Years back, when I had just joined the staff of the Cincy Vineyard, they were gracious enough to let me choose my own title. Granted, the job description was their doing, but they were wide open on what I wanted to call myself as the person who gave leadership to their Servant Evangelism efforts. My first suggestion was “Conquistador of Kindness”, which was shot down because of our lack of ability to land a consensus on the spelling of Conquistador.
Eventually, I became the ‘director of small things’. It’s was fun to have that title. If you’re familiar with the DNA of that church, you understand. We champion the belief that small things done with great love will change the world.
I still believe that to be true, and will continue to do what I’m doing – coaching leaders, thinking about outward focused churches and teaching in other venues when I get a chance. It’s just that the “director of small things” monikor got old, so I’m going to try out a new title for a while, while reserving the right to revert to the original title (when you make them up, it’s no big thing to do so).
I am now retitling myself the Director of Unapologetics. You’ll notice two changes…one, I’ve chosen to capitalize the big words. I think that looks nice. Secondly, moving from small things (which I will continue to do) to Unapologetics is in response to what I feel is our overwhelming tendency to apologize, particularly in the postmodern context. We are so freaking afraid of scaring people (or is it that we’re afraid of not being cool?) that we apologize all over ourselves for anything the Bible says that might be the least bit confusing to a not-yet-believer. We dumb down the context that we share the gospel with them to the point that if they really understood everything that we say we believe, they’d wonder why they were getting the wussy version. They’re postmodern, not postmortem.
I went to a Kansas City Roays game last summer. I didn’t grow up watching baseball, so there were things I didn’t understand, but you know what…they still played the game correctly, and no one apologized. (PA SPEAKER VOICE: You, in the third row…we apologize for the length of the game…)
Fortunately, I sat with a friend who explained things…I still didn’t understand it all, but it was fun, and I think if I went regularly, I could explain it to other people. I learned by watching and asking…not by them dumbing the game down to my level. I’m tired of people seemly apologizing for biblical concepts like sin, repentance, and Jesus’ passionate heart for pursuing the losers of the human race. I say more book of Acts and less Oprah.
No more wussy gospel. As the Director of Unapologetics, that’s what I say.
