What is evangelism?
Someone told me yesterday about a book – it doesn’t matter which – on personal witness, that included chapters such as ‘preparing to evangelise’ and ‘what to do after you’ve evangelised’. The language grated, and I’ve been trying to analyse why. The implicit assumption in the language (and, it seemed clear from the description, in the book) is that ‘evangelism’ is a discrete, verbal activity that consists essentially of stating a small number of particular theological propositions (concerning universal sinfulness; atonement in Christ’s death; and the need for personal appropriation of that atonement) in the hearing of someone who is not yet a Christian believer. Now, I am not, of course, opposed to doing this thing. But to restrict ‘evangelism’ to this seems to me to be unbearably limiting, and patently obviously unbiblical. I wrote an article recently for the Evangelical Alliance magazine IDEA on mission. In part, I wrote this: Does this mean that anything that is not proclaiming the gospel directly is not mission? I would rather ask the question a different way: when Jesus touched a leper, or ate with a tax collector, or healed an outcast, was he not proclaiming the gospel directly? Was Peter not proclaiming the gospel just as much when he went to eat with Cornelius as when he preached to him? Christian social action is, or should be, a living out of the message of reconciliation that God has committed to us. Actually, every aspect of our lives should be a living out of that gospel. Our activities, our values, our decisions about work and family—and about shopping and voting—are, or should be, decisions that are incomprehensible except for the truth of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Mission is not something we do; it is what we are. The word literally means ‘being sent’. Christian mission means being sent by Christ, being sent by Christ to live out the truth of his atoning sacrifice. And living out that truth means proclaiming it, joyfully and reverently, to all people at all times and in all places. And it also means living in patterns of love and service that would be incomprehensible had Christ not lived and died. It means raising our children and spending our money differently to those around us, eating and drinking, even, only to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). There is no part of an obedient, properly lived Christian life that is ‘not proclaiming the gospel directly’. I don’t think St Francis of Assisi ever said ‘Preach the gospel always, and use words if you must’ (the closest in the authentic writings is, I think, ch. XVII of the Rule (1221), which is actually about Brothers who have not been licenced to preach). I’m not even very comfortable with the quotation, which is rather too often used as an excuse to not speak when words are demanded. But the idea the evangelism is a constant, continuous duty and reality of an authentic Christian life, not one confined to the speaking out of certain concepts, is surely vital. If so, any account of personal evangelism that suggests it is not a 24/7 duty and reality should be rejected as inadequate – and, indeed, simply faithless. There is no preparation for evangelism (other than the catechumenate); there is no ‘apres evangelism’ (other than the rest of the saints in glory); there is only the constant call to follow, to live and speak at every moment in such a way that the truth of what God has done in Christ is luminously...
Read MoreA meditation on the indicative mood
I won’t name the liturgical resource, because it is a good one, a very good one, and does not deserve to be vilified for one slip, but I was glancing through it, and lighted upon the Pentecost service. ‘Consider,’ it invited us, ‘Jesus’ command in Acts 1:8…’Acts 1:8 reads: ἀλλὰ λήμψεσθε δύναμιν ἐπελθόντος τοῦ ἀγίου πνεύματος ἐφ ὑμᾶς καὶ ἔσεσθέ μάτυρες ἔν τε Ἰερουσαλὴμ καὶ [ἐν] πάση τῆ Ἰουδαία καὶ Σαμαρεία καὶ ἔως ἐσχάτου τῆς γῆς. (‘But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be witnesses in Jerusalem,and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’–my tr.) Forgive the grammarian in me, but this is all in the indicative mood, not the imperative mood; there is no ‘command’. Jesus is here stating realities, not issuing instructions. I suspect that the most common way of eviscerating the gospel in our churches is this: making indicatives imperatives. We turn promise into command; gospel into law. I know why we do it: anyone who has been a pastor does. We struggle with people who take the gospel for granted, and we want to illustrate to them the radical claims of Christ on their lives. I won’t even say that the instinct is wrong (although I will confess to giving in to it far too often and far too readily in my own ministry); but turning Biblical promises into demands is no way to deal with it. When Jesus says ‘you will…’ he means–you will. Not ‘you might’, or ‘you should’, or even ‘if you do x you will’, but ‘you will’. And so for the rest of Scripture. And so Acts 1:8: the promise, to the eleven at least, and I suspect to all Christians (I take it that all who have come to Christ in penitence and faith, been baptized and received into the church have received the gift of the Spirit here promised), is that they will be witnesses. This is not an instruction that we should evangelise, but a promise that, somehow, at some level, in some way, despite so much of what we are and do, when people encounter us, they will see a glimpse of Jesus. I wonder if we took this promise seriously as a promise, believed that Christian people will witness to Jesus regardless, whether our evangelistic strategies would look...
Read MoreEdinburgh at Christmas
Our annual visit to Edinburgh’s winter celebrations today. That most attractive of cities dresses up specially at this time of year, and the result is genuinely magical. We discovered a free children’s area at the west end of Princes St Gardens. A paddock of reindeer, evidently occasionally fed by Santa, caught our eye. Behind it was a large ‘nordic-style’ tent, in which colouring and craft tables were available, and every so often a storyteller performed in a grotto-like setting with a log fire to warm the audience. We sat through a performance: a couple of songs (‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Jingle Bells’), and three or four stories in similar vein. The storyteller, identified only as ‘Fergus’, was talented, and easily held his audience of 50-60 children aged 4-10 for forty minutes or so. Kudos to Edinburgh for putting on the event, free. It made Christmas shopping a pleasure for our girls, and left us with warm memories of the day, despite a fraught trip home because of signal failures on the railway. Later, we passed a church doing street evangelism. Dressed as Santas and clowns, they gave us sweets for the kids and a tract for the adults; as we walked back past them, one clown was, incongruously, preaching, to a rather-too-obvious rent-a-crowd (if four people can be a crowd). Good for them for doing something, of course, but my idle reflections on the crowded train home went back to the storyteller. Could not the churches have done that, just as it was done by Fergus, only with a sensitive and non-threatening telling of the nativity as the last story, and perhaps (but perhaps not) an invitation to find out more about this story at a church near you this Christmas? Good numbers of people, genuinely pleased to be there, leaving feeling positive about the event–not a bad model for evangelism,...
Read MoreAn aphorism on evangelistic preaching
Written whilst listening to a sermon on John 3:16, which seemed to assume the subject of that verse was human faith, not divine love: ‘Our task is not to tell people that they must believe in Jesus, but so to tell them of Jesus that they must believe in Him.’
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