2006 January — wadehodges.com

The Logic of Evangelism

Filed Under: Books, Emerging Church, Gospel, Kingdom of God, Quotes

Yesterday at the Tulsa Emergent Cohort we talked about evangelism. I tried to stoke the conversation by bringing some quotes from one of the best books on evangelism I’ve read: The Logic of Evangelism by William J. Abraham.

What is especially striking is the way in which the gospel of the kingdom initially spread. It did not spread because of a carefully designed program of evangelism; nor did it start because the early disciples meditated on the Great Commission and felt that they had better obey it to assuage their feelings of guilt. The church did not begin its evangelistic activity because it was terrified about the prospects that faced those who died without hearing about Christ; the Christian movement was not initiated by a band of professional evangelists eager to sign up a public relations firm and get the show on the road. Rather the gospel spread and the church grew because the sovereign hand of God was in the midst of the community that found itself surrounded by people who were puzzled and intrigued by what they saw happening. Pg. 37

Thus Christ?s death as an atonement for sin becomes in many quarters the heart of the message, and the whole drama of the coming of the rule of God in his birth and incarnation, in his life and ministry, in his death and resurrection, in his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and in his continued presence in the worship and ministry of the church are all treated as a kind of scaffolding or backcloth to the salvation of the individual sinner. The impression one receives from the New Testament is very different from this . . . Pg. 59

Evangelism in the early church was rooted in the eschatological activity of God, which was inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and continued in the act of the Holy Spirit. Given what God had done in and through Christ and the Holy Spirit, it was only natural that Christians should proclaim the mighty acts of God in salvation and liberation, and that they should found communities committed to celebrating all that God had done. They were propelled by a wellspring of joy and love that was at once irrepressible and contagious. Pg. 92

We can best improve our thinking on evangelism by conceiving it as that set of intentional activities which is governed by the goal of initiating people into the kingdom of God for the first time. Pg. 95

One of the issues we tried to grapple with is the evangelical tendency to make evangelism hell-centric. In Scripture, evangelism is so much more than just making it hard for people to go to hell from your city.

Another issue that came up was urgency. Assuming that keeping people out of hell is not your primary motivation for doing evangelism, then where does the sense of urgency come from? Are hell-centric evangelists more likely to have a sense of urgency than those whose evangelism is motivated primarily by something else?

evangelism, hell, emergent

January 13, 2006 By Wade 4 Comments

Equipping is Not Delegating

Filed Under: Books, Church, Quotes

Here are some important words from R. Paul Stevens that I return to every couple of months because I need this reminder:

Equipping is not delegating. Pastors think they are equipping the laity when they delegate certain parts of their ministry to laypersons. For example, a pastor my not personally enjoy doing premarital counseling, so he may train several couples in his church to gain competence and confidence in spending five or six counseling evenings with a couple before marriage. In so “equipping” lay counseling couples, the pastor may feel he has delegated some of his ministry to laypersons and has helped himself immensely. Such training would be a good thing to do. But there is a better reason to do it than the fact that every church has more ministry than one person can perform: This ministry is not the pastor’s to give away but theirs by right.

Equipping, Delegating

January 11, 2006 By Wade 5 Comments

Equipper’s Guilt

Filed Under: Church

This morning in staff meeting we talked about what I’m going to call Equipper’s Guilt. Equipper’s guilt is something I’ve had ever since I’ve been involved in paid ministry. A big part of my job is equipping others for ministry. Yet when I approach someone to partner with me on a ministry project or task, I always feel guilty for asking them. This causes me to soft sell whatever it is I’m inviting them to do, which makes the ministry opportunity I’m offering them seem trivial, which makes them less likely to be inspired enough to say yes.

Anybody else know what I’m talking about or do I just need to seek out the services of a good counselor?

Equipping

January 10, 2006 By Wade 6 Comments

Getting the Most Important Things Done

Filed Under: Blogging, Quotes

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, has a blog.

He linked to a great article by Paul Grahahm on procrastination that talks about the difference between good and bad procrastination. Some things need to be put off, but others can’t afford to be. Just because you get all the items on your to-do list crossed off doesn’t mean that you didn’t procrastinate. It’s possible to use a to-do to list put off working on the thing we most need to be working on.

Errands are so effective at killing great projects that a lot of people use them for that purpose. Someone who has decided to write a novel, for example, will suddenly find that the house needs cleaning. People who fail to write novels don’t do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. “I don’t have time to work,” they say. And they don’t; they’ve made sure of that.

Graham’s advice is put off the little stuff–that’s good procrastination–and start working on the big stuff. He quotes Richard Hamming:

What’s the best thing you could be working on, and why aren’t you?

Here’s another quote from Allen’s blog:

The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished. – St. Francis de Sales

GTD, procrastination, David Allen

January 8, 2006 By Wade 1 Comment

Embracing Grace

Filed Under: Books, Emerging Church, Gospel

Another great book I read in 2005 is Embracing Grace by Scot McKnight. Scot’s blog is a must read and I listed another book of his, The Jesus Creed, in my official 2005 favorites list. I’ve become quite a fan of McKnight’s work over the last six or seven months. He’s also become an important voice in the emerging church conversation.

In Embracing Grace, McKnight tackles the question that I’ve asked here repeatedly: What is the gospel? In the introduction he lists three typical answers to the question.

1. The gospel is that Jesus came to earth to die for my sins so I could be forgiven and go to heaven to be with God in eternity.

2. The gospel is the Good News that Jesus came to liberate us from oppression, from systemic evil, from slavery, so there would be justice and peace.

3. The gospel is being a part of the Church.

Mcknight says, “The most important thing I have to say in Embracing Grace is this: each of these groups is trying to say the same thing, each of these groups is right in what they do say about the gospel, and each of these groups needs the definition of the other.”

I love this both/and approach and the vision of an integral gospel that it gives us. Rather than picking one definition over the other, why not take the best from all of them and integrate them into a more complete whole. The future belongs to the politicians, theologians, and leaders who can do this instinctually.

McKnight goes on to provide his own definition of the gospel, which he spends the rest of the book unpacking. “The gospel is the work of God to restore humans to union with God and communion with others, in the context of community, for the good of others and the world.”

One of the things McKnight does very well in both Embracing Grace and The Jesus Creed is to pull in biographical sketchs from a variety of people, some well-known and others not. He uses each of these sketchs to illustrate the particular facet of the gospel he’s hightlighting. In other words, his theoretical discussion of the nature of the gospel is accompanied by practical images of what the gospel looks like in real life when it’s lived out by real people. This ability is rare in a New Testament scholar of McKnights caliber.

Embracing Grace

January 6, 2006 By Wade 3 Comments