Thursday, July 03, 2008
Can We Consider Them Separately?
The Reformed Evangelist recently looked at "Evangelism and Discipleship." It is an interesting post, but there are two points I want to make flowing from it:
If Young Life had (has?) a weakness, it was the transition from our ministry to a church, but for the most part we tried. Some YL areas formed partnerships with churches. there was certainly the Campaigners ministry designed to give kids the very basics of the faith to help them understand what went on in church so they could make an informed decision about where to go. The fault laid most strongly in the fact that in Campaigners we never pushed the kids to church enough, we assumed they would go with their parents, or something.
Which brings me to the second point:
All the problems here discussed seem to spring from the idea that salvation and sanctification, evangelism and discipleship, are somehow separate things. They are not. They are different aspects of the same thing - the return of ourselves to the place where we were created to stand - a journey, not a step, a transformation, not a conversion.
And thus for the evangelist, church becomes most necessary, if not for their own support but so that the efforts of those that encourage the first step of the journey can be seen by those taking that step as part of the greater whole. Indeed, your call to ministry may be limited to encouraging that first step, but their call to it is most certainly not. The glory of the church is, in part, in its harnessing of the various gifts of its individual members. When we cut ourselves off from that, we cut our ministry off from it as well.
When you do evangelism you may not be calling an individual to YOUR church, but you are calling them to THE church, that is undeniable. You owe it to them and to God to get them that far.
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Generally speaking, in the BEC [ed note: "Biblical evangelism community," his definition] those who would even mention that they are affiliated with a church when they are on the streets are viewed with some suspicion. After all, we are not there to get people to come to our church, we are there to get them to come to Christ.Now, I am not quite sure what the "Biblical evangelism community" is - when I worked for Young Life and did pretty much what this talks about, we called ourselves "the parachurch." By that we meant that simply an organization dedicated to do one, and only one, part of the church's whole mission. We to were called to evangelism.
If Young Life had (has?) a weakness, it was the transition from our ministry to a church, but for the most part we tried. Some YL areas formed partnerships with churches. there was certainly the Campaigners ministry designed to give kids the very basics of the faith to help them understand what went on in church so they could make an informed decision about where to go. The fault laid most strongly in the fact that in Campaigners we never pushed the kids to church enough, we assumed they would go with their parents, or something.
Which brings me to the second point:
I don’t agree with everything that he teaches, but Zac Poonen has made an excellent point when he said that most missionaries emphasize either evangelism at the neglect of discipleship or vice versa. It is rare to find a missionary who has proper emphasis on both. Rarer still are those in the BEC who are even trying to understand the balance.I read that and the first thing that passed through my head was "Can they really be separated that way?"
James 2:17-18 - Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, {being} by itself. But someone may {well} say, "You have faith, and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works."Sounding rather Zen, if the wind blows, but a leaf does not stir, how does one know the wind has blown? Too many time in my career with Young Life did I, and have I since, seen kids that no longer carry any sign of the commitment they appeared to make those many years ago. And my heart weeps.
All the problems here discussed seem to spring from the idea that salvation and sanctification, evangelism and discipleship, are somehow separate things. They are not. They are different aspects of the same thing - the return of ourselves to the place where we were created to stand - a journey, not a step, a transformation, not a conversion.
And thus for the evangelist, church becomes most necessary, if not for their own support but so that the efforts of those that encourage the first step of the journey can be seen by those taking that step as part of the greater whole. Indeed, your call to ministry may be limited to encouraging that first step, but their call to it is most certainly not. The glory of the church is, in part, in its harnessing of the various gifts of its individual members. When we cut ourselves off from that, we cut our ministry off from it as well.
When you do evangelism you may not be calling an individual to YOUR church, but you are calling them to THE church, that is undeniable. You owe it to them and to God to get them that far.
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