Evangelism isn’t optional for the church. Things seem to be going reasonably well in Africa where people have not been anesthetized to religion. The church is growing in China and Korea. The culture of Western Civilization is Judeo Christian in essential ways, but, after centuries of vigorous expansion, the gospel is running against a post-modern ethos. Increasing numbers of Americans and Europeans seem disinterested, to put it mildly. A new approach is evidently needed if people are to encounter Christian faith and the hope it provides against alienation, suffering, and death. The community of the church is revitalizing. To communicate the shared hope, we need to start listening before we preach.
Mark 16: [15] And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation."
The Incarnation is the reality of God’s presence and participation in the world. Jesus suffered the worst of everything we encounter or hope to evade. He affirms the worth of every person and responds variously to ordinary people. He could heal with a touch. He silenced critics. He doesn’t disregard anybody. He said his followers would do greater work. In some parts of the world Christians are known as those who raise the dead. The church can survive materialistic skepticism.
Jesus preached good news of the Kingdom of God, but in every chapter of the narratives he is involved in conversation and controversy. The 12th chapter of Mark's Gospel includes an account of Jesus's attacks on the scribes and Pharisees. Here Jesus compares the venerable authorities to vicious tenants who mismanage a vineyard entrusted to them and kill the owners' son. Next, in a controversy about church and state that still rages, he silences those who would entrap him: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. A challenge about the resurrection follows, and Jesus again stuns his antagonists: As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead but of the living. Then we have the question about the greatest commandment and a couplet that has resonated ever since: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.
After this litany of earth-shaking rejoinders, Jesus sits down opposite the treasury of the temple and watches as people contribute their tithes and offerings. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow put in two copper coins, which make a penny. Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they contributed out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, her whole living'.
The contrast of aggressive rhetoric by religious leaders, juxtaposed with the humility of a widow who contributes two copper coins, accentuates the love of Jesus for ordinary people who sustain a desire to be included in the Kingdom of God. The story of the Pharisee and the Publican, again, illustrates God's acceptance of intellectual honesty even by a disreputable tax collector. Jesus commends ordinary people who struggle and pray. By all accounts, he is interested in their prayers and their offerings.
Jesus didn't have a pulpit or a title. He lived a life of dialogue. He rejected being called reverend. The psychological dispositions he commends and the people with whom he interacts compassionately tend to be those the world overlooks or tramples. Ministry in the church as we know it, and historically, has been primarily clergy on the platform talking down to auditors in the laity. It isn't a stretch to conclude that life in the Kingdom should involve interaction beyond conventional preaching and teaching.
A lot of controversy in the church lately has been about contextualizing ministries. The growth of churches using derivative pop music and theater seating has shocked Lutherans and Episcopalians into efforts of their own to conform to cultural trends, in these cases to elite culture. The growth of megachurches is better explained by the support groups that proliferate in their midst than by pop music. The efforts of main-line Protestants to conform to elite culture are proving futile by the concurrent dwindling of attendance in their churches.
As a church musician my experience has traversed various cultural idioms: Lutheran, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, and for most of the past thirty years, Episcopal. I’m a conservative, but I sing in a choir in a church under the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church where the bishops have spent thirty million dollars suing conservatives since the ordination of a gay bishop in 2003. My wife and I have sung at gay weddings for friends. We did leave a church after fifteen years when a new priest dictated that a woman would read Jesus’s lines in the Passion narrative, taking Holy Week out of history to make a malleable myth in conformance with current gender ideology. We have our limits. Churches are imperfect human institutions. It isn't culture that keeps us in the Episcopal Church.
Music used to be called a universal language. Lately, it has become a universally disputed language. After we left the Episcopal church, we joined a growing church affiliated with the conservative Anglican Church in North America. This provided some relief from hectoring about white-male privilege and politics. Unfortunately, the people in charge of music at the new church wouldn’t let us sing. On Easter the amplified music was so loud that we left, along with others who didn’t want to go deaf.
Call me a spineless weasel, but I don’t think I’m very different from other people who want to be recognized for who they are and what they do. Support groups help churches grow because they communicate at the level of what is called felt need in the church growth literature. After fifty years’ study, my wife and I prefer, not to say crave, singing music with history and tradition. If the Widow’s penny counts for something in the Kingdom of God, our decades of musical study seem worthy of inclusion in the life of the church. Not everybody wants to sing, but those of us who can are going to show up where the music is more than three chords and a snare drum.
A good example of outreach and inclusion by the church, in which we sang, was a combined concert and art show. The invitation to participate was extended to musicians and visual artists among church members and their friends. Few in attendance knew all the participants, but people who had never been there on Sunday morning came for this event. We’ve hosted and attended other groups where people play their instruments or read their poetry or essays. The principle works for many different interest groups.
It is often noted that communication is affected as much by how well we listen as by what we say. Is the church listening? Planning and programming are useless until we have a connection with people. The conversation can begin by opening our doors. Not everyone wants to sing, play their instrument, or show their photographs, but even the most introverted want to be recognized. Most new converts came to church because somebody personally invited them. A conversation that leads to an invitation to church doesn’t occur very often in my experience. Conversations that have resulted in an invitation have been after I have shown interest in the person invited by listening to what is important to them. People who create art or music are passionate about their work. Open the doors of the church to them, and they’ll come. This isn’t too different from support groups that help people in times of stress.
After maybe sixty years, I can vividly recall a conversation my father had with a man about grass the other had growing in his front yard. My father and he were acquainted because they were both railroad workers. The grass, Stan said, was a combination of ordinary grass and Kentucky Bluegrass. It was a nice piece of lawn, and the landscaping all around was artful. Dad listened! He was a good listener generally. Anybody could see that Stan put his creativity into the area under discussion. Stan also hosted a model airplane club for boys of the age I was then. The conversation started because I was part of the club, and Stan had patiently shown me how to build and fly model airplanes. Dad didn’t have to invite Stan to church. Everybody went to church in the 1950s. In the 21st century nearly everything has changed except for the importance of paying attention to people and the things they care about. If Stan were living near any church now, somebody could invite him to talk about yard landscaping, or to teach kids how to build model airplanes, now maybe drones.
Ours is a contentious era. Suppose churches at either end of the political spectrum invite speakers of various perspectives for civil discussion of issues. The Episcopal Church I currently attend recently hosted a rabbi from a nearby synagogue for a discussion of Zionism and the State of Israel, this within weeks of a pronouncement by the Episcopal hierarchy that was, expectedly, very critical of Israel. When people are bolstering their perspectives by talking only to others who agree with them, these kinds of dialogs might get us beyond the ad holmium vitriol on social media. They are also opportunities to get acquainted with people we’d never meet otherwise.
Matthew 4: [17] From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
John the Baptist and Jesus both drew crowds despite their difficult sayings about repentance and self-denial. This is quite a different approach than that of gospel tracts advertising that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Evidently the Ancient Near East was different from the post-modern era during which psychologists counsel their patients to “create their own reality”. The people most likely to be interested in a message of repentance are those who have sunk far enough into depravity to understand depths of despair after years of dissipation or pathological consumption. Most of us trudge onward trying to be responsible and decent. Evangelists who suspend their auditors over the pit of hell are rarer than those hyping the prosperity gospel. Preaching of any sort has lost considerable impact when we’re assailed constantly by hype in the media. Fear and greed continue to captivate readers and sell products, but the gospel isn’t a book or commodity to be hyped for the market or a sociological niche. Repentance and character development are part of Christian formation. It remains how to involve people in the community of faith to support them.
Inviting people to church to be auditors for platform personalities or liturgical formalities is a long shot against their conflicting obligations and interests. It works in many cases to offer support during stressful times, help that meets their felt needs, but the needs that people feel are not only negative effects of divorce, financial distress, substance abuse, or health crises. Affluence leads to new kinds of distress. Having more than we need and leisure can lead to a different kind of disorientation. Against meaninglessness, large numbers of people are alone in their struggles. Again, conversations that seem trivial in the beginning can be opportunities to significantly engage people. When a degree of confidence and rapport—friendship—has been developed, instead of inviting people to church, suppose we invite the church to them.
Many people are looking for community, not for what they can get out of it, but for what they can put into it. There are salesmen and professionals of various sorts who join a church to make business contacts. Most of the time this is fine. People who serve on committees or make coffee are there because they want to be useful. “Joyce, you’re a great tennis player. Would you be interested in teaching some of our parishioners how to play?” Jesus’s resurrection is an event that changes everything, but what is the point if our bodies are not fit enough to live? Athletics serve little practical purpose. They are done for their own sake, but anybody who remembers the Fellowship of Christian athletes knows how much a bunch of jocks can contribute to the character development of youth.
Many affinity groups occasionally need an auditorium or meeting room. If church facilities are empty most of the week, it is neighborly to make space available to social clubs, sororities, fraternities, writing, reading, photography circles, or groups engaged in social and political activism. Church members’ interests may correspond to those of hosted communities, or church members could attend simply to get acquainted with others. My wife is a member of a musical organization that does free concerts in the state of Washington. Because there is no money involved at any level, they are always interested in places to perform. This worked out fine for our church where there were members who appreciate classical music. Some insurance issues needed to be resolved. Churches can’t charge admission without complications for tax-exempt status.
In gritty detail, here’s how this works. We’ve invited a group of friends, some Christians and some unchurched, to a musical soiree at our house. The music hasn’t started yet because we’re waiting for a pianist who is essential for the ensemble. Conversation rambles until somebody asks Bruce a question about his recent work, a translation and commentary on the Psalms. The discussion that ensues astonishes some of the people in attendance. Bruce is a Harvard-educated scholar, one of the translators of the Hebrew Bible for the New International Version. People who appreciate music in the historic western tradition tend to be progressives. Our friends know we go to church, but the subject of religion rarely comes up. A few have attended concerts we’ve sung in church auditoriums. To find themselves in a discussion where the Psalms are more than texts for musical compositions is out of the ordinary. An afternoon get-together like this changes things. Friends get the idea that singing in a church choir is something that we do beyond aesthetic interest. The Fauré Requiem that they attended last year for All Soul’s Day is actually about what the libretto says: Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see other opportunities for dialogue that involve more than preaching or, worse, witless witnessing. When I was a college kid I used to go out with my Bible and try to engage other students evangelistically. The end of it for me was the day I asked another student if I could join him for coffee at the student union café. He was clearly interested in conversation and invited me to sit down. It was pleasant and engaging until he saw the Bible. I carried the RSV without leather binding or gold edged pages, so he hadn’t noticed right away. “What is this book?” He asked with alarm. After that he turned away and wouldn’t speak to me. I eventually understood that he was probably Muslim and scared to death of proselytizing. Some years later a church member who had worked in Muslim countries explained a better way to communicate with Muslims who were then attending American colleges in large numbers. As with the fellow I alienated, they were eager for friendship with Americans of their age. Some of my friends played soccer with them. You could tell when the Arabs showed up because more than a few of them were driving expensive sports cars. We chatted about cars. We had dinner together and got along fine, even in homes that were obviously Christian.
Effective communication is dialogue. The coffee hour can be the most important event of Sunday morning at church. There people talk to the liturgists and communicate with one another. The difficult question is how to get people who aren’t there on Sunday into the discussion. Church-league basketball used to include kids who hadn’t been to church since their baptism. Music sometimes works for people who are not baptized or for older people who have forgotten they were baptized. Christians who show interest in the activities into which people invest their creative energy will find themselves in conversations that are more than business transactions. Nearly all of us work to pay the bills, but we don’t have to join a camera club, garden, travel to exotic locales, hike in the mountains, ski, play golf, or go sail boating. Take an interest in the activities people enjoy and you’ll get into interesting conversations and make new friends. If the church is open to people’s creative activities, there will be dialogue.
Frivolous? Not serious? Affluent Americans and Europeans are not mainly suffering from deprivation and depravity. They’re trying to live! They have too much of everything except community and friends who recognize them for their efforts. For many, the striving has gone on longer than people lived in the age of apostles. Contextualization should be about more than styles of worship.
After an earthquake damaged an historic church in Seattle, we were trying to find ways to keep things going against financial difficulties and declining attendance. Members of the vestry visited St. Bartholomew's church in New York City. St. Bart's revived from decline by hosting arts events featuring the wealth of talent in the city. It's quite a story, and we incorporated aspects of it into our efforts.
New York is a magnet for musicians and actors who are trying to survive in a very difficult business. Being skilled, even exceptionally skilled, isn't enough to guarantee success in the performing arts, so St. Bart's could stage very high-class events without spending a lot of money. But there is another angle on this that doesn't require striving professionals to implement. The amateurs in most communities are often very capable. You don't need musicians who are aiming for Carnegie Hall to have an enjoyable evening of music.
Consider this quip by noted author and professional grump, Kurt Vonnegut:
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
“And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not good at any of them.’
“And he said something then that I will never forget and that absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’
“And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.”
I don’t think it’s too obvious to mention that the church is not about winning. It’s about building up the people who find their way into the community. In the Episcopal church, communion is open to those with faith and to those with little faith. There are many ways to open our doors to people.
