In discussing the invitation of the church to those whom the Spirit gathers and their initiation into the reign of God through baptism, a boundary becomes obvious between those inside the church and those outside of it. Evangelism happens at this boundary. I see evangelism as the process by which the Holy Spirit works at the edges of the church and the world, gathering people to the church, who responds to the Spirit’s work with an invitation to be initiated into the reign of God. In this last section of Part Four, I work through this understanding of evangelism. First, I will address the church’s work at these boundaries. Then, I discuss the process of invitation and initiation into the church, ending this section with a discussion of the importance of hospitality and radical welcome to this reframed understanding of evangelism.

               In the prior section, I mentioned Eckhard Schnabel’s understanding of the early Christians as envoys sent by Jesus in the same way that Jesus was sent by the Father.¹ Christians bear witness to Jesus and the reign of God in their every day behaviors, which are distinct from the world in which they live due to the transformation worked by the Holy Spirit. This bearing witness is not something the church does as much as it is something the church is, as witnesses of what God has done and is doing in the world. The church represents God to the world, and the world to God.

               Bearing witness is not anything new for the church, but in a Post-Christian era the environment into which the church bears witness is new. Stefan Paas uses the language of exile and diaspora to describe this state of the church. In a secular₃ social imaginary with its focus on the immanent, it is difficult for us to see God moving in our everyday.² To respond to Post-Christianity, Paas looks to the role of “priest,” a mediator between deity and humanity, as performed by “pilgrims,” strangers and foreigners in the world.

               Paas’ understanding of priesthood has several layers. The whole of humanity was created with a mediating role between God and creation in Genesis 1. After the effect of sin on humanity and creation, the mediator between God and creation gets more specific, culminating at the incarnation. The incarnate Christ is the ultimate mediator between God and humanity, and after his ascension the gathered church is empowered to mediate between creation and God.³ Paas connects this with the pilgrim nature of the church as strangers in the world described in 1 Peter. The church does not belong to the world, it belongs to the reign of God.⁴ Summarizing his use of these metaphors of priest and pilgrim, Paas writes:

The priest metaphor defines the missionary nature of the church as a dual movement: the Church represents the world before God and she represents God before the world. She comes into the presence of God as a worshiping, praising, liturgical community and she engages with the world in a witnessing, inviting, friendly way. In short, while passing through the world as pilgrims, Christians bless God on behalf of the world, and they bless the world on behalf of God.⁵

In a Post-Christian era, as the church continues to lose influence and membership, Paas’ metaphors are apt. In thinking of itself as pilgrims, traveling through the world but not belonging to the world, the church can accept and mourn its losses, putting their trust in the promise of the fulfillment of God’s reign. This pilgrim metaphor is balanced with the priest metaphor, lest the church fall into escapism and neglect its role as priest to the world. As a priesthood, the church is intimately connected to the ones they mediate between. The priestly nature of the church counters any impulse to escape world by building relationships, as Paas explains:

Priests can drop by their neighbours or the city council, and ask them if they can pray for them in the Sunday worship celebration. Priests can praise God on behalf of their non-churched relatives for all the beauty they have received in each other. They can offer the guilt of the world, the neighbourhood and their family to God in the ministry of reconciliation… Christians worship God in the name of God’s world that does not recognize God.⁶

The priesthood aspect of this metaphor builds relationships with people outside the church, even as the church recognizes that it was gathered into the reign of God and are now pilgrims in the world.

               These interactions happen at the edges between the priestly community of the church and the world it is a stranger to. As Bryan Stone writes, “Evangelism…is performed at the boundaries and along the edges of difference.”⁷ Evangelism, as the process by which the Holy Spirit gathers people into the reign of God, by necessity situated at the border between the “kingdom” of the world and the “kingdom” of God. A person outside the church is offered an invitation to cross the border, be initiated into the reign of God in baptism, and become another pilgrim-priest.

               Edwin van Driel describes a national church who has adopted this way of thinking, the Protestant Church of the Netherlands. Responding to drastic secularization, churches there function as pilgrim-priests on these edges. van Driel describes a softening of the boundary between church and world, with worship services led by non-Christians and pastors acknowledging the appeal of secularization. “Living with porous boundaries,” van Driel writes, “is not just a matter of being hospitable to the stranger in our midst, but also to allow for the otherness in ourselves.”⁸ Softening these boundaries and welcoming life at the edge of the church and the world is the place of a pilgrim-priest and the realm of evangelism. As the Holy Spirit works in and around these edges to offer an invitation into the reign of God, the church also exists at these edges, responding to the Spirit’s work and welcoming those whom the Spirit gathers into the reign of God.

               The church takes loving care regarding the manner of its invitation to those the Spirit has gathered. In Post-Christianity, not only are the claims of the church to an inbreaking transcendence hard to accept, but the kind of Christianity many have experienced—like the members of the Bunker—has not been a positive experience. With evangelism happening at the edges of the church and the world, the church must remember its primary identifier is its love for God and its neighbor. Before addressing the church’s invitation to the people whom the Spirit gathers to it, it is important to first center love in those interactions.

               I already mentioned in a prior section that the invitation the church makes, as described in Scripture, responds to questions from the person outside the church. This is one aspect of how love informs the invitation into the reign of God. Elaine Heath continues the emphasis on God’s love as it relates to evangelism. Love, for Heath, makes the difference between the message being good news or bad news. She writes,

When we believe in and experience love as God’s meaning, love becomes our meaning, for we become like the God we worship. When love becomes our meaning, the ramifications for evangelism are immense. We are cleansed of legalism, judgmentalism, coercion, and exploitation. We are liberated so that we can now see the “total fact” of others, which is so much more than their guilt and sin, or their wounds. This is not a sentimental, soft love. It is a tungsten power that respects others, says “no” to injustice, and unflinchingly involves itself in the muck and mire of broken lives.⁹

Ensuring that evangelism is rooted in love keeps evangelism rooted in the reign of the God who is love. This also emphasizes that evangelism is more than a practice. Just as love is the identifier of those who follow Jesus, the invitation to follow must also be rooted in love. Heath connects with Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 that he is found among the “least” of the world (Matthew 25:40,45), and in her words there are echoes of Welker’s view of the Spirit as the force-field of God’s action.

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 met them.¹⁰

Evangelism is as much an aspect of the identity of the church as love is, and the two are inextricably related. Evangelism without love becomes hostile, turning people into objects rather than bearers of the divine image. Love without evangelism leaves aside the promise and fulfillment of the reign of God. Evangelism expressed in love both recognizes the humanity of others and offers an invitation to be with the loving God.

               I have described evangelism as the process by which the Holy Spirit works at the edges of the church and the world, gathering people to the church, who responds to the Spirit’s work with an invitation to be initiated into the reign of God. While I see evangelism as primarily the activity of the Holy Spirit, the church is not passive in this process: as pilgrim-priests, the church at the boundary of the world and itself extends a loving invitation to those whom the Spirit gathers to it.

               In his own exploration of evangelism, William Abraham strikes a balance between the work of the Holy Spirit in evangelism and the church’s role in bearing witness. He defines evangelism “as the set of intentional activities which is governed by the goal of initiating people into the kingdom of God for the first time.”¹¹ Even as defining evangelism this way, seemingly as an action of the church, he also clearly positions the action of God as the primary agent in evangelism.¹² If the church does not take God and God’s action expressed in the reign of God seriously, then the thing into which they are initiated is no longer the reign of God. For Abraham, the duty of the church is to “lead the candidate for its membership into a full encounter with the dawning of the rule of God.”¹³ The Holy Spirit gathers; the church invites.

               Scott Jones, building on Abraham’s work, further describes the church’s role in evangelism. After establishing that God’s actions are good news that God is actively working to solve humanity’s problems, and indeed those problems have been overcome in the death and resurrection of Jesus, he focuses on the invitational nature of God’s actions: “These actions are invitational, because God is continually working in the world to invite and encourage persons to participate in the reign of God… God is always inviting the world to embrace God’s reign and return to the set of relationships God intends for it.”¹⁴ Jones connects this with the activities of discipleship, which he describes as living obediently to God’s will and participating in God’s mission.¹⁵ (In the language of this work, I would say that discipleship happens as the Holy Spirit brings people into more constructive interference with herself.) For Jones, evangelism is the way through which people enter into discipleship in particular communities in particular places. One is not initiated into the reign of God through an abstract universal church, “They are evangelized by individuals in communities of faith called congregations.”¹⁶ This connects with van Driel’s conception of the church—the local congregation itself—as a gathered community. Local congregations are the primary location where evangelism which leads to discipleship happens. They are the new households of God who bear witness to God’s reign.

               This occurs as local congregations do the things that local congregations do. The priestly acts of local congregations—gathering for worship, hearing Scripture, and sharing the eucharistic meal; acts of loving service; Christian education; and more—all may bear witness to the reign of God and offer an invitation to discipleship, responding to the Holy Spirit. The practices of the church become evangelistic when they are done with the intention of responding to the work of the Holy Spirit in gathering people to the church. This is where Abraham’s definition of evangelism is helpful, as it recognizes that the intention of the church when it comes to its everyday practices is important. Abraham warns:

Preaching an evangelistic sermon on television is not in itself evangelism; nor is baptizing twenty people on a Sunday morning in church; nor is sending a consignment of Bibles to a tribe that has never seen the Bible before; nor is teaching someone the basic doctrines of the Christian faith; nor is inviting someone to walk the aisle and repent; nor is leading someone in a prayer of personal commitment. Unless such acts are intimately related to a process that intentionally brings people into the kingdom of God, they are something other than or something less than evangelism.¹⁷

The everyday practices of the church, when done with the intention of responding to the Spirit’s gathering work, are evangelism. This is why, as Bryan Stone writes, “The church does not really need an evangelistic strategy. The church is the evangelistic strategy.”¹⁸ Evangelism is not simply something the church does; evangelism is what the church is. It is the primary locale in which people grow to bear witness to the reign of God.

               Here, I turn to an important addition that Jones makes to Abraham’s definition of evangelism. Jones construes evangelism as “that set of loving, intentional activities governed by the goal of initiating persons into Christian discipleship in response to the reign of God.”¹⁹ The addition of love reflects Jesus’ own statement on the nature of his disciples: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Jones makes clear that, for evangelism to be authentic it must be rooted in the same love that God has for the world.²⁰ This honors the personhood and agency of the person outside of the community of the church while also respecting the call to offer an invitation into the reign of God.

               In order to live this out, evangelism must take on characteristics of radical hospitality and welcome. To paraphrase the Bryan Stone quote I shared in the prior section, evangelism happens at a boundary, at the border of the church and the world. These boundary encounters also come with encounters with difference, connecting to the pilgrim nature of the church.²¹ Softening these boundaries is a part of the church’s priestly role and requires what Leanna Fuller describes as a vulnerability to the differences one will inevitably encounter. Fuller suggests that one of the primary aspects of a posture of hospitality, especially within congregations, is this vulnerability to difference.²² Though Fuller’s work is focused on conflict and systemic anxiety within congregations, being edgy pilgrim-priests also requires this openness to experiences with someone whose experiences, beliefs, and values differ from one’s own. With a vulnerability to difference, diversity, the things that make humans different from one another, is a positive, intentional aspect of creation. Fuller writes, “Diversity lies at the heart of God’s good creation; without difference, there would be no creation at all.”²³ Developing a vulnerability to these differences and maintaining an openness to the diversity which exists in all of creation, is the foundation for community, especially the loving community that Christ’s church is meant to be.

               Extending from the vulnerability to difference which invites diversity is hospitality, the radical welcome of those who are different from us. In terms of the local congregation, this means an openness to extend an invitation to anyone whom God the Holy Spirit would gather to that local congregation. Invitation and welcome go hand in hand. The work of Amos Yong is helpful in expressing the importance of hospitality to evangelism. Yong offers a “stranger-centered” evangelism which reflects the work of Jesus:

The Son of God became a stranger, coming into a far country, even to the point of death. Here, Christian mission is the embodiment of divine hospitality that loves strangers…, to the point of giving up our lives on behalf of others as to be reconciled to them, that they might in turn be reconciled to God.²⁴

In other words, as God became a pilgrim among humans in the incarnation, humans are pilgrims in the world as they bear witness to the reign of God.

               Yong encourages a posture of listening, welcome, and servanthood to live into this kind of hospitality. Local congregations become willing to be vulnerable to the differences and diversity brought by those others in the everyday activities of the congregation. “Evangelistic hospitality is something we do not in addition to but in and through our worship, liturgical, or sacramental practices. Or put another way, it is in and through these ecclesial practices that the redemptive hospitality of God is accomplished by the powerful works…of the Spirit.”²⁵ Hospitality is one of the ways the church lives out its identity as a new household, the gathered community of pilgrim-priests which bears witness to the reign of God. If people are gathered to the church by the Holy Spirit, welcoming them is the church responding to the action of God.

               The pattern I suggest for the church as it lives out this understanding of evangelism may be summarized through the work of Diana Butler Bass. Bass suggests that in the modern, enlightenment church, coming to faith was ordered in a particular way: “belief came first, behavior came next, and finally belonging resulted, depending on how you answered the first two questions.”²⁶ In order to belong to a faith community, one needed to accept and espouse their particular statements of faith and practice their particular sets of important behaviors. Bass suggests that in a Post-Christian era, the first and most important aspect of being in a spiritual community is belonging, followed by behaving, then believing.²⁷

               To put it in language more consistent with this work, the first experience of one gathered by the Spirit to a local congregation is to encounter the radical, loving welcome of God through the people already gathered to that congregation. Then, in the midst of this community, just as Jones and Abraham argue, the new person is invited into the reign of God. They learn to bear witness to the God’s reign through participation in the community as the Holy Spirit works to bring them into constructive interference with herself. Finally, after being with the community and the work of the Spirit, the new person comes to experience the transcendent God who gathered them into the community, and they are initiated into the new household in baptism. Beginning with the gathering of the Holy Spirit, radically welcomed into community by the church, through the continued work of the Holy Spirit, a person experiences the transformative inbreaking of God, so that they may bear witness to another. In the final chapter of this paper, I will explore what this might look like in light of the experiences of the Bunker’s apatheists, and suggest a way forward for the church in a Post-Christian era.

Notes

1. Eckhard J. Schnabel, Early Christian Mission: Jesus and the Twelve, vol. 1 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 389. ↩︎
2. Stefan Paas, Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society (London: SCM Press, 2019), 165. ↩︎
3. Paas, 173. ↩︎
4. Paas, 168–73. ↩︎
5. Paas, 182. ↩︎
6. Paas, 216. ↩︎
7. Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism After Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007), 172. ↩︎
8. Edwin Chr. van Driel, “Ministering to the Grand-Children of the Lost Son: Being Church in Dutch Post-Christian Society,” The Presbyterian Outlook, September 13, 2018, 33. ↩︎
9. Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach, Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 48. ↩︎
10. Heath, 115. ↩︎
11. William J. Abraham, The Logic of Evangelism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 95. ↩︎
12. Abraham, 168. ↩︎
13. Abraham, 179. ↩︎
14. Jones, The Evangelistic Love of God and Neighbor, 43. ↩︎
15. Jones, 65. ↩︎
16. Jones, 75. ↩︎
17. Abraham, The Logic of Evangelism, 105. ↩︎
18. Stone, Evangelism After Christendom, 15. Emphasis in original. ↩︎
19. Jones, The Evangelistic Love of God and Neighbor, 114. Emphasis mine. ↩︎
20. Jones, 115–16. ↩︎
21. Stone, Evangelism After Christendom, 172. ↩︎
22. Leanna K. Fuller, When Christ’s Body Is Broken: Anxiety, Identity, and Conflict in Congregations (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 140. ↩︎
23. Fuller, 147. ↩︎
24. Amos Yong, Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor, Faith Meets Faith Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 131. ↩︎
25. Yong, 137. ↩︎
26. Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 201. ↩︎
27. Bass, 204. ↩︎