A THOT ON EVANGELISM

When they had testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord,
Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.
Acts 8:25

A THOT ON EVANGELISM

Why doesn’t the New Testament mention evangelism much? The passage above is one of the few places that does.

Where is the exhortation we hear so often today, “Go tell your friends about Jesus?” asks Graham Tomlin in The Provocative Church (SPCK 2004). After a careful theological analysis of Ephesians, he answers by citing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together: “one of the simplest and most effective forms of evangelism is ‘would you like to come to church with me next Sunday?’” Church is where the fruit of Christ’s ministry among us should be most easily seen as He takes sinners such as us and transforms into a new kind of person in Christ. Then our invitations “ring true because it connects with the reality experienced among God’s people.”

If you have a church like HTB or the Rez or St Paul’s Bloor or countless other healthy places, this is a natural obvious strategy.

But what happens when the church itself has become too large an obstacle to climb. This conundrum lies at the heart of the FX movement. In many different forms and variety the church is reinventing itself across the UK so it can better reach and enfold those who find present church culture off-putting, to put it mildly.

My Church – off-putting: really?

Some find our services way too wordy, our liturgy strange - and embarrassing when you get it wrong - and singing together just weird: where else besides karaoke do people do that today? And where do you have to endure longish speeches on subjects you didn’t come to hear about; the sort of thing when it comes on the TV you reach for the remote? and our language as if from another planet.

Crossing the threshold of the church for many means...

joining someone else’s history. If the first rector started there in 1297 AD, how long will it take before you feel like you belong?

... maybe swallowing years of perceived rejection;

...how does the way you speak compare with that of these church people? This is more a British than a Canadian issue. "Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of people in Britain don't like the sound of their own voices. Given the chance to change the way they talk, most Brits would prefer to sound like the Queen." ["One Would Rather Talk Like the Queen", LONDON, July 29, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/]

Status positions within British society are far more easily recognizable by the way one speaks than it is in most places in North America. Brits are far more attuned to that sort of thing and it can become a big issue when considering attending church! What if they all speak like the Queen and me with my Brummy accent! No way.

(BTW: after three weeks of mixing with my delightfully hospitable English hosts, I also found that I didn't like the sound of my own voice either. It makes one hesitate to contribute to the conversation.)

Crossing the threshold of the church for many also means...

...breaking into someone else’s lifelong friends;

...joining someone else’s family – where except for marriage do you do that?

...dredging up interest in new-to-you (and vexing) community issues when you are barely coping with your own;

... immigrating to a foreign culture when there is nothing that dysfunctional about your own, thank you very much (Christ can be incarnate in your own culture, too, you know);

... encountering layers upon layers of hidden expectations;

...and soon upon entry – because you are fresh blood – these new best friends of yours offer you up in sacrifice to membership on the Parish Church Council (“You have so much too offer”) or altar guild or gardeners (“It’s only three hours a week”) or where your own children become the Sunday School and you the superintendent so you never get to church anyway so why not just stay at home…

...all with the most welcoming of intentions.

But is this really how one must (or even should) begin to follow Jesus?

A VOICE IN WESTMINSTER ABBY

Wandering into Westminster Abbey on free tickets granted us because I was wearing my clergy shirt (well, some people find getting into church easy - other couples had to pay $48. CA.), we stood in awe of the lofty sanctuary and vaulted ceilings, the grand tombs of royalty and stately tributes to the faithful departed etched in stone all around us – and beneath our feet.

Am I allowed to walk on these grave markers? Its rude to do so in cemeteries... and If I do, whose sensitivities might I be offending – yikes! It’s like….visiting a new church.

Within eyesight of the imposing white marble monument commemorating the death of General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham (ah, a Canadian connection), another clergyman, noticing my collar, approached us.

He, too, like others in the stories that follow, was serving in a rural parish in the UK countryside. We described what you will soon read – the heroic efforts we had just witnessed in a week in rural East Anglia. He sighed in sympathy with words to this effect: “People are also coming Christ where we are, but getting them to church – it’s not that easy. If we had to depend on that alone to bring them to maturity as Christians, well… it isn’t going to happen.”

What might one do when the Sunday morning congregation ceases to be missional? When it is unaware of, and unwilling or unable to lower the Himalayan barriers it presents? When it is impervious to quick change – or change of any sort at any rate– yet people are coming to Jesus all around you right now and need a body of believers like themselves to belong to?

When the culture of the rural church militates against the newby growing in Jesus… read on for three rural FXs I visited.

Also see "Guidelines for Dioceses to aid a staged process of transition to maturity and legal recognition for rural church plants," by the Rev'd Sally Gaze

downloadable from: http://www.encountersontheedge.org.uk/MSC/MSCreports/rural%20legal.htm