Something on Evangelism

I've recently had a few seperate conversations about evangelism, and particularly about its seeming absence in the life of the Uniting Church. That's probably a bit of overstatement, evangelism does exist in the life of the Uniting Church in various places. Nonetheless there is a need to re-imagine and re-emphasise evangelism in the life of the Uniting Church. Part of this work, it seems to me, must begin with a reconfiguration of some of the key concepts related to evangelism:

• Mission

• Salvation

• Conversion

• Church

• Identity

In much of the received Christian tradition the relationship between these key concepts and evangelism is clear:

Salvation happens through conversion, which shapes individual identity. Mission happens through evangelism, which defines the Church's corporate identity.

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The challenge faced by the Uniting Church is that many in the Uniting Church are shaped by a quite different configuration of these concepts.

In the foundational theological document of the Uniting Church, The Basis of Union, when it speaks of mission it mostly speaks of Christ's mission. Throughout the 20th century there have been significant theological reevaluations of mission which has emphasised that before the Church has a mission, God has a mission. Even more: God is mission, the mission Dei.

Mission is about sending, in particular it's the technical term given to the relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity. The Father sends the Son. This defines who God is in the Christian tradition. God is Trinity, we cannot understand God in the Christian tradition without reference to the sending of the Son by the Father. It is in this sense that mission is primarily a statement about God and God's actions in and for the world — even before it is a statement about human action, or the actions of the Church.

This reorders the relationship between mission and Church. Rather than mission being the work of the Church, the Church is the work of (God's) mission. Our God is the God who is found in the sending of the Son by the Father (i.e. our God is Trinity). And in this sending the Son gathers and forms a community of reconciliation which we call the Church. Or, to quote the Basis:

… in his own strange way Christ constitutes, rules, and renews [people] as [Christ's] Church. (Basis §4)

Rather than taking the Church as foundational, as something we basically know and understand: a discrete self-identifying community, a set of institutions, beliefs, and practices; we should instead take God in Christ as foundational. The Church is only ever the community which is formed in response to God's (ongoing) work in Christ.

… reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The Church’s call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself. (Basis §3)

This means that where the Church we think we know — the self-identifying community, the assemblage of institutions, beliefs, and practices — fails to be an instrument of reconciliation and renewal it is not truly the Church. In other words, a community which calls itself a Church, but which is not rooted in God's life for the world as revealed in Jesus Christ (i.e. God's mission) is not truly the Church.

In truth, the thing we typically call the Church is both a “true” and “false” Church simultaneously. At times the thing we call the Church really is an “instrument through which Christ [works] and bears witness to himself”; at other times the Church actively opposes Christ's reconciling work. We must work with this ambivalent, flawed, and fragile instrument.

This reconfiguration of the relationship between mission and Church implies a reconfiguration of evangelism, conversion, and salvation. Evangelism can no longer mean trying to get people into the thing we typically call the Church, in order that they then join in the Church's mission. Rather, the primary task of evangelism is to try and get people participating in God's mission:

This work of reconciliation and renewal is what Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are all about. It is the core of what it means for the Father to send the Son into the world, it is the very definition of God as Trinity.

As we help more and more people participate in God's mission we grow the true Church, and this may or may not mean growing the thing we typically call the Church — though surely it must occasionally mean that, because the concretely existing Church is still, partially and with fragility, an instrument for Christ's work: where it is grow it!

Another part of the reconfiguration of this bundle of concepts comes into view at this point. If God's mission is about, “the end in view for the whole creation,”¹ then can we actually draw a clear line between those who are “saved” (i.e. included in this redemptive work) and those who are not? In other words, do God's purposes fail, does God really mean the whole creation?

If we take seriously the fullness of God's salvation for the whole creation, then we cannot say that any part of creation — or any creature, including any person — sits outside of God's reconciling purposes. The question of evangelism as, “trying to get people participating in God's mission,” is not about who is “saved” or not, but about who is an active participant in God's mission. That is we do not save people, God saves all people by enacting the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation, through the work of sending Christ. We are merely secondary participants in this work as we are filled with and empowered by the Spirit.

We might also talk about the “saved” and “unsaved” in terms of the ways and degrees we experience this reconciliation and renewal in our lives.

Conversion, then, may not so much be about a transition from unsaved to saved, but rather our ongoing transition from passive to active participation in God's mission; and a greater experience of God's reconciling and renewing work in our lives.

Our identity as Christians, then, arises out of this process of being converted more and more, continuously and eternally, into the mission of God. (There's likely a lot more that can and should be said about this.)

Here the reconfiguration of the cluster of concepts around evangelism can finally be expressed in a new way. From:

To:

Mission is God's life for the world, a project of “reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation.” This reconciling and renewing work forms communities who share in this work, this is the Church. Salvation is our experience of, and participation in God's mission. Through this increase in experience and participation we are continually converted, and our identity reshaped in light of God in Christ.

This suggests that the thing we typically call the Church should take its cues in evangelism not first and foremost by trying to grow its own numbers, but by trying to align its own life more and more with God's mission through, “worship, witness, and service” (Basis). So too, the task of evangelising to those outside the thing we typically call the Church is not primarily to have them join the community, institutions, beliefs, and practices. Rather, the task is to help them align their life more and more with the experience of, and participation in God's mission. Where the institutional Church is an instrument to this end it should be used, but never for its own sake — where the institutional Church is a hindrance to this experience and participation we should yell, “flee!”

This ought to mean curating liturgy, spiritual practices, sermons, sacraments, discussions, reflections, programs, and on and on, which help people experience and participate in God's reconciling and renewing work.

It should be a word of judgement on the Church where it fails to do this, and a call to reform (semper reformanda!). It should be a word of great joy when the Church is an instrument of this work.

It is first to God's mission, and not the Church, that we call people in evangelism. And we must be ready to judge and reform the Church in light of God's reconciling and renewing work. This is what it truly means to be evangelical.

1. Emphasis added.