Evangelism has become such a dirty word in the mainline protestant world. Our church even changed a committee name a few years back to remove the word so people “didn’t get the wrong idea.” Unfortunately, there is nothing wrong with evangelism – the Church should be rock solid evangelists… but maybe not the ones of our recent past.
Evangelism in America has coincided with proselytizing and typically with some ulterior self-motive, whether it is filling our own pews or filling our own egos. I know evangelism at my own church was about going around the neighborhood and inviting neighbors to join us on Sunday mornings so we could feel good about our full pews and overflowing offering plates. But, I believe evangelism of today is going to be more about the community and less about our churches.
To reach the young adults and youth of today, we are going to have to get off our cushioned pews and get out into the world. Evangelism isn’t slick advertising or a fancy website drawing people in. We must be Christ in the suffering world for the Kingdom’s sake and not for our own. Today, evangelism can’t be about sharing the Word of God so we can increase our membership, but instead sharing the Word of God because people need to know the Hope of the world is here and now. We need to be in our community centers, our schools, our coffee shops, our gyms, and our bars being Christ incarnate for the Church’s sake – not for our churches’ sake.
About Jen Reiff
This seems right on the money. Evangelism as relationship and personal narrative, not strategy.
Anyone using Unbinding the Gospel books, by Martha Grace Reese? Seems to fit this shift.
Perhaps Evangelism has too strong of a definition to change its meaning. So many people are trying to define what this is in the post modern world. Perhaps instead of redefining a word that has a clear meaning to the majority of the population, we just need a new word to define what we need to be doing.
Missional, kingdom development, community creation, Jesus awakening, relationship centered church growth, life transformation…
Other ideas?
I for one as a mainline Emergent still struggle with the baggage of evangelism that has been defined by the religious right, stating that the goals of their efforts of evangelism are to notch another soul for their ticket to heaven when they die.
I am all for introducing people to the Jesus that talks about a loving and grace filled God for ALL people, and how we need to respond to that love by loving others through our lives and our actions. That is an activity that I can get behind. Is that evangelism in the traditional sense? If not than we need another word.
I appreciate the heart of what I think you’re saying in this post. I’m a recent “convert” to a mainline (United Church of Christ) church and have noticed the hesitancy around the dreaded “E-word” that you talk about.
I agree that ultimately the goal of evangelism is bringing the good news of God’s love into peoples’ lives. That said, I think it’s hard to ignore the fact that evangelism is also crucial to the survival of many mainline churches from a numbers perspective. While growth for the sake of growth should never be our primary motivation behind evangelism, many mainline churches will continue to shut their doors and be sold off for condo redevelopment unless they find ways to grow their membership. But I think that brings us full circle back to sharing the gospel. In order to assist us in sharing the gospel, we need to nurture healthy, thriving communities of faith in which we live out the Christian life, in order that we can invite others into those communities. So filling the pews can be an admirable goal, if it is rooted in a desire to create Christian community.
One other thought on your remark about advertising and web sites. While I do agree that there’s a danger in churches being overly driven by market research concerns, a church web site is an important communications tool that churches should not neglect as part of their evangelism arsenal. It’s simply part of the way people communicate in the 20th century. As a 30-year-old man, the web is the first place I go when I want information. Fair or not, an institution (be it a church or a business) that has a sloppy, amateurish web site will go down a few notches in my mind from the outset. Just as we’d prefer not to have a conversation with someone about Christ with garlic breath and a sweat-stained, ratty T-shirt, or do communion with moldy bread or racid wine, I suggest that we ought to put our best food forward with any of our communications media, including our church’s web site. Of course, running a billboard ad or designing a web site with all the bells and whistles can never replace a face-to-face conversation about Christ. But it is an important way to inform people and invite them to venture through our church doors.
Re: the Unbinding the Gospel series. I’ve looked into it and I’m intrigued. Trying to get my church leadership to commit to it. I love her approach (getting people to fall back in love with Jesus again as a way to motivate them to share the good news). We’ll see what happens!