The other day a friend of mine who is planting a church in New York City tweeted this: “The most aggressive, disturbing and overall frightening people I’ve encountered in Manhattan have been the street preachers.”
Most disciples of Jesus rightly don’t want to be associated with people like that, but I think that’s also a big reason many of us struggle to actually proclaim the good news. We can be kind and serve others and demonstrate the love of Christ in many ways, but many of us become tongue-tied and quiet when it comes to sharing the content of our faith, mostly out of fear of being associated with those people.
Evangelism has been on my mind lately. Deb and I have been talking with the leaders at Christ Church about it, it seems to be something God is emphasizing for our community this year, and it’s been an frequent topic of reflection and prayer for me. This post is a bit of a follow-up to one I wrote a few weeks ago on a key to recognizing “Persons of Peace.”
In that post I said that we probably won’t encounter too many persons of peace until we are willing to also encounter persons of “unpeace.” Thus it is mainly pride that holds us back from recognizing what Jesus might be up to in the lives of the people around us.
Similarly, our fear of being lumped in with mean-spirited street preachers or bigoted television personalities causes us to shrink back from actually sharing the gospel. Instead we have made efforts to distance ourselves from “those types” of Christians. “We’re not like those weird ones – we’re normal! Come and see!”
But often the problem with “those types” of Christians is not the fact that they are boldly proclaim the gospel, it’s that they’re hypocrites. Their gospel words don’t line up with the attitudes they use to say it. Their lyrics don’t match the music of their lives. Their proclamation is utterly divorced from any kind of embodiment of their message. Hypocrisy is the problem, not necessarily proclamation. (There is also the other problem of people proclaiming “non-gospels” or “pseudo-gospels,” but for the purposes of this post, we’ll just focus on hypocrisy.)
So it seems to me that we are throwing the baby of proclaiming the gospel out with the bathwater of hypocrisy and judgmentalism, as though the only way to proclaim the gospel is to be an inauthentic jerk. We need to find ways to reclaim authentic gospel proclamation, not avoid it out of fear of being associated with “those types” of Christians.
And we’re right to emphasize the need for embodied witness. We do need to demonstrate the love of Christ in our actions. The quality of our presence is the platform for our proclamation. We have chafed at seeing proclamation without presence, but presence without proclamation is just as hypocritical.
Some tout the phrase “Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary use words” (which St. Francis never actually said or believed), but from a biblical perspective, words are necessary. As one blogger said recently, “The truth is that faith comes by hearing, not by deducing through comfortable apprehension of good deeds. An implied gospel is a gospel fail.”
We need to reclaim evangelism as a more vital part of the ministry of the church. Part of the task will be training people in what the gospel actually is, and another part will simply be us getting over ourselves enough to stop worrying about how others perceive us. That’s the journey it seems God has our community on, anyway.
I think you are correct in recognizing that proclimation itself is not the problem. Likewise, when people choose only to serve and not proclaim the lack of proclaimation is a symptom of a greater problem. The real issue is a lack of a theology grounded in the cross. When we are not grounded in the cross we either proclaim like a hypocrite or we don't proclaim at all. In either case it is neccssary to address the root issue of being grounded in the cross.
I was just disussing this same thing last night. We landed on the idea that, yes, the gospel can be reenacted in many ways (social justice, actions, restoring community/relationships, etc.) but it is never void of words. Exchanging the lie for the truth requires truth to be spoken. Challenging post here. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful Ryan!
Ben, I really agree with you on this. Like you said, it's totally an example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater…just a swing of the pendulum one side to the other.
I keep coming back to how Jesus made disciples…appropriate (for his culture) public proclamation of the good news coupled with demonstration of that good news AND relational proclamation and demonstration in houses and everyday relationships.
The big question for me is How? I'd love to hear more of how your community plays out what you're thinking about .
I'm hoping to take some of the appropriate-contextualized–public-space-proclamation as we did on campus and try it in our city this summer.
That is the big question, Luke: how? I'm sure I'll be posting more on it, so that question will help me shape future posts. One thing we're working on is simply helping people understand what the good news IS, and actually practicing sharing it in huddle with one another.
Isn't another issue with the "street preacher" method the idea that they are not applying the "Person of Peace" concept that seems to be present in the Gospels? The message of the Gospel is just being sprayed (fire hose mentality) out onto any person that passes by with no regard to whether or not that individual is a Person of Peace. Thanks for the post.
Not sure – Jesus, Peter and Paul and others preached to the crowds often in open public spaces. It appears that proclamation actually helps identify people of peace who then can receive more focused follow-up.: Acts mentions those who reply "Come and speak to us again on this topic" once they've heard the message, for example.
I think there is a question of 'how much is too much': I was going to say that probably proclamation should simply tease out interest in the gospel rather than drive the whole train-load into the people who are passing by, but some of the sermons in Acts are pretty full-on (and result in the evangelists getting stoned or whatever as a result!)
I was going to say the same thing as Richard. Oftentimes the "driveby" proclamation serves as a way to "out" yourself as a kingdom person, and then see who is drawn toward you as a person of peace.
So I still think the public proclamation thing has merit, if it is part of a person of peace strategy.
Finally, someone has correct St. Francis' alleged quote. We must use words to explain deeds, just as Jesus did. You can't explain the Gospel without words.
Also, I disagree with the translation of the word "proclamation." In our culture proclaiming is too many times seen in a negative light. Perhaps we could say "good-newsing" the gospel.
Scot McKnight says something similar in his recent book The King Jesus Gospel – he calls it "gospeling" because in Koine Greek the verb is so similar to the noun. Thus we "gospel the gospel," or "goodnews the good news."
"…as though the only way to proclaim the gospel is to be an inauthentic jerk." – Love this line!
It encapsulates so many of the fears in my community…
I also think you're right about "evangelists" needing to be much clearer about what the gospel is. Once proclamation ceases to be about persuading people to believe propositions and starts to be about an invitation to participation in the Kingdom, its a different ball game.
Absolutely! It also gets to be a lot more fun, too, because we are free to simply announce and invite, and the results are up to God, working by his Spirit to draw people toward Jesus. We just get to participate in the process.
Yay to no-pressure-for-results type evangelism! I think when we understand salvation as part of the ongoing process of discipleship it also changes our perspective on this one…our proclamation doesn't have to result in immediate "conversions" to be considered fruitful (though if that happens its obviously great). Rather we are looking for the beginning of discipling relationships.
Right! One plants, another waters, another harvests oftentimes.
Well said Ben. Street preachers here in Adelaide are in the news and on the nerves of believers. Seems around the world they're cut from the same cloth (why have I never seen a kind one?).
But of even more detriment to our mission is the "presence without proclamation" trap which has the vast majority of believers.
We need to wrestle with the fact that in the west at least, cultural rules demand that no one tells anyone else what to do. And to see Jesus as different. "First take the plank out of your own eye" DOESN'T mean Jesus wants us all to leave one another's eyes alone. We are to deal with our own stuff so that we can be expert optometrists!
Thanks Dave. I think this is right – I would expand upon it a bit to say that in addition to proclaiming the gospel in our gatherings that we focus on equipping people to proclaim the gospel in their everyday lives, giving people concrete enough "handlebars" so they feel equipped to talk about Jesus in a normal, bold, and winsome way with their friends and neighbors.