11th Hour Evangelism (part III)

and he said to them, ‘ why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ … He said to them, ‘You too go into the vineyard.”

ASPECT #3: The Landowner recognized the eleventh-hour group’s personal sense of self-satisfaction but was certain he could offer something better. When the landowner speaks to the eleventh-hour group, he asks them “why have you been standing here idle all day.” The word “standing” is the Hebrew term ‘Histemi;’ its definition includes “standing firm, continued safe and sound, of quality,” and “unhesitating.” The eleventh-hour group personally considered standing unemployed in the marketplace beneficial to them. The landowner first and foremost recognizes their personal sense of self-satisfaction and security.

But he is also fully confident in his own offer. The Hebrew term for ‘idle’ is ‘argo?’ Which translates as “Careless, Useless, or Lazy.” After acknowledging their perception of their market place idleness as “of quality and secure,” he tells them that in reality it has been useless. Such a bold declaration requires absolute certainty in his particular offer and leads to a two-tiered application.

ELEVENTH HOUR APPLICATION 1: Because of the lackluster evidence of the church’s “saltiness,” the world has become a haven for comfort, ease and technological dependence. The Daniel Project will repeatedly expose its outcome as cataclysmic. But in the immediate moment, the world’s offers are engaging, enjoyable and sufficient enough for the comfort and ease of the average citizen. We now face a citizenry dependant on outside mechanisms for daily function and interaction. Americans watch 8.1 hours of television per day, spend countless hours on videogame consoles, couldn’t think of living without iPods or cellphones, and spend whatever waking moments they can in fledgling virtual worlds like “Second Life.” Regardless of the implications, society has grown comfortable in that state. It is merely a part of the backsplash of modern life. The world doesn’t feel it is missing anything, and in fact turns the tables on the church, claiming they are the ones missing out on all the world has to offer. Which is where the second discovery leads us.

ELEVENTH-HOUR APPLICATION 2: Despite scriptural assurance that Christianity is the best way of living, the church’s evidence is grossly lacking. The church, as a universal body of believers, hasn’t failed society. But church members, inept at living life with more zeal, richness, depth, compassion, and insight than the average non-believer are soiling the power of the gospel. The church is grossly failing at living a “taste and see” evidential lifestyle. Instead, it is content to criticize others for what they place in their mouths. The church must recognize the failure of its voice: in both its evangelistic and condemnatory forms. Instead, it must actively live a Kingdom-focused life capable of producing such powerful evidence of Christ’s love and the Spirit’s wisdom that it silences every anti-Christian ambassador. The church must live the gospel, not merely preach it. Preaching requires no evidence of its claims. The eleventh-hour society, rife with a myriad of subjective voices, is looking for proof, not petitions. Megachurches and expository preachers may flourish if their sanctuaries are stacked with the first- to ninth- hour groups. But without verifiable, transformative evidence, the church will have fewer and fewer inroads into this eleventh-hour society.

“… They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’”
ASPECT 4: Nothing said prior resonated with the eleventh-hour group. Scripture makes it clear that the eleventh hour had also been “standing all day” in the same marketplace. But under questioning, the eleventh hour response was, “no one has hired us.” Nothing in the previous four petitions resonated with this group. It wasn’t necessarily that they were adverse to employment the vineyard, it was that they had felt no draw from all previous methods of solicitation.

ELEVENTH-HOUR APPLICATION: The church must not merely uncover and address societal needs; it must speak through the culture’s various voices. The eleventh-hour society is not looking for the church to repackage its evangelistic message in their language. The eleventh-hour society isn’t even looking for the church. But if “all truth is God’s truth,” then scriptural truth can be spoken and validated in the language of the domain in which it is applied. The church must avoid adopting culture to promote the gospel, but use the holistic Biblical Worldview to objectively explain, uncover, and remedy culture’s most troubling issues and concerns. It is not merely theology, but Biblical wisdom and understanding, that will be the foundational starting point for solutions in all of society’s many and broad domains. In a culture that has distanced itself from its Creator, the best its experts can offer is knowledge, which is rarely capable of transcending its particular sphere of application (experts in law cannot often speak into another domain, such as neuroscience). Wisdom, as a transcending and transformative force, becomes the lens through which knowledge is filtered.

The world will pay attention to the church when, through wisdom and understanding, it can better explain and apply the findings and discoveries of society’s many domains than any of its previous secular, knowledge-based experts. But the church was never meant to do this alone. The church must recognize the holistic and transcendent power of wisdom and develop strategic relationships with society’s experts in knowledge. This “paradigm of partnership” between experts in Knowledge and Leaders in Wisdom will ensure the church won’t dominate culture. Instead, it will shape it. Through the correct understanding and application of knowledge, wisdom and understanding, the church will become the forerunner to solving the world’s most complex problems in its own languages. It will rebuild the “ancient ruins” and by default become “the city on a hill” it was always meant to be. But it must do so with the utmost sense of previous regret and present humility.

“… They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into the vineyard.’”
ASPECT 5: Of the five groups of laborers, the eleventh hour was the pinnacle of humility and selflessness. While the other groups were promised some form of compensation, the eleventh-hour group (once engaged) went without negotiation or future incentive. They required no outlandish proposition, merely engaging dialogue.

ELEVENTH-HOUR APPLICATION: The church must recognize its moral superiority complex may be both the world’s – and God’s – greatest turnoff. Christians tend to see themselves as superior: morally, philosophically and spiritually. But despite our promised heritage as the principal purveyors of “truth,” our superiority complex may be God’s greatest turnoff. When the eleventh-hour group receives the same compensation as the first hour (one denarius), the first hour grumbles and complains. To this, the landowner refers to the first hour laborers as “evil.” They had born the brunt of burden in the “scorching heat” of the day. But the landowner still calls them evil. Why? Their focus was internal and narcissistic, instead of external and selfless.

Their argument for greater compensation was rooted in their own needs and based on their own previous accomplishments. But there was another way for the first hour group to view their position: that of the value of service to the landowner and his customers. The first hour was given the high honor of providing the most benefit to the landowner. His customers received the greatest fruit from the first hour group’s labor. But instead of enjoying satisfaction in their altruism, they remained egocentric. The attitude of the first hour laborers reflected, in part, their perceived value of the landowner and his customers.

We, as previous hour Christians, are often rightly seen as self-centered, self-interested, and self-absorbed. And despite the “moral” shortcomings of those outside the church, our selfish character traits are, to the world, more repugnant than the majority of their own pleasure-based “sins.” Because of our elitism, exclusion and hypocrisy, and its repellent effect against the transformative truths of our God and His Word, the world we currently find ourselves in – the society we campaign against and look down upon – is the world of our own making…

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