H. Stephen Shoemaker
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
February 19, 2006

THE CHURCH AND EVANGELISM
Mark 2:1-12
 

I want to talk about the church and evangelism - - about our church and evangelism. There are many forms of the deadly sin of pride. One of them is the rolling of the eyes. When the word evangelism is brought up in our oh, so sophisticated religious company, there is the rolling of the eyes. Then there are those of us - - like the one now talking, thirteen steps up - - who are tempted to roll their eyes at those who roll their eyes. As someone said of the sin of pride: It comes early and stays late.

Does the word make us nervous because it implies a spiritual need in us and in others? No doubt evangelism has taken many dubious spiritual forms. But let’s not let others define evangelism for us and rob us of the word. Indian theologian, D. T. Niles, still has one of the best definitions of it for me: Evangelism is one hungry person showing another hungry person where to find bread.

I

The word evangelism comes from the New Testament Greek word euangelion, which means eu, good, angelion, message: Good news, good tidings. It is the word for gospel. Is there a more central New Testament word than this one?

Good news, good tidings. You can’t fake it. It is or it isn’t. It feels good. It feels joyful, hopeful. Something you’ve been waiting to hear. Your heart beats faster. It makes you smile. How come the word evangelism today has so little joy and gladness attached to it?

II

Our text for today shows us evangelism in action.

Jesus was preaching in Capernaum, back “home” again, perhaps in Peter’s house (see Mark 1:29). People were so hungry to hear what he said - - it felt like the best news they’d ever heard - - that the house was crammed with people

Four guys arrive hauling their friend, who was paralyzed, on a cot. They’d heard that Jesus healed people. Maybe he could heal their friend. Here’s another definition of evangelism: Doing what it takes to get someone into the presence of Jesus because you believe in Jesus there is healing and hope.

When they got to the house it was so jam packed with people they couldn’t get their friend in the door. They rushed up the outside steps to the roof, tore a hole in the mud and straw ceiling, and let their friend down through the hole in front of Jesus. That’s determination. If this was indeed Peter’s house he probably muttered to himself: When he said, “Follow me,” I didn’t imagine “hole in my roof.”

As they let him down, the text says Jesus “saw their faith.” Saw it. Sometimes faith is something we see. Not faith as a feeling, faith as the recital of a creed. Rather, faith as carrying a friend to Jesus because you think Jesus can help. Faith as tearing a hole in a roof. Faith as audacious action. Or as Pogo would say it, Bodacious action!

I see George Campbell’s faith every week. (He’s not here, so I can talk about him.) He is helping the Community School of the Arts; at work in Lakewood for the children there; helping with R.A.I.N. He recently declined to be nominated as deacon. I suppose because he had so much going on for people outside the church. I told him he’s our deacon to the outside, to those who need a hand. I think we should deputize people to be our deacons to the outside. We’ve got a bunch of them, doing the gospel in the world. As St. Francis said, “Preach the gospel everywhere. If necessary, use words.”

Jesus saw their faith, saw the crippled man and said to him, “Your sins are forgiven.” Sometimes forgiveness is what we most need. No better good news than that.

The religious officials present object. “This is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone!” But the real issue is that they no longer had control over the grace of God. They thought they had God’s exclusive franchise on Grace. Then comes Jesus giving it away to anybody. A character in Philip Pullman’s “Dark Materials” trilogy says, “Every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.” That’s true for too many churches I know.

Jesus then said to the crippled man - - to show that his forgiveness was not just words but the power of God:

Stand up! Take your mat and go home.
Rise, roll up your cot, walk home.

And the man did. And the crowd was amazed and glorified God, which is what Jesus had in mind - - the glorifying of God. They said, “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

How many ways do we see evangelism at work here? In his teaching and healing. Yes. In the four friends’ actions. Yes. In the words, “Your sins are forgiven” and “Rise and walk.” Yes. In the people glorifying God, praising God. Yes. The praise of God is evangelism too, when it’s real praise.

Ever had a group of friends care so much about you that they got you where you needed to be to get well? Have you ever been such a friend?

Evangelism is doing, being, telling God’s good news in Christ in the world. So I have defined it for today in these words:

An activity by which the good news
of God in Jesus Christ is shared with
the world. This activity may take
the form of preaching, worship,
personal witness, acts of service
in Jesus’ name, social transformation
in Jesus’ name, missionary activity, artistic creations, and more.

That’s a start. Walter Brueggemann describes evangelism as.

... an activity of transformed
consciousness that results in our
altered perception of world,
neighbor and self, and our
authorization to live differently
in that world. The news that
God has triumphed means that a
transformed life, i.e., one changed
by the hearing of the news, works
to bring more and more of life,
personal and public, under the
rule of this world-transforming,
slave-liberating, covenant-making,
promise-keeping, justice-commanding
God.1
 

That’s a glorious mouthful.

Evangelism is about the salvation of God at work in the world. And salvation means “making whole” or healing (as in the word salve); and it means “delivering” or rescuing people from that which is diminishing or harming them. It is a healed relationship with God which leads to a healed relationship with self, others and creation itself. This is the good news of Jesus Christ we share.
Let me pause for a curmudgeonly word.

I hate how the word evangelical is used today to divide Christians. I have described evangelical Christians as those who emphasize: salvation by faith, personal relationship with God and with Christ, personal conversion, the authority of scripture, and a desire to share the gospel with the world. So far so good. We need more of them. Many of you are here today because you started there.

But some use “evangelical” to mean the real Christians with right beliefs and real relationship with God. This attitude ruins the word.

And many today assume “evangelical” automatically goes with “conservative” as in the phrase “conservative evangelical,” as if conservative were evangelical’s first name. There are liberal evangelicals too.

There was a cover article in Time magazine a year ago (February 7, 2005) which named “The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America.” It was striking how many had a relationship with the White House. Evangelical used to mean a relationship with Jesus.

Part of the problem with the word evangelism, is that it sometimes telescopes the spiritual life into one moment in time or into one kind of religious experience - - an emotional response and a one-time decision to follow Jesus, like at a Billy Graham Crusade. Billy Graham Crusades have done enormous good for millions in this nation and all over the world. It is in truth, evangelism. But evangelism is broader than that.

I prefer the word evangelization, which stands for the whole process by which a person is introduced to Jesus Christ, comes to know him, decides to follow him, is baptized, becomes part of his community and grows in the Spirit so that he or she becomes good news to the world. It may take some time.

It may start as today, with the dedication of a child. It includes learning to praise God in children’s choirs and at church. It include things like our eighth-grade Discipleship Class, being baptized, walking the way of Jesus in the world. I’m still learning the good news. Still learning how to share it in the world.

The church is an outpost of the gospel in a world hungry for this good news.

One calling of this church is what Warren Carr called “backdoor evangelism” or “Evangelism at the Exits.”2 There are many people in this world on their way out of the church. They’ve despaired of the church’s narrowness of faith and life, the way the church tells us to stop thinking and to be quiet; the way it can shut down people’s spirituality; the way it closes its eyes to the world and shuts certain people out. The church has often preached a false gospel, a Jesus scarcely different from our cultural ways, and people are looking for the exits.

For some people our church is the last stop before they leave. We give them a way to believe and to be Christian that is spiritually meaningful to them. Ann Tyler tells of a storefront church named “The Church of the Second Chance.” Perhaps we could be named “Last Stop Baptist Church.” Or as Mahan Siler described churches like Pullen Memorial Baptist: “The Church of The Last Resort.” This is back-door evangelism, and this is one of our callings in Charlotte.

But there’s “front-door evangelism” too, and we need to do this better. I’m speaking of reaching out to people who have no faith, who have never been introduced to the way of Jesus. We won’t do it like First Baptist Church or Forest Hills Church, but we need to do it, because we can reach people other churches cannot.

This is joyful stuff. To see people come to faith. To be midwives of the new birth. It helps us veterans in the faith remember what the beginning was like - - and it may help some new beginning happen in us who’ve been at it for awhile.

I’ve loved this description of what it means to become a Christian, what that first step is like: To become a Christian is to give as much of yourself as you can to as much of Christ as you know.
That’s a step any person here this day can take. Sometimes the next little step is the saving one. Take that step and the wonderful journey begins. Then day by day you’ll discover more and more of yourself to give and learn more and more of Christ to give yourself to .

There’s real pleasure in this, or it’s not good news. It will feel like good news. The gospel is always on its way into new parts of yourself and into new parts of the world. And if there’s no hint of joy about it, it’s probably not the gospel.

We have heard the joyful sound: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Spread the tidings all around: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Bear the news to every land,
Climb the steeps and cross the waves;
Onward! ‘Tis our Lord’s command;
Jesus saves! Jesus saves!

Waft it on the rolling tide: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Tell to sinners far and wide: Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Sing, ye islands of the sea;
Echo back, ye ocean caves;
Earth shall keep her jubilee:
Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
 

There are a lot of ways to do the good news. There are a lot of places inside us where it needs to go. And there are a lot of places in the world aching to hear it.

How shall you live your days? Letting all the bad news of the world dominate your life? Or letting the good news, the euangelion, fill every crevice and every ocean cave?

The prophets had this dream: That the word of God would cover the Earth as the waters that cover the seas. That the praise of God would fill all creation. What a dream! May God dream it in you!


1Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), p. 129.
2Warren Carr, “Evangelism at the Exits,” The Glad Irony of the Gospel (Warren Carr, Wake Forest Baptist Church), pp. 63ff.