The next Billy Graham might be drunk right now.

Russell Moore:

The next Billy Graham might be drunk right now. That’s a sentence I remind myself of almost every day, every time I feel myself growing discouraged about the future. It all goes back to a conversation I had years ago with an elderly theologian (Carl F.H. Henry)....And that one conversation changed my life. 

Several of us were lamenting the miserable shape of the church, and about the downward slide of the culture....Henry seemed not the least bit unnerved by it all. Then he cleared his throat and offered up the rebuke I needed. It was right after I had asked, rhetorically, whether there was any hope for the future of Christian witness in the public square. 

 “Why, you speak as though Christianity were genetic,” the old theologian said. “Of course, there is hope for the next generation of the church. But the leaders of the next generation might not be coming from the current Christian subculture. They are probably still pagans.” 

“Who knew that Saul of Tarsus was to be the great apostle to the Gentiles?” he asked. “Who knew that God would raise up a C. S. Lewis, once an agnostic professor?.... They were unbelievers who, once saved by the grace of God, were mighty warriors of the faith.”

Of course gospel Christianity had, and has, a future. But the gospel Christians who will lead it may well still be pagans. He was right. Christianity is not like politics, rife with the dynasties of ruling families. God builds his church a different way. 

The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might be a misogynistic, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist right now. The next Charles Spurgeon might be managing an abortion clinic right now. The next Mother Teresa might be a heroin-addicted porn star right now. The next Augustine of Hippo might be a sexually promiscuous cult member right now, just like, come to think of it, the first Augustine of Hippo was.

Most of the church, in any generation, comes along through the slow, patient discipleship of the next generation. But, just to keep us from thinking Christianity is evolutionary and “natural,” Jesus shocks his church with leadership that seems to come, like a Big Bang, out of nowhere......Jesus will be King, and his church will flourish. And he’ll do it in the way he chooses, by exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, and by transforming cowards and thieves and murderers into the cornerstone of his New City. That atheist on the highway in front of you, the one who just shot you an obscene gesture, he just might be the one who evangelizes your grandchildren.