Gary M. Wollersheim is bishop of the Northern Illinois Synod.
I worshiped at the noon Ash Wednesday service at Trinity Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Rockford, Ill. Good sermon, imposition of the ashes, and Holy Communion.
After the service I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some salmon to grill for dinner. The woman at the fish counter, when she saw the smudge on my forehead, exclaimed, “Oh, you must be a Christian.”
The sad thing is, that I have been shopping at that store for years. Only now had she discovered that I am a follower of Jesus. This kind of experience might be true for many ELCA members, so I share with you my thoughts about evangelism.
“Evangel” is a New Testament word which is translated “gospel” in old English and “good news” today. For ELCA members, the “evangel,” Good News, is first and foremost Jesus.
Next, the good news is about Jesus’ victory over sin, death and the devil through Christ’s life, death and resurrection. And finally, the good news is that this victory, won by Christ, is graciously given to us by God, received in faith. We don’t earn it, nor do we deserve it. God gives us this gift because God loves us.
Why should we share Jesus?
The sharing of the good news is called evangelism or evangelization. Now the question might be asked, why should we go to the bother of sharing Jesus with others?
The short answer is: God asks us to do so. There are many places in the Bible where we read about God’s command to share the good news about Jesus. Perhaps the most frequently quoted comes from Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all.”
We also share this with others, because we have good news, and the world is longing for what we have. Watch the evening news and you will quickly see what I mean. The world is longing for good news, for Jesus.
How should we share Jesus?
Now the big question is, how do we share this good news?
Do we share it by doing actions of mercy and justice? Yes!
Do we share the good news by witnessing to our faith in terms of what Jesus means to us? Yes!
Do we share the good news by using media and social networking to get the message out? Yes!
Do we share the good news by being peacemakers and bridge builders in our communities? Yes!
Jesus made invitations
But the process for sharing the good news that I am encouraging is called “invitational evangelism.” It is what Jesus himself did: “Come and see” and “Follow me.” Jesus made invitations.
Invitational evangelism is based upon community, hospitality, discipleship and vocations. God has graciously given us everything we need to be faithful in this ministry of invitation.
So, our first task in evangelization is to invite people to come to church where the word is preached, the sacraments are administered and where the community of believers gather. It is in this context, the church, where we meet Jesus and learn to follow him.
Whom should we invite? We could invite all first-time visitors who attend worship to come back again next Sunday. We could invite all new residents in the community to attend worship or a church function. We could invite friends, family, neighbors, fellow workers and classmates to come to worship.
We could invite the inactive members to come back. We could invite those who are served by our congregation, but are not members, such as the preschool families and Boy Scouts, to come to worship.
After we invite, we must pay attention to the matter of hospitality. What if a visitor actually shows up?
I suggest that when you are out of town on vacation and attending worship, take notes as to how you were made to feel as a visitor. What made you feel uncomfortable, and what made you feel welcome? Implement these observations in your home congregation.
Evangelism includes discipleship
But it doesn’t stop with someone just showing up. Evangelism is about both breadth and depth. The depth is called discipleship.
God has given us spiritual disciplines to assist us in our walk of discipleship, some of these are: prayer, service, giving, worship, encouragement, Scripture and witness/invite. It is important that congregations provide lots of opportunities to engage in these faith-deepening disciplines.
Members of the ELCA like to talk about vocations. When we are more intentional about witnessing to Christ in our vocations — daily rounds of job, school, family, community, home and grocery store — then we will become, as St. Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, “ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us”(5:20).
The work of evangelism is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit. So let us pray urgently and constantly that God would renew God’s people, through the power of the Holy Spirit, by making disciples of all.
Gary M. Wollersheim is bishop of the Northern Illinois Synod, Rockford, and has served in that role since 1998. Wollersheim has served as pastor of three congregations and is passionate about evangelism. He enjoys fishing, hiking and reading in his spare time.
I don't know how to respond to this article. On one hand, it's a legal formula for evangelism. Here's what you do, why you do it, etc, etc, which is all Law, trying to communicate Gospel, which I don't think it can do. And yet, I don't have any better words for it, nor do I think the instructions are inherently wrong.
I think part of it is the 'why' that really gets me. If we're doing it for legal reasons (God so commanded us), I don't think we know what we're proclaiming. Instead, I think we must do it because there is no other way. It is a gift that we are given. Paul's language in regards to himself is always 'slave of Jesus Christ', and yet that slavery does not come through the Law nor did the Law send him to any of his churches.
It's frustrating, because I feel like there should be a way to more fully communicate the Gospel.
I don't find the bishop's article to be legalistic at all. If we view everything that has to do with "law" as inherently bad then we are going to end up with a hollow gospel. The Gospel includes both. However, let me try to give us all some impetus to be evangelists without resorting to "law."
In last Sunday's Gospel we hear that God loves us so much that he sent his only Son to die for us. As Pr. David Lohse put it in his blog last week, God didn't come down here and ask us if we wanted Jesus to come and save us. God just sent him, we didn't have a say in this business of salvation. Why? Because God loves us unconditionally like it or not! When you are faced with the fact that someone gave their life in your place without ever consulting you, what are you going to do? There are only two options if you have a conscience: 1. feel guilty; 2. feel indebted. In either case there is nothing you can do to ever repay the debt you owe to that person who died in your place.
So what do we do? Once again we are faced with only two options: 1. run away; 2. give into God's love. When we give into this love that is unconditional and unequivocal we find ourselves enslaved to it as St. Paul puts it. However, it's an enslavement to which we gladly submit because we are held in the bonds of God's beautiful, forgiving, merciful love. When we find ourselves in this place we want to shout it to the world. We deserve to die and yet God dies with us and for us in order that we might have eternal life in God's presence.
How can we be silent when faced with this truth? We gladly go and share the good news with others who don't know the loving God of creation. The last words spoken to us at the end of every liturgy is command: "Go and share the good news." However, when we truly understand and experience God's boundless love for us in Jesus the crucified and risen Lord of the universe, we experience those words as invitation to serve as God's redeemed children.
Randy,
I think all of the things Bp Wollersheim listed can and should be done, but it feels like something's missing. It's like a laundry list of 'do x, y and z and you will be good evangelists', and we certainly need to learn the how's of doing x, y and z. Nor do I doubt that they aid in evangelism or even that successful evangelists use those techniques. It's just not enough, and on more reflection, I think his penultimate sentence is the most important one: evangelism is something only God can do, which is started (and finished?) in the dying and rising of Jesus. We're just fans. Yeah, we talk up our team, but it's the team that wins the fans, not the other way around, and we don't do it because we feel guilty over how awesome our team is at sports and how awful we are, or because they command it or because we owe it to them. We do it because it's our team.