who reach secular people. These Christians focus on "a range of human needs," where the communicator meets the secular on neutral or secular grounds (125). Finally, guided by Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, Hunter profiles the types of Churches that reach secular people through contextualization, acceptance, being seeker sensitive and joining/starting new congregations in the practice of evangelization.
While Hunter provides a number of helpful tools to the practice of evangelism, such as his commentary on effective communication as being an active listener, friendly in nature, taking time and telling redemptive stories, there were a number of issues that were not so helpful (98-105). For example, Hunter briefly mentions that "new theologies are virtually impotent for making new Christians from the world" (92). Liberation theology has in its message and intent, a "rooted understanding of the faith at the service of the church's mission of evangelization" (Guitierrez 1988, xliv). While it is understood that Hunter is arguing for a mission field in North America, the theme of liberation still applies to ethnic minorities, the poor and marginalized communities in this same North American context. More importantly, the historical analysis of the six watershed events, noted at the beginning of his analysis, suggests that before these events, Christianity in its early and medieval roots was superior or right in its practice. Furthermore, it treats secularization as somehow apart from Christianity and Christian thinkers; for instance, Hunter states "the Renaissance and Reformation provided the one-two punch that got secularization rolling" (27). This view of history provides a poor platform to begin an analysis because it neglects both the atrocities of the medieval church, such as the Crusades, and suggests a normative claim to the watershed events as exclusively negative: positive examples include the Social Gospel movement and Catholic Social teaching. However, Hunter's view of history reflects the perverted language arguing for a Christianity that is "more caught than taught" (99) and is "contagious" (18). In an oversimplification of Hunter's argument, this rhetoric reflects a Christianity that infects society like a plague, rather than transforming the world through faithful Christian witness.

In his book entitled How to Reach Secular People, George Hunter profiles the different groups of people and the different church related activities that are involved in evangelism to the post-enlightenment, western world. He begins by suggesting an explanation for how Christianity's influence over people in the West is no longer as prominent and effective as it was before the Enlightenment. He understands secularization to mean "the withdrawal of whole areas of life, thought, and activity from the influence of the Church" (26). With the rise of humanism, nationalism, and urbanization, the breakup of Christendom resulting from the Protestant Reformation, and the increasing impact of science and human reason, the momentum of secularization stripped the Church of its influence and impact on the world. Because the West was lost to secularization, Hunter thinks that "Christianity must now compete on its merits if it is to rewin the West" (32).

Hunter then spends three chapters describing the characteristics of what he calls "secular people," and describing strategies for reaching out to and communicating with these types of people. Among other things, he suggests that secular people are ignorant of basic Christianity; they seek life before they seek death, and they have a negative image of the church (52). He describes strategies for reaching secular people ranging from meeting people's basic needs to empowering people by giving them meaning and self-worth. Hunter then shifts the focus of his book to the characteristics of Christians who are good at reaching secular people. These kinds of Christians are effective communicators who are honest and credible and they understand the power of secularization on the secular mind. They have a set of core convictions that drive their reasoning and they realize that secular people have doubts. Apostolic churches should be concerned with the lost and not with self-maintenance. They should have congregations that are accepting of people unfamiliar with church culture and should use "music that secular people understand" (151).

I find Hunter's book to be confusing, lacking in logic, and unchristian on many fronts. . I get the idea that Hunter believes that before the Renaissance Christianity was doing really well because it had such dominance over public life, cultures, traditions, and thought. Hunter's purpose for writing this book is to help Christianity win back influence over these public structures because Christianity has become "private, problematic, marginal and. . . eccentric" (31). Does he want Christianity to be public, unproblematic, at the center of the world stage, and normal? The logical groundwork for his argument collapses when he advocates for a Christian society, in which everyone is influenced by Christian forces of culture and thought, and then supports Kierkegaard in his Attack Upon Christendom in which Kierkegaard writes "when everybody is a Christian, nobody is a Christian" (33). He makes odd, sweeping generalizations suggesting that religions other than Christianity have truth claims that are negotiable (33), that Buddhism and Communism are atheistic (37). In the introduction, he is unchristian in his suggestion that Christianity should exercise control over people, so as to shape their minds and lives without allowing them to have a choice in the matter (21-39). I find his association of Christianity with democracy to be dangerous (30), and problematic and illogical when he later condemns the deification of political ideologies such as Communism (42). He condemns secular people's concern for life before death (45) and yet calls the church to cater to such a position by bringing meaning to people's lives (57), thereby implying that Christians do not need meaning in their lives because they are not concerned with the present life. Hunter ignores the negative aspects of pre-enlightenment Christianity and does not discuss the impacts of secularization on Christianity. Hunter's book would be more helpful if he displayed an awareness of the complexities of defining the secular person and offered a critique of current Christian witness.

George Hunter's central claim in How to Reach Secular People is that, due to the process of secularization, the Western world has become a "mission field" (13) again, a field that is "ripe for harvest" (38) in which Christians should actively seek to evangelize those person who have been "secularized." For Hunter, secularization, which he defines as the disintegration of the "Christendom arrangement" (25) resulted in the "loss" of the West, a process brought about by two major causes: 1) the coalescence of six major cultural movements -- the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the rise of Nationalism, the Copernican Revolution, the Enlightenment, and Urbanization -- spanning several centuries and 2) the church's forlorn, and, in Hunter's words, "pathological" (29) response to those events. Since Christianity has lost its hegemonic standing and surrendered ground to other ideologies the church must enter into the marketplace of ideas and "compete for the minds of people" (108) -- people who are not "churchbroke" (41) -- in order to "rewin the West" (32). Thus, in Hunter's estimation, the church finds itself in a situation not at all unlike the early apostolic church, indeed Hunter believes ours is an "apostolic age," a period in which the church must undergo an important paradigm shift in order to successfully evangelize and effectively capitalize upon the "new missionary challenge" in the secularized West (35). Apostolic evangelism involves informing persons of the gospel story, influencing persons and garnering positive sentiment toward Christianity, convincing persons of its foundational truth, and inviting persons to adopt the faith and join the community (35). Citing successful exemplars such as Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Robert Schuller -- all of whom are curiously pastors of mega-churches and card-carrying members of the church growth movement -- Hunter goes on to delineate successful and effective strategies for reaching and communicating with secular people all of which hinge on the supposition that the efficacy of evangelism is inextricably linked to its ability to produce converts and increase church membership (114).

If it is true that language creates our reality and colors our world, then Hunter's work, while perhaps well meaning, is a dismal failure and, in some sense, self-defeating. He seems to celebrate the crumbling of Christendom (33-34), yet by bemoaning the loss of Christian credibility (32) and claiming that the church should "rewin" the secular West throughout the book Hunter seems to be suggesting that the church should once again hold a prominent and influential position in society, indeed should perhaps be the catalyst in a "Christian society." The book's logic visibly undermines itself when Hunter superficially condemns American civil religion (24), appears to reject Western consumerism (45), and seems to denounce American individualism (80) and then proceeds to explicate an "apostolic evangelism" without questioning the theological grounding of each in the practice of evangelism in modernity. By suggesting that churches should mobilize like armies (158) and appropriate Sunday School as "evangelism's secret weapon" (68) Hunter still falls prey to the Constantinian social imagination of conquest which undergirds American civil religion. His emphasis on producing conversions (121-22), multiplying and growing churches (135-72), and reifying the Christian message in modern liberal categories (92-3) are demonstrative of his tacit deference to the logic of capitalistic consumerism. Finally, his pervasive use of the language of "winning" and lack of emphasis of the ecclesial grounding of evangelism -- unless of course it relates to church growth -- indicate his captivity to the vice of modern individualism. To put it bluntly, because Hunter fails to develop an adequate theology of evangelism and instead starts with the methodological a priori of "reaching secular people" he inevitably falls victim to the very logic he intends to jettison by, among other things, subjecting evangelism to the cold calculus of church growth. The statement that "the message is unchanging, but the forms and methods may vary" (148) turns out to be true in ways Hunter did not realize. The result is the same old evangelism with different window-dressing, the same core logic with different, more attractive language.