Don't it always seem to go that you don't know you've got till it's gone

If you are old enough (or, young enough) to get the reference, the title of this blog post is a line from a 1970 song. The next line is, "They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot."

This is a post about things that we have as Evangelical Christians, but perhaps have failed to cherish and value. These are reasons to stay Evangelical - even if other Christian traditions might at times seem appealing, tempting even. Evangelical Christianity is the faith I have received, the form of Christianity I was born into spiritually, and which has been my home since 1991. At least in this post, my concern is not to question the legitimacy of other Christian traditions, such as Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, or the faith of those brought up in those traditions, so much as to value my own tradition, and to encourage my fellow evangelicals to "stick with it" and "dig deeper" rather than going elsewhere.

This blog is dedicated to a couple of dear friends who in recent months and years have experienced all this first hand. They know who they are! 

Here are ten aspects of evangelical Christianity which represent "what we've got", and what, I hope, we don't want to lose.

1. Evangelical Christianity was where you and I were born spiritually, it is where we "come from", it is who we are, it is the faith handed down to us and what we have received. I want to start here, because so often the appeal of other forms of Christianity is that they are "more ancient" and more legitimate. But what could be more legitimate than your spiritual parentage? The Apostle wrote to the Corinthians, "For you may have countless instructors in Christ, but you don’t have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel."

2. Secondly, evangelical Christianity is the form of Christianity most shaped by the Word of God. Protestant and Evangelical Christians are the ones who have translated and studied God's Word. Evangelical piety centres around Bible reading, Bible study, Biblical preaching, and thinking Biblically about the things of God. While other traditions do claim to revere Scripture in the same way or more, this is not borne out in practice. As a rule non-Protestant Christians have poor knowledge of the Bible, and far less interest in feeding on God's word daily. 

3. Thirdly, Evangelical Christianity is where I have best experienced "church". Now, by "church" I don't mean liturgical sophistication, or ancient customs, I mean what "church" actually means, namely the supernatural event of two, three or more believers gathering in one place in Jesus' name. Wherever and whenever that happens, there is a promise from the Lord, "there am I in their midst." We experience this presence of Christ by his Spirit on a weekly basis - sometimes more powerfully, sometimes less so. Whether it is powerful preaching, heartfelt praise, soul-wrenching prayer, soul-warming fellowship, invigorating means of grace, or just the oasis of being gathered with other believers, it is in evangelical Christianity that we have experienced these things. And, of course, that experience of fellowship is not limited to "public worship" but is lived out in shared lives throughout the week.  

4. Fourthly, Evangelical Christianity is clearest on the gospel. It is in evangelical churches that the message of God's unexpected, generous and sufficient grace in Christ to everyone who believes is clearly believed and proclaimed. Evangelical Christianity is all about what is "of first importance: that Christ died for our sins... that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day..." In terms of the benefit we derive from Christ's work, absolutely foundational is the truth, apparently played down or even denied in other parts of the Christian church, of justification through faith alone. This is the basis for our confidence that we are God's people, accepted by him, standing in grace before him. This confidence, far from an excuse to believe and do nothing else, is the basis for a lifetime of obedience and praise. We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone. All this has always been clearly taught since the Reformation - and indeed we can also see this truth peeking through in earlier centuries of Christian history by church fathers and others (I would refer you to the work of Nick Needham on this subject).  

5. Fifthly, this gospel truth is never clearer than in the evangelical celebration of the Lord's Supper. Now, communion has been something of an "Achilles heel" for Protestants, especially when our overreaction to Roman Catholic teaching has led us to an empty symbolism, where the bread and cup become reminders of what Christ has done rather than "the communion of the body and blood of Christ". I would be the first to say that the "circumstances" (external details) of how we celebrate the Supper are often far too low-key or, as someone said to me recently, "sloppy". That being said and conceded, our neglect in respect of the circumstances does not negate the virtue of this means of grace. It is at the Lord's Table that we most clearly appreciate the gospel truth as proclaimed, for example, in the Church of England's prayer of humble access. I will quote it in full, as it is truly wonderful. "We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table; but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.  Amen." Every card-carrying free church evangelical should wholeheartedly affirm every word and phrase in that prayer. If not, may I suggest you go back to your Bible and hear again what the teaching of the Lord and Apostles really is. 

6. Sixthly, those same evangelical truths are best celebrated in the evangelical tradition of hymnody (songs). Classic hymns such as "Hark the Herald Angels sing", unashamedly evangelical in their wording and theology, are now part of parcel of Roman Catholic hymnody (Eastern Orthodoxy is rather less open to non-orthodox praise material). We have a wonderful heritage of Spirit-inspired hymns and songs. In many cases, this can be treasured by singing old hymns (the good ones). It can also mean praising God in new songs which draw on the heritage of the past. Writers such as Townend and Getty are not innovators, but adaptors, and singing their new pieces connects with the past as well as engaging with our ever changing present. To leave evangelicalism for another tradition will involve distancing ourselves from these wonderful expressions of praise infused by the Holy Spirit for musical traditions perhaps culturally more sophisticated, but Biblically and spiritually poorer. 

7. Seventhly, Evangelicalism is arguably better connected with the ancient Christian past than other apparently historic traditions. When we read the church fathers of the earliest centuries, we are dealing with churches marginalised by society and bereft of any political power. Members of these churches were known as the "faithful" i.e. believers, not simply attendees willing to repeat the liturgical answers but without faith or enthusiasm. Those churches exercised active discipline, excluding those who sinned and restoring them to fellowship. They treasured God's Word, taking centuries to decide on the small number of disputed books (most of the canon was settled by 180), aware of the infinite chasm between God's Word (such as the letter to the Hebrews), and valuable human writings (such as the writings of the Apostolic Fathers). This connection with the past is not limited to the "early church". When the Reformers of the 1500s rediscovered the gospel, they did not labour under the illusion that they were the only ones to understand the gospel since the time before Emperor Constantine. On the contrary, they reconnected with those throughout church history who likewise treasured the gospel, such as Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Wycliffe and Jan Hus - and many more besides. Luther's own "spiritual father", Von Staupitz, although he remained a Roman Catholic, was the one who taught Luther to rely on God's mercy and look to Christ. 

8.  Eighthly, Evangelical Christianity is a tried-and-tested faith "boasting" (you know what I mean) thousands of examples of those who have "run the race" before us, and whom we can learn from. While we don't have "saints" as such (all believers are saints), we do have "heroes of the faith". The Apostolic command is "become imitators of me, as I am of Christ." In some cases these "heroes of the faith" have been assigned days in the calendar in similar ways to canonised saints. Aside from those shared with other Christian traditions, such as Patrick of Ireland or Raymond Lull, Protestant/Evangelical Christianity has a sizeable "cloud of witnesses": from CS Lewis to Mary Jones, from Eric Liddell to Thomas Boston, from John Bunyan to Katharina von Bora. To catalogue all these "heroes of the faith" would take an encyclopaedia - and is certainly beyond the scope of this blog post.  

9. Ninthly, evangelical Christianity has been at the forefront of evangelistic and missionary work worldwide. An early criticism of Protestant Christianity, for example by Counter-Reformation scholar Bellarmine, was that we were not evangelising non-Christians (as the Roman Catholic church was doing at the time). This criticism has not been true since the Dutch Reformed missions in the early 1600s, outreach to the First Peoples in the Americas, the work of the Pietist missionaries from the 1700s, and later the explosion of Protestant mission work from William Carey onwards during the long "Great Century" (1789-1914). Later, in the twentieth century, Wycliffe Bible Translators and countless other missions carried forward the Great Commission. This work has seen demographic sea changes in countries such as Nigeria, South Korea, Latin America, and the People's Republic of China. In other places, work has been much slower, and we continue to pray and serve.   

10. Finally, evangelical Christianity focuses on the person of Christ. This is perhaps the most important point of all. The Apostle wrote, "My goal is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death." This is what evangelical Christianity focuses on. Not on Mary, the God-bearer. Not on ceremony. Not on impressive architecture. Not on sophisticated choral music. Not on paraphernalia for aiding prayer. Not, I hope, on a fixation with the written Word which eclipses Christ. But on Christ himself. Read John Calvin's chapter on Christ in the Institutes. Or Charles Spurgeon's opening sermon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Or John Stott's book Incomparable Christ. I want to follow a version of Christianity that makes much of Christ - I imagine that is what you want too. 

The song I referred to at the beginning of this post (Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell) is all about losing valuable things, such as trees, birds and bees, and then compensating for their loss with artificial replacements that are no substitute for the real thing. That seems pretty similar to the claims of churches that look down on evangelical Christianity but lift up exalted titles, maze-like church calendars, gruelling spiritual disciplines, complicated theological works, and so forth. I don't want a parking lot; I want paradise. In Colossians, the Apostle sums it up, "In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Why go looking elsewhere?