Let me start off by saying that I have heard beautiful stories of people genuinely converting to Christianity after receiving a tract, listening to a brief presentation of the gospel by a total stranger, etc. I am not saying that the Lord never uses these methods to draw people into his church. What I am saying is that we have to ask our selves, "should this be our normative method?"
I don't think that it should. Before getting into what evangelism should look like in our post-Christian culture, it is helpful to think about why quick/impersonal presentations of the gospel should not be our primary evangelistic tool.
There are two major reasons.
1) Why is it that we all hate it when sneaky businessmen knock at our door and try to get us to buy something? You know what I'm talking about. A person tries to sell us some particular product and communicates the value of the product, its benefits for us and its cost in less than three minutes.
On one level we feel violated. We are all intelligent human beings who like to think about alternatives. We want to be able to think about something before we make a rash decision.
This stems ultimately from our being created in the image of God. Everyone (yes- including non-Christians!) are created in the image of God. This means that we have inherent dignity and worth. People should respect our intelligence and our dignity when they communicate something to us. Are we respecting the dignity and intelligence of non-Christians when we give them the 3 minute gospel presentation?
If we, as Christians, are going to respect the imago Dei (image of God) of our fellow neighbors, we need to make sure that any presentation of the gospel is clear, charitable and never forced. We have to let those we evangelize think about what we have said and give them time to struggle with its implications.
2)
The second reason is that our post-Christian culture has undergone a radical [postmodern] epistemological* shift. We are no longer living in a culture where people believe that truth can be received from raw statements/propositions. Instead, people believe that truth (if it even exists) is discovered/experienced through communal interaction. This means that people will probably be more receptive to hearing the gospel within the context of a healthy relationship than from a tract given to them by a total stranger.
* Epistemology: the study of how we know things
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Evangelism: Toward a Definition
As I've been thinking about coming on staff at a nascent church plant in a rapidly growing city, I've been struggling a lot with the concept of evangelism.
I hope to reflect on evangelism in the next few posts.
For the last couple of days, I've been reading Robert Webber's Ancient-Future Evangelism. In this book, Webber maps out a template for evangelism - in a post-Christian world - informed by various principles and models derived from the ancient church.
The church today is a mile long but only an inch deep. As a church, we have witnessed many "conversions" but have not given much effort to disciple and train those individuals who have supposedly been "born again".
Webber thinks that we need to rediscover the three "b's" of evangelism highlighted in the ancient church: believe, belong, behave. As Americans, we are influenced far more by the compartmentalized world-view of the Greeks than the holistic world-view of the Hebrews. We want to separate evangelism, discipleship/spiritual formation and worship. But this can't be done.
Here is my definition of evangelism:
communicating the gospel in word and in deed to those who are outside the circle of faith in expectation that they will believe in Jesus Christ, belong to his church, and behave in light of his Kingdom ethic.
I hope to reflect on evangelism in the next few posts.
For the last couple of days, I've been reading Robert Webber's Ancient-Future Evangelism. In this book, Webber maps out a template for evangelism - in a post-Christian world - informed by various principles and models derived from the ancient church.
The church today is a mile long but only an inch deep. As a church, we have witnessed many "conversions" but have not given much effort to disciple and train those individuals who have supposedly been "born again".
Webber thinks that we need to rediscover the three "b's" of evangelism highlighted in the ancient church: believe, belong, behave. As Americans, we are influenced far more by the compartmentalized world-view of the Greeks than the holistic world-view of the Hebrews. We want to separate evangelism, discipleship/spiritual formation and worship. But this can't be done.
Here is my definition of evangelism:
communicating the gospel in word and in deed to those who are outside the circle of faith in expectation that they will believe in Jesus Christ, belong to his church, and behave in light of his Kingdom ethic.
Hello
Hi.
My name is Quique Autrey.
I am a senior at the University of Houston. I will be graduating this May. (Yahoo!!!) I will be joining Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Sugarland, Texas (www.redeemersl.org) as their Director of Ministries. Redeemer is a church plant of the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America), my denomination.
I embrace Anselm's epistemological principle- fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). It is within this framework that I will be reflecting on theology, philosophy, and culture.
Enjoy!
My name is Quique Autrey.
I am a senior at the University of Houston. I will be graduating this May. (Yahoo!!!) I will be joining Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Sugarland, Texas (www.redeemersl.org) as their Director of Ministries. Redeemer is a church plant of the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America), my denomination.
I embrace Anselm's epistemological principle- fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). It is within this framework that I will be reflecting on theology, philosophy, and culture.
Enjoy!
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