The second installment of Important Lesson Week will be old hat to some of you, but it bears repeating. It deals with Evangelism, hands down the most misunderstood word in the theological lexicon.
As I talk to people hither and yon I bump up against this definition again and again:
1. Evangelism is about changing other people's behavior.
2. Specifically, it's about getting them to change their Sunday morning behavior by coming to your church.
Every time I encounter this (and it's often enough that it feels like I'm beating my head against a brick wall) my reaction is the same: ARRRRGGGGHHHH!
Oh, sorry. That's wasn't theologically correct.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!
There. That's much more accurate.
This all-too-common definition of evangelism carries several assumptions:
1. Your behavior is fine, holy, the standard for God Stuff (or at least as close to the standard as one can get).
2. Other people's behavior is less fine.
3. If other people just behaved and thought more like you they'd not only be better, but more God-like.
4. Church functions as the endpoint for Evangelism.
5. Attendance is the measure of a church's success.
6. As long as we can get people to come to church, by whatever means, we've done our job.
Here's the problem with all that.
1. Your behavior isn't fine, especially if you frame it selfishly as in, "I need to get more people to come to my church so I can be happier and feel validated!" That's as self-centered as it gets. You're using both the church and your neighbors to feed your own sense of well-being instead of giving up your sense of well-being for the sake of God and your neighbor.
2. How do you know if other people's behavior is less fine than yours? You don't even know them. How do you know that your church is speaking to them if you haven't bothered to build a relationship with them first? As a matter of fact, you're operating under the assumption that your church is good for everybody just like it is. Even if these people came to church you probably wouldn't let them affect much. They're objects to you and your church. They're the "less enlightened" people in your little drama, folks who are "walking in darkness" who need the guiding light of your congregation. But again, how do you know they're in darkness? What if you and your church are walking in darkness as well but are blind to it?
Even if you assume other people's behavior is less fine than yours, is that how the Christian church defines folks? Is that how God sees you? Does he judge you by your faults or did he send his Son to die for you so that he could forgive you and uplift you despite your faults? Isn't it odd that you depend on God to forgive and view you this way but you insist upon viewing your neighbors by their faults?
3. Point 3 above, about other people being more God-like if they'd just believe and behave more like you, is idolatry pure and simple.
4. The church isn't supposed to be the ENDPOINT of ANYTHING. It's supposed to be a beginning, and inspiration, to propel people along a holy journey that happens for the most part outside its walls. Assuming that whatever we do here is both right and the ultimate destination for our faith journey is the beginning step to abandoning that faith journey in favor of slowly dying in place.
5. Attendance doesn't matter if the whole church is approaching thing backwards. Getting more people to do the wrong thing is bad, not good.
6. Defining your job as getting people to come to church--calling the most effective means of doing so "good" by definition--has nothing to do with Christ's definition of goodness or the faith community.
Evangelism assumes that our behavior isn't fine, but that it's forgiven and that our calling is ultimately more important than our doubts or mistakes.
Evangelism assumes that our neighbors are also beloved Children of God, bearers of God's Spirit, and are forgiven as well. We don't ask our neighbors to follow us, we follow them by listening, caring, embracing, and reaching out in time of need.
Evangelism doesn't tell people they should become more like us. It shows people our struggle to become more like God as we love the world the way he does.
Church reminds us of our calling, helps us translates that calling into our daily lives, renews our spirit, blesses us through God's Spirit, provides strength for the daily journey, brings help, companionship, and compassion for each other. It does not exist for itself. It's not an endpoint unto itself. It exists for the sake of the world, to propel us into the Godly life of service.
Attendance means nothing in itself. What people do and experience in church matters more.
The goal here isn't getting other people to come into our church, it's getting our church people to go out and share. Evangelism happens when your church and its members turn inside out, give themselves up for the sake of God and neighbor, and devote their lives to sharing the Good News of Christ's salvation and forgiveness in whatever way their neighbors most need.
Almost every icky impulse and experience you've had in, around, or through a church has come from people defining the church's purpose backwards.
Almost every great experience you've had in church has come from people overcoming that backwards purpose through love and living out God's gospel.
And yet every time I speak the world "Evangelism" in public I can see the bad, old wheels turning. "How does this benefit our church? How can we get our church more popular? Our particular worship in our particular place is the most important and truest reflection of God ever! If it doesn't make my (institutional) church 'successful' then why should I even bother?"
We have got to change our definitions. The only way I know to do that is to live in a different way and then explain (over and over again if necessary) why we're doing so. That may be the most important theological step our church will ever take.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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