Every Church an Evangelizing Community!
Every year, the Diocese of Huron organizes a weekend of spiritual refreshment for those who spend 52 weeks of their year serving in their parish churches. Naturally, they call it “The 53rd Weekend.” In 2006, John Bowen, Director of the Institute of Evangelism, was the theme speaker. Here are the talks he gave.
Listen Here to Part 1:
[podcast]/resources/53 Weekend Part 1.mp3[/podcast]
Part 2:
[podcast]/resources/53 Weekend Part 2.mp3[/podcast]
What do you think of garbage collectors? Or architects? Or farmers? Not whether they are nice or nasty (though that might be important): but what do you think of them theologically?
The reason I ask is this: I find that in seminaries we do not always place a high value on the career theology students followed before they began to train for ordination. In fact, we sometimes talk as if it is fairly irrelevant, even inferior, to what they are doing now, and what they are going to do.
I see three problems with this attitude.
1. People coming to Wycliffe have often had the most impressive careers, in teaching, engineering, the arts, home-making, the law-you name it. Whatever we have been doing during that time, God has been at work, shaping us, developing our gifts, chipping away at our character, preparing us for the next phase.
Thus there is a very direct line connecting our previous work and our future work. If you were a manager, doesn’t a priest need to know how to manage people? If you were an educator, isn’t education central to congregational leadership? If you started your own business, might God not have prepared you to plant a new church? And so on.
2. More significant is the fact that this attitude to “secular” careers will likely rub off on the way we lead parish ministry. Who will you think of as the most spiritually mature Christians in your congregation? For many clergy, it is those who spend most time in the four walls of the church, serving on committees, singing in the choir, maintaining the building. Isn’t that the best way to measure their commitment to Christ and his church?
Exhibit A: Don Page was a senior civil servant in Ottawa. During his twenty years or so in that job, he started the Public Service Christian Fellowship, which eventually sponsored around a hundred Bible study groups scattered throughout government buildings in Ottawa. Through those groups over the years, he told me, about a hundred people became Christians.
How much did Don Page do in his church? Very little. The elders (it was a Fellowship Baptist church) said, “Don, that is clearly your ministry. We will support you and pray for you, but we will not ask you to take on any internal jobs at the church.”
Exhibit B: When Don left, to become Vice-President of Trinity Western University, he asked his VP to take over the PSCF. The man replied, “Sorry, I can’t do that: I’ve got too many responsibilities in my church.”
One of the chief reasons the church exists, surely, is to equip its members so that they can go out in witness to the world. If you like, Christ is centrifugal, inviting us to follow him into the “secular” world where he is already at work. Often, however, we work against this by making church centripetal, drawing our most energetic members away from “the world” they are supposed to inhabit into the running of the church’s infrastructure. Those who don’t serve on committees or running pancake suppers or planning the annual bazaar are regarded as second class Christians. Is there not something wrong with this picture?
3. But we do not witness simply by starting Bible study groups and seeking to bring others to Christ, important though those are. We witness simply by living as God’s people in God’s world in God’s way. The Christian architect shows by her work that God is concerned for the beauty and usefulness of where people live. The Christian scientist demonstrates his love of God by his delight in the intricacies of God’s amazing world. The Christian accountant shows by her efficiency and love of people something of the character of God. The Christian garbage collector mirrors the love of Christ, who dealt (and continues to deal) with the garbage in our lives. And the “call” of God to such jobs should be just as clear and compelling as the “call” to an ordained job in the church. Both are part of the work of God.
Thus the good pastor will affirm her people in their “secular” jobs and teach about the value of those jobs in the work of God. I know one pastor who visited as many as possible of his church members in their place of work, so that he could appreciate the opportunities and the challenges of the context in which they spent so much of their lives. As a result, his preaching became far more connected, and he stopped acting as if church activities were the most important thing his members were involved in.
As Luther said, “Every shoemaker can be a priest of God.” And, after all, Adam was a gardener.
Originally published in Morning Star
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This Article is from the Fall 2005 edition of good idea!, also available here in a fully formatted PDF file. |
For churches to thrive in a post-Christian culture, at least two things are needed.
They need clear leadership to help them switch from maintenance mode to understand and focus their calling to mission.
Good pastoral leadership can make the difference. Secondly, many congregations are still nervous about evangelism, but need to recapture a healthy understanding of evangelism if they are to shape their communal life to minister to the needs of the spiritually hungry.
Judy offers three presentations to address these twin issues of leadership and evangelism.
They can be combined in different ways to suit the requirements of the hosting group. Each presentation is self-contained, and can form a half-day workshop. Or the three can be run consecutively to create a one-day workshop. In either format, the goal is to encourage and strengthen clergy and other leaders in their leadership role, and to offer an understanding of leadership and evangelism which is stretching but which has integrity.
The workshop’s narrative style examines such issues as: the transformative nature of the Gospel, the key tasks of effective leadership, the unique challenges and possibilities for ministry in today’s culture, and strategies for building or rebuilding compelling and passionate communities of faith.
A double strand
The title of a book tells you a lot about where the author is coming from. There are two books I use in teaching evangelistic preaching which illustrate this very nicely. One is a book of essays entitled Mastering Contemporary Preaching. (Do you get the picture? Preaching is something which can be “mastered”—as an angry bull might be mastered by a matador. What does that tell you about the authors’ view of preaching? And their view of the preacher?). I use an essay by Bill Hybels out of this book, entitled “Speaking to the Secularized Mind”. The other is by William Willimon and is called The Intrusive Word. Again, the picture is clear: the world is in sin and darkness, but the Word of God intrudes from the outside: so his theological preferences are not hard to see.
These two authors illustrate quite different approaches to what it means to preach evangelistically–to preach the Gospel–and they will provide us a door into a bigger topic which has implications not only for how we preach but for how we understand church and Christian mission in general.
Let us begin by putting the two Williams into conversation.
Hybels is very keen that preachers listen to their culture in order to “connect” with secular hearers. He says, for example:
As we learn the way non-Christians think . . . we can speak the words of Christ in a way they’ll hear.”
The emphasis is on shaping the message in such a way that outsiders can hear and understand. It would seem to be a straightforward and commendable suggestion.
Willimon, however, is convinced that this is completely the wrong approach, and understands this idea of “hearing” of the Gospel as problematic:
People bring many things with them in their listening to a sermon. Having been preconditioned, their ears are not in tune with the message. . . Desiring too desperately to communicate, at any cost, can lead us into apostasy. . . . Can we preachers respect the gospel enough to allow people not to understand it?
Willimon’s point is that the preacher should not, must not, try to speak in a way that the hearers can understand. That is a sure recipe for getting it wrong. As soon as I try to adapt the message to my (sinful) hearers, I am inevitably watering it down. There is nothing in their experience which will prepare them to hear and understand the message, because the Gospel is so counter-intuitive to sinful people.
For Hybels, the fact that this is a consumer culture means that we have to respond to our hearers as the consumers they are, and give them what they want. He knows that his hearers will treat their response to the Gospel as they would the purchase of a used car: that is their normal way of functioning. It may take them six months “simply to kick the tires, look at the interior, and check the title before he finally can say, ‘I’ll buy it!’” So he makes allowances for them and seeks to be relevant:
An unchurched person who does venture into a church assumes that whatever is spoken will not be relevant to his life. That’s why I select 60 to 70 percent of my illustrations from current events. I read Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, Forbes, and usually Business Week. . . . Why? Because when I can use a contemporary illustration, I build credibility. The unchurched person says, “He’s in the same world I’m in. . . .” When I quote Augustine, he feels like I’m not playing in the same ball park.
Relevance for Willimon, however, is precisely what the preacher should not strive for. If your hearers find you relevant, then you are not preaching the Gospel. If the Gospel is preached authentically, the person outside of Christ will find it unintelligible:
We preachers so want to be heard that we are willing to make the gospel more accessible than it really is, to remove the scandal, the offense of the cross, to deceive people into thinking . . . that it is possible to hear the gospel while we are still trapped in outmoded or culturally conditioned patterns of thought and hearing.
Hybels’ attempt to establish a common footing with his hearers is misguided, because:
“Common human experience” doesn’t exist, and even if it did, it should not be confused with the gospel. . . . Preaching means to engender experience we would never have had without the gospel.
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History of this conflict
This conflict is hardly a new one, however. In fact, it runs like different-coloured but intertwined strands through the whole history of Christian missions.
Let me give three more illustrations, and then suggest what lies behind the conflict, and how we might resolve it. (I will only say at this point that my conclusion is not that both are correct, tempting though that is. That would be too easy!)
1. Barth and Brunner
In 1934, Emil Brunner published a book entitled Nature and Grace. In it he argued from the existence of general revelation to the validity of natural theology. General revelation is God’s self-disclosure which is “universally available” and which “it is impossible for anyone not to know”, whether or not they have a Bible, whether or not they know about Christ. Natural theology is the deductions people then draw from that revelation, “the attempt to attain an understanding of God . . . by means of rational reflection, without appealing to special revelation.”
This has a very practical bearing on evangelism. Thus, Brunner argues, an evangelist can appeal to people to repent, because they already know from general revelation that God exists, that God is a righteous lawgiver, and that they have failed to keep that law:
Only because men [sic] somehow know the will of God are they able to sin. A being which knew nothing of the law of God would be unable to sin.
According to Brunner, there is a “connecting point” in human nature, in the mind or in the conscience, with which the Gospel will connect, and which will enable the Gospel to be understood.
Barth replied to Brunner’s thesis with what is generally considered the shortest title in theological publishing: Nein!–No! He has no patience for a discussion of general revelation and natural theology because he is convinced that “[the] subject . . . [of natural theology] differs fundamentally from the revelation in Jesus Christ.” Sinful human beings, because their powers of reasoning are distorted and naturally inclined against God, cannot draw accurate theological deductions from general revelation. Any theology they construct is inevitably going to be partial and misleading, even idolatrous. And in that kind of anthropocentric theology, there is no longer any Gospel, nor any need for a Gospel.
This all sounds fairly abstract: why would anybody (except theologians) get upset about such an idea? But I suspect you can already see the lines of connection. If Barth is right, then Willimon’s approach to preaching makes perfect sense. If the Gospel is the powerful word of the Creator, breaking into our sinful and helpless condition from the outside, and turning the world upside down—or, better, right side up—then it needs no help from us. If you need surgery, the doctor is unlikely to need your help or advice: the only thing you can do is submit to the anesthetic and let the doctor operate.
But if Brunner is right, that there are connecting points in a sinful world which will predispose people to understand the Gospel, then Hybels’ approach is more appropriate. On this view, preachers need to find the connecting points, otherwise their words will be wasted.
473 >> 458 words
The second example takes us back into the world of mission and evangelism, which is where this issue belongs, and where it most frequently fought over.
2. De Nobili and Tournon
In 1604, a young Jesuit, Robert De Nobili, arrived in India, and began an unusual form of missionary work. Few Indians were being converted because there had been an emphasis on the need for converts to adopt European customs and dress, and many Indians were too committed to their own culture to do so. Nobili decided to become an Indian in order to win Indians. He gave up anything that might cause offence, such as the eating of meat and the wearing of leather shoes. He adopted the saffron robe of the ascetic holy man. He impressed his hearers by his perfect command of the Tamil language, and by quoting with ease from famous Indian authors.
At the end of five years, a number of leading Brahmans were baptized. Naturally they retained their Indian customs and dress. This was not as unproblematic as it sounds, however. Some customs were on the borderline between having cultural and religious significance. More clearly a problem was the fact that Brahmans would have nothing to do with people of lower castes, and were suspicious of a religion that potentially embraced all castes, and thus implicitly threatened the existence of the caste system itself.
Pope Gregory XV pronounced himself in favour of De Nobili’s approach. A hundred years later, however, Charles Tournon, an investigator from a later Pope, saw things differently, and recommended a rejection of all cultural concessions:
[H]e issued a decree in sixteen points, wholly unfavourable to the methods and practices of Nobili and his Jesuit followers. Ceremonies which had been suppressed as offensive to Indian ideas were to be restored in detail. Caste differences were not to be observed, as they had been in the past. Practices regarded as too nearly allied to Hindu superstition were to be suppressed.
De Nobili, it seems to me, is in the tradition of Hybels and Brunner. He is willing to sacrifice everything of western origin. He finds as many points of connection as he can within Hindu culture and uses these to construct a bridge over which the Christian Gospel can travel.
Tournon, however, is an ancestor of Barth and Willimon. From his point of view, Nobili has sold out by his concessions to local culture. Hindu theology and Christian theology are of different origins, and any attempt to merge them is inevitably going to result in a watered-down Gospel. But it is not only theology: if adopting the culture means that the inequities of the caste system are to be maintained, then that is an outright denial of the Gospel which removes distinctions between “Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free.”
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3. Tertullian and Justin Martyr
A parallel tension exists in the attitude of the early church fathers. Admittedly the weight is on one side, but the other side also exists, represented most famously by Tertullian:
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? . . . Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity [singleness, purity] of heart.” Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel!
Athens has nothing to do with Jerusalem. Christianity has no need of help from non-Christian philosophies, whether Stoic or Platonic. The Gospel, being of God, stands on its own feet. It sits in judgement on the shortcomings of other views. I can almost hear Willimon cheering.
The opposite point-of-view is represented (among others) by Justin Martyr:
Whatever either lawgivers or philosophers [like Socrates] uttered well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part of the Word. But since they did not know the whole of the Word, which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves.. Christ . . . was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word who is in every man).
“Christ was partially known by Socrates” and other philosophers. True, he did not know everything: “they did not know the whole of the Word [and thus] contradicted themselves.” As Simplicianus explained to Augustine, “In the Platonists . . . God and his Word are constantly implied.” Thus the person who has read Plato will be looking in the right direction. Christianity will simply provide them the right path which they will readily embrace.
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Summary so far
These two schools of thought could be characterised as those who believe there is a degree of continuity (large or small) between the Christian revelation and culture, and those who say there is some degree of discontinuity (either absolute, radical, or partial) between Christianity and culture.
In a postmodern world, we no longer have to pretend to be objective in our opinions, though we should be upfront about our biases, so at this point let me declare my interest in this topic! I confess that I have preached the Gospel under titles like The Gospel according to Calvin and Hobbes (and in this context I should clarify that, yes, I do mean the cartoon), Jesus is Alive, Elvis is Alive: What’s the Difference? What Jesus says to the Smashing Pumpkins, and the Gospel according to Jim Carrey, to name just a few. (I say “I have preached the Gospel,” but some would obviously doubt it!) In other words, my evangelistic practice is firmly on the side of continuity, so I have a strong reaction towards Willimon, but at the same time I confess that Hybels makes me nervous.
Is there a way to resolve this tension?
If it is not too presumptuous, let me begin with our doctrine of God, because all else flows from how we understand God. In every generation, the church has mined the resources of Scripture for clues and images of God to help it understand its identity and its role. The end of Christendom in the second half of the twentieth century has prompted another such theological reassessment: if the church does not exist as a chaplain to the state, if we can no longer assume that everybody in a so-called “Christian country” is in fact a follower of Jesus Christ, what then is the church to be and do? As a result, beginning with a lecture by Karl Barth in 1932, a fresh theological emphasis has emerged of God as a Missionary God, and of God’s work as the missio dei. As David Bosch puts it: “[M]ission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. . . . In the emerging ecclesiology, the church is seen as essentially missionary. . . . [T]he church is not the sender but the sent.”
What I want to argue is that the balance of scripture, doctrine and missionary experience are on the side of continuity, while at the same time I want to listen carefully to the cautions of the discontinuity school. To do this, I am going to draw on three sources: the writings of two missiologists, on two Christian doctrines, and finally on scripture.
A. Missiologists
So what light do missiologists have to shed on the question? I want to offer you two names:
Lamin Sanneh
Sanneh is an African from the Gambia who teaches at Yale. Many authors have one big idea which they then elaborate in different ways, and Sanneh’s big idea has to do with translation. Christianity, he argues, is intrinsically translatable. In this, it differs from Islam, which is diluted by the act of translation. (Sanneh speaks as a convert from Islam.) In Christianity, however, since the earliest days, the Bible and the Gospel have been translated into different cultures and languages. Far from being diluted by this process, Sanneh argues, Christianity actually gains strength from being translated. His main illustrations are from Africa, where he sees missionaries as having put power into the hands of African converts by giving them the Bible in their own language.
One implication of Sanneh’s thinking is that culture and language are God-given vehicles for the church’s mission. There is no culture-free mission and no culture-free Gospel. Although all cultures are distorted by sin, the Gospel always comes to people in the cultural forms of those who bring it, and it is always received into the cultural forms of those who hear it. There is no alternative: none of us has a place to stand that is outside all cultures. And the strange thing is that God seems to bless this arrangement, despite its limitations.
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Lesslie Newbigin
Newbigin spent half his life as a missionary in India, ultimately as a bishop with the Church of South India. He returned to the UK in the 1970’s and became a trainer of missionaries. Like Sanneh, Newbigin is in some ways in the discontinuity tradition–he is very emphatic about the uniqueness of the revelation that comes to us in Christ–but he parts company with them at a significant point, and finally argues not for “total discontinuity” but for “radical discontinuity.”
One influence on him, he says, was again the issue of translation. Many cultures have a word in their own language for the supreme being, the omnipotent creator. Should a Bible translator make use of that local word? How far does the term for God in the receiving (“receptor”) culture resemble the Bible’s understanding of God? Indeed, those on the side of discontinuity would ask how can there be any real similarity between a pre-Christian understanding of God and the unique revelation of God which comes through Jesus. Is not any image of God apart from Christ necessarily idolatrous?
What Newbigin discovered was that Bible translators around the world almost always used the local name for God. And, he notes, on the few occasions when translators did not do that:
the converts have simply explained the foreign word in the text of their bibles by using the indigenous name for God.
You can imagine the conversation: “What’s that funny word you just read?” “Theos.” “What’s that mean?” “Oh, it’s the word the missionaries like to use for God.” “Well, if that’s what they meant, why on earth didn’t they say so?”
Of course, there is a certain irony in the fact that we are even discussing the propriety of this when, as English-speaking Christians, we use the word “God,” which was itself a pre-Christian term and which those who first translated the Bible into the Germanic languages, like Luther and Wycliffe, decided was an adequate vehicle for the good news of Jesus. I am sure we would say that since then our understanding of “God” has been filled out and transformed by the understanding of God we have received from the Gospel, and that is certainly true. Nevertheless, we need to note that the pagan term “God” was the starting point.
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B. Reading Christian doctrine
Each time we emphasise something different in the nature of God—whether God as Sufferer, God as Liberator, or God as Missionary–we are pressed to rethink all other doctrines in light of it. So if we think primarily of God as a missionary God, reaching out to the world with forgiveness, healing, and new life, what effect does that have on how we read other doctrines? Traditionally, the argument between continuity and discontinuity has focused on the doctrine of revelation: how is God revealed to the world? Yet I think other doctrines also shed light on the issue. Let me suggest just two:
a) Pneumatology: Where is the Spirit at work?
Barth observes: “It seems that behind [Brunner’s] re-introduction of natural theology a ‘new’ doctrine of the Holy Spirit wants only too logically to break forth.” And indeed, how we understand the doctrine of the Spirit is crucial for understanding this topic.
Willimon would say that the Spirit works through the preaching of Christ, and I would agree. Yet at the same time the Spirit is always and everywhere at work throughout the world, drawing attention to Christ and glorifying Christ, even where Christ is not yet named. The Spirit works through all of God’s revelation: through general revelation to point people towards Christ, and through Scripture and preaching to make Christ real. As John’s Gospel makes clear, the Spirit convicts people of sin, righteousness and judgement, even before they hear the Gospel. The Spirit prepares people to hear the Gospel.
b) Grace: Where does grace find us?
Grace is the coming of God to the world and to the human heart in forgiveness, renewal, and reconciliation. But how is that grace known? One crucial answer would be: through the preaching of the Gospel. But there is more. Wesley, perhaps the most theologically reflective of evangelists, coined the term “prevenient grace”. In his understanding, there is a grace that prepares a person, softens their heart, makes them aware of their need, to hear the Gospel and receive Christ.
Don Richardson, pioneer missionary in Irian Jaya in the 1960’s, puts it this way: “[T]he God who prepared the gospel for all peoples [has] also prepared all peoples for the gospel.” Thus a snide witticism like the one Charles Campbell quotes: “[do not try to] meet the listeners where they are because too often they are ‘in the wrong place’” is actually to underestimate the work of the Spirit in the world. By the providence of God, no-one is in the wrong place.
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C. Biblical roots
This is not the place for a full examination of relevant Biblical texts, of which there are many, so let me just highlight one passage with a direct bearing on these issues. It is instructive not least because it shows Paul preaching the Gospel to an audience which knows nothing of special revelation: Acts 17, the story of Paul at Athens.
In the sermon he preaches on Mars Hill, Paul draws on three “points of contact” with the pagan culture he is addressing: one, the altar to the unknown god (he assumes the legitimacy of equating this god with the God he is preaching); two, the pre-Christian beliefs of Stoics and Epicureans which he confidently weaves into his sermon; and three, the poets’ praise of the god Zeus. He seems to have no doubt that God has been at work in this pagan culture before he ever got there, preparing the people in however shadowy a way to receive the Gospel. And so he does not hesitate to make use of what he considers evidences that the Spirit of Christ has been at work preparing the Athenians to hear the Gospel of Christ.
As it happens, Willimon has written a commentary on Acts. Let me read you what he says about this chapter. He begins by expressing compassion for the Athenians and their spiritual plight :
Idolaters they may be, but at least they are searching. . . . Their religious yearning . . . is the inarticulate and uninformed yearning of the pagan for . . . God. . . . The church, rather than standing back from pagan religiosity, pointing our fingers in righteous indignation, should, like Paul at Athens, minister to their searching.
He suggests that it is important to connect with what the Athenians already know of God:
Appealing to their knowledge of creation (for he could not simply recite Scripture to pagans who were ignorant of Scripture) and to our common humanity, Paul asserts that his God “made the world and everything in it.”
This appears to be a different approach from that recommended in The Intrusive Word, where (for instance) rather than praising the appeal to “our common humanity”, we are informed that “‘[c]ommon experience’ [between believers and unbelievers] doesn’t exist.” Or again, does not the approach of Acts 17 come close to assuming the validity of natural theology? Willimon concedes that it does:
In reasoning from the natural world toward faith in God, Luke’s Paul borders upon a “natural theology”–our observation of the natural world and its wonders is a forerunner of faith. . . . In citing the verses of a pagan poet (17:28), in drawing upon the pagan’s experience of the world, Paul hopes to move them to faith by way of the natural world.
It would probably be unkind to suggest that Willimon’s emphasis on discontinuity simply becomes untenable as he tries to deal responsibly with the text of Scripture.
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Conclusion
To some extent, the answer to our dilemma is that both Hybels and Willimon are necessary. After all, missionaries who are in the front line of mission are in constant danger. As they strain forward to new fields of mission, and come close to a non-Christian culture, they may lose perspective, fall into syncretism, and sell out on the Gospel. Being a missionary is a risky though necessary business. They need the help, the partnership, of those who are looking in the other direction, back to the tradition. The missionary asks, Is this particular feature of the culture a God-given point of contact, or am I reading it wrongly? And a sympathetic theologian will enter into conversation, and offer a yes, no, or maybe. There is no place for the missionary to become intolerant of academic theologians; nor is there any place for theologians to scoff at the efforts of front-line missionaries. Both are legitimate ministries within the body of Christ, and in the mission of God.
But I promised I would not end simply by saying both Hybels and Willimon are right. That would be too easy. So let me modify what I have just said by suggesting that one of these two is more right than the other. Here is an image of G.K.Chesterton’s:
There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is to be more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. . . . To have avoided . . . all [heresies] has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
I would suggest that Chesterton’s image for orthodoxy can equally well be applied to the mission of the church as a whole—since mission is a central expression of the orthodox faith he is talking about. The missionary church is a chariot whirling through history, sometimes racing ahead, sometimes getting off track, sometimes stumbling. If it is not too whimsical, let me suggest an allegory: that the horse is the Gospel: it is after all “the power of God for salvation”, and it moves through time and space, drawing all nations into its train.
What then is Hybels? To me, he represents the missionary impulse as God’s Spirit communicates it to the church, as people make themselves available to follow the galloping of God’s Spirit. So what is his kind of ministry? Maybe we could say that his ministry (and that of other front-line missionaries) is the chariot itself, representative of the church following the lead of the Spirit.
What then is Willimon? His role seems to me to caution over-enthusiastic missionaries to remember the Gospel, to remind them that mission is God’s work not theirs, to remind them that the world is no friend to God or to the Gospel. So where does that fit in my allegory? Maybe this is the role of the reins, offering direction, keeping the chariot on track, preventing swerving to left or right. Or maybe this represents the brakes (I guess even a chariot has to have brakes), slowing the chariot down as it goes round a sharp corner, preventing disaster as it comes too close to a precipice.
Which is more important? In one way, it is a silly question, since both are needed: but surely the point of the chariot is to move forward. This is the way the horse’s energy is pulling. The church is the instrument of God’s mission in the world. I would suggest therefore that the missionary impulse (of Hybels) is the primary one, and the corrective impulse (of Willimon) a secondary one. Both are needed—but the point of the chariot is to follow the power of the horse, and to reach the promised destination.
Inaugural Lecture
March 22, 2005
Notes:
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In 1959, C.S.Lewis wrote to BBC producer Lance Sieveking, who had apparently proposed that a movie be made of The Chronicles of Narnia. Here is part of Lewis’ response:
I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.
All the best,
yours
C. S. Lewis
So is he turning in his grave at the release of the first two of what is planned as a whole series of Narnia movies? Personally, while I have reservations about both movies, I thought they were neither buffoonery nor nightmare, and I would like to think that, with the advances in movie making since 1959 and the co-direction of Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham, he might have been pleased after all.
Most churches have been excited about the movies, and various websites have offered various ways to turn it into a great evangelistic opportunity. One website, for example, had pages for youth groups, one for “Becoming a Parish promoter”, and one for starting a study group. Another invited us to find a Lion party near to us; and a third introduced us to four “deeper truths” (which bore a suspicious resemblance to the Four Spiritual Laws) to be found in the Chronicles. This enthusiasm will probably continue for as long as the series is turned into movies.
Was this the right way to think about the movies, however? My fear is that on the one hand people went expecting the wrong thing and were disappointed, and that on the other hand they may have missed what Lewis the evangelist is actually trying to do, and thus fail to benefit from what the movie does have to offer.
Definitions of Evangelism
First, it would probably be useful to offer a definition of evangelism. In one sense I can’t improve on J.I.Packer’s 1961 definition of evangelism as “just preaching the Gospel.” In teaching, however, I expand that definition in two directions: one is to say that “evangelism is those words which help people take steps towards faith in Jesus.” In putting it that way, I am deliberately expanding Packer’s definition of “preaching” to include all words whose intention is evangelistic, whether it’s conversation, a Bible study, a word of testimony, or an evangelistic book—not just formal preaching. I also want to introduce the idea that evangelism is a process. There is some evidence, for example, that Canadians need to hear the Gospel nine times before they respond (I’m sure Americans get it much more quickly), and that the process of moving to a response takes on average 4 years.
Secondly, it is helpful to know something of C.S.Lewis’ background. He grew up as an Anglican in Northern Ireland, was alternately bored and terrified by church, and by the age of thirteen declared himself an atheist, which he remained for fifteen years. During those years, however, he had what he later came to recognise as spiritual experiences, flashes of what he called “joy” which spoke to him of something beyond present material experience. These experiences came to him through the beauty of nature and through ancient mythology, particularly Norse mythology.
For years, he made no connection between his experiences of joy and Christianity, until he made friends with J.R.R.Tolkien, who argued that mythology contained glimpses of God’s truth, and that all mythology pointed to Jesus Christ and was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. As Lewis wrote later:
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences.
Once he had acknowledged that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, he started going to church again, and began to explore and write about his newfound faith. From that time on, he published on average one book per year till his death in 1963, from the academic (such as The Allegory of Love) to popular theology (The Screwtape Letters) to the fictional (Narnia and the science fiction trilogy), every one demonstrating a deep integration of his faith with his learning and his life.
So what did Lewis think about evangelism? He was ambivalent in his attitude to conventional evangelism. In an interview with Decision magazine in 1963 (six months before his death), he said, “There are many different ways of bringing people into His Kingdom, even some ways that I specially dislike.” Among other things, he clearly disliked evangelical jargon. When Sherwood Eliot Wirt asked him: “Would you say that the aim of Christian writing, including your own writing, is to bring about an encounter of the reader with Jesus Christ?” Lewis replied: “That is not my language, yet it is the purpose I have in mind.”
At Oxford, he was reluctant to identify with the OICCU, at that time the only evangelical student organisation at Oxford, and instead started his own student society, The Socratic Club, where Christian faith could be debated. He did once address the OICCU on the topic “What is Christianity?” Lady Elizabeth Catherwood (daughter of Martyn Lloyd-Jones) called it “a really splendid, perfect talk.” Yet when a student, probably feeling that Lewis had failed to close the deal, asked “If everything you’re saying is true, what should we do about it?” Lewis replied, “God forbid that I should intervene in such a personal matter. Go and talk to your priest about that.” That’s hardly a standard evangelistic response.
Lewis’ High View of Evangelism
Yet Lewis had a high view of evangelism itself. He wrote: “The glory of God, and, as our only means to glorying him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life.” And for him, this was not merely a theory. He wrote in a letter in 1949:
I have two lists of names in my prayers, those for whose conversion I pray, and those for whose conversion I give thanks. The little trickle of transferences from List A to List B is a great comfort.
He developed an understanding that different people with different gifts contribute different things to the process of evangelism. His contribution, he came to feel, was very specific. In a paper on apologetics, he said:
I turn now to the question of the actual attack. This may be either emotional or intellectual. If I speak only of the intellectual kind, that is not because I undervalue the other but because, not having been given the gifts necessary for carrying it out, I cannot give advice about it.
He came to believe therefore that evangelism was best done by a team:
I am not sure that the ideal missionary team ought not to consist of one who argues and one who (in the fullest sense of the word) preaches. Put up your arguer first to undermine their intellectual prejudices; then let the evangelist proper launch his appeal. I have seen this done with great success.
He had seen it done because in at least two instances he was the “arguer.” When Lewis started doing lectures to the RAF during the Second World War, he worked with an English bishop, A.W.Goodwin-Hudson, to whom he said:
I wish I could do the heart-stuff . . . I can’t. . . I wish I could. . . . I wish I could press home to these boys how much they need Christ. . . . You do the heart stuff and I’ll do the head stuff.
They agreed that Lewis would first of all do a 20-minute lecture presenting the rational case for Christianity, and Goodwin-Hudson would then follow up with the evangelistic appeal. Lewis adopted the same approach by teaming up with Stephen Olford for a crusade at Westminster Chapel in London.
As far as I know, Lewis never wrote about evangelism as a process. But clearly he sees himself as playing a part in the work of evangelism, though not the only part or necessarily the most important part. The way he understood his role was as preparation for the Gospel rather than the Gospel itself, “preparatio evangelica rather than evangelium”
If this is how Lewis sees his own role as an evangelist—as an intellectual John the Baptist—there are nevertheless two distinct ways in his writing in which he fulfils this role. I am thinking of Mere Christianity and the Narnia stories.
Mere Christianity began life as a series of radio broadcasts on the BBC in 1941; these were followed by two other similar series’. They were finally published in the form in which we know them in 1952. At the beginning of the series, he wrote to Dr. James Welch, the producer of the series to explain what he was trying to do:
It seems to me that the New Testament, by preaching repentance and forgiveness, always assumes an audience who already believe in the law of Nature and know they have disobeyed it. In modern England we cannot at present assume this, and therefore most apologetic begins a stage too far on. The first step is to create, or recover, the sense of guilt. Hence if I give a series of talks I should mention Christianity only at the end, and would prefer not to unmask my battery till then.
His intention, then, was to start where people are at—with humankind’s innate sense of right and wrong—and to work back from there to the necessity of a lawgiver, and thence to a sense of sin (our failed responsibility to the lawgiver), and to a saviour from sin. It was a rational, logical, step by step approach, illustrated profusely with brilliant analogies and metaphors.
Although he said it was preparation for the Gospel—what Schaeffer would have called pre-evangelism—in fact it has been the means of countless people coming to faith—most famously, in our generation, Charles Colson. Which is indicative, I think, of the fact that God is no respecter of our neat categories like evangelism and pre-evangelism. Some of what is intended as pre-evangelism actually brings people to faith; some that is intended to be directly evangelistic is for some people only early preparation for their conversion much later.
The Purpose of the Narnia Books
The Narnia series began in 1950 with the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . This was two years before Mere Christianity, but six years after the last of the radio broadcasts. Whether or not Lewis was aware of it at first, the Narnia stories demonstrate a quite different approach to evangelism. They do not begin with an attempt to establish a sense of sinfulness. They do not argue in a linear fashion for the truth of Christianity. In fact they do not argue at all. After all, they are children’s fantasies.
Perhaps then we are wrong to think of them as evangelistic. But Lewis’ own words confirm his evangelistic intention:
I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. . . . [S]upposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.
Lewis is concerned for people like himself who thought they knew Christianity, but had never really known or experienced its true nature. In his life, his experience of church on the one hand and his experience of the things that touched him most deeply on the other were totally different. It took many years before he came to realise (through Tolkien) that the thrill he found in mythology was not an end in itself but merely (to use his own image) a signpost pointing him for its fulfillment toward faith in Christ. The mythology of Narnia, he felt, might provide a similar kind of signpost to point people to Christ.
Lewis is the master of metaphor, and it is not surprising that he gives another image for what he was doing in Narnia to his friend and biographer, George Sayer:
His idea, as he once explained to me, was to make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life. He hoped they would be vaguely reminded of the somewhat similar stories that they had read and enjoyed years before. “I am aiming at a sort of pre-baptism of the child’s imagination.”
The Gospel may not yet have reached their minds or their wills, but if their imagination has been captured by Narnian images of redemption, then when they hear the Gospel, it will resonate more readily because of that preparatory work done by Narnia.
Thus Lewis is still John the Baptist, preparing the ground for the hearing of the Gospel, perhaps years later. Only now, unlike the Lewis of Mere Christianity, he is primarily trying to win the imagination, not the mind.
Not that evangelism was Lewis’ initial motive for writing the Narnia stories. Indeed, he had no idea of even writing a series at first. He says that the images came first (the faun, the queen, the lion), then the fairy tale form, and only afterwards the theological realization of how the books might be helpful in evangelism.
So what is there in the Chronicles that can be understood as evangelistic or pre-evangelistic? Barth says somewhere: “The best apologetic is good dogmatics.” If so, there is a wealth of good apologetics in the Chronicles, because behind Lewis the storyteller is Lewis the teacher, fleshing out almost every Christian doctrine. There are theologies of creation, the imago dei, the cultural mandate, and the fall; there is a Redeemer who dies because of sin and is raised again; there is a doctrine of the Spirit (the breath of Aslan); there are experiences of conversion, and lessons in repentance, faith, obedience and sanctification; there is an eschaton, an Armageddon, a heaven and a hell.
All that is lacking is an altar call—but Lewis has already told us he cannot do “the heart stuff.” Yet it seems to me that, in spite of his words, Lewis is not simply baptizing readers’ imaginations, preparing them for a future response. He hopes that people will respond to Jesus, both immediately and in the future.
Why do I say this? There are several occasions in the Chronicles when Lewis comes close to giving away the identity of Aslan. One, for example, is in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy visits house of the magician Koriakin, reads through the book of spells, and comes across a story which takes up three pages and tells “about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill.” She says, “That is the loveliest story I’ve read or ever shall read in my whole life.” Yet as soon as the story is done, she can’t remember it, and she can’t turn the pages back. She asks Aslan, “Will you tell it to me, Aslan?” And he says, “Indeed, yes. I will tell it to you for years and years.”
So we imagine Lucy back in our world, knowing only that she had once read the most wonderful story, wondering how Aslan will keep his promise, and then discovering in the most unlikely place in our world people who treasure a story about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill. And as she learns more about the story, she realises that Aslan is keeping his promise.
Maybe the clearest clue, however, is at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There the children meet Aslan in the form of a lamb, who has prepared breakfast for them on an open fire in a beach. The children are about to return to our world, and Lucy is upset because they will be leaving Aslan behind. Aslan, however, reassures her: “But you shall meet me, dear one”:
“Are—are you there too, sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. That was the very reason you were brought into Narnia, that by knowing me for a little, you may know me better there.”
Lewis’ intention is that readers, having got to know Aslan in Narnia, should try to discover Aslan’s “other name” in our world, and indeed that what they have learned about Aslan will help them in getting to know him in our world. Thus he does not seem surprised when a girl called Hila wrote to him about this question. He comes close to giving the answer, but not quite:
As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2) Said he was the son of the great Emperor. (3) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4) Came to life again. (5) Is sometimes spoke of as a Lamb . . . Don’t you really know His name in this world. Think it over and let me know your answer!
Like the good teacher he is, Lewis does not spell things out for his students, but points them in the right direction, and lets them discover the truth for themselves. Most evangelists are reluctant to do this! Lewis however is content to sow seeds, nurturing curiosity that he trusts will lead people to consider or reconsider the stories of Jesus without the interference of the watchful dragons. Is this evangelistic? In the sense of calling for an immediate decision to follow Jesus, no. But if evangelism involves all kinds of words whose intention is help people take steps towards faith in Jesus, then the stories of Narnia certainly count.
Does it work?
Some will want to ask, Does it work?—although people like Packer would say that is the wrong question to ask. However, for what it is worth, in the past six months, I have been in email communication with a woman in her 30’s, in England, whom I have never met. She discovered my website, and emailed me with some questions. After some online conversation, I suggested she needed to read the Narnia stories, and sent her the manuscript of my book, The Spirituality of Narnia (Regent College Publishing 2007). With her permission, I’m going to share some of the questions that reading Narnia raised for her:
What have I been created (designed) for? Who am I meant to be? I found the whole creation scene [in The Magician’s Nephew] very moving. It has made me realise that rather than simply (!) being created, I’ve been called to life for a purpose.
I’ve been questioning my work anyway regarding its moral validity [she works in the gambling industry]; reading about how the dwarves loved making the crowns (as you put it, “it is what they were made to do and thus what they do well”) has made me question it in another way – “Where does my passion lie?” “What is it that I have been made to do well?”
How do logic and faith contribute to what I think is the truth? In the “We hear and obey” chapter, the “seeing is believing” / “believing is seeing” section has raised questions about my reliance on my own reason to understand/believe some things, but also helped me understand why and how I know the truth I know about other things.
What are the things that stop me following Aslan even though I believe in him (like Susan in Prince Caspian)? This is one I *really* need to work on.
The way Aslan accepts people and their failings has made me understand much better how God accepts us (and question how I accept myself and others).
In your book, one phrase that really hits home is in the description of Uncle Andrew’s reaction to the creation. “And Aslan will not force him to give in.” It actually makes me feel the “wonder and a certain shrinking” sort of fear when I think about this.
I cannot imagine that (humanly speaking) any amount of preaching would have caused her to ask such questions. But Narnia has reached very deep into her soul, and drew her closer to Aslan almost by the day. The watchful dragons were indeed driven back.
Conclusion
Lewis leaves me with many questions about our evangelistic practices. Many people in our world are guarded by the watchful dragons—they can smell religiosity a mile off and they do not want it–how do we get round the dragons? We know how to appeal to people’s minds and wills in our evangelism, but how do we appeal to people’s imaginations? Are we willing to trust the Holy Spirit enough to ask questions and let people figure out the answers themselves–without our spelling everything out? Do we feel the only way to explain the Gospel is by beginning with sin? Or are we prepared to think there might be other starting points, such as people’s longing for joy, which will lead them to the same conclusion? Are we prepared to make use of a wide range of gifts within the Body of Christ to nurture people’s progress towards Christ, however slow it may seem?
And, most relevantly, are we prepared for the Narnia movies simply to baptize people’s imaginations, rather than producing actual conversions? I would argue that if the movies succeed in disarming the watchful dragons, that is an essential contribution to the process we call evangelism. And unless such sowing and watering takes place, there will never be any reaping.
This article is adapted from its first appearance in the Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education, Fall 2005.
Christian discipleship is no picnic. There are picnics on the way, of course—and parties an festivals and celebrations and holidays. But discipleship is hard work, and Jesus wasn’t afraid to make that clear, even if it meant having fewer disciples.
Now evangelism can be incredible joy, almost intoxicating—when you see a person responding to the message, like a flower opening in the sunshine. Jan was baptized a couple of Sundays back. She had invited all the people who had played a part in her coming to Christ over a period of two years. As she told her testimony, she asked each person to stand at the point where they came into the story. By the time she finished, maybe a dozen people had stood up, there was not a dry eye in the church!
But (as the old Prayer Book says about marriage) it is also not to be undertaken unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, but soberly, discreetly and in the fear of God! There’s a good book on evangelism called Evangelism made Slightly Less Difficult. That about sums it up: it will always be difficult, but it can be “made slightly less difficult.”
So why do it? Why not be comfortable? One basic reason because we follow Jesus and this is something he commanded us. (I am not aware that he ever promised us we would be comfortable.) Indeed, the command to make disciples was the last command he ever gave. Sometimes we recognise that obedience is important: we know it’s important to love our neighbour, or to forgive our enemy, or to “do this in remembrance of me.” So it’s strange that we ignore things like the command to make disciples! Probably we do so simply because it’s difficult. As G.K.Chesterton said of the faith in general: “it’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but that’s it’s been found difficult and not tried.” It’s the same woth evangelism.
If we decide that we need to work at obeying Jesus in this, learning to make disciples, it will cost . . . So let me suggest to you ten items that need to go into the balance sheet. (I am assuming the worst-case scenario here; so if you find yourself thinking, “That wouldn’t be a problem for our congregation,” that’s a plus. Pat yourselves in the back.)
1. We will need to re-educate our congregations about the reason we exist
Our churches do not exist to keep the Anglican Church of Canada in business. Our churches do not exist because there are still a few religious people who happen to like that kind of thing. Our churches do not exist because it’s nice to see old church buildings dotting the Canadian landscape and they remind us of our heritage.
At its simplest, church exists to be a gathering of disciples of Jesus, to worship him, to learn from him, and to invite others to become disciples too. That might sound too obvious, too simple, but for many that sounds really weird. One elderly lady said, “Why do we always have to think about other people: why can’t we think about ourselves for a change?” and that was after 60 years in that church! So for our congregations to understand what the church is all about is the starting point, the sine qua non of evangelism.
2. We will need to rediscover the Gospel
I was leading a seminar once, and talking about the Gospel, when an elderly gentleman in the front row raised his hand, and said “I’ve been in church all my life, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anything I would call ‘the Gospel’.” I suspect he had heard many sermons about behaving yourself, being a good citizen, not being racist, caring for the environment, and (perhaps) the lack of leadership in society. Many such sermons, I am sure, told him to try harder, love more, and give more. But these things are not the Gospel, they are not the kind of good news to make us dance, or even smile. All too often, they just weigh us down.
So what then is the Gospel? The good news is that God has not given up on our world, but is doing something new to deal with evil and sin, and to restore the whole world. That “new thing” is called “the Kingdom of God” in the New Testament, and it centres on Jesus. And now God invites everybody to give up whatever they were living for before, to become a follower of Jesus and to become a part of what God is doing in the world.
We need to hear this message, in all its glory and all its many facets, from the pulpit. We need it to be the focus of our Bible studies. We need it to be at the heart of the devotions which open our committee meetings. We need to sing about it, talk about it, and let it warm out hearts. The Gospel needs to become our lifeblood again. Without it, church life becomes boring at best—and lethal at worst.
The Greek work for good news, or Gospel, is evangel—so if there is no evangel, there cannot be any evangelism. It’s absolutely basic.
3. We will need programs to help new people understand discipleship
Let me ask you, if a person comes to your church and is asking, “I’d like to understand this Christian faith business,” what can you offer? One woman new to our church said, “I didn’t know where to begin.” We too often begin in the middle, and assume a person is ready to jump into the middle of active ministry, when in fact they may not know anything about Christian faith, let alone be committed disciples. We ask, “Could you help with Sunday School?” when we should be asking, “Where are you at in exploring your spirituality?”
Remember too that the church is a school, the school of Jesus. If people behaved this way in any other school, we would think it was bizarre, like offering graduate programs to people who ought to be in kindergarten. There are programs to help beginners: Alpha works for some, Christian Basics is great, Harold Percy’s Christianity 101 is being widely used, Emmaus is catching on. So there are lots of programs: we just need to choose one and start teaching it!
4. We will need to redirect finances to make evangelism possible
At the simplest level, if you buy Alpha videos, you won’t be able to buy something else. If you start a new service, you may need to hire a musician. (A couple of years ago, we started a new service in my parish, and put in our budget $5,000 to pay a worship leader. At our AGM a few Sundays later, a long-time member said, “Are the people at this new service actually giving $5,000 a year? And if not, why are we putting money into it?”)
I don’t need to tell you, when you talk about money, specially taking money away from something, or raising money for something new, you touch a raw nerve. For evangelism to happen, you need a treasurer with strong nerves and a passion for outreach!
5. We will need to reassign personnel
When we started our third Sunday service, we needed musicians, greeters, an extra Sunday school, and so on. And where were the people to come from to staff these? At least at first, they came from the existing services. You can imagine how popular that was.
It’s not only responsibilities within the church that will change, however. Often in the church, the way you measure someone’s commitment is by how many committees they are on, right? Wrong. I recall a friend in Ottawa, Don Page, who founded the Public Service Christian Fellowship. Over several years, they established about 100 Bible study groups on Parliament Hill and in government offices, and, over those years, Don heard of about 100 people who had become Christians through them. You know what responsibilities he had at his church (a Fellowship Baptist church)? None. They said, “Don, that’s your ministry. We’ll pray for you, support you, give you anything you need. But don’t waste your gifts on church committees.”
When Don left, there was a suggestion that the vice-president of the PSCF should take over, but he was unable to do so. Guess why? He had too many church commitments. There’s something deeply ironic about a church which limits people’s ability to do evangelism, isn’t there? But it happens all the time.
So we may need to release people from their regular commitments. Maybe someone will resign from a church committee because they are gifted at teaching one of those newcomers groups we are going to be offering. Maybe someone will give up teaching Sunday School because they’re starting a Bible study group at work. And instead of getting antsy and protective, we need to bless them and let them go. And to remind ourselves that people who serve on fewer committees may actually be getting more serious about their discipleship, not less.
6. Some old things, familiar and beloved, will have to give way to some new things.
I don’t know what these might be for you, but we need to be prepared. I think of a friend who was priest in a little country congregation in Ontario. He took out the two back pews because there was nowhere for people to stand, to mingle and have coffee. Sounds like a sensible move, right? Let us just say he is no longer the priest in that congregation. In fact, he has a thriving ministry in Nova Scotia.
He had offended people with money, and people who had the bishop’s phone number. The people he was trying to reach had neither—indeed, they weren’t even there yet. He changed something for the sake of outreach—and it wasn’t appreciated. Beware!
7. Our worship may have to change
I did a series of sermons on Lord of the Rings a couple of years back, for a weekly seeker service in downtown Toronto. Towards the end, one of the music group, a long time church member, came to me, and said, “At first I didn’t like your sermons. I couldn’t see what you were up to. But finally I’ve figured it out; they’re not for us, are they? They’re for the new people!” and she was right. But it took her time to get used to the different style.
But it may be something as simple as how we begin the service. I was in a service recently where the first announcement before the service began was about the new stewardship campaign. That’s hardly appropriate as the first thing new people hear. After all, what does it tell them? “Oh wow, so this place is in financial trouble! Do I really want to stay?”
So we will need to think about the beginning of the service, how and whether we take up an offering, what we sing, how we introduce Bible readings. Everything needs to be thought through from the point-of-view of a newcomer. Not that we necessarily change everything—of course—but at least we are sensitive to how a new person will hear things, and respond accordingly, so they do not feel alienated and never come back.
8. New people will come
But that’s what we hoped for, right? Isn’t that the point of evangelism? Why is that a cost? Well, the question is: what if they’re not like us? Our youth group has been growing with unchurched kids the last few years, and, as a result, on any given Sunday morning, there may be at least half a dozen youth in the service, and there are more belly buttons and nose rings, and more colourful hair than have ever been seen in this church before. And what’s worse, they don’t know the service. So far, we’re coping well.
However, one priest who has seen his church grow significantly with new people said to me, “People like it . . . until it comes to questions of power. The new people have come to feel they belong, and they want to serve, so they come to the annual general meeting, and they run for office.” You can imagine the rest. Power touches people where it hurts almost as much as money. But this is what happens if we do evangelism.
9. Some people will leave
Some would say that in any congregation there will be 20% who want to reach out and make disciples; 20% who say “Over my dead body” but show no sign of being about to die any time soon; and 60% who are open to be persuaded either way. Sometimes we have to choose which 20% we want—because in all likelihood not all of them will stay.
10. All this puts pressure on clergy for a different kind of leadership
I remember one minister in his mid-40s who said to me, “I was trained for a church that no longer exists.” A minister who cares about evangelism may well end up doing less pastoral visiting and more time hanging out in the local Tim Horton’s; less time with church committees, and more time training lay leaders; less time caring for the present members, more for the potential members that nobody knows or has seen yet. And such clergy need the encouragement and support of their congregations, not criticism and complaint.
Well, this is the price. Is it too high? But consider the cost if we do not do it . . .
The cost of not doing it
• To put it bluntly, a church that is not growing is a church which is dying—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but somewhere down the road, when the last three members close the doors for the last time, and say, “Maybe we should have thought about evangelism after all.” Church that is not trying to make disciples is going against its God-given nature.
• But I would say this is the least of our worries. Far worse will be the fact that we will have failed to obey our Lord’s last command. And one day we will have to look him in the eye and explain why. This is a higher price!
But don’t be discouraged. If we do launch out into disciple-making:
• We will find our own faith come alive. The New Testament was written to a disciple making church, and it will start to come alive to us in a fresh way if we too are disciple-making church. “Faith without works is dead,” and evangelism is one of the “works” which will bring our faith to life.
• We may see new people come to faith, and that will be a cause of great joy. It’s a good reminder when someone becomes a Christian that, “Wow! It really works!”
• You may remember that movie of 20 years ago, Chariots of Fire, and those words of Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” When we start to evangelize, we will know God’s pleasure. Why? Because God is an evangelizing God, a disciple-making God, and when we do the things that God cares about, and our heart begins to beat with the heart of God, and we know God’s pleasure. And there is no greater joy for a human being on this earth.
Diocese of Edmonton, June 2004
The direct route is not always the best route. C.S.Lewis says, for example, that if we want joy, the worst thing we can do is go out looking for it, because we will never find it. If we want joy, we need to forget about it and simply get to work on whatever God has given us to do. And joy will sneak up on us when we’re not looking. It’s the same with evangelism. If we suddenly say, “We have to do evangelism”, and try to do it, we’ll be disappointed and frustrated—and, whatever we do, it’s unlikely to be evangelism. But, as with joy, if we get to work on what God has given us to do already, evangelism may just sneak up on us. Hence I call this talk “The Unexpected Key to Evangelism.” So, if we don’t start with evangelism, where do we start?
We start with discipleship. Christians are called primarily to discipleship, not to evangelism. But if we work on being disciples, I won’t say evangelism will happen spontaneously, but it will at least be within our grasp. Consider how this works in John 1:35-36. John the Baptist says to John and Andrew, “Behold the lamb of God!” and they follow—in other words they begin to be disciples. The very next thing is that Andrew goes to fetch Peter. But in telling him to come to Jesus, he is in fact evangelizing him. What is it that has made that possible? Simply that Andrew has become a disciple himself, so now he can invite someone else to be a disciple—which is the heart of evangelism. The same pattern happens just a few verses later. Jesus evangelizes Philip, that is, he invites him to be a disciple. Now, because Philip is a disciple he can go off and evangelize Nathaniel—that is, invite him to be a disciple too. You see the pattern? So evangelism begins with discipleship. Once we have started on the road of discipleship, we can help others become disciples too—that is, we can evangelize them. But only disciples can make disciples. Only those who are following can help others follow. Only those who have experienced good news can share good news.
So let’s think about discipleship. Christians are Disciples Interestingly enough, the name by which the first Christians called themselves most often was “disciple.” And the literal meaning of the word “disciple” is “learner” or “student.” For them, it seems, when they thought of Christian faith, the thing that came to their mind first was not church or services or the Ten Commandments or being a good citizen, but learning. This suggests that for them the Christian community was first and foremost a school, and the Christian life a process of learning.
This raises some interesting questions. Where is this school? What is it for? What do you learn there? What are the teaching methods? Who are the teachers? And where are classes held? How do you graduate? Is it true that the graduate programs are out of this world? The easiest question to answer is: who is the teacher? The answer is Jesus. Many times in the pages of the earliest biographies of Jesus he is called “Teacher”, and a couple of times he calls himself by the same title. But what is it that he teaches? What is the curriculum in this school Jesus is running? In the 1940s, Dorothy Sayers wrote a series of plays for radio based on the life of Jesus and called The Man Born to be King. In one of those plays she puts into the mouth of Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus’ first followers, the sort of thing Mary might have said to Jesus as she recalled the first time she met him: “Did you know? My friends and I came there that day to mock you. We thought you would be sour and grim, hating all beauty and treating life as an enemy. But when I saw you, I was amazed. You were the only person there who was really alive. The rest of us were going about half-dead—making the gestures of life, pretending to be real people. The life was not with us but with you—intense and shining, like the strong sun when it rises and turns the flames of our candles to pale smoke. And I wept and was ashamed, seeing myself such a thing of trash and tawdry. But when you spoke to me, I felt the flame of the sun in my heart. I came alive for the first time. And I love life all the more since I have learnt its meaning.” [1]
Sayers explains elsewhere: “What she sees in Jesus is the Life–the blazing light of living intensely.” What did Jesus come to teach? He said on one occasion, “I have come so that people might have life and have it in all its fullness!”[2] Jesus is a teacher of life: he teaches us how to live as God’s person in God’s world in God’s way—and in the friendship of God. That is what people saw in Jesus. It is what gave him that unique quality of being fully alive; it is what attracted people like Mary to be his followers. They wanted to learn the life that they saw in Jesus. Then I want to ask: how do you learn this kind of life? Some time ago I received in the mail a Bible study guide with a picture of a very formal classroom on the cover: big desk, blackboard, books neatly arranged in the desk, clock on the wall. To be honest, I didn’t spend a lot of time with it, because it seemed to me the whole image was so deeply wrong. Jesus’ kind of learning never took place in a classroom with a blackboard and a big desk. The
That then raises the question of how we learn? Jesus has a specially vivid image for this:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am humble and gentle in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
There in the centre of this saying of Jesus is his offer to be our teacher: “Come . . . Learn of me.” Then he gives us a powerful image to explain how we learn. He says, “Take my yoke upon you.” Before we came to
Well, we learn theory through such things as Scripture, sermons, small group discussions, and books. We learn by watching models of the Christian life—Jesus first and foremost, then models in Scripture and church history, but then too people we have known who have showed us what it means to live a life of Christian faith. Experimenting generally means risking something new. I don’t know what that will be for you. Jesus tailors the learning to the particular disciple. it may well involve such things as:
o learning to be generous with what we have—perhaps more generous than we feel comfortable with at first;o learning to express our anger in more constructive ways;o learning how to forgive;o learning to come alongside someone at work or at school who is a bit of a misfit;o Jesus the Teacher may also want to alter our career plans, or our retirement plans, or our holiday plans. Then there is evaluation: going over what we are learning with a friend or a mentor or a spiritual director. And all of this of course in an environment of Love: the safety of Jesus and the community of his followers. If this sounds daunting, it is important to note that there are encouragements here. For example, Jesus says he is a teacher who is gentle and humble. Many of us have had teachers who are not like that: they delighted in showing how clever they were, and in putting down their students’ mistakes. Jesus is the opposite: encouraging, nurturing, patient with our mistakes, taking time and trouble with us individually, to help us learn. Then too he says his yoke is “easy.” For anyone who has been a follower of Jesus more than about twenty-four hours, that sounds a little strange because being a Christian is often demanding. The original biographies of Jesus, from which this saying is taken, were written in Greek, the main language of Jesus’ world, and I am told that the Greek word for “easy” can be better translated “well-fitting.” Actually, we still use the word “easy” this way. If you are looking for a pair of new shoes, you might try a couple of pairs that really do not fit and then you find one that is just right, and you say, “That’s a really easy fit.” You mean the shoes are comfortable, they are right for you. This is the sense in which Jesus’ yoke is “easy”: it is well-fitting. After all, in those days, yokes were made one by one for individual oxen—there was no mass production. Jesus is saying, in effect, My yoke is made specially for you. There will be work and there will sometimes be difficulty—but the yoke will still be the one I made for you. When Jesus originally said these words, he was issuing an invitation. He begins this saying with the words, “Come to me!” That wasn’t a theoretical statement, and his hearers knew it. In my imagination, when he had finished, and the crowds were going home for supper, there were some who did not leave straight away. They pushed through the crowd and came up to Jesus, maybe a little hesitantly, and said something like this: “Jesus, you know what you said about being your student and sharing your yoke? I really think I’d like to do that. Is there some kind of application form? Do I have to get transcripts?” And whoever that person was, whatever they had done, wherever they had been in their spiritual journey, Jesus said (and in my imagination it’s with a big smile and outstretched arms), “That’s great. You’re welcome. We’re just going to have supper. Come eat with us and I’ll introduce you to the others.” In one sense, nothing has changed since that first day, if it is indeed true that Jesus has returned from death and is alive forever. So we can speak to him just as if he were present here in the flesh. The offer of becoming his student, learning to live as God’s person in God’s world in God’s way, still stands. And his invitation, “Come to me”, is just as real today as it was 2,000 years ago. And now just as then he waits to see what we will say. Let me offer you the sort of thing you may wish to say to Jesus in response to his invitation. If it makes sense to you, you may wish to echo these words silently in your heart to him.
Jesus –
Thank you for inviting me to join your school. Thank you for offering yourself as my Teacher, and for shaping a yoke just for me. I do want to learn what it means to live as God’s person in God’s world in God’s way. Please enroll me as a student in your school. Teach me to share your yoke and to be your faithful student day by day. Amen I want to end by connecting back to evangelism. (I don’t want you going home, saying, He was supposed to talk about evangelism but all he did was talk about discipleship!)
How Does Discipleship Connect to Evangelism? A) One of the things on Jesus’ curriculum for his disciples is that they should “Go, make disciples.” B) If we are ourselves disciples, that is the first, most essential step towards helping others become disciples too. (I recall an Anglican Bishop in
“As time went by, I started to notice that Sarah and the other Christians in the residence seemed to live by some kind of code which was different from everyone else. They seemed to have a lot of fun, but . . . They were different, and I noticed the difference and was impressed by it. As I continued to think and learn I scrutinized those around me to see if they really were living a life that was true to what they believed. I discovered that indeed they failed from time to time, but I was more impressed by their readiness to own up to their failure and to start again with new enthusiasm.”
These people were living as disciples . . . and someone was attracted to become a disciple too.
Tomorrow we’ll think more about how this works out in the life of a congregation. I will have good news and I will have, well, difficult news. But my hope is that like me you will come to the conclusion that this journey to evangelism is worthwhile, perhaps the most worthwhile thing we will ever do. Diocese of
[1] Dorothy L. Sayers The Man Born To Be King (London: Victor Gollancz 1943), 186-187.
[2] The Gospel According to John, chapter 10, verse 10.
Students in my “Evangelism in Cultural Context” class went out into the neighborhood around the college a couple of weeks ago to talk to people about Christian faith. The questionnaire (put together the previous week) asked about: (a) people’s present spirituality (b) what they knew already about Christianity and (c) what might cause them to investigate Christian faith further. The results were intriguing, and there was more good news than bad. Out of 85 respondents, most of them aged under 25, fully two thirds had a Christian background of some kind. One third had grown up Catholic, though few were committed to Catholicism today. About 10 identified as practicing Christians in one tradition or another. The others came from a wide range of churches. As a result, when asked what they knew of Christian faith, most were able to say such things as “Jesus was the Son of God”, “he died on a cross”, or “he came back from death.” So much for “secular”Canada. There are clearly many people, including young people, out there who still have some “Christian memory.” For them, evangelism does not have to start from scratch.
The Christian memory was somewhat fuzzy when it came to people’s understanding of the Gospel. Most said the message of Christianity was primarily ethical—“To make the world a better place,” or “To be kind to people.” Not that these are completely wrong, of course, but are they the heart of the matter? It was interesting for instance, that not many people mentioned Jesus! In fact, Muslims (of whom we talked to nine), gave more complete and theological answers, such as, “God is one, Jesus is God’s son, act like Jesus.” One particularly fruitful question was “If you could ask God one question, what would it be?” Most of us expected “Why suffering?” to be top of the list, but perhaps surprisingly, 23% wanted to ask, “What is the purpose of life?” Suffering was the second most frequent question (18%), and 9% wanted to know about life after death. We also encountered unique questions like, “Were there ever unicorns?” and “Why do I turn red when I’m nervous?” (This person had in fact turned red during the conversation.)
We asked, “If you know Christians, what words would you use to describe them?” About 120 positive adjectives (caring, intelligent, cheerful) were used, compared with 26 negative ones (hypocrites, naïve, self-righteous). Whatever image Christians may have in the popular media, the impression made by real-life, flesh and blood Christians is on the whole positive. This probably had an effect on answers to the question, “What might cause you to be interested in Christian faith?” Three questions began with, “If a friend invited you”: the options were “to church”, “to a discussion group” and “to a lecture on a topic of interest to you.” Other possibilities were “reading a book by a Christian on a topic of interest to you” and “in time of personal crisis.”
Responses were in the mid-20’s (22%, 25%, 24%) for church, a speaker, and a book. Small groups were less popular (14%), probably, as some said, because it was somewhat threatening. A similar number (14%) would turn to Christian faith in time of crisis. The willingness of people to go with a Christian friend to a Christian event (even church!) was quite startling. We didn’t ask whether they would go “without a Christian friend”, of course, but it seems likely that the friend is the factor that makes the difference. Overall, we were encouraged by:
(1) The willingness of people to talk about such personal matters. Very un-Canadian! Probably the fact that interviewers were asking for help (“we have this awful assignment to do . . . can you help?”—what one called the pity factor) rather than seeking to deliver a message made a difference.
(2) The degree of knowledge (however hazy) of Christian faith there still is in the minds of (apparently) unchurched students.
(3) That so many were open to considering Christian faith. The challenge, of course, is for Christians to make friends with people who believe differently, and for the Christian community to dream up the kind of events which would provide an open door in to a consideration of Christian faith. Finding a creative way to address questions like the meaning of life and the problem of suffering would seem like an appropriate place to begin! Discovering people’s openness is only the beginning. After that the real challenge begins. But it’s a good beginning.
The Morning Star
Wycliffe College
March 2004
