What happened to Evangelism?
Have you washed windows recently? Or maybe you've spread butter on a slice of bread recently? No? Ok, have you brushed your teeth recently? I am sure you have! I hope you have!
I remember my father teaching me to wash the car. Yes, we didn't go to the car-wash. We had to earn our pocket money. The last thing you do when you wash the car, said Dad, is you clean the windows. He let me do it the first time, then he did the inspection. Of course, he went straight to the edges of the glass, the area closest to the frame, and pointed out that while the center - the obvious area you looked out of - was clean, the edges were not. So he instructed me that the job was not done until the edges were clean. In future, I decided, I would always start with the edges. I did this to the point that I would often not completely clean the center while the edges were spotless. My eye would focus on the edges rather than the center. I didn't want to default by missing the edges, the periphery.
Well, I'm sure you got the point of the buttered bread. Yes, it's about buttering the edges first, they say. I have found myself making sure every bit of the edge is buttered, not quite paying as much attention to the center. As for brushing the teeth, you guessed it. We are so intent on not missing the difficult-to-reach places in our mouths that we often leave the obvious, visible parts to the end - sometimes skipping them in favor of the hidden parts.
In recent years, I have been feeling that these may be metaphors of the church's omissions regarding evangelism - telling the basic message of salvation and inviting people to know the person of Jesus Christ! Sometime in the not-too-distant past, we decided that the church was not proclaiming the whole gospel to the whole person. We observed that the Church was too focused on evangelism and not enough on mission - living the gospel outside of our personal and into the public world. I was, and still am a strong protagonist of this "missional" emphasis too. This it the edge of the window, the edge of the slice of bread, the difficult-to-reach part of our set of teeth.
I wonder if we as the Church have let the pendulum swing and stay on the other end? In the circles I serve, I notice a very strong emphasis on social service and social justice, and almost no action on evangelism. The average church - and I work with hundreds of churches - does not struggle with having most of its leadership portfolios filled, but almost without fail has a vacant seat for the evangelism chair. At best, we may have a leader but no committee, or no evangelism activities to report. Some churches, when asked about their evangelism plan or activities, quickly list all their "mission" activities - their social services and "open-to-the-public" fun activities.
We should not discount these "mission" activities, but is it really evangelism. Do people really stop us on the street, or in the middle of our "mission" activities and ask us why we do these activities? Do they really ask us to tell them about this Jesus that we apparently know and believe and in whose name we do these good deeds? God bless you if you have had any significant number of people engage you as a result of your "mission work" and given you the opportunity to tell them about Jesus and invite them to believe in Him.
It seems to me that we have swung so far from the "telling" in order to "do", that we've simply stopped telling altogether. I admit that we still have a long way in the "doing", particularly in the area of social justice action that address the social ills of our time, but that is no excuse for us to give up on telling. Yes, society has changed. Society is always changing, and we as Church need to adapt to as well as influence the change. If at times, societal change causes us to give up on the fundamentals of our commission in the world, then we need to do less adapting and more influencing.
I started my ministry as a lay church youth worker in 1985. My focus was holistic discipleship of youth and young adults. We built a significant interdenominational christian movement of youth around Durban, South Africa. My model for youth ministry included: Spiritual Development, Skills Development, Socio-political Development and Emotional-psychological development. Having grown up in apartheid South Africa and being committed to justice and the end of apartheid from childhood, social justice was the lens through which I approached all of the areas of ministry.
Around fifteen years later, after I became an ordained pastor, a former youth member of the organization I had led, came to visit me. He first thanked me for all I had taught him. He, like me, was an active part of the movement for change that led to democracy in 1994. He enumerated my teachings and mentoring, highlighting my continued work even after I had returned from imprisonment at the hands of the apartheid government in 1996. Then he stopped, looked at me and said, "You know, you always told us that you were doing all that you did because of your faith in Jesus, but you never once told us how we could know this Jesus! We followed you as God led you, but we were not led to this God!" He had been Roman Catholic but had given up on church until recently, when someone took the time and effort to intentionally tell him about Jesus. He said that he now believes that Jesus is the Son of God and that Jesus loves him... explaining his whole faith statement. Up until that time, he had seen the works but had not heard the salvation story.
Yes, (confessing, mouthing) faith without works is dead, but the reverse is also true - works without telling, without verbalizing that great faith, is nothing but altruism with a christian cloak. So let's talk faith. Let's not shy away from having faith conversations. I have read many recent books about being or becoming a "missional church." I was happy to see a renewed focus on prayer, studying the bible, connecting and building community with our members, meeting the needs of our surrounding communities and foreign "mission". Sadly, almost all stop short of the telling! If evangelism outreach is mentioned at all, it is about "showing" and "being" only. Let's not shy away from telling our faith. The Jesus story is still powerful! May the force (Holy Spirit) be with you (us)! And the good liturgical Christians said, "And also with you!"
