Where Is the Line Between Sharing the Gospel and Performative Faith?

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The Great Commission Really Does Require Public Courage

There’s a difference between telling a dad joke and sharing the good news of Jesus. One of those is how people can be reconciled to the God of the universe. We believe that the gospel isn’t merely one interesting idea among many.

That means “nobody asked” can’t be the absolute rule for whether or not we speak.

The disciples clearly didn’t have that rule. They were talking about Jesus even when people told them to shut up. And they clearly did this in situations where the people around them were uncomfortable. Some of the discomfort we feel with the “airplane guy” might be the gospel itself.

Sometimes we call something “cringe” just because we’re terrified of doing that thing ourselves. We can baptize cowardice with words like wisdom and sensitivity. So, I don’t want to mock boldness.

And that’s where I need to be careful with trusting my cringe meter too much. We can become so terrified of making anyone uncomfortable that we turn evangelism into something that can only happen once someone has explicitly asked us what we believe. That doesn’t seem particularly New Testament either.

But I’m still not buying an airplane ticket and planning to record myself holding the cabin hostage with a mini-sermon. The seriousness of the gospel gives us a greater reason to speak, but it doesn’t give us less reason to think about how we speak. In fact, I think because of the importance of the gospel, we need to be careful not to add unnecessary stumbling blocks between the person and the message.

Photo Credit: Unsplash/kanereinholdtsen 

Having a Captive Audience Changes the Moral Equation

I have a challenge for you. You might be able to succeed, but I’m having a really hard time finding an instance in the NT where Jesus or an apostle possesses social or physical control over unwilling listeners and uses that control to make them hear the gospel.   

Paul preached while imprisoned. He testified before governors, kings, and councils. Jesus spoke before Pilate and the religious authorities. But notice who usually holds the power in those scenes. It isn’t the preacher. Paul is in chains. Jesus is under arrest. They are proclaiming Jesus from a position of vulnerability rather than using their control of a situation to force an audience to listen.

There are several instances of something like “open-air” preaching. John the Baptist seemed to do this in the wilderness. Jesus certainly preached to many crowds. Peter did this at Pentecost and Solomon’s Colonnade. Paul preached at the Areopagus.

But notice something here. It usually happens when people are gathered (but could leave), where public discourse is expected, or because an event has created an audience. It’s much harder to find something like one of the apostles barging onto a ship and then preaching a sermon while they are all in the middle of the ocean. The closest thing you have is Paul in Acts 27 when the ship is threatening to capsize. And even here, you’ll note that Paul is a prisoner.

That means I wouldn’t make a hard and fast rule on this. If you’re a prisoner on a plane and it’s going down, maybe stand up and give one potentially final sermon. My point here is that Paul was on the first-century equivalent of an airplane, and we don’t see him commandeering it to give a mini-sermon. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem like he thought, “I’ve got 275 people who can’t leave. Time to preach. Silvanus—grab your pen!”

I think the reason for this has to do with love. Love for the message and the ones receiving it. Yes, the gospel is the greatest reason to speak. But that also doesn’t give us a greater right to disregard the people we are speaking to. If anything, because the message matters so much, we ought to care about whether our method helps people hear it or is unnecessarily getting in the way.

There is a difference between someone being offended by Christ and His gospel and someone being irritated because I’ve behaved like an inconsiderate jerk. Christians should be very careful not to confuse those. Sometimes we aren’t being persecuted, we’re just being annoying.

There’s another part of this story, too, that I think matters greatly.

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Mike Powell  

The Camera Complicates Everything

Recording yourself seems really weird to me. Why are you doing this?

Granted, it doesn’t make it necessarily sinful. And sometimes someone else is recording it and sharing to say, “See what I had to deal with on my plane ride.” But many times the preacher themselves are the ones recording.

Yes, my sermons are recorded. (At least they were, but the hosting might have expired). Missionaries tell stories about amazing things God is doing. We love testimonies, as we should. There are legit reasons for recording some of these things.

But Jesus also warned about practicing righteousness to be seen by others.

For the Pharisees, being seen had become the point. Is that the same thing as the airplane preacher? Is this just content? Would he have still been preaching if nobody online ever knew? Maybe. Would he still stand up and preach without a clip? I hope so.

I don’t want to assume someone else’s motive, but I think it’s part of what sets off my cringe meter. I know my own heart. I know how easy it is for the people hearing the gospel to stop being the real audience. We can preach to those who aren’t in the room. And when that happens, we’re mostly using people for our own glory, and that’s deadly.

That is where we start getting close to performative faith. Performative faith isn’t simply a faith that other people can see. The Christian faith is supposed to be visible. But performative faith happens when the display itself is more important than the people we’re trying to serve.

Think about the airplane video. Who is the main character? Who are we talking about?

Are we talking about Jesus? Is He the main character? Or is it the preacher?

Photo Credit: Kushagra Kevat/Unsplash 

So Where Is the Line?

I don’t think there is a simple rule that says Christians should never preach on an airplane. Nor should we be instinctually suspect of every act of public evangelism. But we also shouldn’t treat every viral act of public evangelism as automatically bold and courageous.

The line probably has more to do with posture than volume. You could be faithful with a megaphone or quietly share with the person in the seat next to you. We can probably find the line by asking some questions of our hearts and motives:

• Would I do this without a camera?
• Do the people around me have any meaningful ability to disengage?
• Am I thinking about what will help them to hear, or only about whether I’ve spoken?
• Would I admire this method if someone from another religion were using it on me?
• Do I love the people around me? (Yes, sharing the gospel is the most loving thing you can do—but I’d add a word there. Sharing the gospel in a way someone can actually hear is the most loving thing you can do).

The answer to performative Christianity isn’t silent Christianity. We are called to make disciples. But not spectators. And as Jesus said, “you’ll know them by their fruit.” That doesn’t mean we measure things pragmatically, but what kind of fruit is the airplane preaching bearing? Is it humbling to the one preaching—or is it puffing up? Is it encouraging the faith of others? Are more people hearing and thinking about Jesus and His message?

Are you looking for followers, or followers of Jesus?

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Vitezslav Vylicil