NothinsGonnaStopIt!: measuring what happens

This past November, 2008, I was invited to do NothinsGonnaStopIt! at All Saints Anglican Church, a prominent Anglican church in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. It was founded in 1747 and the last pastor (and still a member), Chuck Murphy, is now the bishop of the Anglican Mission in America (AMIA), a church planting movement comprised of those evangelical and charismatic Anglicans who had left the Episcopal Church to align with the conservative bishop of Rwanda. Last year Bishop Murphy invited me to do the seminar for fifty AMIA pastors on a retreat in Pawleys. One of those in attendance was the current pastor of All Saints, Terrell Glenn, also a bishop in AMIA. Bishop Glenn was responsible for bringing me out for this more recent trip. His congregation is comprised of many retired couples who have been long-time Episcopalians and made the switch with the clergy to the AMIA. They also have a strong contingent of younger families.

As the 150 in attendance filled the room it became clear that Bishop Glenn’s strategy was to sell the seminar to the older crowd in hopes of them selling it later to the younger crowd, who would, perhaps, listen to it via DVD or CD. That this was his strategy was clear when I was asked to preach in the young families’ contemporary service in the fellowship hall on Sunday morning while Bishop Glenn spoke to the traditional crowd in the sanctuary. My preaching in that service was to create credibility for the younger people to embrace NothinsGonnaStopIt! later. As it turned out, many of the people who were supposed to be in the sanctuary played hooky in the fellowship hall that morning! It was nice to see them again.

As I saw the more mature crowd filing in for the seminar I immediately wondered how NothinsGonnaStopIt! was going to go over with a group of people who had no doubt been reading their Bibles for many years. Would I have the same kind of results as those younger people who have generally comprised my audiences throughout the years? Surely this group, who had walked with the Lord this long, would have more a grasp of the storyline. My surveys would tell the tale.

Survey Data

Out of the 150 in attendance, 99 signed consent forms that committed them to taking my “before” and “after” online surveys. As it turned out, 34 filled out the “before” survey and 30 filled out the “after” survey. While statistically this is actually above average for survey returns the esprit de corps was so high in the room that I blamed the poor response on the fact that I had asked them to do too much. It also might have had to do with problems that I had with Survey Monkey actually delivering the seminar to each participant. In retrospect, a “before” and “after” survey comprised of over sixty questions was way too much.

The first questions in my survey told me some things about who comprised my sample. The group was comprised of long-time evangelical Anglicans, most of whom were very familiar with the Bible. Half of them had gone to college but none of them (except the sprinkling of clergy in attendance) had had formal Bible training. Three quarters of them had never had any kind of course that took them through the storyline of the Bible.

As to the seminar’s impact, 50% of them said that although they had known the general drift of the story they now saw “new connections.” Another 30% said that they had known many of the stories but had no idea about how the stories connected into a whole. My perception, given the consistent feedback that I have gotten after teaching this material to mostly younger audiences throughout the years, is that this last statistic is usually higher than 50%. My future surveys, which will once again reconnect me with younger audiences, will prove whether this hypothesis is true.

One statistic that makes me question whether it was really true that only 50% of the audience only saw “new connections” and not something more substantial is the fact that 92.6% said that they had a new appreciation of the Old Testament. How could one really know the story if they do not have a firm grasp on the Old Testament, given that Jesus came as the fulfillment, or mid-point of a story that had begun in Genesis? In a separate question, another 92.6% said that they saw in a new way that the Bible was really one story. Furthermore, in regards to knowing the basic outline of the intertestimental period and how it prepared the world for the advent of the Christ, so critical for knowing how the story works, 54% said they had never even heard of the intertestimental period while 31% said they now saw in a new way how God had set the world up for the gospel story. This data would seem to say that more was going on than connecting a few dots. My guess is that this skewed data is the result of my ability to frame the questions correctly.

In NothinsGonnaStopIt! I present the thesis that the biblical writer’s view of human history must be seen as historical commentary on Genesis 3.15, where God said that he would put “enmity” i.e., hatred/war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This provides an interpretive “key” for the biblical narrative as the reader follows the story all the way to the end, in the book of Revelation, where Babylon the harlot is judged and Jesus returns triumphant. Despite a time of trouble on the earth such that will have never been seen before, not ever will again (Mk. 13.19), what God has purposed will come to pass (Is. 46.10) and nothing can stop it.

In light of my presentation I wanted to measure what the audience’s response was to this rendition of the biblical storyline. The survey indicated that 96.4% saw in a new way that God was in control of history. When asked an affective question about how they felt about the “unstoppability” of the story of God, they wrote in words and phrases like “comforted, at peace, excited and confident.” By implication this could be an indication of an unconscious embrace, to some degree, of what I call a “Star Wars” view of theodicy that sees God and the Devil as coequals and history is interpreted as a battle between the Force and the Dark Side with a great deal of angst about who will win in the end. The biblical position, clearly presented in the seminar, is that the “battle” is so unequal, with God in complete control, that I call it the “unbattle.” Once exposed to the biblical writer’s positions that nothing can stop what God has purposed, 100% of those who answered this question said that they could see why Satan would not want this interpretation of the biblical story to become common knowledge. It is interesting that 9 out of the 24 that answered this question said that they experienced some kind of spiritual warfare during the seminar. This could be not only an indication of a new awareness of the spiritual warfare dimensions in the story but of a new awareness of the reality itself.

Given Bishop Glenn’s strategy to have the elders in the congregation sell this telling of the story to the younger congregants, how well did we do? It is noteworthy that 96.7% said that getting this story out to the rest of the church would have an impact on the whole church. Attending the seminar also gave 83.3% a new sense of their unique role in fulfilling history and 26 out of 27 indicated that they had specific plans in mind about how go share the story and who to share the story with. These statistics fulfill two of my objectives, to encourage people to get involved in playing their part in the play and equipping them by imparting a truly biblical story to share with others.

As far as the story that people would share, I attempted to ascertain if they had grasped one of the central points, namely that in the biblical story the death and resurrection of a male child born to the seed of the woman is the only possible solution to what I call God’s “impossible dilemma.” How would God succeed in his command for Adam to multiply, fill and rule the earth when Adam had broken the creation covenant and was “on death row” because God had told him that if he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he would surely die. How could God proceed with his plan for the world if, in order to be true to his justice, he had to issue the death penalty? This is the heart of the biblical drama. What is God to do? He seems to have painted himself in a corner. The answer is that God has an ability to do something that no one else can do. He alone can create life out of nothing (the implications of the Hebrew word barah in Gen. 1.1). He alone could go forth with the death penalty and then raise the dead back to life. But, and this is a huge “but,” Adam did not die. Rather, God substituted an animal in the place of the man, thus laying the ground for the sacrificial system in the Old Testament that would look forward to Paul’s “second Adam” who would pay for Adam’s sin and then be raised to life to inaugurate the new creation.

The significance of this point not only has to do with its centrality in the biblical narrative but because in our postmodern world the idea that there could only be one solution (once the problem is understood) doesn’t play well when the common assumption is that all religious roads ultimately lead to God. So, would the seminar students get it? I’m excited to announce that 100% of those who filled out surveys said that they now understood why Jesus is the only way to God and 17 out of 26 wrote in that knowing this will help them tell the story in a new way to those who would hear their story in the future. By the time we were done, 26 out of 27 wrote that they had made specific plans to share the story with someone they knew.

As far as how the seminar affected their lives personally, 44.8% said that knowing the storyline would help their relationship with God and 13.8% said that it would take it to a whole new level. 92.6 said that they would now attempt to study the Bible more and 15 out of 28 wrote in that they had plans to study the Bible in conjunction with my seminar notes. Even more, 93.1 said that knowing the story would now help them to live in more alignment with the trajectory of the story as they improvise their lines in the human drama.

Before going to South Carolina, one of my intercessors felt that the Lord had told him that in the course of the seminar that I was to invite the Lord’s presence three times and that we were to wait on Him for a significant amount of time. The third time would be the longest and at the end God would visit the group powerfully. I weighed this word and felt it was the Lord, so three times I invited God to come and visit us and we waited in silence in His presence. Each time God came and “sat” on us like a blanket. The third time was at the conclusion of the presentation and at the end of the time of waiting I sensed that the Lord was singling out certain people to fill them with the Spirit. I asked these people to stand and then I prayed for God’s power to fall on them. I could visually see the hand of divine visitation on a number of them. When the surveys were completed 13 out of the 26 who wrote in answers to this question said that they felt powerfully touched by the Lord. One person said that she felt power come into her hands. She said it was a heavy and tangible presence. Another said that she rested in the Spirit in her chair and could not get up the presence of God was so heavy. One of the men, a doctor, said that he felt the power of the Holy Spirit go straight through him (“this never happens to me,” he conceded). Someone came up behind him and laid hands on him for impartation and he said that the power of the Holy Spirit rushed through him. He said that it was incredible.

Would the seminar participants invite someone else to NothinsGonnaStopIt!? 29 out of 29 wrote in their response box that the main reason they would tell someone else to go through this experience was that future attendees would see the big picture of human history in a whole new way. This was a clear indication that my first objective, to display the mission of God in history, had been fulfilled.