Imagining a New Way
By Elaine Heath:
Since I teach evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, I often have opportunities to talk to congregations about evangelism. Dallas is the buckle of the Bible belt, with many more large churches than in most of the rest of the nation. So I often find myself in suburban, upscale congregations talking about ecclesiology. Whenever I talk about a church becoming missional and leaving behind its self-centeredness, when I talk about the poor, invariably I am told that what people like the Missionaries of Charity are doing is fine for them, but not practical for most people. They are a special interest ministry, not “the church.” I am told that the normal church in the suburbs is a building with lots of programming to meet all the needs of the members. Evangelism is mostly about strategies to keep newcomers from leaving for another church. Most of these churches have short term mission trips in the summer, where youth and adults do cross-cultural ministry among the poor. Most of them donate money to local homeless shelters and food banks. These forms of outreach are seen as the church’s contribution to mission.
The idea of congregants living like the Missionaries of Charity in our own suburban neighborhoods seems unimaginable. But is it? Is being the church really about buildings, programs, budgets and “giving units”? Isn’t the “normal” church supposed to be a community of Christians living for the sake of the world? What is the basis for our ecclesiology?
The hermeneutic of love is grounded in the belief that Jesus really does live in the people around us, that Jesus thirsts in our actual neighbors. Jesus is bound with eternal love to every person I encounter. This is the starting point. When I see people that way, everything changes. How I evangelize changes. My ecclesiology changes. Now I see people already being called by the Holy Spirit, already being loved and known by Jesus before I ever meet them. Now I understand that prayer and friendship are the foundation for my relationship with others, in the name of Jesus. With a hermeneutic of love I give myself in prayer and friendship to the people around me not so that I can get something from them, not even a commitment to join my church, but so that I can minister to Jesus in them, Jesus who thirsts.
To do this I have to think about what it means for myself and other people to be sinners. I have to re-think sin, what Luther called the soul curved in upon itself, and its relationship to wounds. A hermeneutic of love means that God looks at human sin “with pity and not with blame,” because God sees the complexity of sin and wounds. A hermeneutic of love includes a doctrine of atonement that is non-punitive, meaning Jesus chooses solidarity with us sinners so that he can set us free from sin. When Jesus sets us free, we are free indeed. With the hermeneutic of love I see others’ sin the way Jesus does, not as insurmountable obstacles or permanent stains, but as the consequences of life in a broken world. I see the full power of resurrection for them, before it ever happens. This means I believe in the potential for their healing as well as their forgiveness. No one is beyond the possibility of being made new in Christ. A hermeneutic of love is fully aware of the devastation of sin and evil, yet refuses to give them the last word.
Excerpted from The Mystic Way of Evangelism by Elaine A. Heath, 124-126.
Used by permission of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright ©2008. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.
Elaine Heath is the McCreless Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, and an Elder in the United Methodist Church.
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there is so much work we need to do to find what “church” ought to be that must be done both to recover what has been lost and preserve what has value from our tradition. thank you for this reminder!
Hey Wes,
First use your mouse to highlight the area you want to print. (you can do this by putting the mouse’s curser just above or just below the area you want print, and then left clicking without letting up on the clicker)
Then you can let go of the mouse.
Secondly, hold down the ctrl button on your keyboard and then hit the ‘p’.
a dialog box will appear. in the bottom left hand side it will say ‘page range’. Change it to Selection by clicking on the empty white dot.
Hi friends,
may I translate this article into German and publish it on my blog? It sure is worth being read by German speaking people, too.
Blessings!
Günter from emergent Berlin
I love your approach to people – our preconceptions are so engrained and we seem to both lack courage and lack imagination when it comes to realising that God exists outside of what we see as the church.
We chuckle knowingly woth mock horror when we consider the ‘oh so obvious’ messages about the judgements we make about peopl;e different to our selves at Equality & Diversity training in the work place, and yet we remain so entrenched in our view of people outside of what we perceive as God’s influence, simply because we cant recognise God’s love and grace in the lives of our neighbours and our wider communities
Thank you so much for saying it loud and clear
Thanks for the good words! To translate into German, please check with the permissions people at Baker Academic. I’m delighted that you want to do this.
As a seminarian I am often asked what role I believe missions and social justice causes have in the life of a Christian. They are refering to “Kingdom Now” and “Kingdom Come” theology. You may have covered this in your book, which I do intend to read, but I am wondering what you think?
Yes, I do a lot with mission and social justice in my book, demonstrating that a contemplative stance always leads to prophetic action. I believe we are supposed to pray and live into the phrase Jesus taught us to pray: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Chris Haw have a new book out about this, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers. The kingdom is both now and “not yet.” We are living in the in-between space, as Peter Phan tells us.
So many feel good words all about self and yet none that quotes His voice-the Bible? Knowing our Father is not a transcendental experience, but a knowing learned by listening to His word. God hates sin! The Bible states so. The sinner must acknowledge that he cannot enter into God’s presence without repenting. It is this repentance that is life changing. No amount of ‘love’ can change the heart of a person who has not seen the depth of his depravity and his separation from God.
If you read the Christian mystics, the ones I have highlighted in my book, you’ll see that they are all about God and not about self. Give it a try!
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...excellent post
...thank you!
...is there a way this “non-techy” olde man can learn to print off posts from in here without all the good graphics, just the fine content?
...thanks for any help!!!