Sermon for Sunday, February 10, 2008

EVANGELICALS, EVANGELISTS, EVANGELISM

5^th in a series on Confronting the Controversies

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. 

I want to tell you about something that happened here last Sunday that I found very inspiring. I had the chance to meet and talk with a family new to our church after the 9:40 service. They have been coming to St Andrew a few times now and feel very welcome and they like what they have seen. I asked them, as I always do, how they found out about us and how they chose to come for the first time. They are new in town and she told me that she first learned of the church when they drove by here on University Boulevard and she saw us and liked how we look! Then a couple of days later as she was looking through the accumulated mail, she saw the post card we had sent about the current sermon series on controversial issues and it looked interesting. But the clincher was that a few days later they were having a garage sale and one of their neighbors came by and welcomed them and this neighbor couple asked, “Have you found a church yet? And if you haven’t, let us tell you about our church—St Andrew Church!”

Of course, the new family, after this series of coincidences or God-incidences, had to come and give us a try and they like what they see and are already getting involved! I have their permission to tell you that story and I think it is a really important story for many reasons:

It is not an unusual story because others of you have had similar experiences—finding out about the church by seeing us, or by getting one of our mailings, or by being invited to give us a try by a friend or neighbor or relative or co worker. It is how the good news has always been shared and it is what we hope all of us do when we feel good about our church or about a book we have read or a restaurant we have tried—we invite others to take a look, try it for themselves.

What might be surprising for us is that when we offer that invitation to someone else or when we talk about something good we have experienced, we are identifying ourselves with a concept or a role that has some scary, even negative connotations in our culture—we are becoming “evangelists”!

The “e word”—evangelism, evangelist, evangelical—has taken on a negative flavor for so many people because of who we identify with that word. It is a powerful word and powerful concept in the Bible and in our faith and I want to see if we can’t reframe it today by looking at how it is used in the Bible and how important it is for us as mainstream United Methodists that we become evangelists also and “evangelical” in our faith and practice.

Let’s look at each of these three words—evangelicals, evangelists, evangelists to see what we can learn.

I hope that you have discovered a regular feature in the USA Today newspaper on Mondays. Every Monday the paper has a column on religion that is almost always worth your time as a thoughtful Christian and the column is one of the reasons I am a regular reader of that paper along with the two Denver newspapers and the New York Times.

Three weeks ago we reprinted one of those religion columns for you and we still have some available on the racks outside the sanctuary. The writer is David Gushee, a professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta. He identifies himself as an evangelical Christian and is taking to task other evangelical Christians because they have adopted such a narrow view of faith and life and because they have allowed the Biblical message to be co opted by one political party. He says they have allowed their religion to become simply a branch office of a single political party.

Dr. Gushee says the other mistake some conservative Christian leaders have made is to focus on a very narrow agenda such as abortion and gay marriage “instead of tackling the full range of biblical concerns which include poverty, oppression and war.” 

In my view, Dr. Gushee has correctly identified the problem that is being echoed by others in our country who identify themselves as conservative or evangelical Christians but who believe that there has been a fixation or obsession with just a couple of issues, have ignored the major themes of our Bible and our faith, and as a result may be losing influence!

Let’s first look at what this “e” word has come to mean. Evangelism has become a scary and uncomfortable word for many churches because of the abuse and misuse of it. When most of us think of evangelist or evangelical, we usually think of TV evangelists like Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell or our neighbor sixty miles to the south, James Dobson. They all identify themselves as evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. The required theological beliefs that go with that label are the literal inerrancy of the Bible, the literal virgin birth, the physical/bodily resurrection of Christ, a literal second coming of Christ as described in the Left Behind books (also written by evangelical Christians), and a narrow emphasis on the ethics related to sex and reproduction.

What has been happening recently is a revolution among other conservative Christian leaders who are helping us recover the whole meaning of that wonderful “e” word and are offering a healthier and broader group of concerns. Chief among those persons in Rev. Jim Wallis whose new book, “The Great Awakening”, will be a book study in a couple of months in our congregation.

Wallis spoke at St. Andrew Church a few years ago, will be here again in the next few months, and has become the foremost leader in telling folks that to be biblically centered means that we are concerned about the environment and poverty and war and injustice and compassion for people who are being left out and forgotten. Wallis says those are the concerns of the prophets and of Jesus and they should be our concerns as well. It is a refreshing view and it is long over due.

To be even more true to our book and our identity, we can look at the root that has caused the words evangelism and evangelical to have negative vibes for so many.

When the Gospel of Mark introduces Jesus of Nazareth to us, the first words Jesus says are: “The time is fulfilled and the reign of God is near. Change your hearts and believe in the euangellion-the good news.” Believe in the gospel, the evangel, the positive message about God. One writer says that the message of Jesus is not good advice or good principles but Good News. God is for you. God loves and accepts and receives and forgives you. God wants the best for you and is offering a way for you to live abundantly and joyfully by following the person and the teaching and the example of Jesus Christ.

The message is basic and is different from what we sometimes hear from church leaders: you are a bad, bad person. You are a worthless wretch and God is a cosmic judge who has just barely saved you by the skin of your teeth.

The Greek word evangel or euangellion means great news and the ones who share that news are called evangelists. Evangelists are people who want to offer good news to others and who invite others to come and see. Come and see for yourself. Our namesake, St Andrew, was an evangelist. Why? Because once he realized that Jesus offered the secret to abundant life, the good life, he started to tell others and to invite others to come and see. He brought his brother to come and meet Jesus, his brother Peter. He invited some pagans, some Greeks, to come and talk with Jesus and listen to Jesus. He was contagious in his faith and his outreach.

The fellow who began a renewal movement in 18^th century in his stagnant church was an evangelist. He was so fired up about his relationship with God that he enthusiastically invited others to consider being part of this movement. His name was Wesley and his movement was called Methodism. He saw his role being to share the good news of God’s grace and love with everyone. He said that he never feared that this group of Methodists would die out but that we might just look like a church without the passion and the zeal, without being evangelical enough! He was close to being right.

Wesley followed the words of Jesus we read from the last verses of Matthew’s gospel: go into the world and share the good news with others and invite people to the best life possible.

That is the great commission. We are working on it in our congregation. We are called to be evangelists by how we live and what we do and what we say. Most of us don’t know how to say it but we are clear that we want our deeds and our words to be inviting and to point to God’s ways of life. Our youth choir has adopted the life and the prayers of St. Francis as the theme for their summer choir tour—St. Francis whose movement of simplicity and compassion began to change the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century. Francis once said, “Preach the gospel (good news) at all times. If necessary use words.”

Most of us mainstream Christians are more comfortable hoping that our deeds and actions will be persuasive and inviting and will do what our benediction says each Sunday—that our light will shine and our joy will be obvious so that others will be led to abundant life. Our actions of compassion and generosity are important and they are the proof of our words. We can say that we believe in giving a helping hand to others, we can say we believe in compassion and service, but when 500 of us are involved in building two Habitat for Humanity homes in a six month period, that is even more powerful.

BUT what we have forgotten as mainstream Christians is that both the words and the deeds of evangelism are important. The invitational words must go along with the deeds of generosity and service. For many of us, when we think of evangelism we think of manipulation and fear based stories. We think of people coming to our front door with their tracts and pamphlets and telling us we are going to hell unless we believe exactly what they do.

The great commission tells us that we are to invite others to consider abundant life in Christ and one of the best definitions of that scary “e” word, evangelism, is on your bulletin cover: Evangelism Is One Hungry Beggar Telling Another Hungry Beggar Where To Find Bread. If you had been hungry and you knew where food is available and you met someone else who felt hungry, wouldn’t you share the good news of where the food is? That’s what we do with our faith as well.

Most of you are in the church because others have invited you here; others have been evangelists for you. In some cases that was our family as we grew up who acted like Andrew did with his family, saying let me tell you about this fellow who has the secret to abundant life.

Many of us have filled that role of being inviters, being evangelists, talking about what our congregation means for us and inviting others. Some of the best inviters, some of the best evangelists, are our youth. When we ask if they have ever invited others to church with them, almost all of them say yes!!

And many of you have done what the couple did in the opening story—said to a new neighbor or a co worker or friend, if you are ever looking for a church, let me bring you with me some Sunday and introduce you to my congregation. That is a very non threatening approach and different from the manipulation and pressure that we sometimes associate with “evangelism”.

One more observation about these three scary words—evangelical, evangelists, and evangelism: I believe that people need a faith community and a place of nurture and belonging and a community to talk about and think about the spiritual issues that matter the most in life. I believe that people need what churches have to offer. Our church will not be that place for everyone but we will be that place for hundreds and thousands of people over the years and people will not know about us unless some of you invite them.

They may get a post card in the mail. They might see our Easter ad inviting them to worship for the first time.  But the most important thing may be that they get the kind of outreach that our member family offered their new neighbor—a personal invitation to come and take a look for themselves. Somebody did that for you in some way. That is why you and I are here.  That is what the church is about—fulfilling the great commission to offer the chance to follow Christ and imitate Christ. We are being effective at that and so we are out of space and we need more worship seats and classroom and parking spaces because we have outgrown our lovely three year old building and there are more people who are being invited and more whom we are going to invite and be evangelists with.

It is important and necessary that you and I do that for others.  Because I believe that everyone needs some faith community, some spiritual home, some place to think and learn and serve and grow in their relationship with God.  It may be this place or some other place, but everyone needs a belonging place, because everyone will realize that after we have pursued consumerism and materialism and the false gods of achievement and appearance and affluence, we feel the feeling that the Methodist pastor in Belfast Ireland told 500 of us about two weeks ago in Orlando.

Rev. Gary Mason said—his words are on your bulletin cover—“The gloomiest moment in life is when you have just experienced that which you think is the ultimate and it has left you disappointed.”  Do you know that feeling—when you have looked forward to something which you thought was going to be the total fulfillment of your life—a promotion, new car, new house-and it is less than the ultimate, it is not as fulfilling as we thought it would be?

There is one thing that is the ultimate; it is our relationship with God and the chance to serve others and act in compassion for others. That relationship will never let us down and every one needs a form of that relationship. And that is why we are contagious about our faith. That is why God calls each of us to be evangelists. Amen.

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