I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church! by Paul Nixon

Author:Paul Nixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pilgrim Press
Published: 2006-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

4 CHOOSING BOLD OVER MILD

What used to pass for coffee in this culture doesn’t quite do the trick anymore. Even McDonalds has traded what many in the 1970s considered the most dependably good cup of coffee in town for this high octane stuff they call Premium. Maybe the proliferation of Starbucks has driven this. Or maybe Starbucks and McDonalds have just skillfully read the tea leaves (or coffee beans, in this case) and then marketed in sync with the times. In the early years of the twenty-first century, it is clear to me that bold is trumping mild hands-down. And it isn’t just coffee.

Our mild Anglo-Saxon eating habits in middle America have been accosted by an influx of Mexican and Thai restaurants and a jovial guy named Emeril who preaches on the Cooking Channel the need to “kick it up a notch.” Kicking it up a notch is more than simply good advice for gumbo. It extends beyond food.

It has become almost impossible to get elected to high office in the United States trying to straddle political middle ground. To get elected these days, the voters want to see a little mad-dog passion in a candidate’s eyes, and a bold, “love me or leave me, but here is where I stand” position on some key issues that reflects one’s heart and passion. Welcome to the era of the bold!

Boldness is nothing new. Society is constantly going mild on us in various ways. Bold movements challenge our mildness and our ambivalence—and sometimes correct it.

In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit rushed like a gale-force wind into the mild-mannered Mediterranean synagogues of the first century, stamping people with a bold new brand of faith. And guess what happened? Bold trumped mild.

Starting in the 1700s, freedom movements and democratic uprisings began toppling monarchs and empires in a process that culminated in the twentieth century. In one way or another, the mildness and social stability of the old world has been tossed out in almost every country on earth, in favor of risky, messy democracy—one of the boldest and most audacious forms of government ever invented.

Bold most always wins over mild—except where boldness is associated with overbearing, dysfunctional excess. Whenever boldness leads to emotional excess in worship or to xenophobic excess in politics, when bold becomes extreme or foolish, then mild and balanced may save the day. However, despite the attention given to a few bad politicians and loose cannon preachers, bold should not be understood as a synonym for stupid. Bold simply connotes clarity, courage, creativity, and cutting to the chase.

On most days, we are wise to put our money on bold.

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