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Two decades in evangelicalism didn't do it. Planting a church didn't do it. A master's degree from Fuller Seminary didn't do it. Years of teaching theology at evangelical schools didn't do it. It was a Saturday morning trip to the Rose Bowl that finally showed me what evangelicalism is all about.

That day a revival meeting came to my town, as The Call inaugurated a 40-day fast in Southern California. When I arrived, an estimated 20,000 people were praying, kneeling, dancing, and milling around. The news reports called them "young people," probably because reporters are used to associating church with the elderly, but they spanned at least three generations. The parked buses said they came from all over the western United States and all over the denominational map, and the faces in the crowd said they came from nearly every tribe, tongue, and nation.

On my way out, I couldn't resist visiting the three demonstrators who had caught my eye on my way in. "The Call leads to hell," their signs warned. An exasperated audience surrounded each. "Who are you?" one listener demanded. Her answer came as a pamphlet from a group called A True Church. It featured a list of the false teachers and enemies of the faith the group had come to warn us about: "Benny Hinn, Billy Graham, Bobgans [Martin and Deirdre Bobgan], Charles Spurgeon, Charles Stanley, Chuck Smith, David W. Cloud, Dr. [David] Jeremiah, the Early Church Fathers, Glen Conjurske, Greg Laurie, Jack Hayford, James Dobson, John Hagee, John MacArthur, Keith Green, Miles McPherson, Paul Chappell, Raul Ries, Steven Shoemaker, T. D. Jakes, Tony Evans, Vernon McGee, Catholicism, Central Christian, Church of Christ, COGIC, Coptic Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses, Laurel Glen Bible, March for Jesus, Mormonism, New Life Center, New Wine Christian Center, Promise Keepers, Seventh-day Adventists, Stine Road Baptist, Valley Baptist, Valley Bible, Weigh Down Workshop." Whew!

"How many are there in your church?" another asked.

"Thirty-five."

"What is so wrong with tens of thousands of Christians praying together?" asked someone else.

"They are ecumenical."

It hit me that day that there are two kinds of evangelicals: those who make distinctions, and those who don't. The dialectic of hospitality and separation is what brings tens of thousands into the Rose Bowl to plead for the Spirit to come, and also brings three outside it to warn them away. It is the key to who we are.

"You are God's field, God's building" (1 Cor. 3:9). Praise God that Paul wrote before the rule against mixed metaphors. Ramming these two images together exposes the dialectic that brings evangelicals together even as it pulls us apart.

The trick is to keep the metaphor mixed, to be both a field and a building at the same time. Theologians call it "apostolicity." The apostolic way embodies unity and difference with practices of both continuity and discontinuity.

We evangelicals have been about as good at that as the Corinthians. Eschatological confusion has created unnecessary and unhealthy tension within our movement. Inside the Rose Bowl, the people of God are a field of possibility, lacking everything but the promise that alone assures a harvest. Under the picket signs the people of God are a strong building, lacking nothing so long as it stays securely on its one foundation. One looks above and so finds itself glancing outward; the other looks below and finds itself drawing inward. Each looks at the other and sees an enemy, yet at the same time it sees itself.

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February 2004, Vol. 48, No. 2