Churches are meant to be places that can change abnormal people into normal people. People who are shadows change into real people. People who are half-dead in their addiction to destructive habits of selfishness and egotism, change into rich, fully alive human beings, knowing how to love, even when it hurts. At the same time they are also to be places that transform the life of the communities and societies around them by this very same power.
So says Graham Tomlin on page 120 of The Provocative Church.
One question that I have that isn’t answered in this book is, “Why do we major on evangelism now when the early church didn’t?” Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that the early church didn’t evangelise, its simply that they didn’t make it the focal point of their teaching. One answer to the question could be that it is because so few of the people are involved in evangelism and I’m certain there are more than a few who would accept this premise.
However, I’m not so sure that we are focussing on a symptom rather than the cause. Pushing an agenda that highlights evangelism as the most important role of the church seems to distort what the church is really about. It is not about bringing people to a crisis point in their life and getting them ’saved’, it is about being a community in which people are transformed into people in whom the glory of God is seen.
Let me make it clear, I believe that the Salvation Army was called into being to reach souls for the kingdom. I believe that this is our first and greatest mandate. I am not though convinced that in your face evangelism is the ‘be all and end all’ of our effort. In fact I think that the real reason for our success was not our skill at evangelism, but rather our position of being firmly entrenched in the holiness movement.
Graham Tomlin’s book (and I promise this is the last mention of it for a while) actually is not so much a book about evangelism but is a book about holiness. He might not call it that, but the core of his argument is that for us to be truly evangelistic in our efforts for the Kingdom we must live holy lives. Without this basic holiness then ultimately no amount of evangelism will bring the numbers to the Lord that we would like. For me personally, this is why Jesus didn’t turn round and tell us to only get people saved, but instead told us to go and make disciples. Only disciples who seek to live the holy life that Jesus did; disciples who are being increasingly human; are going to influence a real and lasting difference in the lives of those asking the questions.
When we think about being provocative I would guess that a lot of people would see this as a negative thing. I suppose this is mainly because provocation is one of those words that seems to be a bad thing. We think of people being provoked into an argument or of someone hitting someone else after being provoked. So when a book suggests that the church should be provoking a response from people it could well get assigned to the spiritual dustbin, along with terminology such as ‘getting out of comfort zones’ and ‘taking risks’.
However, a few months ago a book that does exactly that was recommended to me. At that point I didn’t get it, but then as I was browsing the shelves of my local Christian bookshop about a month ago there it was simply begging me to buy it!
On Sunday night I finally got round to starting to read it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed. Its actually a book about evangelism, although I suspect that some reading it might not agree with the methods it suggests. What is refreshing though is that this is not a book that consigns verbal evangelism to the scrap heap, but instead elevates it to its rightful position within the church, front and centre.
By the way the book is Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. The basic premise is that unless an individual, or a congregation, live their lives in such a way as to make people start asking questions about the way they are living no amount of evangelism is ever going to make an impact. One quote that stood out on the first page of Chapter 1 was,
Sometimes Christians assume that people ‘out there’ are eager to listen to what the Church has to say. The only problem is learning how to say it louder and more clearly.”
It immediately made me think of the stereotypical ‘Brit abroad’ picture. We have a reputation for talking to people who don’t speak English ‘loudly, slowly and clearly’ so that they will understand what we are saying. Of course the real problem is that we aren’t speaking their language. The same mentality still exists in some circles of the church, including The Salvation Army. It doesn’t seem to matter that people no longer speak our cultural language. All we have to do is say the same things louder, slower and clearer and everything will be ok.
As someone who has never felt entirely comfortable in traditional evangelistic methods this book is really speaking to me and I’ve been thinking in depth about possible efforts that we could get involved in here in our location. I’m well into chapter 5 and have numerous thoughts coming out of it, so I’ll probably be posting more on this.
Those of you who have followed my blog for a while will know that I have mentioned my concern over the attitude of Western Christian’s to what is being called Christianophobia. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that this does exist, especially in places in the world that see Christians prevented from worshipping or being truly persecuted. I’m just not sure we can count things like “Jerry Springer - The Opera” and the fact that some aren’t allowed to wear crosses outside their uniforms as real persecution.
Two things have brought this subject back into the forefront of my mind. Firstly, an article by my former colleague, Jonathan Bartley, written just after Christmas. Picking up on the fact that there was the normal avalanche of stories in the lead up to Christmas about the downgrading of the season due to over political-correctness, he suggests that this was in reality achieved years, if not decades, ago. His conclusion is that:
Christmas is offensive, and for ever will be. It legitimates the undermining of those in authority. But it is also about looking after not just those who are “deserving” of our love, but those who may appear disreputable and unworthy.
The second was a piece by Nick Tomlinson in the September issue of Zoe’s Women Alive magazine which arrived from Latvia earlier this month. Tomlinson suggests that the typical suburban lifestyle is all about comfort. This striving for comfort is really the complete opposite to what real Christianity is about. One telling comment that leapt of the page as I read it is this:
…radical love and forgiveness become invincible weapons of evangelism when the Church is under fire. But when the Church is comfortable and safe, it becomes hard for its members to understand how to apply Christ’s commandments to daily life.
He goes on to suggest that maybe rather than responding by acting as if a slight on Christianity is a terribly offensive thing and insisting our status is protected from these slights, we should see an opportunity to publicly forgive and bless our ‘enemies’. Now that’s counter-cultural!
On my way from WeightWatchers to the hall this morning I was listening to Rob Bell’s podcast from Mars Hill. Whilst I know that this is enough to get me ostracised in some circles, I felt that he had an interesting point in the sermon that I was listening to.
He says this:
‘I would argue that many … have been taught the Christian faith in terms of conquest and persuasion. By conquest, I would argue, that for many people the way they’ve been taught the Christian faith is, “You are right! Other people are wrong! Your job is to convince them of their wrongness and at the same time … convince them of your rightness.” I would argue that for others their fundamental paradigm is that of persuasion or proving. “You follow Jesus! Somebody else doesn’t! Therefore the nature of your relationship is proving to them the rightness and truth of your worldview, over and against the wrongness and error of their’s”‘
My mind was instantly taken back to a situation a few years ago with a good friend. He had been trying to reason his way into faith in Christ for many months and everyone around him was more than willing to debate with him and answer his questions, to which he would always come back with more. There came a point, over a drink in a pub one evening, when I simply turned round and said to him that he can ask all the questions he likes, but sooner or later he will come to a choice between taking a step of faith or not! Eventually he did take that step!
Rob Bell goes on to say that Jesus speaks of faith as ’satisfaction’. In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, he offers her the water of life. Rather than an intellectual discussion that can end up antagonistic, Jesus says that true faith will satisfy the deep longing we all have in our lives. How do we find that method of evangelism today? How do we show to a generation that is clearly seeking for something of meaning in their lives, to a generation that is turned off ‘Church’ by the seeming arrogance or irrelevance of what it appears to stand for, that faith in our God will actually satisfy that longing they have?
Is it through reasoned, or sometimes unreasonable, debate and apologetics? Or is it in another way?
! That makes 11 1/2 in just over 5 weeks!
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