I recently had the opportunity to engage 33 pastors from five denominations in two events that featured intentional conversations about what I call the “dirty words” of the church: stewardship and evangelism. Martha Grace Reese, writing in Unbinding the Gospel, notes that a good many people have taken to calling evangelism the “e-word.” I heard recently that someone else had called stewardship the “f-word,” that is, finances. There is reluctance in the church to engage these topics. These conversations also revealed that there is hope, if we can address them not only from a “gathered church” perspective, but from the viewpoint of the “scattered church” as well.
To facilitate and report back on the conversations I used two similar worksheets, “Redefining Stewardship” and “Redefining Evangelism.” There were two columns on each worksheet; on the left participants were asked to define topic at hand “in institutional terms”; on the right they were asked to define each topic in “life in the world” terms. Based on one participant’s comment about the unfortunate pejorative connotation of “institutional”, and in keeping with the overall direction of my recent work, I’ve changed the left column to “in the church.” If you make it to the end of this report, you’ll find that I’ve changed it even further based on what I learned.
With each worksheet I asked participants to work alone on the left column for a few minutes to establish a baseline understanding of the topic. I told them that I expected they would write down legitimate, theologically valid definitions of stewardship/evangelism in the left column definition. I then told them they had permission to add jaded, stereotypical definitions as well. (more…)
John Bowen (in Evangelism for “Normal” People) writes about rediscovering the stories of the first witnesses to Christ’s life, death and resurrection in the book of Acts, and realizing that evangelism is inevitably linked with risk:
In previous posts, an underlying assumption has been that evangelism is the work of the whole Christian community. I don’t want to sound like I’m completely contradicting that understanding, but evangelism also relies on each individual Christian doing her or his part. The problem is, viewing evangelism as the work of “the whole Christian community” can lead quickly to the conclusion that evangelism is somebody else’s job and not mine. 
The doorbell rings; we open the door and a stranger demands of us, “If you die tonight, do you know if you will go to heaven or hell?” This kind of approach—while being a form of flasher evangelism and running contrary to everything we’re saying about good evangelism—is also based on the assumption that people are either “in” or they are “out.” Other forms of evangelism, such as asking people to “make a decision for Christ,” are also based on this kind of either/or thinking.
Evangelism that is built on trusting relationships also requires that we be attentive to the discipline of prayer. We can begin by praying, “God make me aware of the people around me who are searching and want to hear about your love.” Bowen writes, “Whenever I get to know individual non-Christians…I am completely convinced that I find God already at work in their lives.” Since evangelism is based on God’s passion to “seek reconciliation with those who have set themselves up as his enemies,” our role can only be seen as God’s instrument for reaching and inviting people to come home. Prayer is the place we begin as we seek to discover who it is in our lives that God wants to invite home.
Since evangelism is built on trusting relationships, one often-overlooked skill is critical to the process: listening. While many church leaders like the one I encountered years ago attempt to motivate us—like salespeople at an Amway meeting—to get out there and “share Jesus” with others, Jesus’ own model suggests a different way.
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