Three Mindsets that Make Evangelicals Ineffective

“For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.”

I am an evangelical. But I think that evangelicals possess several habits and mental frameworks that are uniquely ineffective at taking action in the world.

For example, when I learned that successful entreprenuer and Austin-based CEO David Perell was an evangelical Christian, I was surprised. His habits and manner reflected those of his social circle of successful, elite CEOs. His interviewees are the top writers across many fields, providing value to listeners of any and every persuasion.

Perell interviewing famous tech author Kevin Kelly.

Perell’s habits strike me as atypical, because evangelical Christians tend to have these three habits which make them ineffective in public life: ideological thinking, risk-aversion, and valuing what’s “Christian” more than what’s competent.

Evangelicals Think Ideologically

Ideological thinking is a kind of thinking that fails to receive outside input, assuming that an existing mental model is adequate. Christians tend not to interact with the world and non-Christians in an information-gathering way, but instead to show up with their Christian worldview already formed and deliver that to others.

This is illustrated by some comments of highly successful female venture capitalist Codie Sanchez. After talking to several billionaires, she describes how founders of successful companies seek out disagreement because, as she says, “they don’t want to be right; they want to win….All we care about is we want to information-gather; we want to always be connecting dots, and we can only connect dots if we see more of them.”

How often do you hear Christians say what she describes billionaire founders saying? “Tell me what I’m doing wrong; tell me what I’m missing here. I think this, but I am open to persuasion one way or the other.”

Do evangelicals “actively look for disagreement because they don’t want to be right?” Of course not. The evangelical belief is that in any such conversation with an unbeliever the evangelical already knows that he or she is right. But this means that evangelicals will not enter as many conversations looking to “information-gather,” connecting dots they haven’t already. The idea is that we connect dots at church through Christian teaching and training in apologetics, but our interactions with non-Christians are evangelisitic and combative, almost by nature.

If we exhibit habits the opposite of what successful entrepenuers do, we won’t be effective in our action in the world as they are. Often, evangelicals think that “winning” is just saving souls; but this ignores many of the more proximate objectives we have, and I think may result in actually saving fewer souls. Winning would be effectively making a dent in the world. It might mean making changes to society in the moral and political sphere. It might mean actually pitching our message so it’s heard well.

In order to imitate these founders, we need to adopt a conversational strategy of information-gathering, having productive, win-win interactions with non-Christians. I have begun to practice this by locating the kinds of non-Christians who are open to positive interactions with evangelicals. On my part, I enter such conversations seeking to learn and grow, assuming that they bring at least as much to the table as I do.

Evangelicals Are Risk-Averse

Next, evangelicals are risk-averse in taking action. To be ambitious is seen as prideful, so evangelicals tend to take a more low-risk strategy in their actions and allocations of resources, rather than the higher-risk strategy adopted by financial investors and entrepreneurs.

Aaron Renn argued this in his podcast, “Why Evangelical Are Not Leaders in Our Society.” He says:

If you think about the average Evangelical, if they laid out a vision - “I'm going to transform this community,” “I'm going to lay out a new business,” “I'm going to drive it to completion” - we’d probably say,…that's kind of prideful. It's very cocky. That's hubristic. Evangelicals would view that negatively. It just seems like the sort of thing that…[wouldn’t] really resonate in the evangelical world. So there's something in this evangelical-specific culture that is off.

Renn ties this to the “middle-class mindset” of most evangelicals, both in terms of the actual socio-economic class of must evangelicals, and their low-risk, maintain-the-status-quo kind of expectations.

Among creative and entrepreneurial types you see a kind of thinking big that is much more comfortable with risk and expecting investors and capital to flow in to a project that is worthy. Christians love ministries that run on donations, but profitable enterprises that affect the world and are self-sustaining can do as much if not more good.

I was struck by this recently in reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. Some of the phrases Elon said struck me as ones an evangelical never could or would say, for example, one that supplied Elon’s reason for creating SpaceX: “Humans have got to become a multi-planetary species.”

This kind of statement is striking because it reveals that Musk believes the future of the species depends on his actions. There is a kind of belief in “free will” or “contingency” that evangelicals seem to lack. Given the providence of God, does anything really hang on whether we act? Or is human action unnecessary and unlikely to accomplish much?

Also, Musk views his access to capital as entitling him to think big and accomplish goals that others don’t even dream of. Evangelicals, viewing their abilities and funds in terms of stewardship, often think of themselves as “custodians of funds” whose “biggest responsibility is essentially capital preservation,” like an investment advisor only investing “safely in bonds,” not doing “anything too risky.”

In the parable of the talents, the master tells the man who buried his one talent in the ground that he should have at least invested it at interest. Renn imagines evangelicals taking this as the preferred investment strategy:

Imagine if the guy who had five talents at first had, instead of going out and earning five more, instead of investing it and putting to work, had done what the master told to the person who had one talent. “You should have at least put it in the bank so you can make a little interest.… I'm going to invest it in treasuries.” And I think that is the mentality of the Evangelical, “I've been given something, and I need to invest it in treasuries, I need to invest it in low risk bonds.” It's not like, “Wow, I've been entrusted with this capital. I should view this like a venture capital opportunity. I should view this as a private equity opportunity. I should view this as I've been staked to start a high ambition business.”

Why don’t evangelicals view stewardship as giving them even more of a license to think big, compared to Elon Musk? Why not see vocation and the distribution of talents as a divine right to take a higher risk strategy in the investment of our time, abilities, and resources?

Evangelicals Want What’s “Christian” Over What’s Competent

Third, evangelicals are ineffective because they think their chief vocation in the world is to do something Christian rather than to do something with competence.

For instance, before forming the successful mainstream act Mutemath, the members had a Christian band called “Earthsuit,” inspired by a sermon teaching that our bodily existence is just a temporary and unimportant layer of clothing. (A gnostic idea, as Nicholas McDonald described recently.)

Christianity ... competence

Let’s just say that “Earthsuit” didn’t take off. Lead singer Paul Meany would later say that the only influence of “Earthsuit” on “Mutemath” was learning what not to do. As a result, Mutemath built up a mainstream following, even while members retained their Christian faith. (They also upped their style, as you can tell.)

In American evangelical culture, when somebody wants to affect the world for Christ, they think of forming a ministry and doing things for Christians, by Christians, with a Christian label. But I would argue that it would be better to do something that requires secular expertise and that helps people broadly, regardless of their religious affiliation, and to do it really competently.

Instead of judging what is Christian by reading the label, we should judge the Christianity of an enterprise, a service, or a band by its fruit. 

In preferring the Christian to the competent, evangelicals often want to do things with a good heart but are less concerned that they be done effectively or efficiently.

For example, a friend of mine spent a couple of weeks recently helping a ministry drive around people and things around and was struck by the incredible waste of resources involved. All involved were people of good will and intention, but someone with secular management expertise could make the whole system much more effective in its goals. Of course, this would feel more “impersonal” and perhaps less pious. But it would free people up to maximize their talents and resources. My friend reflected that his frustration was not from an unwillingness to serve; rather, he sensed that it was a dereliction of duty to misuse resources and talent into this way.

When evangelicals feel a call to use their talents for Christ, they leave their secular jobs behind. But so often this is like leaving the realm of doing things efficiently for the realm of doing things inefficiently.  Or, we think of a “Christian” version of what he’s good at. He’s good at business? He could use those skills for a ministry.

In thinking this way, it’s as if we completely failed to see what he was good at in the first place: Business. But his secular business was an application of his talents, for people’s good. Alternatively, what if people aimed higher in their actual secular occupations? Perhaps, the evangelical “feeling the call” is correct that being a mid-level employee isn’t the complete application of his talents. So do something entrepreneurial; change jobs; look for a position in which your talents are being used.

Penultimate Things, Shrewdness, and Christian Realism

A major reason we do this is because we have neglected the value of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “the penultimate things.” If something does not directly serve the ultimate good of people’s salvation, it feels like it is not of value. But this is quite contrary to Jesus’ teaching. Jesus urged that we not pray for people or evangelize them without attending to their material needs and well-being. In the parable of the unjust steward, Christ encouraged his followers to imitate the “sons of this world” in their “shrewdness”: “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” (I wrote a paper arguing against evangelical and Catholic interpretations that try to skirt around this.) In the parable of the talents, Christ commended relatively high-risk investment leading to the doubling of capital.

There was a time when a different philosophy of Christian action held some sway. The Christian realism of Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr was not endemic to the evangelical tradition. But being formulated in the 30’s and 40’s, it was the de facto public American philosophy in the 1950’s, continuing to have devotees from James Comey to Barack Obama.

Emil Brunner summarizes the philosophy of Christian realism and contrasts it with what he calls “Christian inwardness, … the obvious tendency of many earnest Christians to shrink from all external action, is based on good reasons.” After all, the world is complex and resists our good will and best efforts.

But in spite of the difficulty of and impersonal nature of effective external action, Brunner argues that, “It is here, in this borderland between technical action and ethics–in economics, in politics, in public life–that the great decisions are made.”

The Christian obligation?

Since God requires from us not merely volition but action, He requires us to enter into this ‘alien sphere,’ into this realm of the impersonal, and it is His will that we, as believers, shall prove ourselves within this sphere.” (Brunner, The Divine Imperative, 261-262.)

Christian action must not remain inward, pure, and ineffective, but must enter into the alien, secular sphere in which the world is affected and real good is done.

Back to entrepreneur David Perell. Why is Perell an outlier relative to Evangelicals? Perell only recently became a Christian. His habits and mindset were not formed in an evangelical context but in an Austin, Texas entrepreneurial culture. Even his turn to faith, according to several of his non-Christian, entrepreneur friends, was the fruit of his successful personality that dives into an area with complete focus and dedication.

If he had been an evangelical from the start, perhaps he’d have been sucked into Christian publishing, a smaller subculture, instead of contributing to the common good. He might have been encouraged to do something less daring. Just use your money for a charitable ministry.

But that’s not what he did. By having mindsets and habits of successful, effective people, Perell is a better exemplar than the majority of evangelicals of Christ’s command:

“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).