In his new book, Planting Churches in the 21st Century, Stuart Murray begins by talking about the move that some have tried to make away from the term "church planting," as for some, this has seemed too human planned and even imperialistic. This came from the observation that many many churches in the 1990s were planted cookie-cutter like, without even consulting with the indigenous people in which the church was planted.
Stuart then says this,
"Another reason why many emerging churches avoid the language of church planting is their distaste for this narrow understanding of mission and the evangelistic practices that accompnaied it. The allergic reaction to evangelism apparent in some emerging churches and their concentration instead on other aspects of mission represents an understandable desire to distance themselves from activities perceived as inauthentic and manipulative. Uncorrected, however, this opposite missional imbalance will mean they are parasitic on the evangelizing churches they criticize and may eventually lead to their demise. Church planting may not be merely a "means of evangelism," but evangelim and church planting are both essentia aspects of holist mission."
Stuart makes the observation that emerging churches often react strongly against evangelism. The emerging church movement is somewhat hard to define, but in general, it is a form of church that seeks to be more in line with postmodern values than the modern values of the older generation of churches. Some of these churches could be missional in orientation, while others would not.
Strangely, however, I have noticed this phenomenon of being averse to evangelism amongst some of those who call themselves missional. Admittedly, these are usually emerging folk as well. But even Alan Hirsch, in a conversation that we had at Fuller, said that he thought that those that were missional struggled with evangelism a bit. Why is this?
It would seem that those who are missional in self-understanding very often emphasize incarnational living, which is excellent. To many in this camp, evangelism as it has been traditionally practiced--with sales technique, monologues, manipulative presentations, mass media--seems forced, ill-conceived, and contrary to what a real relationship with a lost person ought to be like.
It is ironic that those that are closest in proximity to the lost are sometimes the least likely to want the directly share the gospel with someone and invite them to follow Jesus. This is not true, I think, for the vast majority of those who are missional. In fact, they are the ones urging the church back to evangelism, though often a more relational form. And anyone who comes at missional from the theology side absolutely emphasizes this. Think Ed Stetzer doesn't believe that evangelism is important? Hardly. But it is true that a minority struggles with evangelism--probably mostly the emerging missional types.
I absolutely believe in missional theology. But I also strongly believe in inviting people into an evangelism conversion process. This is why I wrote the Story of Redemption, an evangelistic Bible study for today's postmodern culture. And I have found that some 80-90% of those who go through this study do decide to follow Jesus, make him the Lord of their life, and are baptized. Evangelism should not be abused, but it is still vitally important and a tremendous part of what it means to be missional.
Do you see any struggle within either the emerging or missional camps to be evangelistic?
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