Evangelism: Good News!
As someone who grew up attending churches that would self-identify as ‘evangelical,’ it has taken a number of years to come to terms with how that formation has shaped my approach to the subject of ‘evangelism.’ They are so close in sound that they are taken as practically interchangeable, but I believe that with the rapid politicization of the ‘evangelical’ movement as we presently know it in the United States, it is important to differentiate that name from a very necessary and life-giving truth at the heart of catholic Christian faith. As these are both terms that, in our time, are becoming increasingly charged with a diversity of contending meanings, it seems helpful to clarify what we mean by them as Anglicans, how clarity might shape our practice as Christians in this tradition, and what we might then have to offer to the broader Christian dialogue in our country. This will be the first of several essays attempting to do just that.
Both ‘evangelical’ and ‘evangelistic’ are adjectives that share the essential term ‘evangel,’ which comes from the Greek euangelion, meaning ‘good tidings’ or the ‘the reward of good tidings.’ Strong’s lexicon notes that one of the earliest uses of the term comes from the classical imagination, as early as Homer’s Odyssey. In Book 14 (one of the emotional crescendos for me), King Odysseus has returned in secret to his homeland after twenty years of war and wandering. On his native shores, he meets a former servant of his whom, the king discovers, has remained faithful to him for all of those long years while many others have not. Odysseus tests the loyalty of the servant by questioning him while in disguise, and then requites his faithful longing by informing him that the king is really returning. He then asks for the servant’s hospitality as the reward of bringing such good news, which the servant gladly and abundantly provides.
This vignette touches something deep within us. Consider, for a moment, one of the deepest longings of your heart, something that moves you, something for which you would sacrifice and endure through years of waiting. If you were told that your wait was over, that your faith would be rewarded, how would you feel? That is the other side of evangelion; it means tidings so good that they must evoke a response and move the one who hears them. This sense of ‘evangelion’ or ‘gospel’ we get from Homer takes us much closer to the sense of the term in the Scriptures than do our more modern understandings. The classical and Scriptural uses of gospel assume that the message will move you unless something in you has gone awry. The news is intrinsically valuable—it is not the product of rhetoric or a sales pitch. It is what it is—a fixed point, a statement of fact. And everything else must move around it.
It is easy to see why the New Testament would absorb and apply this term to describe the mission of God in Christ, the ‘gospel of the kingdom.’ Like the return of the king we see in the Odyssey, the apostolic ministry of the Church concerns the proclamation that the King of Kings has come in a triumph of humility, and that He will come again in glory to reign forever. The desire of every Christian heart is for the coming of the King, who will reward our faithfulness to Him and vindicate us in our humble obedience before the face of those who tried to exalt themselves to His throne. The arrival of the Gospel in the Scriptures always reveals the heart of the person to whom it comes–whether they look with longing for the fulfillment of God’s promises or whether they react with shock that their vanity has been upset. The ‘evangel’ moves the heart that longs for something beyond itself, and such a person is willing to sacrifice everything for it. Evangelism, in this purest sense, is the ordering of life around the ‘evangel,’ the news so good that everything now has to change around it.
Evangelism is all of life understood through the good news of the Kingdom of God. It is all of life organized around the presence of Christ among us through the Spirit, all of life as it is being drawn into the Godhead as we are presented to the Father in Christ. Evangelism is the natural quality of the Christian’s life. It is not something we do but rather the quality of life as what we now are. The life we now live in Christ is a life that, like Christ, goes out and brings in. With every thought, word, and deed, that life proclaims the life of God beyond the dying of the world. Evangelism is how we self-describe and how we exhort others to come and see, yes, but it is also an invitation to reorient the way we relate to every atom of the world. Like the faithful servant of Odysseus, it means to live with the quiet joy of knowing that all will be well even while it is being made well. Evangelism is practically endless, it is inexhaustibly creative–we are called to nothing less than to proclaim the Kingdom with all we are and do.
Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!