There is no doubt that evangelicalism today is in a state of perplexity and unsettlement. In such matters as the practice of evangelism, the teaching of holiness, the building up of local church life, the pastor’s dealing with souls and the exercise of discipline, there is evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with things as they are and of equally widespread uncertainty as to the road ahead. This is a complex phenomenon, to which many factors have contributed; but, if we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that these perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip on the biblical gospel. Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty. Why?

We would suggest that the reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God-centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be ‘helpful’ to man—to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction—and too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel was ‘helpful’, too—more so, indeed, than is the new—but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of divine sovereignty in mercy and judgement, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace. Its centre of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the centre of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach people to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and his ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed. (125–126)

Enculturation is the net result of the church’s failure to understand and appropriate the primary and secondary elements of renewal which define the meaning of fullness of life in Christ. It almost inevitably appears over a period of time in which any of these dynamics is substantially missing in the church. It is a kind of rust which forms on the surface of the church’s witness and clouds the glory which ought to shine out from it to illuminate the nations. At its worst, it destroys the church’s life. At best, it freezes the form of the church and produces a sanctified out-of-dateness which the world can easily learn to ignore. In periods of awakening, the church is all growth and movement as new and creative expressions of the gospel are shaped to communicate to the surrounding culture. With the onset of spiritual decline, the church’s expression ceases to be creative and becomes mere rehearsal of the forms that once expressed life and spoke to the world with arresting power.

Despite their weaknesses, the religious language and hymnody of the Moody era came out of such a vital movement of the Holy Spirit. But their continued dominance in many sectors of the Evangelical church life a hundred years later is not a testimony to their spiritual power but to the deadness of twentieth-century Evangelicalism. The church ought to be like a mobile sculpture in which fixed forms of truth and fellowship are constantly shifting their relationship to harmonize with the décor of the social and cultural environment. Enculturation freezes the form of the mobile until it becomes a static monument, a reminder of the past which appears to have no relevance for the present. (197–198)

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