Features:
Evangelism: the dreaded 'e' word
Research indicates British Christians believe
evangelism is important, but struggle to do it
effectively. Does the Church need a new approach?
Members of my congregation used
to tell me that they would far sooner
hear a sermon on sex or death than on
evangelism. But before you flick over
to Maggie’s column or go looking for
the obituaries, I want to let you into a
secret. Nobody likes evangelism. Not
you. Not me. Not Christians. Not
non-Christians.
Of course, everyone celebrates
when somebody is converted. We all
long for our friends and family to know
the hope that somebody once shared
with us. But the business of actually
telling them about God often ends up
feeling awkward, politically incorrect,
frightening, messy and time-consuming.
Why is it so difficult to talk about
the most central and significant part
of our lives? Why do so many of us
feel timid, but appear arrogant? Or
feel unqualified, but appear Biblebashing?
What does evangelism need
to look like to be biblically faithful
and culturally relevant, an integral
and inspirational part of our walk
with God, and a natural part of our
relationships with others?
Evangelism is important, but
it isn’t happening
We know that evangelism is in crisis
when on any given day we are more
likely to have had a conversation about
the weather, sport, the price of petrol,
or the relative merits of hair products
than about God, eternity or the
meaning of life. Statistically, this will
only get worse with age. According to
a recent Evangelical Alliance survey of
17,000 UK evangelical Christians, the
older we are in years and faith, the less
likely we are to share our beliefs.
The survey,
21st Century
Evangelicals, also showed that although
90% of us are convinced that we
should be active in evangelism, the
likelihood that we will speak to anyone
this month about God is no more than
60%. The survey confirmed what
many of us already feel: evangelism is
important – but it just isn’t happening
(Find out more at eauk.org/snapshot).
While the word ‘evangelism’
is quickly disappearing from our
church notice sheets, there are some
fantastic new initiatives filling the
empty spaces: reports of street pastor
patrols, debt-counselling dropin
mornings, language classes for
asylum seekers, parenting seminars,
alternative curriculum mentoring for
children on the brink of exclusion, and
hundreds of other ways
the Church is changing
our communities. When
it comes to opening
our hearts, Christians
are making a huge
impact calculated at
over £2 billion worth of
welfare provision (using
figures extrapolated
from a survey of Welsh
evangelical churches).
However, when it comes to
opening our mouths the silence is
overwhelming. The reason for this
dichotomy may be an over-correction
to the words-only-mission that came
to dominate evangelical churches
in recent decades. Or perhaps it is
because the gospel is almost as foreign
to us as it is to the people around us.
Why is it difficult?
There are a host of factors that
may have affected our willingness to
share the gospel.
• New Atheism
It has been argued that it is the
vociferous onslaught of the New
Atheists which has silenced the
Church. Fearful of being asked
penetrating questions, being accused
of insubstantial debate, or having the
vitriolic attacks on the God of the
Old Testament thrown in our faces,
Christians have gone quiet. But even
before Dawkins and Hitchens and
friends were on the scene, evangelism
was a struggle. John Stott’s book on
the topic entitled Our Guilty Silence
was written way back in 1967. We may
well be nervous about a response to
hardened atheists, but this
is not the only reason for
our current awkwardness
in evangelism.
• Political Correctness
Nadia Eweida was
forbidden from wearing
her cross visibly on her
British Airways uniform
in 2006. In 2009,
Caroline Petrie, a nurse,
was suspended by her North Somerset
Primary Care Trust for offering to
pray with a patient. The same year
Caroline Gammel, a primary school
receptionist, was reprimanded for
emailing a request for prayer for
her five-year-old daughter who was
sharing her faith at school. Could
it be that these high-profile stories
produce a culture of fear for those of
us wanting to open up a conversation
about Jesus at work, school, or with
neighbours?
I spoke recently with a believer
from Ethiopia who laughed out loud
when I shared this theory with him,
because I had casually used the word
‘persecution’ in relation to these
stories. The Church in his country has
remained resilient despite the constant
threat of violence. In the town of
Besheno, Ethiopia, for example, all
of the Christians received notes under
their doors telling them to convert to
Islam, leave their homes or face death.
Persecution is normal for the
Church in many parts of the world
and for the most part of its 2,000-year
history, and so our current politically
correct climate cannot be held
responsible for our reticence to pass on
the good news.
• Awkwardness
As a young person I was briefed in an
evangelistic technique that began with
a short survey. Most of the questions
were irrelevant fillers in preparation
for the killer question at the end: ‘If
God exists would you like to know
how you can know him personally?’
If the victim then said yes,
they would be subjected to
me reading an evangelistic
tract ending in another
yes/no question: ‘Would
you like to become a
Christian now?’ I had that
presentation down to a
fine art. I could read the
survey and tract upside
down for the benefit of
the pre-convert, and the
whole process could be
completed in less than four minutes
from patter to pitch to prayer. Any
Christian watching would be able to
immediately pick the method up, so
I was soon multiplying my ministry
exponentially. Our God, who can
speak through donkeys, mercifully
brought some of us to faith through
this method. But this manipulative,
mechanical, and meaningless technique
in (im-)personal evangelism feels so
inauthentic that we have been quick to
distance ourselves from it.
• Lack of authenticity
The four-point gospel I signed up
to when I became a Christian had
some merits. It had a simplicity of
style, a clarity of challenge, and
definitely showed the centrality of
Jesus. However, it failed to explain
the consequences of believing in Jesus;
there was little mention of the cost of
discipleship, the calling God has for
us in the world, the significance of the
Church, or the work of the Holy Spirit.
It is this individualistic and simplistic
presentation of the gospel that most
of us imagine when thinking about
evangelism. It may be easy to script, but
very difficult to substantiate. It does not
take into consideration the complexities
of people’s lives in a broken world.
Although the tract-style presentation
may appear to equip people for
evangelism, we quickly discover that
we are in battle with no more than a
plastic sword.
There is no doubt that courses such
as Alpha and Christianity Explored
have responded to the problems raised
by inauthentic and ineffective forms of
evangelism. They have released pressure
on the individual by showing that
evangelism is a team effort. They have
shown that evangelism and discipleship
is more of a process than an event.
They have allowed us to find a way to
invite friends to explore,
discuss and discover the
faith of the Bible over
a period of time, over a
relaxed meal and with a
community.
However, despite their
huge success, we must
also acknowledge the
weaknesses and limitations
of these types of courses.
Any off-the-shelf package
comes with the risk of an
over-reliance on the technique at the
expense of relationship, and the risk of
neglecting the parts of the gospel that
are not covered by the programme.
The other challenge is that people
are messy and don’t always attend, let
alone fit into neat courses or timetables.
Not everyone relates to well-spoken
Oxbridge-educated middle-aged men.
And the further afield the course
spreads, the less relevant it becomes.
Unfortunately our British, urban,
middle-class explanations of the gospel
fail to engage sufficiently with the
big issues of poverty, justice, sexism
and inter-religious conflict that face
millions of people worldwide, while
simultaneously reinforcing a colonial
West-knows-best mindset as we export
our cultural assumptions globally.
How did Jesus do it?
Just as Alpha and Christianity
Explored freed us from previously
held assumptions that had shackled
evangelism and gagged the Church,
I believe it is time to expand our
horizons, raise the stakes and find our
gospel voice once more.
The great thing is that we don’t
have to reinvent the wheel – we just
need to rediscover something of our
Lord Jesus. Jesus demonstrated the
good news of God in his actions
centering on his life, death and
resurrection, but also in the way he
touched lepers, challenged hypocrisy,
fed the hungry and healed the sick.
Jesus’ perfect actions spoke louder
than our words ever could. But he
didn’t stop there – he explained his
actions, finding the right words for
the right people and modelling for us
the fact that, just as we push back the
boundaries of social action, equally
we need to be pushing back the
boundaries of our conversations.
Sometimes Jesus told a story,
sometimes he engaged in discussion,
sometimes he reminded people of
Old Testament ideas, sometimes
preaching, sometimes provoking,
sometimes walking away with a
punchline. He never used long words,
he was never patronising. He was
always accessible, always loving,
always gracious.
Evangelism doesn’t have to mean
arm-twisting our neighbours into
attending church meetings, or forcing
our colleagues to come to terms with
their own mortality in their coffee
break. Evangelism doesn’t have to be
formulaic, middle class, manipulative
or misleading. Evangelism doesn’t
have to be a war of words or wills.
Evangelism should not be a chore, a
challenge – or a choice. Evangelism
Jesus-style is for all his disciples as we
live authentic, humble lives.
No one programme, book,
DVD, evangelist or website is
going to win the lost in the UK.
Recognising there is a problem is
the first step to recovery. It will take
us a while to detox from the quickfix,
mechanistic solutions we have
used in the past, and realise that
we are
all enlisted in this enormous
task. As we go through this shift in
thinking, I would like to propose
five questions to help us begin
an open and honest conversation
regarding what will happen next
with evangelism in the UK:
See questions
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