Making Disciples: Obstacles and Opportunities in Urban Congregations

This article looks at the current theological understanding and practice of evangelism in the United Methodist Church. In the early 2000s, the denomination crafted and adopted the mission statement “Make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.” As someone who has worked at both the local church and denominational levels of the United Methodist Church, I have seen a gap between the denomination's stated mission and the actual ministry of local churches due to two primary obstacles. Congregations are unsure of what it entails to make disciples and do not understand that the purpose is for the transformation of the world. Through interviews and the study of local congregations, impediments to fulfilling this statement emerged. The article concludes by offering an example of an outlier congregation that is effectively engaged in life‐affirming evangelism in an urban setting.     

Re‐experiencing Evangelism in the City

The paper reflects on some of the exposure visits/city walks that were organized as part of the recent workshop on life‐giving evangelism in the city, held in Sydney, Australia. These exposure visits were designed to engage participants in reflection on evangelism and stimulate their own expressions of contextually relevant evangelistic practice. I suggest that the visits remind us of at least five key themes in evangelism – invitation, invaded space, serving the least and lost, the importance of the local, and the need for celebration in the midst of our multicultural world. In the second part of the paper, I reflect on the discussion that took place with my class at United Theological College, Sydney, on the theme of evangelism, particularly from the perspective of the three recent global statements on mission. Finally, I join in the call for joy to be the hallmark of our engagement in evangelism. We are to “glow with fervour” as people who have first received the joy of Christ.     

Evangelism from the Margins: Experiences of the Ironic in Evangelism in Cardiff,UK

This article arises from a presentation to the CWM/WCC Consultation, Explorations in Evangelism which took place in Sydney from 5 to 13 September 2015. There I shared the street art evangelism of my own congregation. However, in this article I want to explore how this street art evangelism is pointing us to the need for an appreciation of the ironic nature of evangelism, and consider evangelism from the margins. I explore this here as an aspect of the liberation missiology of the WCC's new ecumenical affirmation of mission: Together towards Life. But also show how it describes the historical roots of evangelism in the early church and captures the possibilities of evangelism now in a post‐Christian context like the UK. The article explores ideas and artwork as they invite an ironic appreciation of the countercultural nature of Christ's call to life, a call that questions the empires of Caesar and the church.     

Evangelism as Discipleship

This article gives attention to the challenges that the missional and conversational relationship of the church poses in the intercourse between evangelism, discipleship, theological education and leadership formation in its ministry and mission. This multi‐faceted and complex process brings together competing interests with different agendas that, in a number of contexts, have resulted in mis‐evangelization. This has called into question issues about human dignity and respect and the need for reciprocity to inform all missional response of the churches. The article argues that an appropriate model of theological education is needed to equip leaders for effective witness to the gospel. This necessitates the recruitment and mentoring of emerging leaders who have had a life‐changing encounter with the life‐giving Spirit of Jesus that controls their identity, vocation and witness. Some experiences of formal and informal theological education and formation within the Anglo‐Caribbean context were identified that disconnected and disorientated leaders from the Church's missional task of bearing effective witness to the gospel. This article calls for an overhaul of seminary‐ and university‐based theological education careerism, because they serve as an encumbrance to nurturing effective contextual witness of churches. The article argues that if Jesus calls and makes us into his disciples, then faithfulness in discipleship necessitates that (1) authentic evangelism must be grounded in humility and respect for all, (2) leadership formation must be infectiously relational, and (3) the gospel must be communicated through genuine interpersonal and community‐affirming relationships. The article ends with an invitation to all churches to embrace a missional model of witnessing that invests in living with, learning from and sharing with people in communities depending on the Spirit of God in Christ to lead and bear fruit in God's time.     

Reclaiming Evangelism

This paper introduces approaches to reclaiming evangelism, noting the challenges and opportunities of our changing global context, and stressing the importance of authentic witness. The author draws on the Council for World Mission's work promoting the development of missional congregations as life‐affirming communities and its statement identifying six conversation threads (the absence of God; secularism; issues of identity; how we affirm life; the sources we use to shape and nurture our faith; and how we overcome fear and violence in our societies and in the world) that need to be developed on Christian witness in a pluralist world.     

The Impact of Migration on Evangelism in Europe

The extensive secularization that eroded Christian belief and practice and that caused a drastic decline in church membership and the presence of an increasing number of non‐Christian migrants in Europe today is not only endangering the future of Christian faith, but reminding us that there are millions of people in Europe who need to hear the gospel. But generally, there is a continuing decline of interest in evangelism among the local churches and theological training in Europe, with the exception of free churches and some mission organizations. Theological training in Europe, at least in its present shape, has not been successful in shaping, leading and equipping the church for the task of evangelism as discipleship: a life‐transforming encounter. Therefore, we need a renewed vision of evangelism to develop contextual evangelistic approaches that takes paradigm shifts of our time into account. Migrant Christians bring a remarkable new dimension to the understanding and practice of evangelism in Europe. They come from a context where evangelism is intrinsically interrelated to discipleship making and is seen as the central identity of a church and a primary goal of theological training. This can inspire, encourage and compel European Christians to rediscover a courageous missional identity and develop effective cross‐cultural evangelism. Meanwhile, migrant Christians need the guidance of European Christians in order to use a proper and contextualized approach to win the trust of Europeans and succeed in evangelizing them. Humility is the key element that is commonly needed in this win‐win situation. Positive theological and multicultural networks along with interdependence and mutual learning–oriented relationships between migrant and local Christians can help to develop ecumenical missiologies that are relevant to diverse contexts of Europe today. The issue of the International Review of Mission focuses on the theme of Evangelism as Discipleship. This theme is held by most migrant Christians and congregations as the main interrelated aspect of evangelism. I will start by giving a brief background on the status of migration and evangelism in Europe. The main focus will be the impact of and contribution of migration on evangelism and some major aspects in which migrants may influence the search for new ways of evangelism and the development of ecumenical missiologies in Europe.     

Crafting a policy statement: Some observations

In 2016, a task force appointed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America began drafting a policy statement which in 2018 appeared with the title “A Declaration of Inter‐Religious Commitment.” This article explains the production of that document and explores its main themes. The document appeals to vocation—that is, the calling to serve one's neighbor and community—as its framework. It encourages engagement, resisting stereotypes, cooperation for the common good, and standing up for those who are harassed or mistreated. It goes on to explore the relationship between evangelism and inter‐religious understanding, affirming both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.     

Evangelism Challenges the Church's Identity

The gospel of Christ has spread to hundreds of linguistic and cultural communities. Christian churches have come face to face with an extraordinarily positive but nevertheless perplexing problem: Can the churches find the common core message of the holistic gospel or will the actual content of faith become relativized into the interpretation of interpretations? Despite the many different definitions of evangelism/evangelization, evangelism always leads to consideration of the basic questions of faith: its profound understanding and its reception. Evangelism involves the questions of what I believe or believe in, and of what I commit to. In the midst of the constant flow of information and the hectic tempo of life, evangelism challenges the church again and again to reconsider how the gospel can be expressed compactly, but in a rich, understandable, and true‐to‐life way. In the ecumenical discussion, the concept of “witness” as a form of evangelism is becoming increasingly important, because it comprises all the essential dimensions of the whole gospel. Evangelism challenges churches and their members to boldly bear witness by word and deed to Jesus Christ.     

The Joy of the Gospel of Life

Together towards Life (TTL) and Evangelii Gaudium (EG) convey a renewed and fresh understanding of mission and evangelism that speaks meaningfully to the contemporary context, reminds churches of their primary task of mission and evangelism, and challenges them to reflect on and practice mission and evangelism with joy and life. This essay strives to discuss three important aspects of mission and evangelism that TTL and EG share, albeit with their own distinct perspective. The inseparability of ecclesiology and missiology is one affirmation that is commonly shared by TTL and EG.     

Expressions of Evangelism in Latin America

The purpose of this article is to explore the expressions of evangelism that are emerging in Latin America within the Evangelical‐Pentecostal context of the continent. We will do this by approaching our subject from the perspective of change, religious mutation and transformational change: we will first refer to the shift in evangelism and mission perspective in Latin America. We will explore the shift in numerical growth, then will deal with the shift in the concept and praxis of evangelism. This will be followed by a discussion on the shift from Western forms in church liturgy, music and hymnology to more contextual and indigenous expressions. Finally, I will refer to the shift toward holistic practices in times of turmoil and violence.     

Together towards Life

Which are the convincing ways of evangelism in the secular, multicultural countries of western Europe? Does the new mission affirmation Together towards Life offer relevant contributions to this debate? This article explores recent developments in western Europe. It starts by reviewing the secular nature of these countries and then explains how migration has tested the secularization thesis. The transformation of western European cultures from secular toward secular/multi‐religious reopens the debate on secularism and religion. The article also reflects on the question of what the central ideas in the new mission affirmation – the affirmation of life, the power of the Holy Spirit, mission from the margins, and authentic evangelism as discipleship – may mean in these changing secular cultures. The author concludes that discipleship, provided it is authentic, may help to move beyond the apparent contradictions between secularism and religion and may help to find new ways of bringing forth the good news.     

“Seeking the Absentee”: A European Perspective on Evangelism in the Wake of a Feral God

Abstract Europe's religious “demise” is well reported and often lamented in missionary circles. This article aims to offer a contrary perspective using the common approach of evangelism: “double listening”. The task is to listen to our culture and our text in conversation and to discover what the text is saying afresh to our needs and values. It is, however, largely expected that this double listening will yield itself to the means by which Christ can change and counter culture. But what if our double listening reveals the deafness of evangelism to the voice of Christ in our culture? This paper aims to explore the widespread religious experience in Europe of God's absence, and how it prompts us to re‐examine the stories of Jesus and the rhetoric we use to describe Europe's religious life. It contends that much evangelism in Europe is too inhospitable or unsophisticated to see this absence as anything other than something we should rush to fill with the latest model of our reliable 24/7 god. However, it might be leading us to acknowledge something about the life of faith that Jesus seems to offer in much of his teaching. Europe's resistance to organized religion is painful to experience, but it might be inviting us into a fresh conversion to what God is doing beyond our walls. If so, evangelism will have to learn a fresh humility as well as to provide the fresh energy to discover and partner God there.     

Nietzsche on Nobility and the Affirmation of Life

In this paper I explore Nietzsche's thinking on the notions of nobility and the affirmation of life and I subject his reflections on these to criticism. I argue that we can find at least two understandings of these notions in Nietzsche's work which I call a 'worldly' and an 'inward' conception and I explain what I mean by each of these. Drawing on Homer and Dostoyevsky, the work of both of whom was crucial for Nietzsche in developing and exploring his notion of worldly nobility and affirmation, I then go on to argue that Nietzsche provides us with no concrete examples of worldly nobles and that, given his historicism, he cannot. Thus Nietzsche's thinking here is broken-backed. I turn, therefore, to explore the inward notions of nobility and affirmation. Discussing Montaigne and Napoleon in the context of Nietzsche's philosophy, I argue that we can make good sense in Nietzschean terms of someone's affirming his own life in an inward sense. This, however, opens up the difference between someone's affirming his own life and his affirming life überhaupt, and I argue that Nietzsche needs to be able to make sense not just of the former but also of the latter. Referring once again to Dostoyevsky, I suggest that Nietzsche can only do so by accepting the idea that all human beings possess dignity qua human beings. This thought is, however, one that he rejects. Thus Nietzsche's reflections in this area cannot be rendered finally plausible since they depend upon something which can find no room in his philosophy.     

A Reflection on the Growth and Decline of the Korean Protestant Church

This article examines the reasons for the growth and decline of the Korean Protestant Church during the following five periods:

• In the early period of settlement (1884–1909), growth originated from the emancipation motif, modern values, the Christian's moral life, the Revival experience, Bible study, and the prayer culture. The Korean church did not polarize evangelism and social action.
• During Japanese domination (1910–1945), growth came from the respect of the people toward the church. The church served the nation, consoled and healed the minds of the people, and gave brave witness of their faith in God. However, political persecution, economic devastation, socialist influences, and finally the coercion of the Shinto shrine worship to the church blocked church growth.
• During the recovery time (1945–1960), the social anomie after the nation's liberation and the Korean War ironically became a seedbed for church growth. However, the church improperly made her image pro‐government and pro‐America.
• During the time of industrialization and urbanization (1960–1995), Korean Protestantism achieved great growth and the highest percentage. Most of the Korean Protestant churches in cities, taking advantage of the mass rural–city migration, were actively involved in evangelism and church planting. University mission organizations and military missions were most active. Yet, they did not do well in terms of holistic evangelism. On the other hand, the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), the Urban Rural Mission (URM,) the minjung churches and others carried out social mission work.
• After the time of urbanization (1995–2005), church membership began to decrease. The Protestant church‐planting policy in city areas became inappropriate. In addition, the church's political conservatism fell out of favour with the young generation.

     

Strictly for Evangelical Parenting Support? The Case of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS)

Parenting poses a unique set of opportunities and challenges for both mothers who work for pay and for those who stay at home across the United States today. Specific types of ??work-family?? mothers?? groups have thus emerged as a way for these parents to provide support, information, and advocacy to one another in friendly communities. This study analyzes the boundary work undertaken by one national Christian mothers?? group, Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS), to maximize its membership base and distinguish it from other work-family mothers?? organizations. In this article, I first probe how MOPS engages in a particular presentation of self that I call ??open evangelism?? to market its organization. Open evangelism combines both an open (nonreligious) and evangelical philosophy to appeal to a diversity of mothers across the country. I then use data collected from 25 in-depth interviews with MOPS members in 2009 in order to assess if and how this open evangelism is, in fact, experienced by members at the chapter level. I find that both open and evangelical themes emerge when members describe the benefits that they receive from joining the group and the challenges presented by parenthood, thereby suggesting that MOPS is successful in its self-presentation. I conclude with MOPS?? prospects for survival and growth in the competitive world of both religious and nonreligious mothers?? organizations.     

Kierkegaard’s Notion of a Divine Name and the Feasibility of Universal Love

Kierkegaard's well‐known analysis of the self, in the first part of his work The Sickness unto Death (1849), presents, even if only in passing, the somewhat enigmatic notion of “divine name.” In this article I offer an interpretation of Kierkegaard's analysis and suggest that the notion of a divine name be understood as expressing the conception of human beings as possessing (what I call) “individual essence.” I further demonstrate that it is this quality that makes a human being a self, namely, the individual that he or she is. In addition to defending the exegetical and substantial plausibility of this conception, I show how it opens the way to affirming the feasibility of universal love.     

The Emergence of Sound Art: Opening the Cages of Sound

This article discusses listening that is appropriate to sound art and the associated changes in the paradigms, or thought patterns, that occur so often when we move from visual to aural perception. The distinction between historically accepted and rejected sounds is used to show how putting sounds in cages has fashioned a form of listening and of life. Twentieth‐century experimental music and, especially, the music and the reflections of John Cage have opened these cages of sound and at the same time weakened the visual paradigm for intellectual knowledge. This article examines sound art as a place where artistic practices coincide with certain theoretical issues centered on sound. The centrality of sound is approached first, and music and sound art are discussed in relation to space. Second, the attention to sound in the reception of prominent examples of sound art focuses on site‐specific relationships with the city and with listening. The article concludes by affirming the need for an aesthetic reflection that takes into consideration the implications of these profound transformations. However, that is another cage yet to be opened.     

Pannenberg,Particularity and Eschatology: Shifting the Debate

Wolfhart Pannenberg's account of the eschatological transition in his Systematic Theology describes how human beings are transformed by passing through a purifying fire that destroys whatever in them is incompatible with the life of God. I argue that this representation of human transformation renders individual existence too discontinuous between life as it now is and the life to come, makes redeemed interhuman sociality unimportant, and transforms access to salvation for non‐Christians into a matter of works. As a result, Pannenberg cannot preserve the kind of particularity he needs for his own theological aims: ensuring the significance of history, affirming finitude and developing a non‐oppositional understanding of the relation between the finite and the infinite.     

Additive Theories of Rationality: A Critique

Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually‐given reasons for belief and desire‐based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to ‘monitor’ and ‘regulate’ our believing‐on‐the‐basis‐of‐perception and our acting‐on‐the‐basis‐of‐desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as ‘I’ rather than ‘it’. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, ‘transformative’ framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal.