Discussion following the recent Nexus conference which attracted a considerable chunk of Sydney Anglicans clergy and a critique by David Robertson who left half way through, has all sides being keen on evangelism.
As far as this writer can tell the disagreement is about how best to do a good thing: help others follow Christ and become citizens in the next world.
The sharp end of the debate centres on two davids: Dave Jensen , rebel from a well known ministry family turned evangelist, and David Robertson, a Scot with a history of evangelism from a base in Dundee. Both davids work or used to work for the Sydney Anglicans’ Evangelism and New Churches department.
Dave
Here’s Dave Jensen passionate about evangelism discussing “maintaining mission heat” in the local church at the Nexus conference: he explains that church and uni evangelism will be different. This is a important thing to say to Anglican Evangelicals who look back to a revival begun by Charles Simeon at Cambridge and a long history of University ministry.
“One of the great strengths of university ministry has been the teaching, the training, the development of a system, a structure which allows people to learn the gospel and teach the gospel almost simultaneously, that while you’re on campus, you’re being taught to us and then you are going out with someone who knows how to do it and then you do it with, and then what does that do? Well, regardless of the outcome to the non-Christian, it actually emboldens you. It grows your confidence. You build in your desire and your ability to share.
“So what’s the solution? Well, the way to get people involved is not to keep the bar so high, but to lower the bar of entry into Christian evangelism, but not simultaneously compromise on the message of the gospel. While so doing and not pandering to either non-Christians or Christians by telling them that evangelism is actually just saying to people, do you want to go to heaven? Or what do you think life’s all about and leaving it there? That’s not evangelism. Evangelism is the proclamation of the gospel, so what we want to do is create a lower bar entry for regular people who aren’t particularly gifted in evangelism of entry into razor sharp life and death. Real bullet evangelism whilst not making it so paralyzingly socially difficult for them. We want them involved in something that is both evangelistically sharp but also socially warm. Now, where would that happen in the life of a church?
“Well, multiple options to choose from, but can I offer that? The two that stand out most clearly in my mind are the regular, reliable, dependable, repeatable evangelistic course and a gospel driven, warmly welcoming weekly Sunday or other day church gathering. Let’s think about the gathering for a moment difference. We know that the gathering on a Sunday is not for non-Christians. [Jensen then offers a critique of the seekers ensitive movement}
“However, as the apostle Paul points us to, it’s absolutely worth identifying that non-Christian people are at church with us every single Sunday. Some of those are long-term members, maybe even parish council members. Sometimes some of them are long suffering spouses or children who’ve been coming. Often they are people who’ve been brought along by someone else for the first ever time or they’re returning to church for a very long time. What that means is that we need to view the Sunday gathering as a way to both increase our connectivity with non-Christians and also establish confidence in the actual missional objectives of the Christian.”
Dave Jensen is telling clergy, there are clear pathways to making the local church, and its programs more evangelistically effective.
David
David Robertson went on Vision radio after reflecting on the Nexus Conference. Here’s an exceprt where he also talks about effective evangelism.
“It was Paul who wrote to Timothy, the pastor of the church and Ephesus, I think in one Timothy four, five, that he should do the work of an evangelist in order to fulfil his ministry.
“My view is that every minister should be to some degree an evangelist in that we have a desire to communicate the good news and we do communicate the good news and we need to set an example to our own people. I think what people have this idea as well is if you’re an evangelist, you’re not very well organised and you might push things a bit, be a bit risky. That may be me actually, but sometimes you need pastors to be like that as well
“I think within a church you should have a team of people. You should have elders, pastors, a pastor, preacher. You have people with different gifts. We’re a body. But I do think that that truism never let evangelists be in charge of the church. It’s not biblical.”
(That never let evangelists be in charge was a throw-away line at the Nexus conference. It fired up Robertson. It’s often the hyperbole and jokes that set the sparks flying.)
Good different
Dave and David are not a million miles apart. They both want effective evangelism by churches. But David Robertson it seems favours evangelists working with and through churches whereas Dave Jensen and the the speakers at Nexus emphasise sharpening the programs within the local church. Neither, The Other Cheek trusts, would disnmiss the other’s approach. Yet it may be that in this story The Other Cheek has over simplified the differences.
It may be that Dave and David carry the marks of where they have worked – David from profoundly secular Scotland where Christianity has dropped off the agenda, and Dave from a Sydney where evangelical Christianity has kept its head above water – or hasseemed to until disappointing stats came to light.
And class comes into play, thinking of the “Red Rooster” line (pictured) that divides Sydney diagonally between a wealthy globalised “hipster” city and people who see themselves happily living in suburbia. Sydney Uni’s Honi Soit newspaper has tested the thesis of how fast food chains can map a city’s demographics with many food chains – for example, the middle eastern El Jannah chain which has now opened in Melbourne.
Different syles of evangelism will be more effective in parts of Sydney. Could one think of the evangelist model working in the Hillsong heartland and the course model working better further east and north? Maybe we need an Alpha map?
That is another over simplification of course, with Hillsong and Sydney Anglicans both sides of the Red Rooster line.
But can we make the point that there may be two (or more) ways to do this good thing.
And diversity of approach might serve us all.
Image: Dividing Sydney by fast food outlets Honi Soit