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Martyn Atkins: Evangelism Consultation Nov 2012.
Thanks for being here, and for your enormous and valuable contribution to the
material collected. There have been responses from almost every district in the
connexion, from women and men, old and some young, from every kind and
context of local church from city centre, housing estate, small town to rural
village. In some sense we here are a microcosm of our connexion.
In my report to the Conference 2011 I made some bold assertions that have
not, as yet, been hotly contested.
The first was that Evangelism – which I described as ‘making more disciples of
Jesus Christ’ is part of ‘our calling’, a driver of many of our initiatives, and that
‘offering Christ’ as Wesley put it, is deeply rooted in our tradition. Indeed to
reject such tradition, is to lose who we are at a deep level.
Second, I have asserted that Methodism is instinctively good at Evangelism,
because it is in our genes, and is one of our gifts to the wider Church.
Therefore what we are about today may well have consequences not only for
our own connexion – which like all ecclesial bodies is increasingly post
denominational – but for other Christians who also share a desire for good
evangelism.
Some of us will be reflecting on the evangelistic impulse and the evangelism
gene today.
Third, that for all such talk we openly declare to each other that we don’t feel
very good at evangelism. In questionnaires aplenty, we note we are at our
weakest when challenged to be about a thing we feel is deeply necessitous and
highly complex. We are split between those who say we should and could.
Those who say we shouldn’t and couldn’t. And those who say we should but
we can’t and those who say we shouldn’t but we can!
Today starts from the premise that although all these positions are
acknowledged: we are assuming here that we can and we should! But also that
there are better and worse ways of proceeding from that point.
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Fourth, I state that I believe there is apt and appropriate evangelism, meaning,
inevitably, though I don’t spell it out, that there is less apt and appropriate
evangelism.
I have sometimes more contentiously claimed that some of us who want little
to do with evangelism use the worst kind of examples in order to legitimise
dismissing the whole thing – and that some of us who have engaged in acts of
evangelism have provided lots of examples enabling such folk to do just that!
But most of us, for all our differences in opinion and convictions, wrestle with
the inescapable biblical command to engage in spreading good news, offering
Christ, seeking to make disciples. We want to seek how best and properly to
engage in such things. That is one of the key reasons why we are here today.
Fifth, I have suggested what I consider fertile questions about those facing the
challenge of engaging in evangelism today.
I have stated that a key issue is posed by the outcome question: ‘what will the
person who says yes to Jesus Christ today be expected to become like?’ The
answer is ‘like Jesus’; but that begs as many questions as it answers!
I have made the obvious statement that evangelism is not so much about
recruiting people into Church. That said, evangelism inevitably creates
communities of Christian people: and the language of Church is therefore not
redundant in terms of evangelism. What it should not mean, as it so often is
assumed to mean, that we mean joining church as we know it!
Rather I have suggested that good evangelism is kingdom focussed and
oriented. That it is about discipleship – making disciples of Christ, deepening
and growing in love and knowledge of him, and living out that discipleship in a
way that is transformative, rather than the narrower, poorer and now
increasingly culturally redundant older emphasis on ‘conversion’.
I need to note here that I am not against conversion – either crisis or process,
‘instant’ or ‘gradual’ – and I assert here that I believe in it! Rather I am making
the point that the focus on making disciples rather than converts in this sense
is a major development in thinking about evangelism in recent times. And is
actually, a reversion to an older time, before an enlightenment derived stress
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on assent to doctrine in an assumed Christendom context, gave rise to a
poorer model of evangelism so dominant over most of the last century.
In recent times I have suggested a focus on discipleship and mission, and the
strapline ‘a discipleship movement shaped for mission’. It does not work for
everyone, but clearly for huge numbers of people it has been a real
encouragement and permission giver. Seeking to be a discipleship movement
shaped for mission – whether that statement has a question mark, a full stop
or an explanation mark after it – is intrinsically connected to how we
understand evangelism, and the priority we place on modelling apt and
appropriate evangelism.
Some of us will be focussing on how apt and appropriate evangelism might be
more deeply embedded in the Methodist Church today.
In particular, some of us are going to engage with the fact that Methodism, like
all Churches today, is being wonderfully reshaped in a society in which people
are moving from everywhere to everywhere. We are a rainbow church today
like never before, living in a part of the world that is itself global. We have over
120 languages spoken in worship services in our buildings, and the growth of
ethnic fellowships continues to enrich us all. What do we need to hear from a
wider range of voices as we prayerfully ponder on evangelism today?
I have hinted in a number of places that talk about apt and appropriate
evangelism does not take place in a vacuum, but in a wider context of mission,
apologetics, social justice and worship – to name but a few connected themes.
That too is on our agenda today.
In short, there is a tradition that Methodism not only values evangelism, and
seeks to model it, but values and models good, wide and deep, apt and
appropriate understandings of what it is to offer Christ and practice Christian
discipleship. Methodist evangelism has, at its best, wedded a passion for piety
and practice.
Sixthly, I suggested that in light of such realities as these, identifying and
engaging in apt and appropriate evangelism today remains a crucial and critical
task for us today.
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In more recent times I have suggested a ‘light’ progression of how we have
understood evangelism, which might be termed moods and times of
evangelism.
‘You will’ (the coercion of a context where not to be Christian is distinctly
disadvantageous)
‘Will you’? (the classic invitation to a powerful, influential faith)
‘Please will you?’ (the beginnings of recognition of an increasing sense of
marginalisation – the beginnings of grudging recognition that the world is
not as it was in relation to this faith, now relegated in meaning)
‘Will you pretty please?’ (desperation is beginning to kick in, in order to get
people to comply, we try sugar the pill, make the seats more comfortable –
even take them out if you like! And we note the arrival of seekerfriendliness, and certain kinds of mission-shaped-ness.)
‘Why won’t you?’ (the real attempt to try to see things from the perspective
of the other. What is it about us that causes so few people to want to join
us? Have we got BO? So gone but not forgotten, how to reach secular
people, post- Christianity and church leaving is analysed, and different
degrees of response made.
‘Why wouldn’t you (want to)?’ The embodying of an incarnational faith in
such authentic ways that it becomes its own advocate. ‘Beauty of life
causes strangers to join our ranks – we do not talk about great things; we
live them’ wrote a third century Christian. After all ‘free samples’ are always
more welcome than sales pitches.
‘Naah, you wouldn’t want to’ – the intriguing claim to such a serious, life
changing challenge, that it cannot be reasonably assumed that anyone
would opt for it! (But such a serious version of discipleship is rarely lacking
in takers, and such is necessary for some of the youth tribes about today.
Quite simply, nothing but a huge challenge will work.)
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Lastly ‘what’s that you say’?
Some of today will we reflecting on the most fertile environments in which to
make and nurture new Christian disciples today.
I even suggested that throughout the Church a disproportionate amount of
resources – of time, personnel, money, thought – should be spent reflecting on
it.
Hence this event today, when some of us will be focussing on the strategies
resources activities that best enable apt evangelism to be owned and
embedded.
Lastly, I want to humbly suggest to you that the Spirit of God wants us to
reflect on what apt and appropriate evangelism is too. She is, after all, the
revealer of truth, the seal of God’s presence, the mark of God’s transforming
power. She understands all about making Christ known, and when we seek to
do likewise we are not twisting the divine wing up the divine spine, so to
speak. In short, God wants us to undertake the thinking of this day, and we
prayerfully expect to be guided and resourced by God’s Spirit.
The outcomes of our day are laid out for us:
It is a day of conversation, to speak about God in ways that help our speaking
about God to make sense.
In order for us to note, then share, then spread our conversation wider
throughout the Connexion.
We are here to speak, and to listen, to share what we know, and have learned,
and experienced, and to receive new things and new challenges.
Some of us will focus on what hinders us, not so much to wallow in
bewilderment and hand out the razor blades, but to wait on God, and trust the
process, and trust each other, and wait on God, and engage the issues and
moot ways forward.
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It is an opportunity for us all to energise, equip and enthuse each other, to
reflect on where we go from here. About what we might say and do – both as
individuals and as members of circuits, and as a connexional church.
And it is, as Jenny noted, also intended as a day of fun. I hope you find it so.
So, welcome. Use this time: it could be a kairos time. Be expectant. And may
God will bless us with what God wants of us.
Thank you.