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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

10. We must allow time for people to process both intellectually and emotionally what they have heard and experienced.
Rather than pursuing a hot-sell, one-shot, close-the-deal approach, those seeking to share the gospel must be prepared to establish long-term friendships. Donald Posterski comments, "Too many over-zealous evangelists believe in microwave evangelism." We have to learn to become good "neighbours." Our neighbours are not simply, or even, the people next door. "Our neighbours are the people who normally intersect our lives in the natural flow of our days and nights." In evangelizing we have to distinguish between those who are culturally near, who will be affirmed in their commitment to Christ by family and friends, and among whom much of the message is already familiar, and those who come to Christ with little prior knowledge and in the face of opposition or ridicule from family and friends. The latter, especially, will need to be helped through the process of "post-decision re-evaluation," in which they become aware of the lifestyle implications of the commitment they have made.
In conclusion, as we evaluate the points addressed in this article, we must always remain open to the surprises of the Holy Spirit, while resisting a tendency to create a strategy out of a single "conversion" incident. We must never lose sight of the fact that the Holy Spirit can and does short-circuit procedures and act contrary to our presuppositions and sense of the right order of things.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Monday, May 02, 2005

9. We must be open to the possibility that God has something significant to teach through the person(s) with whom we are sharing the good news.
If God has already begun to work in the life of the seeker-after-truth, then that person will bring insights, questions, and challenges that will cause the evangelist to reexamine his or her own lifestyle, depth of spirituality, ability to explain the good news of Jesus Christ, and demonstrate its relevance in meeting their needs and in reordering their priorities. Authentic evangelism requires the one communicating the message of Christ to be open to change. The encounter will deepen our own understanding of the wonder and depth of the gospel message and renew our confidence in the power of the message to transform the lives of those among whom we are privileged to share it. I often ask my students, when the apostle Peter shared the gospel with the Roman centurion Cornelius and his house full of invited guests, who was converted? Peter was changed, as Luke makes clear in his recounting of the incident to the Jerusalem church leaders (Acts 10, 11).

Authentic evangelism requires the one communicating the message of Christ to be open to change.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Thursday, April 28, 2005

8. We must invite people to become involved in a community of believers as the first step to believing.
Among people who are hungry for authentic relationships and who are resistant to advertising claims, the gospel has to be lived out in order to raise interest levels and raise questions. The sequence for many people coming to faith today is, first, they belong to a faith community that welcomes them and treats them as one of their own, then they come to believe. Perhaps this is what the Church fathers were emphasizing in their insistence that outside the Church there is no salvation (ad extra ecclesiam nulla salus) because participation in the life-giving and salvation-conveying Spirit of God could not be understood apart from direct participation in the life of the believing community. Being in Christ entails being in the body of Christ. This is a vital theological truth to grasp in our hyper-individualistic society, in which so many Church members have, at best, a contractual relationship with the Church, rather than seeing it as a covenant relationship. Many Christians in the Emerging Church movement understand the Church to be a way of life, seven days a week, and not a 90-minute gathering once a week. For them you don't go to church, you are the Church. Put simply, "the gospel will be perceived as a feasible alternative when those who do not know God have some positive experiences with people who do know God."

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

7. We must communicate in a clear, caring, compelling, and compassionate manner.
An effective evangelist must have a commitment to intercession and waiting upon God. The exercise of these spiritual disciplines will attune our spirits to the initiatives of God and enable us to communicate with relevance and compassion. One practical approach is to regularly pray the Lord's Prayer with our neighbors, family, and friends in mind. Prayer is part of our being partners with God in the whole process of making him known. We demonstrate our sensitivity by random acts of kindness and by showing a genuine interest in the concerns, hopes, and questions of others. Jesus repeatedly used the circumstances of his current situation to convey what he wanted to communicate.
The evangelist shares the message with sensitivity and patience, yet with a sense of urgency that conveys the importance of the message. Such urgency implies a countercultural stance, for the prevailing attitude is that spirituality is a private and peripheral matter. For the Christian, however, "What do you think of Christ?" is a question with life-transforming implications and eternal consequences. Religion without conviction is shallow and worldly. Religion without compassion is rigid and inhumane. Conviction without compassion is harsh. Compassion without conviction is spineless.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Monday, April 25, 2005

6. We must assume that God is already at work in a person's life prior to the arrival of any evangelist.
Theologians speak of "prevenient grace", signifying the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of an individual and community prior to a personal commitment or a community turning to Christ. This means that anyone seeking to communicate the good news of Christ must first listen and ask questions to discern what preparatory work the Lord has already accomplished. A deeper look inside those who are not yet Christians will frequently reveal both sensitivity to sin and a sense of incompleteness. People do not go around making announcements about their inside stories. As we listen to their stories, we will learn a great deal about ourselves and have our own presuppositions and prejudices challenged. This is God's world, Jesus died for the sins of it, and his Spirit is a free agent. We must take time to discover what God has already accomplished and listen discerningly, for in addition to God's spirit of truth, Satan's spirit of counterfeit is also at work. By listening, we will discover the groundwork already in place on which we can build by relating the gospel to what they already know.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Friday, April 22, 2005

5. The Church must share the good news in the context of the marketplace of ideas and beliefs.
Given the fact that Western societies are rapidly transitioning from Constantinian to secular, neo-pagan, and pluralistic cultural contexts, the Church must recognize that all evangelism has become a cross-cultural activity. In the marketplace of ideas and beliefs, there are no privileged stallholders. We only have freedom to speak to the extent that we recognize other voices with the same freedoms. "Although tolerance is the acclaimed golden rule, the one thing that is not tolerated is intolerance." Christians who hark back to a previous generation have great problems coming to terms with the pluralism of contemporary Western societies. In such a context we cannot hope to communicate by shouting from a safe distance or by circling the wagons and taking up a defensive posture, regarding all those outside our circle as "the enemy." We have to overcome our insecurity, refusing to be intimidated into silence and isolation.
Communicating the gospel in the marketplace of ideas requires both authenticity and humility. In today's world we witness from the sidelines and, in so doing, have to overcome what psychologists describe as the impact of social demotion. We must invite without arrogance. We must propose without trying to impose. We must allow the strength of the other person's argument, and we must admit the limits of our own knowledge. All knowledge and truth belongs to God, not to us, and God has not revealed everything.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Thursday, April 21, 2005

4. We understand that decisions for Christ must express a commitment to be a disciple of Christ.
The Great Commission given at the end of Matthew's Gospel by Jesus to his disciples, just prior to his ascension into heaven, is often referred to as "the evangelistic mandate." It is stated as a parallel command to "the Great Commandment" (which occurs earlier in Matthew's Gospel) to love the Lord our God and our neighbors as ourselves. I have two problems with this approach. In the first place, the Great Commission cannot adequately be described as the evangelistic mandate, as its clear goal is not the presenting of the good news of Jesus Christ in order to bring people to a decision for Jesus Christ, but to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Second, to distinguish between the two mandates creates a separation that weakens the integrity of the disciple-making process. The Great Commission must not be separated from the preceding chapters of Matthew's Gospel.
The entire Gospel of Matthew shows what a disciple is meant to be. The contemporary church has to face the urgent challenge of its failure to turn decisions for Christ into disciples of Christ. Until it addresses the problem of the un-discipled church member it will not be positioned for effective evangelization for one simple reason: it takes a community of disciples to make new disciples and to invite them into the fellowship. Disciple is not a synonym for "super-Christian" but is the word to describe ordinary believers.

"The contemporary church has to face the urgent challenge of its failure to turn decisions for Christ into disciples of Christ."

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

3. Our conviction must be that evangelization emerges from the heart of the Church rather than being fabricated at the periphery.
The Church is a product of mission before it becomes an agent of mission. The Church needs to share the good news of Christ constantly, not only when it gathers as a congregation but during the entire week when it is scattered as salt and light in the world. Evangelization is not a hiccup, but an uninterrupted heartbeat. It is not a program, but a way of life. Every day of our lives, every person and every community communicates a stream of messages. To live is to communicate. The question is, what kind of message are we communicating? The Church is defined by the message that has brought it into existence. It takes a community to communicate that message.
Brad Kallenberg reminds us, "The gospel is sung not as a solo but as a choral piece. The way Christians live with each other can powerfully illuminate the good news. Only then can outsiders say, 'I see what you mean.'" While we must never underestimate the power of individual testimony, we must not overlook the importance of networks of believers with the potential to penetrate into every segment of society.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Monday, April 18, 2005

2. We must communicate the gospel as the story of God's saving mission in the world rather than as a series of abstract propositions.
Preachers have to become storytellers, covering the epic biblical drama from Creation through to its culmination with the restoring of all things under the universal reign of Christ. This is an even greater challenge than that faced by Peter Jackson in filming the three-part epic of The Lord of the Rings. In order to be good storytellers, we need vivid imaginations. Our education has trained us to analyze, criticize, and conceptualize, but, regrettably, in so doing our childhood powers of imagination have faded. That is one reason why rediscovery of the arts is so important in theological education if we are to adequately train Church leaders who are able to communicate in a culture in which image has assumed such prominence.

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism

Saturday, April 16, 2005

1. We need to be energized by a fresh realization of the radical and comprehensive nature of the gospel.
As we have already noted, the gospel is first and foremost about God. It arises from the way that God relates to his creation. The good news is concerned with the reign of God, anticipated by the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, and inaugurated in the coming of Christ. In him was announced and embodied the kingdom, spreading throughout the world by the proclamation of the good news, until his reign is guaranteed with his return to earth. Thus, the opening statement of the gospel is not that God has a wonderful plan for my life, but that he has a wonderful plan for the world - a plan in which I am invited to share. This was the message that Paul and the first - century believers preached all over the Mediterranean world. The death of Christ secures our forgiveness. His resurrection, ascension, and impartation of the Spirit provide the objective grounds and subjective assurance of our reconciliation and adoption into the family of God. Once we are "born from above" (Jn. 3:3-8) we become part of God's new creation by virtue of our being "in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:17).

Labels: mission, reinventing evangelism