Attentiveness: Evangelism

This fall I am teaching a course on evangelism and discipleship in the local church. It is one of my favorite courses to teach, in part because it should be a core concern of every church.

However, I am a missiologist. Missio Dei—a term reminding us that mission begins with God—shows us that while God’s mission includes mercy and renewal, at its heart is the proclamation of the gospel and the call for all people to become disciples of Jesus Christ.

Notably, this particular class includes people from Jamaica, Guyana, Haiti, Montana (raised in Taiwan), Korea (living in Hawaii), China, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, that is), among others.

Here is the point: because of the varied backgrounds and cultures represented in this class, it is impossible to ignore the incarnational nature of evangelism. The gospel does not talk about a docetic Jesus, a savior who was not fully human. Jesus was so fully human he spoke a particular language, wore particular clothes, and ate particular food, even though he was the One universal savior. Particular and universal.

And this matters a lot.

In the class we struggled with the need to have incarnational, cultural, particular churches that spoke a particular language (Creole, Korean, Chinese, English, etc.). Immigrant churches play a vital role by providing worship in the community’s own language and culture, enabling seekers to encounter Christ in their particular expression. In other words, Jesus must be expressed in each language and culture.

This truth is powerfully reinforced by the teachings of Scripture:

“Go make disciples of all nations (panta ethne).”

“…Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth”

“Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven…each one heard their own language being spoken…”

“…I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language…” (Rev. 7:9)

And these are just a few of the key passages. I haven’t even begun to show how even Israel knew that God was the God of all nations, as expressed in the Old Testament.

Even so, as we probed further, we discovered in the class that while evangelism must be centered on the message of the life and teachings of Jesus (Christocentric), it must also seek to reach across cultural divides (racial, social, and lingual). Another way of looking at this is that evangelism must have an element of reconciliation.

When we stop with incarnational evangelism only (that is, evangelizing “our own”), we have not yet fully lived into the calling of Christ to evangelize. This is where I fall back on the remarkable observation of Andrew Walls when he talked about the translation principle of Christianity. Working in Sierra Leone at the time, he observed that the gospel must incarnate in each culture, but it must cross cultural barriers to reach other cultures at the same time. If the gospel (or our evangelism) stops in our culture, the gospel message can reinforce segregation.

But it is the very nature of the gospel to reconcile different cultures. So Christian Arabs, Christian Jews, and German Christians see each other as all part of the Christian family.

All well and good and, well, let’s just say all biblical and very hard.

In the class, a Haitian student who was an immigrant to North America struggled with the need to have a Creole-speaking and singing worship service. “We can’t really be multi-cultural because many of our people need to be Haitian to reach immigrants who are from Haiti.”

True. But the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to both. As Andrew Walls stated it so elegantly: we must be incarnational and a pilgrim people. We must express the gospel in particular cultures, and we must reach out to other cultures. The Korean must be Korean and yet find ways to reach out to other people.

Now, you may be wondering, what about the person who lives in an area in which cultural and lingual diversity is not prevalent? Can this person not fully live into the calling of Christ to evangelize cross-culturally? This is where evangelicalism leads to cross-cultural mission. Even in the most homogeneous communities, there are distinct “cultures,” be they socio-economic, educational, occupational, political, or otherwise. We are called, wherever we are, to cross these (and all) cultural boundaries with the gospel.

Rooted and reaching out. Culture and intercultural.

Evangelism within “our own” ethnic and linguistic communities is good, but we should continue to seek ways to cross barriers. We need that dimension of evangelism today, a dimension that unites, includes, accepts, and heals across cultural differences.

This expression of evangelism reflects the essence of Jesus, who is the only Lord of all.

Dr. Scott W. Sunquist, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is author of the “Attentiveness” blog. He welcomes comments, responses, and good ideas.