I have been noticing on some of the facebook groups I belong, that
many have been falling out over evangelism.
One post reminded everybody of clause three of the Baptist unions
declaration of principle, ‘that it is the duty of every disciple to bear
personal witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to take part in the
evangelisation of the world’.[1] Arguments followed… what does it mean to be
Baptist? How do we bear witness? But I think the most vital question is, what
is the gospel of Jesus Christ?
As I have said previously, I feel like my faith is being
stripped down and rebuilt as I missionally listen. One way this is happening is in my
understanding of the gospel. Though I
never tried to actively preach it, I believe deep down I have been shaped by a
reduced gospel. Many evangelical
churches place their strongest emphasis on conversion, what matters is that
individuals are saved from their sin.
Over time the gospel has been reduced to four or five claims, seen most
evidently in the literature used for Billy Graham crusades. Those
claims: Step one: God loves you; Step two: You are a sinner; Step three: God
paid the price; step four: If you confess and believe God will forgive you and
step five: You can live as Gods child.[2] Here we have the Gospel of Salvation. A reduced gospel. Guder understands this type of reductionism
to be the ‘precise point of challenge to Western churches if they are to become
faithfully missional in our changing world’.[3]
There is much to
criticise with the reduced gospel of salvation.
Murray believes it relies on eloquent professional persuaders for
evangelism.[4] McLaren
has a growing unease with its limitation and fears that for too many
Christians, personal salvation has become another personal consumer product and
Christianity has become its marketing program making salvation ‘all about me’.[5] For McKnight, the salvation culture only asks
one question, ‘who’s in and whose out’ and fails at discipleship.[6] One example of this is the self-reflection of
megachurch Willow Creek community church in Chicago. They conducted a study to measure the
progress of their mission to raise up ‘fully devoted followers of Christ’. Their question was simple, do the thousands
of people that they attract lives’ look different to others? The answer was that though they were
excellent at making believers they had a long way to go when it comes to
forming disciples. Dallas Willard
believes reducing the gospel to just that of salvation:
presumes a Christ with no serious work other
than redeeming humankind… [and] they foster “vampire Christians,” who only want
a little blood for their sins but nothing more to do with Jesus until heaven.
Claiborne
concludes, if our gospel is only about salvation then it is incomplete.[7]
Marshall states that it has been staggering that we have reduced the New
Testament to nothing more than a message of personal salvation.[8]
He writes:
We need a gospel with ethical content
restored. We need a gospel with political vision restored. We need a gospel
that is good news for the world and not an offer of escape from the world.[9]
Most worrying for me, is this gospel does not speak into the big
issues in our world today. McLaren
helpfully groups those big issues into four dysfunctions: The prosperity crisis, environmental
breakdown caused by the unfair unsustainable global economy; the equity crisis,
the growing gap between rich and poor; the security crisis, the danger of
cataclysmic war; and the spiritual crisis, the failure of world religions to
frame a story capable of healing the three-previous crisis.[10]
We can
conclude that by reducing the gospel this way we find a God only interested in
the individual, a missional strategy reliant on persuasive professionals and
programmes, a membership that are not discipled and as a result no different to
those around them in everyday life and we live in a world we want to escape, to
reach our eternal destination. Most
tragically the reduced gospel of salvation leaves us with little in the way of
answer to McLaren’s four dysfunctions of contemporary culture. Marshall is right, we need a new gospel.
Rob Bell in 2009
did a five-part film series devoted to reclaiming the sermon. The first was entitled ‘beginning at the
beginning’.[11] His premise is where the story begins and
ends shapes the story that you tell.
There is much to learn here regarding biblical mission. The story begins in a garden with the creator
who creates a creation and calls humans to be responsible and participate as
co-creators.[12]
We are on this earth for a purpose that flows from the creative purpose of God.[13]
In the garden all is blessed with all the blessings summed up by the one word shalom, meaning:
complete
reconciliation, a state of the fullest flourishing in every dimension–physical,
emotional, social, and spiritual–because all relationships are right, perfect,
and filled with joy.[14]
The story
ends in the city.[15]
Here humans will participate in the reordering of creation.[16]
Once again all will be blessed with all the blessings, shalom. Bell suggests, if
you were to remove sin from the bible you would have the four chapters that
describe these places, and here you have a journey from a garden to a
city. What’s a city? Bell suggests a series of well-ordered
gardens.[17]
Here we see a movement of enlarging shalom with which humans are called to
participate in. It is in the third chapter of Genesis that sin comes into the
world and we have disrupted shalom. Bell
reminds us that this passage is not the beginning or the end of the story.[18] Sin is important but temporary and God
invites us to repent and return to be co-creators. The story considering Genesis three is now
about God renewing all things,[19]restoring
all things[20]
and reconciling all things.[21] If the story we are telling begins in Genesis
three it becomes about removing sin but if we begin in chapter one the story
becomes the restoration of shalom.[22] This still includes the removal of sin but in
its proper place within the bigger story of restoration. If we begin in chapter
three the starting point for mission is that ‘you are a sinner’ but if we begin
with chapter one our starting point is God’s creation and how good it is, our
role within it and a call to repentance because of our part in the disruption
of shalom. If we start with Genesis three
we look for how we are going to escape our present context, Bell calls this
‘disembodied evacuation’, but if we begin in Genesis one we see ‘participatory
physicality’ as joining in with the restoration of shalom.[23]
From the
bleak narratives of Genesis three to eleven we see God begin restoring shalom
with His great promise to Abraham[24]
It is here we know that God is completely, covenantally, eternally committed to
the mission of blessing the nations.[25] Israel came into existence as a people
entrusted to join in with this mission of God for the sake of all the other
nations.[26]
Bell then
discusses the signs of the kingdom in John, concluding the eighth, the
resurrection of Jesus, begins a new creation right here amid this one. Mary’s
intuitive guess when she sees Jesus at the tomb is he must be the gardener.[27] Wright believes that on one level she was
wrong but on another deeply right. This
is the new creation and here he is: ‘the new Adam, the gardener, charged with
bringing the chaos of God’s creation into new order, into flower, into
fruitfulness’.[28]
The story now is about anticipating the coming day when heaven and earth are
one again. Our task is now of praying
for and being called to live on earth as it is heaven now and participating in
it forever. Now we can remove
modernity’s divide of the secular and sacred realm and we can see all things,
such as, business, arts and justice as ministry and in need of redemption. Bell
concludes, the Gospel is Gods desire to restore shalom. The gospel is because
of the resurrection of Jesus, a whole new world is coming right here and now,
and everyone everywhere can be a part of it.
We are called to bring ‘hope not rooted in escape but in engagement, not
in evacuation but reclamation, not by leaving but staying and overcoming’ and
we should never be surprised ‘when grace, beauty, meaning, order, compassion,
truth and love show up… in unexpected good people and places’ because it has
and always will be Gods world.[29]
I
appreciate this approach from Bell and others.
Though he doesn’t mention it – it is based on the missio Dei – the major biblical truth that the God revealed in
scriptures is a missional God, personal, purposeful and goal orientated.[30] Barth originally showed the concept of missio in the early church is to be
found in the trinity, Hartenstein built on this when he coined the phrase Missio Dei, he wrote:
Mission is not a matter human activity or
organisation, ‘its sources is the triune God himself’. The mission of the Son
for the reconciliation of all things through the power of the Spirit is the
foundation and goal of the mission.[31]
The same
view is found in Mission shaped church:
The mission of God as creator through Christ,
in the Spirit, is to bring into being, sustain and perfect the whole creation…
The mission of God as redeemer, through Christ, in the Spirit, is to restore
and reconcile the fallen creation… the mission of the church is the gift of
participating through the Holy Spirit in the Son’s mission from the father to the
world.[32]
The gospel
of the kingdom insists on participation with what God as creator is doing. It insists on seeing all things as needing
redemption. A gospel of a loving,
compassionate God is possibly still welcomed, a gospel that speaks of new beginnings
and envisions a radical vision for a different world might be listened too, a
gospel that is candid about injustice, cruelty, of disrupted shalom may be
respected but a gospel that unswervingly focuses on the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ will encounter resistance.[33] Here is my only critique of Bell is that he
knows of this resistance and he underplays the importance of the cross for
personal salvation. He does see the need
for repentance from our role in disrupting shalom but fails to link that
forgiveness to the ultimate act, ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with
the scriptures’.[34] With this critique added to Bell’s argument I
think we can agree with Newbigin that the gospel is
the announcement that in the series of events
that have their centre in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ something has happened that alters the total human situation and must
therefore call into question every human culture.[35]
This Gospel of the
kingdom offers much in our engagement with contemporary culture. Evangelism would move from recruitment of
those outside of the church to an invitation of companionship. The church would show that their hope is in a
God who reigns in love and will bring about good for the whole earth. The testimony of the church would be the
hearing of this announcement and knowing it already breaking into the
world. They would confirm that they now
know the open welcome and can invite others to join them as those to whom God's
welcome has also been extended. The church would offer those invited assistance
into the reign of God, the kingdom, and travel with them as co-pilgrims.[36] I conclude with Marshall, this approach of
humility is long overdue.[37] Most importantly, it frames our story in a
way that it speaks to McLarens four dysfunctions. It is a story that needs to be heard and can
be spoken with confidence in our post-Christendom culture.
I am loving my emerging
understanding of the Gospel! Let us
share the wondrous story!
[1] Fiddes, P., Haymes, B., Kidd, R. and Quicke, M.
(1996). Something to declare. Baptist
Union of Great Britain. Retrieved January 9, 2018 11:09 from Baptist union of
Great Britain: http://baptist.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=111290. p. 28.
[2] McKnight, S. (2011). The King Jesus Gospel. Revised ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 90.
[3] Guder, D.L. (2000). The continuing conversion of the church. Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans. p. 98.
[4] Murray, S. (2004). Post-Christendom.
Milton Keynes: Paternoster. p. 226.
[5] McLaren, B. (2004). A generous orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.p. 107.
[6] McKnight. (2016). P.30.
[7] Claiborne, S. and Campolo, T. (2012). Red Letter Christianity. London: Hodder
and Stoughton. pp. 10-11.
[8] Marshall, G. (2013). ‘A missional ecclesiology for the 21st century’. Journal
of European Baptist Studies. Holland:
International Baptist Theological Seminary. p.16.
[9] Ibid. p.16.
[10] McLaren. (2007). p. 5.
[11] Bell, R. (2009). Beginning
at the beginning. Robbell.com. Retrieved January 10, 2018 9:41 from
YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2cwMOcMDjhc.
[12] Genesis 1 and 2. (NRSV).
[13] Wright, C. (2003). ‘Truth with a mission: Reading scripture missiologically’, in
Gardner, P., Wright, C. and Green, C. (eds). (2003). Fanning the flame. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 227.
[14] Keller, T. (2010). Generous
Justice. London: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 174.
[15] Revelation 21 and 22. (NRSV).
[16] Isaiah 65. (NRSV).
[17] Bell. (2009).
[18] Ibid.
[19] Matthew 19. (NRSV).
[20] Acts 3. (NRSV).
[21] Colossians 1. (NRSV).
[22] Bell. (2009).
[23] Ibid.
[24] Genesis 12:1-3. (NRSV).
[25] Wright. (2003). p. 226.
[26] Ibid. p. 227.
[27] John 20:15. (NRSV).
[29] Bell. (2009).
[30] Wright. (2003). p. 225.
[31] Robinson, M. and Stängle, G. ‘Missional – The new paradigm in our heterogeneous contexts’, in
Badenberg, R. and Knödler, F. (eds). (2015). Missional – Embracing a paradigm shift for missions. Hamburg: The
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. p. 28.
[34] 1 Corinthians 15:3. (NRSV).
[35] Newbigin, L. (1986). Foolishness to the Greeks. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. pp. 3-4.
[36] Guder, D.L. (1998). Missional Church. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 97.
