Party Apologetics

Discussing the Southside baptism party got me thinking about some greater truths. I think there are some greater lessons about holiness to be learned from it. To explain the title for this post, Dictionary.com defines apologetics this way:

a-pol-o-get-ics [uh-pol-uh-jet-iks] : (noun) The branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof of Christianity.

For a while, my basic understanding has been that personal holiness, demonstrated primarily through radical, otherworldly love, is the greatest of all Christian apologetics. The active presence of Jesus’ body in all its beauty more effectively proves his death and resurrection than anything I know. Because it’s hard to deny someone’s existence when you meet them face-to-face. In my experience, when people encounter Jesus’ very presence on earth, He becomes far more real to them when they encounter a convincing line of reasoning. The salvation stories of most people I’ve met support this.

I realize all of this is very postmodern of me, so you can call me “Pomo boy” or whatever you will. But regardless of the worldview it seems to reflect, it’s incredibly true. In the kind of way where I can’t deny the evidence (there’s the shoutout to all you modern types). And on a college campus, I think perhaps the best stage from which to defend the faith through love is a great party. Let me explain.

One of the passages that most encapsulates the concept of holy and “missional” living to me is Deuteronomy 4:5-8. I want our collective lifestyle to make people ask how our God is so near to us. And on campus, people love partying, so one of the primary ways we can cause people to beg the question is by partying differently. Much, much differently.

I love having parties that celebrate extraordinary events that lie outside the cultural norm. I mean, our culture celebrates birthdays and anniversaries…but not other life-changing events we’ve experienced? Seriously, people?! I’ll just say it:

Our culture sucks at celebrating.

As a church community, we long to redeem the notion of a party by celebrating whatever is worthy of celebration, no matter how out-of-the-ordinary, and do it in beautiful fashion. Hence we have “Pre-baptism life story” parties. And they’re awesome.

Some of our most effective outreach as a house church community has actually been in the form of putting on a party for a brother and sister, inviting friends from our hall or classes, and then pouring out love and encouragement like crazy on the person we’re celebrating (we literally call it “LoveFest”). It’s amazing how effective something like that is in ministering to the students at U of M. This world is not used to seeing people genuinely loved and celebrated. And when it happens, they take notice.

I’ll never forget an instance from this summer where we threw a birthday party for one of the girls in our New Life Team, and invited friends from all over campus. We spent about an hour going around and telling her what we love about her and how she’s changed our lives in incredibly significant ways. We told her how she’s made us understand who Jesus is just by being her wonderful self. There was laughing and crying and hugs and beauty all around.

And it marked the people who came.

Because nobody throws a party like that, but everyone longs to have a party like that thrown for them. Everyone wants to have a lifelong  impact on their friends, and everyone wants their friends to love them in the same way. But the world knows very little of community like that; the kind of community it longs for; the kind of community it was made for, being made in the image of a communal God. And we know that this is one of the best ways we can shine a light among the darkness of the party culture around us. And it’s a really hard light to ignore because it casts its light on the eternal longings of every human being.

On a college campus, most parties don’t actually serve to celebrate anything; they’re mostly means to escape and indulge. But celebration is much truer to the soul. At U of M, the Church is beginning to show the campus how to really party.

Now it’s your turn. What’s “the thing to do” in your cultural context, and how can you do it counter-culturally? How can you redeem it by embodying realities of the Kingdom of God and inviting others in to experience it along with God’s redeemed ones? In so doing, you will “defend and prove” the reality of the Christian faith to the people around you, and you don’t even have to read a book with a bunch of big words to do it.

(*In other news, I’ve decided not to post the third part of the Southside baptism series. There are some stories that the blogosphere just don’t do proper justice to. This is one of them. But rest assured that God is doing amazing things here.) And Technorati, here’s what you’re looking for to prove I’m legit: FR8W847QUN5W

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