What Missional Evangelism is NOT - and what it should be

[James Nored]

Our new Missional Outreach Member (MON) member, M. Scott Boren, author of Missional Small Groups, has written a blog post called "What Missional Evangelism Is Not."

 

In the post, Scott relates an uncomfortable experience he had of sitting through a multi-level marketing presentation to the following small group experience.

This [multi-level marketing experience] made me think about Eli, the owner of a restaurant where our small group frequented. We would sit late at night, talking and drinking coffee. Over time, we developed a pretty good friendship with Eli, so much so that he invited Trey and I to go fishing with him in Galveston. After failing to catch anything, the three of us went to lunch. While eating shrimp, Trey proceeded to tell Eli all about Jesus. Obviously Eli was not interested in the conversation but Trey continued on with all the questions we were taught to ask when someone resists such a presentation. And the more Trey talked the more Eli squirmed. I wanted to reach over and pull Trey's tongue out, but Trey had mentored me in the past and I assumed he knew something that I did not. That day really messed up our friendship. Subsequent conversations with Eli were always met with resistance. I wonder if we made him feel like my friend Bob made me feel.
Honestly, Eli was an evangelism target. We had been taught to befriend people, share Jesus with people and to recruit them to participate in our small group. Of course no one put it in such crass terms, but I think this is the way Eli felt like we were treating him.

I appreciate Scott's post here. But herein I would say is illustrated problems with both many in the missional camp as well as those in typical evangelical "evangelism." Typical evangelical evangelism is entirely presentational, concentrates only on a person's spirit (not their whole person), and it truncates the gospel to forgiveness of sins so that a person can go to heaven (nothing about present day life in the kingdom). In this example that Scott gives, the "missional" group only gets close enough to a person to give them a typical evangelical, one-way, evangelism presentation. This is a wrong approach, both culturally and biblically. We should care about people holistically, including all of their needs. We should not just get close enough to make a drive-by presentation and then wash our hands of people. We should not view them as a "notch on the belt," but rather people to be loved.

 

However, the typical evangelical evangelists do have one thing right--we do need to intentionally share Jesus with people and call them to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and live out this life. This is what some in the missional movement have missed. Michael Frost, in his excellent new work, The Road to Missional, says this: "Those who claim to be missional but who never ever find themselves in a relational place where they can proclaim the lordship of Jesus to a friend, even if that proclamation occurs over several conversations over a period of time, are hardly missional at all."

Some in the movement appear to be so concerned about the abusive evangelism of the past that they have jettisoned evangelism altogether. That it would be a violation of a relationship to make such a call.

 

That type of thinking is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and I'm glad that Frost has tackled this issue. (More on this later) It is not enough to just be in proximity with people. It is not loving to never share the gospel with people. And it is not wrong to intentionally share the gospel with people. In fact, because we love people and care about their souls, we must be intentional about this. There is a good way to go about this, however. In keeping with "missional outreach," this should be the approach to reaching non-Christians in missional small groups:

1. Seek the lost - Go where lost people are with your small group. Adopt a neighborhood or people group. Form relationships with them. Be intentional about this.
2. Serve the community - Have the small group help the people it seeks out/adpots in their areas of brokenness, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. Do this out of genuine love, just as Jesus did.
3. Share the good news - We don't need to make a "presentation" of the gospel to people that have not asked for it in a culturally weird way. Breaking into a presentation in the middle of a conversation on just about anything would be strange. It is a strange way to share the good news, too. What we do need to do is:
   - Talk about our faith in a natural way. Don't sterilize the conversation. Talk about our faith as we would with anyone else. Unfortunately, many Christians do not know even how to do this. We need to help them learn how.
   -  Ask faith/God/spiritual questions. We are not infringing upon people if we ask them these types of questions. Every person is on a journey with God, as Scott implies in his article. And many will talk about their journey if asked.
   - Ask if you can share your story. This is called "permission evangelism." This should be your own personal story interwoven with the biblical story. It should primarily be a story, not a presentation. The one thing you have the right to tell in today's postmodern culture is your own story.
   - Ask the person if they would like to study the Story of Redemption! - There is a way to do this. Tell them that there is an 8 week Bible study called the Story of Redemption that tells the overall story of the Bible. It starts at the beginning and assumes no Bible knowledge. It is a great way to learn more about God and meet some other people that are kind of where you are spiritually.  Would you be interested? A great number of people will be interested. And, at the very end of the study, there is a type of presentation--I would call it an invitation and a question to people about whether they want to be baptized and follow Jesus? (which I will not detail here) This is the proper context for an invitation and call. But note, there is an intentional call for conversion. This is what some missional types miss.

 

Is it wrong to be intentional about calling people to follow Jesus? When and where can and should a person do this? 

 

 

[Bob Young]

Sorry to duplicate comments.  Given the off-link for reading/reference, I desire that comments and interaction will occur here--not seeking to add another forum, just to give easy access to my reflections.

[Bob Young]

Seems that properly, biblically understood, all evangelism should be missional.  The problem is that many past evangelism efforts have not been holistic or focused on the development of healthy Christians in restored God-relationships.  Some of my reflections are in a blog on my website today:  http://www.bobyoungresources.com/blog/?p=785 .  Especially note the summaries under #3--God's desire/purpose, and #4--message.  These are worthy of much more development and discussion.  (Hope it is OK to off-link and not to reprint the same info in multiple places.)

[M. Scott Boren]

I want to keep talking about this. Obviously this is your passion and I think we can can dialogue our way into something that advances the conversation. No worries about RN. I was only there for a day and was running around like a crazy man. I will let you know when I'm in Collin Co. next and maybe we can have coffee.

[James Nored]

Thanks, Scott. It is great to find someone else wrestling with this. We definitely need to stay in dialogue, maybe get together and meet. It would be good to hear more of your story. We are all shaped by these events of our past, and we seek to correct or emphasize not only from the biblical text, but out of our own experience and what God's people are wrestling with.

I'm really sorry that I did not get over to see you at the RightNow conference. I went to as many of the lectures as I could, but I could not attend all of them (a very busy week). I'm glad that you know where our church building is. Next time you are in McKinney/Dallas, let's try to get together.

[M. Scott Boren]

James, This is awesome. The idea of evangelism/outreach from a missional perspective is relatively undeveloped. Kinda weird! Part of it is related to a backlash that evangelicals have had to traditional forms of evangelism. Part of it is related to people focusing on the question of conversation vs. social justice, as if that's really the issue at stake (Ed Stetzer tends to focus on on these categories).

 

I'm wrestling with this because in the 1990s, I was part of an organization that taught about relationship evangelism, as opposed to older forms of it. But we did not take it far enough. Our evangelistic imagination was still shaped by a church growth paradigm, not a missional (redemption of creation by the Trinity) paradigm. While not very practical, this is where Craig Van Gelder's book The Evangelizing Church is helpful. It gives us some new language to help us attain a better imagination.

 

Let's keep up this dialogue. I've followed you for a while and see what you are doing. I think we have a very similar perspective.

 

In addition, I know exactly where your church is located. I don't know if you remember, but my childhood home sat on the corner of Virginia and Custer, right across from where the Home Depot now sits.

[James Nored]

Thanks, Scott! I had wanted to dialogue with you about this, as there seem to be few wrestling with it and you are one of those. I just finished my D.Min. in "missional outreach," and the name of this site is the "missional outreach network." I thought about calling it missional evangelism, but I didn't want the negative baggage of the old style of evangelism coming to mind. (I actually cited you on this in my D.Min. paper) I have a holistic view of evangelism, which includes serving people in their areas of brokenness, whatever they are, and sharing the good news with them. The seeking part adds the missional, "go to them" aspect of this.

However, I am at heart an evangelist, in what I hope is the best sense of the word. (Churches of Christ are not, strictly speaking, evangelical, though we share some common commitments to Scripture and a desire for people to be saved.) And I hear virtually no one in the missional field talking about how to actually call people to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and be baptized into his name. That is why I was very glad to see Michael Frost come out with his Road to Missional and address this topic. Michael, by the way, is an evangelist too, and of course, deeply missional.  

[M. Scott Boren]

James,

This is very helpful. The reason that I'm wrestling with this is because there has been so little said about missional evangelism. Kinda funny huh? Then On top of this, the term "missional" has been slapped on top of traditional forms of evangelism. Michael Frost's new book The Road to Missional does some work on this, but I do think we need more. We need a thorough conversation about this. Is complex and has multiple layers.

[John Dobbs]

Great thoughts! Thanks!

[James Nored]

Thanks to Timothy Tien, by the way, for alerting me to Scott's post.

[James Nored]

I can remember Alan Hirsch saying in a conversation that I had one time with him that he thought that the missional movement was weak on evangelism. That would be ironic, would it not? The reason, by the way, that I called this site missional outreach network and have used the term missional outreach, rather than missional evangelism, is due to some of the evangelistic abuses of the past. But we should not forget a true call to evangelism.