The Institute of Evangelism

Every Church an Evangelizing Community!

Religion - General

Why Create a Podcast for Skeptics?

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Life is a journey. That’s a good metaphor; let’s go with that.

Now, all of us have a map for this journey. These maps can be religious or secular, held consciously or unconsciously, but each one tells us where we should go, how we can get there, and what we’ll see. Christianity too presents a map, drawn with the teachings of the Bible and centred on the person of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is, essentially, inviting and persuading others to join our journey as we follow our map.

 

We Are Not “Here”

However, those of us who invite others to this journey face a number of self-inflicted problems which damage the credibility of our invitation. Some of these are perennial, such as religious hypocrisy, bigotry, violence, coercive evangelistic practices, and so on. But there is one key problem that is more specific to this age. If you look up a map on your phone, you’ll notice a flashing dot, or a red arrow, or something that indicates you are here. Maps posted at parks, hiking trails, or malls have similar symbols that say, “You are here.” Likewise, how we’ve typically presented Christianity to others assumes an identifiable starting point of our journey: you are here.

The problem is, we are not “here.”

Those of us who were raised in secular, modern societies find ourselves in a world that does not match what our reading of the map tells us we should see. Religion is no longer a prevalent part of our culture; fewer people believe in objective morality, or life after death, or a creator of the universe; what we learn in the sciences, the arts, and history seem to go counter to what we learn in the Bible; our society increasingly finds no need for a god to understand our world or to live in it. The landmarks and features that were supposed to be around us at the starting point of our journey are missing from our world.

Now, if a map said we were on a path winding through a village perched upon a scenic mountaintop, but we found ourselves instead in a walled town on a barren hill in the wilderness, we’d question the credibility of the map. Or worse, we could misidentify the features around us with what’s in the map—say, the walled town with the village, or the barren hill with the mountain. Then, we’d become more and more lost as we followed the map until we abandoned the entire journey. Maybe, afterwards, we would write books or start podcasts about de-converting from our journey, or deconstructing our map.

 

A Different Landscape

This obviously is a problem for evangelism. Holding a different worldview is much more significant than just holding a different map; it’s like inhabiting a different landscape. So, imagine that someone presented us with a map that seemed to get everything wrong about the land we saw around us, and then invited us to join their journey. We’d very likely refuse! And if they argued that their map was somehow correct, we’d simply say, “This is not what I see.” If they claimed that their map was of a different, faraway land, which we would only see after we joined them, we’d be suspicious; if they didn’t have a working map for what was around us now, why should we trust that they could get us to some distant land we had never seen—a land which could very well be just a figment of their imagination?

Now, perhaps we would still join them if we had come to deeply trust that person—we might not trust the map, but we would trust the one following it. This, of course, is why Christ-like living and community is so crucial to Christian witness. However, we would be more likely to say to them, “I really respect you, but I think you should ditch your map—in fact, take our map and join us!”

However, our map is not wrong, nor is it just of some faraway land; we just marked the wrong spot on the map as “here.” That means we need to relocate where we are and re-read our entire map. We need to reorient ourselves to this different landscape and identify all the landmarks again: perhaps the mountaintop where the village sits is that distant mountain on the horizon; perhaps this wilderness around us is the hinterlands drawn on the map below that mountain. Then, we need to re-plot our entire journey from our new starting point. There’s no need to return to the mountaintop village; we need to begin our journey from where we are now, where we became lost.

 

Retelling the Story

This, I think, is the task of theology in every generation, but especially now, when the “here” on our map has so radically shifted. Concretely speaking, this means we need to re-articulate even our most basic beliefs in ways and words that those living in this new landscape can recognize. What do we mean by “God”? What do we mean by “Creation”? What do we mean by “sin”? What do we mean by “God speaks”? Then we need to retell the entirety of the Bible’s journey, from Genesis to the Gospels to the End, and reimagine our own journey from where we are today.

This is the project I first outlined in my book, God at the Crossroads of Worldviews, and now engage with in the podcast “What do you mean God speaks?”, which describes itself as “a series that retells key ideas, insights, and stories in Christianity for the skeptics who want to understand religion, Christians with questions about their own beliefs, and everyone in between.” I hope to expand its content further to different mediums, such as books and YouTube videos, while trying to reach beyond the current limited following. Yet these projects remain but the first fledgling steps in unfamiliar territory in our renewed journey—one which the Church of this generation needs to take. A key part of what it needs is people who can connect this series to the skeptics, seekers, and Christians faced with questions from our new landscape.

So I invite you to check out the series “What do you mean God speaks?” and then share it with the skeptics and seekers in your own lives.

https://whatdoyoumeangodspeaks.buzzsprout.com/

or https://what-do-you-mean-god-speaks.onpodium.com/

Precursor to Mission: The Church’s Own Conversion

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This article is part of our Wycliffe Faculty series, in which the faculty of such diverse departments as biblical studies, theology, and history write about mission and evangelism. As somewhat of a shift from Good Idea’s usual focus, we hope you enjoy reading about the perspectives on the mission of the Church today.

 

Anglicanism has been a leader in world mission, beginning its self-conscious outreach in the later 17th century. As it gained steam, this missionary work coincided with Anglicanism’s leading role in local mission, itself tied to the rise of the parish-based Religious Societies, from which the Wesleys and the Evangelical Revival emerged. It is a thrilling story.

 

Evangelism-bereft BCP—and Yet . . .

Yet all this happened with a Book of Common Prayer (I’ll stick to discussing the long-lived and widely disseminated 1662 BCP here) that said hardly a thing explicitly about evangelism and mission. There are no collects in the BCP about mission or evangelism. No prayers about the lost souls of the unevangelized. No petitions for getting up and going out. Yet Anglicans took the lead among Protestants in evangelism and mission from the late 17th century on, seemingly unconcerned with their prayer book’s silence about all this. Indeed, Anglican mission came to be sustained through its most vibrant evangelistic work with this same seemingly evangelism-bereft BCP. By the early 20th century, a few explicit prayers for mission were added to new BCP editions, but not many. And the irony is that, in the 1970s, when BCPs were radically revised here and there, and materials on “going out to the world” were explicitly woven into its language, these revisions coincided with the withering of Anglican mission, especially in the West. Go figure!

Of course, the BCP is not really silent about mission and evangelism. It is only silent about more modern preconceptions regarding what mission and evangelism might be, preconceptions based on organization, method, and (alas) worries about church membership. Leaving that aside, a mission-infused vision is deeply embedded in the BCP, but one that is tied primarily to the church’s own conversion, a conversion whose integrity is its own converting witness to others.

 

Good Works, Repentance, and Mission

Students of the BCP—as well as its more Protestant critics—have always noted the moralism of the Prayer Book’s tenor. There is an almost unremitting emphasis on doing “good works”, not, to be sure, in order to gain God’s favour, but as a result of the joyous condition of being saved by God’s grace in Christ. Take one of the few collects in the BCP that we might associate with mission and evangelism, the one for St. John the Baptist: John, we note in the prayer, “was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of thy Son our Saviour, by preaching of repentance.” Our own petition takes up this example as a hope for ourselves. But note the focus. “Make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching, and after his example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Proclamation here is tied to our own repentance, whose embodiment among other factors occurs through our truth-knowing, truth-speaking, correction, and our own suffering for the truth.

All this is completely characteristic of the BCP’s view of mission: preaching is meant to lead to “obedience” in accordance with God’s “commandments” (this, after all, is divine “truth”)—both for ourselves and for others. And this obedience is itself the “preaching” of the Gospel, which is given in the form of following Christ’s teaching and example. One could say, using a popular modern category, that the BCP’s evangelistic focus is primarily on “discipleship.” And “conversion,” with its “changed heart,” is focused on “virtuous and godly living” (cf. the Collect for All Saints Day).

As many have observed, the specific kind of discipleship that the BCP has in mind is one that is mostly socially enacted—oriented, that is, toward “neighbours” and “enemies” both, and lived out through the daily relationships of common life. While there are moments of introspection in the BCP, by and large there is little dwelling upon guilt and subjective freedom—on “feelings.” Instead, the recognition of guilt and encouragement to perform acts of repentance are aimed at a renewed life with others, with (again) “doing good” to one’s neighbour according to God’s commands. Thus, we see in the extensive Offertory Sentences gathered from Scripture, which are said before Communion, a repeated insistence upon using one’s goods and material resources for the sake of others; the initial Exhortation and then Invitation to Communion are all about living in “charity” with others, seeking forgiveness, even making reparation. And, finally, in the wonderful thanksgiving prayers after Communion, the unspeakable fruit of Christ’s gift of himself to us is that we, in turn, “offer ourselves, our souls and bodies” as a “sacrifice” within the world of our daily relations to the Lord, doing the “good works” that God has “prepared for us to walk in.”

It should not surprise us, then, that one of the BCP’s most “missionary” prayers, in a popular sense, is located within a petition for the Church’s own integrity, the “Prayer for All Conditions of Men”. The prayer begins with a kind of “Great Commission” theme: “We humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men: that thou wouldst be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving-health unto all Nations.” This is one of the only places in the entire BCP where there is an explicit prayer for “all Nations.” But the collect itself goes on to specify the shape of this mission: it is to be given in the form (“estate”) of “the Catholick Church; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians, may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.” As I noted above, mission here is given in the form of the Church’s own conversion; and that conversion is given in the form of an obedient life of discipleship.

Of course, such obedient discipleship is offered explication in the words of the Lord himself; that is, in the Scriptures. It is here, finally, where the BCP truly offers its call to missionary evangelism: in the Psalms and in the Gospel and Epistle texts laid out for every Sunday and Feast day, and appointed for every other day of the year. Within the BCP, almost every reference to “preaching” and “witness” and “the nations” is found in these printed scriptural texts—and there are many of them. The BCP’s theology of conversion and embodied discipleship fundamentally orients the Christian to God’s Word.

 

Inspiration, Guidance, and Example

Only here, in the Scriptures, is offered that inspiration, guidance, and example, those powerful instruments by which Anglicans were impelled and sustained around the globe (and in their neighborhoods) in their missionary efforts during these past centuries and still now, vitally, in Africa and Asia in particular. And why not here? God’s work in Christ calls and empowers us to be the disciples of the crucified and risen Lord, and just following this call leads us ever more deeply into the Scriptures, whose divine Spirit leads us out into the world. So we pray.

The Trinity and God’s Mission

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This article is part of our Wycliffe Faculty series, in which the faculty of such diverse departments as biblical studies, theology, and history write about mission and evangelism. As somewhat of a shift from Good Idea’s usual focus, we hope you enjoy reading about their perspectives on the mission of the Church today.

 

In churches that follow the lectionary, the old joke is that Trinity Sunday is the day the new associate is asked to preach. Why not give them the thankless task of trying to find a way to “explain” the Trinity? We can already anticipate them using one of many popular analogies, “ice, water, steam” or “the three leaf clover” or “the egg—shell, white and yolk”. These well-worn analogies not only reinforce ancient heresies, they mislead listeners by suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity is meant to explain or solve the apparent conundrum of a God who can be both one and three at the same time. The result is only to reinforce the belief that the doctrine of the Trinity is an abstract metaphysical problem that is confusing and ultimately meaningless for our day-to-day lives.

 

Questions for Us

However, there are far more important existential questions for us: “How do we know God?” “How is God involved in our lives?” And perhaps, “what can we expect God to do in the world?” These are the questions that matter to us, and it is difficult to see how speculation concerning the Trinity has anything to do with them. What we miss, because we understand the Trinity as a problem to be solved, is that the credal affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity is meant to address exactly these kinds of questions. The early debates in the church were rooted in practical pastoral questions—how can we talk about God, who God is, what it means that God has “saved” us, and what God is doing in the world? Pastoral theologians like Athanasius (all the early theologians were, to one degree or another, pastoral theologians) recognized that affirming that Jesus is truly God (which is at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity) was the only real starting point to answer these vital questions.

 

Lost Confidence in God’s Reconciling and Sustaining Work in Our World

We have travelled a long way since the days of the early church only to find ourselves back where we started—questioning once again the possibility that God, the creator God, is truly present and engaged in our world. The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that one of the characteristics of our age is that we have buffered ourselves against the possibility that there is a transcendent God who is actively and immediately engaged in our lives. We might ‘believe’ in the idea of God, or that God somehow works in the “spiritual realm” (whatever that might mean), but for the most part, this God is either at a great distance from us or this God is simply a force or power for good that we might hope to direct in helpful ways. We have lost any confidence in God’s reconciling and sustaining work in our world.

 

If we assume that Taylor is speaking about the secular world rather than the Church, then we haven’t understood his concerns and we haven’t owned up to the way most churchgoers think about God. Drawing on data from a survey of 15,000 young people in the USA, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton noted that the God most religious young people in North America believe in is a therapeutic ‘deist’ God: a God who is basically uninvolved in our day-to-day lives but is available to offer help from the sidelines, or at least cheer us on, if we ask in the right way. Yes, we can call on God and hope that God might respond (which is how we tend to understand prayer), and we might think of Jesus as present to us in our inner self or consciousness, but for the most part we assume that God simply lets us get on with our lives. And, when we are honest, most of us prefer a hands-off approach anyway.

 

God in Jesus, the Trinity, Involved in Our Lives

In the second century, a theologian by the name of Irenaeus wanted to speak about the ways in which the God we see in Jesus, the Trinity, is involved in our lives. He spoke of Jesus and the Spirit as the two hands of God. He wasn’t trying to offer an analogy to solve the mystery of the Trinity. Rather, he was trying to talk in specific ways about the God who is involved in our world. For Irenaeus, when we speak about God with us we are speaking about the Son and the Spirit. The Holy Spirit and Jesus are both fully God and the Son and the Spirit always work together with the Father to accomplish the purposes of God. This is not only meant to give us confidence that God is involved in our world, but to help us know where to look or how to see God at work.

 

Irenaeus’ affirmation leads, in turn, to many practical implications. The first and perhaps most important is to know that God does not remain at a distance from us, but has come into our world and made himself known to us precisely so that we might come to know him. God is always the initiator and he never stops in seeking to engage with us. God, in reconciling us to himself, gives us the confidence that no barrier can separate us from him; and in Jesus, we are able to enter into the very presence of the Holy One. Second, when we want to know who God is and how God acts in the world, the place we always begin is with Jesus Christ, particularly as the Bible bears witness to him. We do not need to look for a secret or hidden God that remains at a distance from us or is only visible to the select few. Rather, we (that is, the Church) look directly to the witness of Scripture and what it tells us about Jesus. Third, it confirms that the work of the Spirit is always in line with the work of Christ. There are many spirits in this world, making many different and at times contradictory claims about truth and goodness and beauty. The way we discern which spirit is truly of God is whether or not it is resonant with Christ, for the Spirit is the one who helps us to know and enter into what has already been shown to us of Christ.

 

God’s Mission

So, what does this all mean for the mission of the Church? The first thing we might note is that it is better to say that the Church doesn’t have a mission—God has a mission, and his mission is to bring the world into a reconciled relationship with himself, in spite of the world’s rebellion against him. God does not ask us to do his work for him; he invites us into the work he is already doing. So, our involvement in his mission always begins with prayer—prayer that we will see God and what God is doing in the world more clearly. Theologian Jim Houston often said that he prayed every day that God would help him to see others in the same way that God sees them. That is, perhaps, at the very heart of mission—to begin to know God’s heart, for the world will compel us into the world. One thing that we can be sure of is that there is nothing passive in the way God looks at the world he has created. Rather, he looks at our lost, rebellious, and confused world with compassion, and in his compassion, he continues to work tirelessly to draw all people to himself.

 

In turbulent times like these, it is easy to lose hope for this world. The doctrine of the Trinity, that God is this Father, Son, and Spirit, sustains our hope, because it not only reminds us where to fix our gaze, it helps us to know that God continues to actively reconcile the whole world to himself in Jesus Christ.

What John Stott Taught Me About Personal Evangelism

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This article is part of our Wycliffe Faculty series, in which the faculty of such diverse departments as biblical studies, theology, and history write about mission and evangelism. As somewhat of a shift from Good Idea’s usual focus, we hope you enjoy reading about their perspectives on the mission of the Church today.

 

On the evening of February 13th, 1938, a sixteen-year-old lad knelt by his bed in his dormitory in Rugby, England, and opened the door of his heart to Jesus Christ. John Stott marked the date of his conversion every year for an additional seventy-three years, until his death in 2011 at the age of ninety. The way he describes it, the conversion was a rather solitary affair, a personal decision made quietly in the dark of night.

But, of course, the moment was preceded and surrounded by a great nexus of events, individuals, and influences that shaped his understanding of what happened that night. John benefited from the guidance of his pious mother who brought him to church. He had read his Bible and was familiar with the Christian story, and was even inspired by its high ethical ideals. Closer to the moment of his conversion, other evangelistic agents entered the picture. A Christian school chum invited him to attend a series of meetings featuring Christian speakers. When a young evangelist from the Christian Union presented an address on Pilate’s question, “What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?”, it dawned on the young man that he actually had to do something with Jesus. A subsequent conversation with the evangelist made the way of salvation clear to him, and that evening he surrendered his life. Even so, John would go on to give primary credit for his conversion to God himself, for it was he who had enabled John to ‘open the door’. John Stott soon became a student leader in the school Christian Union and in the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (part of Inter-Varsity Fellowship) and was instrumental in leading others to Christ.

Those who are familiar with John Stott will know that he went on to become one of the premier evangelists of the twentieth century. Over the course of his career, he would lead over sixty university missions, and he appeared on stage with Billy Graham. However, it was personal evangelism that quickened John’s pulse. He had a spiritual discernment for the seeking soul and always made himself available for individual counsel after his sermons and addresses. Even when he was no longer able to preach, he carried on lengthy correspondences with questioners from around the globe.

So important to him was personal evangelism that he took up the theme in his earliest published writing, which he wrote while at seminary in the late 1940s. This publication is a thirty-six page, shirt-pocket-sized booklet called Personal Evangelism. Contemporary readers might find some of what it says of interest.

 

The Presentation of the Message

To begin with, he says that personal evangelism is even more valuable than preaching, since the message is addressed to the particular needs of an individual. This means that personal evangelism will be focused and deliberate. Opportunities to share faith may present themselves to us, but John encourages us to pray that God would give us a particular burden for one or two people, and then give us grace to respond to their spiritual needs. This will happen as we develop friendships with them, even if this involves personal sacrifice on our part; pray for them “systematically, definitely and perseveringly”, for it is the Spirit of God that draws people to Christ; live lives that do not undermine the beauty of our message; and finally, take them to hear the gospel preached. This last bit of advice may come from a context where evangelistic missions were much more common than they are today. And yet there is wisdom in going with a friend to hear a searching message that may open up avenues of deep discussion.

Having laid out this groundwork, John discusses the presentation of the message of the gospel. Here he anticipates a time when we and our friends will be ready to ask and receive the question: “Would you like me to explain to you as simply as I can just what it means to be a Christian?” The ensuing explanation will have three essential components: the fact of human sinfulness and the need for a Saviour; the meaning of the cross; and the need to respond to Christ’s offer of forgiveness. The necessary response, of course, is not just a matter of intellectual assent or what has been called ‘easy believism’. John goes on to describe the cost of discipleship, and says that genuine faith will involve repentance, surrender to Christ’s lordship over every aspect of our lives, and the willingness to let others know that we have made this decision.

Incentives to Faith

John thus acknowledges that it is not easy being a Christian. However, he also discusses incentives to faith that those who are seriously considering becoming followers of Jesus Christ should take into account. The first incentive is that we need Christ for our own sake. The Holy Spirit works within us in the transformation of our character and in the satisfaction of our deepest longings—something that is impossible by our own means and initiative. Secondly, the world needs people who have yielded themselves to God’s righteous purposes on earth. This is the giving of ourselves for others. But these reasons are subsidiary to the one great incentive: that Christ must be lifted up and glorified in our deeds and words. This was certainly John’s primary motive in all of his ministry. As the epithet on his burial marker in Wales testifies, he “resolved both as the ground of his salvation and as the subject of his ministry to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Consolidation

So, these are the essential steps in personal evangelism, according to John Stott. At this point, we have discussed just over half of his little booklet. Subsequent sections treat common obstacles to faith (doubt, pride, sin and fear) and provide strategies for ensuring that our friends’ decisions are made intelligently and with integrity. Here we receive insights drawn from John’s considerable experience: Help your friend to understand that certainty does not rest on emotion, but on the promises of Christ. Offer your friend Christian literature. Invite your friend to join you in attending Christian gatherings. Indeed, help your friend to reframe his or her self-understanding in relation to God, the Church and the world. The nurturing of a friend’s new-found faith will involve new habits of prayer and Bible reading, an introduction to a whole new fellowship, and a new attitude towards their former life. The comprehensive nature of evangelistic follow-up turns out to be a long-term affair, and “the crown of our endeavours,” John writes, “is that he whom we have laboured to bring to Christ out of the world should go back into the world with Christ, as a witness.”

Concluding Advice

And so, in the end, what presents itself as an instruction booklet on personal evangelism becomes an encouragement for us to be mature disciples ourselves. Those who wish to be instruments in the Christian transformation of others should be serious students of the Bible, be willing to learn from their mistakes, and continually rely on the Holy Spirit. As John writes in conclusion, “The principle secret of successful evangelism is the humility which leads the evangelist to recognize his own weakness and to rely on the Holy Spirit’s power. [. . .] Our hearers will be convinced and will turn to Christ not through our eloquent reasonings so much as through the unanswerable ‘proof’ which the Holy Spirit will add to our feeble words.”

John’s little booklet is clearly a reflection of his age and culture. Where we might imagine conversations that are more spontaneous and casual, John takes a more structured and systematic approach (make sure you will not be interrupted, he counsels, and bring two Bibles, one for you and one for your friend!). John had a very methodical mind, and this is part of why he was such an outstanding leader. But I do not think that anyone ever felt that they were being pressured or manipulated in John’s evangelistic encounters. For he also possessed a sensitive and compassionate heart, and those who came to him for counsel found comfort in his deep love for them and for his Lord.

 

Stephen Andrews, the Principal of Wycliffe College, is also a former research assistant to John Stott.

Unwrap Your Church This Christmas: Tips on Making the Most of the Seasonal Outreach Opportunities

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This article first appeared in the November/December issue of Faith Today.

For years, a little church in the Blue Mountain region of Ontario ran an annual pancake supper. Pancakes were flipped, sausages sizzled and the maple syrup flowed as the congregation enjoyed spending time together, indulging in this annual Shrove Tuesday feast before the more disciplined season of Lent set in.

Then, one year, they decided to turn this lovely tradition inside-out in the hope it could help them form new relationships with people in their neighbourhood. Recognizing many unchurched people are wary of entering a church building, they held the supper offsite at their local community centre, partnering with the Blue Mountain Fire Department. Instead of it being mostly an event for church members, it became a fundraiser the whole community was invited to get involved in. A tidy sum of money was raised to help victims of bushfires, the profile of the church was raised in the community and new relationships were fostered; relationships that had the potential to be rich soil for planting gospel seeds.

When I first heard this story about St. George’s Anglican Church, it made me wonder, “What if churches turned more of what they did inside-out?” What other lovely, cherished traditions that have long focused on churches’ own members could be tweaked so they could become a bridge to new relationships with unchurched and dechurched people? To be honest, I also wondered if there actually were unchurched people open to having a relationship with Christians.

In the spring of 2017, Angus Reid conducted a public opinion poll that examined the spiritual practices and beliefs of Canadians. It suggested a full 30 per cent of Canadians fit into a category described as privately faithful–people who have no connection to a faith community, but believe there is a God, pray to God and (perhaps most astonishingly) want their kids to be taught about God by a recognized faith community (https://angusreid.org/religion-in-canada-150). This equates to roughly ten million people across our country. How might churches reach these folks? One thing is for certain. Churches will not reach them by focusing on themselves. We need to begin to think and pray seriously, and plan creatively, so we can better reach people with the gospel.

We have so much to offer, but like beautifully wrapped presents stacked in a shop window, what we have can be just beyond the reach of the unchurched and dechurched person.

What would it look like for churches to rethink and tweak our lovely, cherished traditions of Christmas so people beyond our churches could enjoy them too as a first seed of the gospel? It would be amazing if Christians across Canada actively unwrapped their churches for their neighbourhood this Christmas.

Here are some practical ways churches can tweak what they already do at Christmas to help cultivate the new relationships that can be seedbeds for sharing the faith with the privately faithful, as well as explorers and seekers.

Christmas pageants

While these two words have the power to strike fear in the hearts of pastors and children’s ministry leaders everywhere, in the end all the volunteer recruiting, costume making, kid herding and dress rehearsalling are worth it. After all, who doesn’t love to watch the ancient story of Christmas be acted out by kids in dishtowels, bathrobes and shaggy sheep costumes?

Pageants may be the ideal event to invite unchurched neighbours, friends, colleagues and family to since we already know from the Angus Reid poll that many of them want their kids to learn about the original Christmas story.

So, with them in mind, plan to hold your pageant on a day and time when they are most likely to be able to attend with their kids–for instance a Saturday or Sunday afternoon or early evening, just before Christmas. If you need to host two to accommodate everyone according to pandemic guidelines, do it.

Plan both your greeting and some follow-up hospitality (hot chocolate on the lawn?) specifically with your unchurched guests in mind. But whatever you do, keep it simple and be intentional about advertising your pageant to the neighbourhood, using language and references that will help all your visitors feel welcome.

At the event itself be sure to provide info on other ways you can help their kids learn about God. For example, you could provide a cheat sheet on How to Talk to Your Kids About God, or Answers to Questions Kids Ask About God. Build a relationship with the whole family by assuming their best intentions to help their kids explore faith. And above all, have fun together.

Christmas dinners

Many churches across Canada host a delicious Christmas dinner for those in their community who would otherwise be alone at Christmas. As such this is already an outward-focused event. But how might you tweak this dinner so genuine relationships form among those who make it happen and those who attend?

Since many unchurched people recognize the emptiness of a purely consumer-driven Christmas, invite people in your neighbourhood to join your volunteer prep, set-up and serving teams. Set aside at least half your team roles for such folk and advertise early in the fall to begin to form a relationship with them.

On the day of the dinner itself, make sure there’s at least one church member sitting, chatting and eating with every three guests attending. Get to know the folk who come and invite them out to a Christmas service, a post-Christmas Alpha course, a parents’ and tots group or the seniors craft group. Build in a way for them to give you their contact info so you can follow up with them as a church. Again, it’s all about forming authentic relationships.

Neighbourhood block parties

If there is something the pandemic has taught us, it is that loneliness is endemic in our society. Christmas gives us a golden opportunity to host a get to know your neighbour gathering. Whether an inside wine and cheese, or outside hot choc and s’mores, Christmas can give Christians the ideal reason to invite our neighbours over.

Meeting in small numbers over food, we get to know people in a whole different way, fostering relationships that grow deeper over time. It is out of such relationships Christians can best share with their neighbours the reason for the hope that is in them.

Live Nativity plays

I know of one church on the outskirts of the Greater Toronto Area that hosted a live Nativity play on their sizable front lawn for many years. A microphoned narrator simply told the Christmas story while visually Joseph could be seen leading Mary on a live donkey down the suburban sidewalk, arriving at the enclosed sheep pen housing several sheep and their bath-robed shepherds.

The first year it was mostly church people who came out, but by the second year the neighbourhood started to participate. And by year three there were so many attending that the mayor of the city showed up to press the flesh. Again, if you do this sort of event, give your visitors something to take away such as a Christmas card with the church website on it.

Christmas carolling

The prepandemic rise of community choirs showed us many people love to sing, but the pandemic has largely robbed us all of this. However, outside singing is still allowed! So why not encourage the musical members in your church to host a neighbourhood carol sing with the people on their street?

Be sure to include some Christmas songs unchurched people are likely to be familiar with, as well as the wonderful traditional Christmas carols that speak of our faith. By providing lyric sheets, and some handheld triangles, mini-tambourines and even kazoos, you can help even the nonmusical people on your street join in the fun.

Again, follow up by getting to know them better over some hot chocolate after the carolling. While the voices raised in song may be sublime, or not, the real goal is relationship building. A shared love of music may be the perfect vehicle.

Blue Christmas service

Christmas is traditionally a time for people to be with their loved ones. But this may only serve as salt in the wound for the many people who have had someone they love die in the past year. Grief is a heartbreaking part of the human condition, something unchurched and dechurched people face just as we do.

Additionally, together we are also all mourning for the more than 27,000 Canadians who have lost their lives to Covid-19 and for the children who died in the many residential schools that dotted our country.

Why not hold a short outdoor service to remember and honour the lives of those who have died, inviting the whole neighbourhood to participate? Invite people to gather, reflect and light a tea light in memory of their loved one, as some of your church musicians play an instrumental piece of music. Invite them to whisper the first names of someone they know who has died as you lead short prayers of thanksgiving and prayers for comfort.

Once again, have some follow-up material to help them make a deeper connection — perhaps the dates and times for a new grief support group starting up, or perhaps copies of simple pamphlets on grieving the death of a loved one. Put yourself in the shoes of someone in our society who, due to the pandemic, may have been forced to largely grieve their loved one alone.

Christmas hampers/gift bags

Food banks are reporting that use of their services has increased significantly during the pandemic. Many of the working poor (elderly workers, single parents, low-paid service workers) have lost their jobs and are struggling more than ever.

Christmas is a time when many churches provide hampers of food and Christmas gifts to such people and their families. If your church does this, invite others in your neighbourhood to join in the project.

Many unchurched people feel a bit threatened by the idea of joining a Bible study, attending a church program or coming to worship on a Sunday, but they’re only too happy to join in some form of community service. Let your advertising be clear that you need their help!

For those that respond with offers of help, be sure to pair them with church members so they can feel comfortable with what they’re supposed to be doing, but also to give them the opportunity to be known by someone in the church family.

 

These are just a few ideas of how you might unwrap your church for your neighbourhood this Christmas. Perhaps you’ve thought of some other tweaks to make and new experiments to try. Whatever you do, may you do it with the hope of introducing those who are privately faithful to the God who calls them by name, and was born as a human baby so that they might call Him by name too.

Evangelism and Church Growth Strategies: Why They Aren’t the Same Thing

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Evangelism, at its root, means sharing the gospel. Scripture asks us to be prepared to “give a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15) That is within our power to do, and there are skills to learn for doing it well. But we are not in control of how people respond to our sharing of the gospel, or whether they will make a commitment to Christ.

 

Growing the Church

In the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of people proposed that it was in our power to grow churches. We cannot convert people, but we can attract them to church. Evangelism may have an uncertain outcome, but church growth can be scientifically strategized. That was the argument of such books as Donald McGavran’s Understanding Church Growth (1970), Peter Wagner’s Your Church Can Grow (1984), and George Barna’s Marketing the Church (1989). The Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth in Pasadena produced church growth consultants.

The premise was that once people were in church, they would become faithful Christians. Now, there were other views on that score. In the 1830s, Kierkegaard’s judgment on the Church of Denmark was that it prevented churchgoers from knowing Christ, because it made them think that they already knew Christ. In any event, the church growth movement was more interested in increasing numbers than in deepening the quality of faith.

 

What About Evangelism?

Connecting evangelism to church growth has mightily influenced our thinking. Is our congregational life feeling stagnant? Bring in new members! Are we losing people to the church down the street? Let’s market our brand better! Is our church having financial problems? Grow the number of envelope subscribers! Do we want to feel more successful? Add bums to pews!

I have looked at some Anglican parish websites. They typically reflect church growth ideas, not evangelistic ideas. They promote their church’s worship services, introduce their clergy, and picture social events. They hope to make their church look more interesting, more hospitable, and less threatening than other local churches. But most of these websites do not evangelize in the sense of proclaiming the gospel of Christ. In fact, many seem to downplay anything that sounds doctrinal, presumably because that might make them look, you know, zealous, and therefore less inclusive.

There are problems with this approach. An obvious one is that to build a church on church growth strategies—such as a charismatic pastor and a homogeneous culture—is to build on sand. Think of the Crystal Cathedral during Robert Schuller’s time. It had 10 thousand members and 20 million television viewers in the 1990s. When Schuller retired at the same time that Orange County was becoming demographically diverse, the ministry went bankrupt and the church was sold to the Roman Catholic diocese.

 

Why People Stray from Church

A bigger problem with prioritizing church growth over proclaiming Christ is that, as far as I can see, a lot of non-Christians actively hunger for God, but actively disdain the church.

Churches have a bad name. Not a week goes by without a news story connecting churches to sexual abuse, misappropriation of funds, the mistreatment of children in residential schools, hypocrisy, repressive practices, aggressive political partisanship, or exploitation. Churches just are not places where non-Christians expect to meet God. As the 1960s counter-cultural stand-up comic Lenny Bruce said, “Every day people are straying away from church, and going back to God.”

And even if churches behaved themselves better, they would still have an unattractive image to overcome. They are property-owning, clerically controlled, legally incorporated, self-protective institutions. Who trusts that? And that kind of church is a far cry from the one in Acts 2.

 

Private Piety

In the 1980s, an influential sociological study called Habits of the Heart by Robert N. Bellah (an Episcopalian!) and others presented a portrait of individualism in middle America. The most prominent form of religiosity, as they discovered, was the kind that said, “I believe in God, and I pray sometimes, but I do not have any interest in going to church.” Following the early German sociologist Ernst Troeltsch, the researchers called this religious type “mystical anarchism”—mystical since it assumed a direct relation between individual and God, anarchism because it resisted external restrictions on one’s freedom of spiritual expression. A little later, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone used the disappearance of bowling leagues as a symbol of the decline of community feeling in America. As individualism has strengthened, mainline denominations have suffered. When so many prefer private piety, we will have trouble making church look attractive to those who do not already love Jesus, or who are seeking him.

 

Proclaiming Jesus

Now, there are exceptions. Some seeker churches, like Saddleback, which I have visited, do a pretty amazing job of bringing curious people in, hooking them into the gospel, giving them a community (in a cell group), and changing their lives. But then their website really does do old-fashioned evangelism. You will find “About Jesus” before you will find “About Saddleback”.

I write as one whose own path to Christian commitment did not reach a parish church until near the end. And I know a lot of other Christians with similar experiences. People like me wanted God in our lives, but, frankly, as I am ashamed now to recall, we felt smugly superior to ordinary churchgoers. So we came to know Jesus through conversations with Christian friends or teachers, through some popular theological reading, through Bible studies, through courses, through a crisis in our lives that forced us to re-evaluate our assumptions, through someone’s invitation to prayer, through a televised sermon or interview, through a movie with a Christian message, through Christian music.

So that is why I think that we miss a lot of folks when we focus on marketing our church more than proclaiming Jesus.

 

The Institute of Evangelism

As an unsolicited plug for the Institute of Evangelism, I’m so grateful for its multi-denominational, imaginative, theologically grounded approach to helping people give a reason for the hope that is in them. It will never be disappointed if a new Christian joins the Baptists instead of the Anglicans. It will never measure its success by the number of people signing up for pre-authorized donations. What it does care about is building relationships with and in Christ. It is a great corrective to ‘scientific strategies.’

 

If we share the gospel intelligently, with sensitivity to context, with respect for people, we have done the kind of evangelism that God asks of us. The rest we can leave to the Holy Spirit.

 

 

How a Small Town Church Has Been Reaching (Lots of) New People

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“We know that God is always at work for the good of everyone who loves him.” Romans 8:28

St. Paul’s is an Anglican community of faith located in the small town of Knowlton, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. We began livestreaming four years ago, but God was preparing us to impact our broader world long before that. Our story has so many intertwining vines—worship, mission, evangelism, hospitality, pastoral care, weddings, funerals, and stewardship—that it is difficult to know where to begin. However, I am sure that it is not finished yet. 

Starting a Youth Activity Group

Although Knowlton is in one of the wealthiest postal codes in Canada, it also contains extreme poverty. When I arrived in 2004, St. Paul’s supported a breakfast program at the local elementary school, and would send volunteers to serve the meal. When our girls began school there, my wife, Sara, and I became volunteers. One morning as we were handing out breakfast, I looked into the eyes of a girl in one of my daughter’s classes. My heart broke. “Those are the eyes of a girl who has seen too much,” I thought. She was five years old.

I approached the principal and asked if we might run a youth group for children from Knowlton Academy and St. Edouard’s, the French school nearby. From this conversation came HipHopNHockey, a group for eight- to twelve-year-olds. In a typical session, we would play sports like soccer, basketball, dodgeball, or SPUD for about an hour. Then we would have dinner—pizza, hotdogs, lasagne, etc.—and afterwards break up into smaller groups for other activities like hip-hop dancing (that lasted only one year, but the name stuck), floor hockey, crafts, and gymnastics. The principal of the local high school told us that many of those children treasured those two hours that they did not have to go home.

One of our most loyal, energetic and enthusiastic members was Sebby Call. He was a handful, but he loved HHH. One Friday, Sebby did not look well, and we later discovered that he had leukemia. Sebby died the following year at eleven years old. The town was devastated. We were devastated. St. Paul’s was asked to do the funeral, but many members of Sebby’s family were unable to come in person. Rugge Thompson, a local filmmaker, and Justin Kuplinskis, who worked for our internet company, teamed up to find a solution. On March 17, 2017 we successfully livestreamed Sebby’s funeral to his family in Ontario and England. 

Leading to Livestreaming

That July, we began regularly livestreaming our services. So prior to the pandemic our livestream had already become part of the fabric of St. Paul’s. In fact, when we did not livestream funerals, we would get messages from as far away as Calgary asking why! We had the joy of livestreaming the wedding of one of our key church leaders. Her mother became ill the night before the wedding and unfortunately was unable to get out of bed to attend the wedding. However, she was still able to watch the livestream.

When the pandemic hit, livestreaming was not as new to us as it was to some, but the scale of connecting with so many people was unprecedented. We had over 5,000 views of our 2020 Easter service. Believing that this was God opening another door, we sought to make the best use of our blessing. We began livestreaming not only Sunday morning, but daily. For four months we rang the “Bells of Hope” at noon everyday and delivered a brief meditation. Also, using our muted bell, we rang “Bells of Mourning” on Fridays, both for those who had died of COVID-19, and when a significant event, such as the massacre in Nova Scotia, took place.

I kept an eye on what other churches were doing for their livestreams, and saw that the Rev. Deepak Sundara’s church in Dallas, Texas had the words of the liturgy on the lower-third portion of the screen. After investigating on YouTube, I discovered that the presentation software we use, ProPresenter, could also do that. So, on Mother’s Day we began broadcasting with lower-thirds (in English and French—another story), allowing people to follow along without having to download the liturgy. This helps us keep things very simple, so that we can include as many people as possible (an important part of our mission statement). 

Planning Ahead for Post-Pandemic Worship

Two years ago, the Board of Management began to investigate how we could best steward St. Paul’s land. We explored many possibilities, then, in July 2020, a local developer who wished to purchase the land behind the church approached us. We signed an agreement in that December. As a part of this agreement, we were to receive two initial deposits: one on signing, the other on completion of the “due diligence” and rezoning.

In March, it seemed as though the pandemic was finally ending. However, we knew that post-pandemic did not mean post-digital. We put together a plan of several improvements that would help us meet, both in-person and online. However, we did not want to go ahead if we did not have the money. The very next day, the developer asked if he might have several more weeks to complete his work in exchange for the second deposit. We arranged for him to write a cheque that was for almost the exact amount that we needed for our plan.

On Easter Sunday, 2021, we began using our new state-of-the-art system. There have been many sleepless nights, stressful conversations, sighing prayers (perhaps some swearing too!) and we still are working out some bugs. However, we believe that there is an exciting future for God’s people online with many new possibilities. For example, recently we began the Rev. Dr. Judy Paulsen’s “Bible Study Project”[1] online. 

Reaching the World

St. Paul’s has virtual parishioners throughout Quebec and across Canada, the US, Mexico, Hong Kong, Germany and Egypt. In 2020, we had an average weekly Sunday attendance of 933 Facebook views (in addition to Zoom, Youtube, and Facebook French), up from 144 views in 2019. We had over 315,000 total views in 2020, compared to 19,765 in 2019. We receive prayer requests regularly through Facebook Messenger. People are discovering or rediscovering faith online, at their own speed.

We received a Christmas card from one such person who wrote, “All of your work amid Covid has been an unexpected gift! Still learning, I would like to thank you, but I should be thanking God for our crossing paths through Facebook. . . . So here it is: “Thanks Jesus, our Lord for all your love and work!” (Praying is still a work in progress . . .)” As Isaiah says,

“Rain and snow fall from the sky. But they don’t return without watering the earth that produces seeds to plant and grain to eat. That’s how it is with my words. They don’t return to me without doing everything I send them to do.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

We believe that the same promise holds true, even over the Internet.

[1] The Bible Study Project invites unchurched or dechurched people to read and discuss three encounters Jesus had with people, as recorded in the Gospels. These simple discussions, focused around a few open-ended questions, help new people come to know Jesus as they learn about his life, teachings, death and resurrection.

Reimagining Children in Worship

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The cost of COVID-19 has been horrifying on every level. So many lives have been lost or forever altered. Businesses and charitable organizations alike have been hit hard, and churches are no exception. But I wonder if the pandemic has also offered at least one gift to the Church: an unveiling, not of a brilliant new strategy to come, but of the reality that was.

Since the closing of our buildings, many churches have experienced serious financial strain. Some will have a hard time recovering. What does this say about the Church as the People of God? Haven’t we always told people “The church is not the building”? And yet, it appears it was more about the building than we thought.

And what does this crisis say about our structures and our goals? Were they helping us make disciples who make disciples? In many cases, it seems they were not. Perhaps during this time, when “what is normal” has changed overnight, we can begin to dream some new (and ancient) dreams for the Church.

Let’s think about this in terms of children and worship, for instance. In many churches, kids are largely absent from the main worship service. This is no doubt due to the twin desires to teach them at a level appropriate for their various ages, and allow the adults to worship in peace. But at what cost did we embrace this model of age-specific segregation in worship?

Sunday Schools were at their heyday in the 50s and early 60s, but many of those kids are the very adults who are now absent from the community of faith. In short, the Sunday School model did not serve the Church very well. We discovered that children who are rarely in worship don’t suddenly flock to it once they ‘graduate’ from specialized kids’ programs. Perhaps what we’ve really been teaching them all these years is that worship is for someone else.

But back to our original question. How might we dream something different for children when it comes to worship? There are many creative ideas out there. But here are three things I think the Church can do better.

 

Make Space for Them in the Main Worship Space.

Make space for babies. Yes, in the primary worship space. Ask some of the young parents what would be most helpful. Any of the following might be on their list: a sectioned-off area where people will be less likely to (a) be bothered by the noise or (b) want to hold the baby; some comfortable chairs in which parents can feed their babies; a change table nearby; a glassed-in room to take a fussy baby to while still feeling part of the worship service. They’ll let you know.

Make space for toddlers. Yes, in the primary worship space. Create some enclosed areas that will allow parents to be with their toddlers in worship but also allow toddlers to move around a bit. Include some quiet toys and toddler-size chairs and tables. Carpeting this area will reduce noise for those around them. Soon children will learn that this space is for quiet activities, all the while exposing them to the rhythms of worship.

Make space for early readers and young school-aged kids. Have some tables to one side equipped with simple bible story books and colouring supplies. Have a volunteer oversee this area and have planned times in the service when the children can move to this spot. I have heard of one church that has the children produce a banner related to one of the Scripture readings in the service. They create this during the sermon. This work of art is then brought up to the front during the offering and attached to the altar, after which the kids return to sitting with the rest of the congregation.

Make space for teenagers. Some teens like to sit with other kids their age during worship. Some prefer to sit with their family. Make both options normative. Above all, get teenagers involved in leading worship whenever possible, as part of the worship team or choir, reading the Scriptures, helping people find a seat, or composing congregational prayers.

 

Include Them at Their Level.

There are many ways in which children can be included in worship, while still being allowed to be kids. Have a box of simple musical triangles, tambourines, and shakers that younger kids can use during the singing. Offer simple activity kits containing bible story colouring pages and crayons that kids can work on if they’re too young to grasp the sermon. Invite the kids to write down some things they’d like the church to pray for and have these collected for use on subsequent Sundays. Include older children on your list of people who read the Scriptures, lead the prayers, greet people, or take up the offering. Invite kids that are musical to use those gifts in worship.

 

Expect Them to Participate Meaningfully.

In order to really shift worship towards full inclusion of kids, perhaps we need to first ask this simple question: do we expect children to be worshipping the Living God here, or have we come to think of worship as something that only adults do? How you answer that question will determine whether or not you will include children meaningfully, or continue, as the Church has often done in the past, to bring them into worship to either perform or to observe.

We include adults in worship of God by using a language they understand, by engaging them in rituals that become sacraments, and by accepting the many gifts they bring as part of the worshipping community. Let’s do the same with children.

Let’s ask kids to share about a time they have felt God’s presence, comfort or power. Let’s ask them what they would like to thank God for or ask God for. Let’s ask children to offer themselves to God as his children, making it clear that their worship too is a much-valued part of the Church’s common life. Let’s make sure that as the pandemic comes under control we don’t just re-open the church building to children. Let’s make sure we open up the Church’s worship to them too.

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