The “E” Word- Evangelism

Just like may folks who went to seminary, I have a shelf full of books on evangelism. Sadly most of them are not very good. They are not very good because, for the most part, they treat evangelism as an add on project of the church. Evangelism is a program we place on our “to do” list and then check off when it is accomplished. Or more commonly in my experience, we let it slide to the bottom of our list and then drop off the edge of the page.

This month I read another book on evangelism for mainline Protestant churches. To be completely honest, I didn’t want to. The members of a committee I am a part of were asked to read this book. Being a good committee member I read the book, but I wasn’t expecting much from it.

It turns out, however, that a good book about evangelism does exist. Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism by Martha Grace Reece is a very good book about evangelism. There is a surprising wealth of insight, practical and spiritual, for a 200 page book.Best of all, this book does not offer a program for us to follow but rather asks us to think and pray about what evangelism is and the ways we resist it and the ways we might embrace it.  There are two main ideas I would like to highlight today, our mainline “problem” with evangelism and how we might begin to rethink what evangelism is.

 Part of what makes this a good book about evangelism is the author’s honesty about why we mainline Protestants don’t “do” evangelism. Most of us get more than a little uncomfortable talking about evangelism, in part because many of us have been on the receiving end of some aggressive and poorly done evangelism. Our other problem is we think evangelism means we have to talk about our faith in a way that risks alienating our friends or involves approaching strangers and forcing a discussion about salvation. These are real perceptions and many of us who avoid “doing” evangelism  these are our reasons why.

The book however confronts us with a deeper truth. Many of us in mainline churches haven’t thought deeply or seriously about why our faith is important. People who grew up in the church may take their faith and their church for granted. Sometimes our failure to tell others about our faith is because we don’t think we have much to offer. For some of us, we simply don’t know how to put our faith into words. We need to practice talking about our faith. We need to spend some time thinking deeply with others about our faith and our relationship with God.  For others of us, we can’t tell someone about the good news because we’re not quiet sure what it is or why it matters.

To be sure, there are many people in mainline churches who have a deep, rich faith. Sometimes they are hard to notice because they don’t draw attention to themselves. They share their faith by what they say and what they do.  They bring other people to faith in personal and quiet and life changing ways.

These are the people who understand evangelism as Martha Grace Reese defines it, “…[E]vangelism is anything you do to help another person move closer to a relationship with God, or into Christian community.” I like this definition. I can do this. I might even have done this.

Evangelism as she describes it, is not a program to follow, but a way of life. Individuals and congregations who are growing in faith naturally share it.  This sort of evangelism starts with our own life and in our own families and congregations and then moves into neighborhoods and communities. It is an organic sort of evangelism that begins with personal spiritual growth and then grows to embrace the people around us.

The thing that delighted me most about this book was Martha Grace Reese’s insistance that prayer, as individuals, in small groups, and as a congregation is essential.  In fact she advises that before “doing” anything else the people involved in church leadership and evangelism spend months in prayer together. She has practical advise on helping our churches be welcoming places for people but it is all rooted in listening and discerning God’s will in the life of the people and of the congregation.

As people and congregations pray and grow they will have an authentic faith to share and they will, guided by the Spirit, recognize appropriate and natural situations in which to share their faith.

I’d like to know what do you think?

 

 

 

John Calvin- who are you?

Today, July 10, is the 500th anniversaryof John Calvin’s birth.

John Calvin evokes a lot of emotion for a dead guy. People either love him or hate him.  Calvin is either the greatest theologian who ever lived or as  the “father” of  Calvinism the source of most of what is wrong with the western world today. John Calvin is, of course, not really any of the stereotypes depicted above. He is much more interesting and much more complex than that. 

Even though I am Presbyterian I attended a United Methodist seminary, Saint Paul School of Theology. It was a wonderful experience but I didn’t expect to learn much about Calvin and Reformed theology there. Imagine my delight when in one of the required courses we spent a semester with Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Normally when this particular professor taught this course  he had the class read Tillich. My United Methodist classmates were eagerly expecting Tillich and  got Calvin. I- the lone Presbyterian- was the only happy one in the class.

The class was unhappy enough the professor felt he needed to defend his selection of the Institutes. He told us that we didn’t have to like Calvin but because Calvin’s thought was so important to Western protestant Christianity we needed to be familiar with Calvin’s work.  That meant we needed to read Calvin for ourselves and not simple accept uncritically what others said about Calvin. 

Forty some reluctant United Methodists and one happy Presbyterian dug into the Institutes . My Methodist colleagues discovered John Calvin’s writings were not what they had expected.  Calvin starts by pointing out that our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of God are intertwined. We cannot fully know who we are as humans without the knowledge of God and we cannot know about God without understanding ourselves.  Calvin repeatedly points out how God makes God’s self known in the wonder of creation. Calvin writes about God who wants to be in relationship with us. And so  God comes to us in ways that we are able to understand. God reveals God’s self to us in nature, in Scripture and in Jesus. Calvin talks about how much God loves us.

Well, this was not the harsh, joyless double predestination, TULIP Calvinism they were expecting. While none of my Methodist friends became Presbyterian, many of them did develop a respect and even a sort of affection for John Calvin. (Just as I now have respect and affection for John Wesley.)

The point of this story is to encourage you to dip into Calvin’s work. You could be quite surprised by what you find.  For someone who lived and wrote in the 1500s, Calvin is fairly accessible to modern readers. Calvin didn’t write for scholars and theologians. He wrote for regular people. He wanted people to understand their faith and to think  clearly and logically about what the developing protestant church taught.

What Calvin believed should not be confused with what later “Calvinists” have done. I’m not sure that Calvin would be pleased with everything that has been labeled as “Calvinism”. That is why it is important to read Calvin for yourself.

Additionally we need to remember that 16th century Europe was a very different place and time than the world we live in.  It helps to understand Calvin and his writing if you know something about his life and the times he lived in.

If you search the web for resources about John Calvin, it can be difficult to separate the good from the bad. Here are two places to begin.

From the Presbyterian Church USA, Calvin Jubilee

From the Calvin College , H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies

There are many biographies of Calvin, but here are two to get you started, A Life of John Calvin:A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture by Alister McGrath  and John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait by William Bouwsma.

 You can read the Institutes  on line, along with much of Calvin’s other works at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library site. But much better, in my opinion to own your own copy to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”.

It’s a big book, the Institutes, you may want to begin with something more accessible such as Calvin’s Institutes: A New Compend or Calvin for Armchair Theologians.

A lot of things have been written about John Calvin and his writings. Some more reliable and helpful than others. But as my seminary professor said, Calvin is important enough to protestantism and western thought that you ought to read him for yourself. 

I’d like to know, what do you think?