“An Explosion of Joy”

I love that expression and I believe it wonderfully describes a healthy expression of evangelism and Christian mission in the world. Lesslie Newbigin, a British theologian and missionary to India once said, “Mission begins with an explosion of joy.”

In this third part, I want to briefly talk about evangelism and Christian mission in the midst of our growing secular culture. First of all, most of us are intimidated by the topic of evangelism. We know we are supposed to be sharing our faith, but we feel inadequate or uncomfortable. We feel the pressure and feeling of not wanting people to reject us or worse, feel like we are judging them. We have all probably been exposed to forced evangelistic methods and programs and know that they are inadequate and sometimes even harmful especially in our current secular culture. For years now, the mission of the American church has been driven by the idea of “relevance.” Stefan Pass states, “…why should the Church be ‘relevant’ in the first place, and who sets the criteria for this relevance? Wouldn’t this mean to subject the Church to worldly standards? Surely the Church exists for the pleasure of God, and that should suffice.”

After decades of serving within the Church in several different cities and settings, I feel like I am just now deeply wrestling with the problems of “relevance.” Obviously, we are to be relevant when it comes to our communication and cultural circumstances. The problem comes subtly when we are more concerned about being relevant than about being faithful to the Word of God. When relevance takes over the mission of the Church, we adopt worldly business practices and metrics to determine our success rather than a Spirit-led process. This process is more defined by prayer, repentance, and transformational testimonies whose fruitfulness sometimes is hard to measure. Here are a few thoughts that we should think about when it comes to a renewal of evangelism and the mission of the Church.

1.) Nothing is more relevant than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The starting place for a new zeal for evangelism is a revival of the soul to be overwhelmed again by the mighty grace of God so there is an “explosion of joy” that we cannot hold back.

2.) We must remember that Jesus was not concerned about building a crowd. He was concerned about who would forsake it all and follow Him as a disciple. This biblical truth would radically impact our preaching, teaching and sharing.

3.) We must remember Jesus’ rebuke of Peter that he was too concerned about the things of man rather than the things of God. As soon as we start to adapt our message to what we think people want to hear so we can be seen as relevant we become people pleasers rather than God pleasers.

4.) The drive of relevance will always water down the message and leave no space for theological and spiritual depth. The emphasis becomes no different than secular marketing plans of doing whatever it takes to muster up a little interest rather than bold, loving truth telling with dependence upon the Spirit to awaken souls.

Quotes:

Pilgrims and Priests, Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society by Stefan Pass, p. 3.