Tag Archives: mainline church

The New Evangelism

Last night I found a pretty cool docu as I was cruising Vimeo. It’s called Influencers: How Trends and Creativity Become Contagious.

Here it is:

As I watched, my mind naturally went to the idea of “pastors as influencers,” mostly because, well, I self-identify as a pastor. But the more and more I thought of it, the more I realized that I had an opportunity here to explore an area I feel compelled to gain a depth of knowledge and wisdom in: EVANGELISM.

Confession: I have a visceral reaction to the word and idea of “evangelism.” I am not joking. It makes my skin crawl, and I start to feel a little sick. I am not joking.

In the Fundegelical culture I grew up in, evangelism was the thing you were taught to do. Youth Group was like sales and marketing school. You learned to defend your faith and you learned to, quite honestly, push it on people. Ostensibly, evangelism is “proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ,” but I experienced it more as selling insurance policies. I know, I know. It’s a tried and tired cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason.

Recently, however, I have been compelled to reconsider what evangelism is and what it looks like. It can’t and shouldn’t be the Salvation Road Show of my youth, but neither can it be just a “commitment to welcoming those who walk through our doors and helping them find a place in the life of this congregation” (honest to God, that was the definition the evangelism committee of one Mainline church I attended had as an official statement). Do I believe that the freedom offered in Jesus Christ is transformative and worth giving my life to? Yes? Then, shouldn’t I freely give what I have freely received? Shouldn’t I offer this marvelous thing far and wide? Yes, and yes. Given how I understand the work of God in Christ, to not do so is to say that no one needs this thing I’ve found. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Ephesians 4 says that God gave the church certain gifts, and that among them were “evangelists.” Can we think of evangelists as “influencers”? Well, here’s what the film says about this kind of person (with a bit of my own commentary thrown in):

Influencers are:

  • Confident. They know they are doing the right thing and they are comfortable doing it. They are not shy when the “slings and arrows” come.
  • Creative. They have a different way of thinking and expressing themselves. They realize that the answers given yesterday do not answer the questions asked today.
  • Early Adopters. They see the possibilities on the horizon long before others do. They are willing to take risks and experiment.
  • Well respected. It’s not necessarily that people “like” them. It is that they have a good track record of naming the truth of the situation. When they speak, people listen.
  • Translators. They have an ability to bring an idea into the mainstream consciousness. They can translate from one discipline to another, and draw connections where others see only dichotomies.
  • Practice Embodiment. They do not merely speak, but they live in a new way. They demonstrate the new by the way they move through their lives.
  • Self-Aware. They are concerned with the ways they come of to the ones they seek to influence. This is not to suggest that they “go by the pols” but they are strategic in the way they present themselves.
  • Rooted. They are not iconoclasts. They are a part of a community, they are accountable to others, and they know where they came from.
  • Mentors. They do not believe that it is all about them and their success. They seek out others and mentor them to do what they have done.

One significant theme that ran through the film was the reality that most influencers are a part of the “young creative class.” Part of what was named is the reality that most younger persons cannot afford to be a part of the system and are not willing to “sell out” to become so. As a result, they tend to establish an almost entirely separate network and work around the establishment. Their influence is a direct result of trying to figure out how to express themselves given their limitations.

To me, this feels like a good place to start in looking for a new understanding of evangelism.

Plant a church, but don’t do it alone. That would be dumb.

One of the perils in communication is that you will neither communicate everything you intended, nor will everyone receive what you did communicate accurately. One of those two things happened last week when I encouraged “Young(ish) Mainline Pastor Type People” to plant a church.

I got two basic responses. From old(er-ish), more established pastors the response generally was, “Yeah! Right on!”, while the future pastors in the crowd generally said “No way! We’re not taking the responsibility for this on our own.” (I was talking to a friend today and we both noted that, really, no pastors in their late 20’s/early 30’s who have had a call for 4-5 years said anything. Hmmm….) I would like to address a fraction of that second response.

Firstly, on behalf of the First Mainline Church of Everywhere I’m sorry that you are the folks caught in the middle of the biggest shift in Christian culture and structure in hundreds of years. Truly, I am. It is not fair, and I’m sure its stressing you out. I know that some of you are incurring debt (which we should really talk about sometime), and all you want to do is graduate, go serve a church, and start your life (which includes paying off your debt). But, the reality is: the odds are not in your favor of finding a job. Either you and a church don”t fit, you’re not willing to go some place, or the church can’t pay you enough even if you were willing. Each of these has a technical solution, to be sure, but the sum of these solutions is not even going to come close to addressing the massive shift facing the church. This bubble is about to burst and we all know it.

Don’t think I didn’t hear the core of your retort. I did. “Why should I take all the risk and bust out to do this by myself?” Financially, the truth is that even if you find that one church, the chances of them paying you enough is slim. Your chances of paying off educational debt is probably the same if you go get a job working at Starbucks (or Initech or Dunder Mifflin), and help plant a church during non-work hours.

But philosophically? Have you asked for support? I mean, have you done the hard work of putting together any kind of game plan and asked for support? The NCD I served as a seminary student did. They went to their presbytery and said, “We’re not asking for money, but we want prayer and support.” They got it. And some money. A good number of the private responses I got to the blog post was “We’d love to support folks, but where are they?”

So do this: put together an idea for a community. You know as well as I that there are dozens of ways to think about a church. Pick one and go with it, but….

Do Not Do It By Yourself.

This is where I assumed something in my last post that you did not. We are not built to do this by ourselves, but with others. The myth of the “lone gunman who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps” is precisely that. A myth. On this we can agree. In seminary I learned the powerful idea that nobody “owns” their whole call. I only have a piece of what I am called to do. Someone else has the other piece. Maybe there is a third (or fourth or fifth…) person who own another piece. But I don’t have it all.

We can talk about “call” some other time, but the point is this: You should go plant a church, but you should not do it by yourself. Yes, your original idea might change when you begin working with someone else, but, hey, more heads are better than one, right?