Why Evangelize?

Modern evangelism certainly has its trivial and self-serving elements. From the fictional Elmer Gantry to the wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-he-were-fictional Jim Bakker, the very term “evangelist” conjures up images of conmen, whoremongers, and snake oil salesmen. What is it about this holy calling that draws so many unholy servants? For — make no mis­take about it — evangelism is a holy calling, the Great Commission being the last orders Jesus gave the apostles in the Gospel of Mat­thew. As one thoughtful evangelical, Sher­wood Wirt, has noted,

Evangelism has had an extremely low priority in society as a whole; the number of jokes about soul-winning evangelistic preachers must run into the hundreds. Yet the fact remains that each new generation must be won to Christ, or Christianity will be­come extinct; God has no grandchil­dren. The winning is the work of the Holy Spirit, but the task of announc­ing the good news of new life, and persuading people to hear and re­spond, is ours. It is a clumsy business . . . but we are commis­sioned to the task and, jokes or no jokes, we must be about our Father’s business. Without evangelism, the church is nothing but a private club, and not the best club in town, either.

This is a vision of evangelism as it was ordained to be — “the announcing of the good news of new life.” Would that it were the only vision. There is some truth in the stereotype of the evangelist as huckster, as someone who employs a patina of theology to justify what is in effect a business enterprise, if only because more people reached means more contributors, which means more money for more stuff — and “more stuff” can run the gamut from medicine for babies and shelter for the homeless to an air-conditioned dog­house at Heritage, U.S.A.

How much can those who proclaim the free gift of the Gospel legitimately charge for it? How much is the ox that grinds the grain entitled to eat of it? At what income level does an honest evangelist slip into hucksterism? I wish I knew. Motive is the key, but motive is sometimes hard to discern. I always thought Jimmy Swaggart a jerk; but once upon a time, I thought him an honest jerk. When it comes to evangelism, I feel a lot more com­fortable describing the poles than I do the axis. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s meditation on the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee helps de­fine those poles:

The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clear and cool, from the heights of Hermon and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. The Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, for the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep.

At our evangelical Sea of Galilee, pilgrims are freely given the Good News that saves be­cause those who dwell here have never forgot­ten the One who first gave it to them. Here there is a continual recrudescence of faith: It is given, it is nurtured, it is passed on. Mother Teresa dwells by this Sea’s shore; Billy Gra­ham lives but a bit downstream. C.S. Lewis once dwelt here, as did Pope John XXIII and John Wesley and William Booth of the Salva­tion Army; each is remembered with love. Ev­ery pilgrim who comes to drink from this Sea’s life-giving waters is treated as a sacred soul.

But at the terminus of the river, on the shore of the evangelical Dead Sea, a religious bazaar has been thrown up, and all is as warm. The free gift of the Gospel has been torn to fragments by greedy hucksters, and the sales pitches grow more frenzied even as the pool of customers shrinks. Almost nothing is sacred by the shores of the evangelical Dead Sea. Those who enter here looking for the Gospel are regarded as bovines to be milked: They are all cash cows.

Of course, the motives of anyone involved in evangelism are rarely as stark as our met­aphor would indicate. I doubt that most of those whose full-time vocational responsibili­ties include evangelism (of course, evangelism should be among every Christian’s duties) are so purely altruistic that they are indifferent to the fiscal implications of what they are about, or so purely cynical that they regard additions to the flock as nothing more than corporate assets. In short, most evangelists are to be found at neither the Dead Sea nor the Sea of Galilee, but afloat at some point along the Jordan River. The question then becomes: When one evangelizes, what is the telos, the end toward which one is working? Is one paddling toward the Dead Sea, or the Sea of Galilee?

On a recent edition of The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Episcopal Bishop Barbara Harris said, “Churches shouldn’t be involved in the numbers game.” There’s a certain pur­ity in that position — after all, Christians shouldn’t have to adopt the competitive ethic of corporate America — and she’s not the first to state it. Those of us in mainline Protestant churches tend to hear it a lot from our denom­inational leaders, generally as a justification for our precipitous numerical decline, usually from those whose offices are heavily endowed and whose sinecure would be preserved even if another human bottom never warmed an­other wooden pew. But evangelism, to use the purer definition, isn’t a matter of counting beans, but of sharing the Good News of God’s saving love with lost and suffering souls. And because it is, this ostensible “numbers game” has sacred dimensions, for every one of those numbers has a face and a name and a soul.

The Gallup organization recently pub­lished a useful study called 100 Questions and Answers: Religion in America, which shows that in matters of faith, we are a sadly confused people. The study reveals that 94 percent of all Americans believe in God, 84 percent be­lieve in the divinity of Christ, 82 percent be­lieve in modern-day miracles, 80 percent ex­pect the Last Judgment, and 77 percent con­sider the Bible the word of God, but only 65 percent belong to a church or synagogue, which probably explains why only 42 percent could name who delivered the Sermon on the Mount and why 23 percent believe in reincar­nation. Church membership is at its lowest point in the 51-year history of the survey. What are we to make of all this religious schizophrenia? I’m not sure, but it seems clear that if these trends continue, 100 percent of all Americans will eventually claim to be Chris­tian, and every one of them will be home or on the golf course on Sunday morning.

It may be that what we’re seeing is the triumph of privatization (in religion as well as economics). After all, this is what even the best and most honest televangelists do, simply by virtue of the medium with which they work: They privatize the faith. Its tasks — worship and nurture, stewardship and educa­tion — are removed from the community and relocated in the privacy of one’s own den. The Gallup survey tends to support this thesis: 76 percent think a person can be a good Christian or Jew if he doesn’t attend a church or synagogue. A majority of Americans (51 per­cent) defined “faith” as a relationship with God, while only 19 percent defined it as a particular body of beliefs. A plurality (39 percent) said a concentration on the spiritual growth of one’s family and self should be the top priority of Christians, while only 27 percent said it should be winning the world to Jesus Christ (evangelism), notwithstanding the Great Commission; and only 15 percent de­scribed it as supporting causes that would strengthen the entire community, regardless of what Matthew 25 says about our obligation to the least of Jesus’ brethren.

There is, of course, absolutely nothing wicked — and a great deal that is good — in seeking a relationship with God, and in con­centrating on one’s spiritual development. The danger comes when these intrinsic goods become ends in themselves, to be used as justification for what is a certifiable wrong: a self-imposed isolation born out of disdain for one’s neighbor. A “relationship with God” that has no basis in a right body of beliefs eventually becomes a conversation with one’s sovereign self; claiming to be a good Christian while absenting oneself from a community of faith is tantamount to saying one loves Christ but despises his Bride.

What all this indicates is that American Christianity is being consumerized, that every religious viewpoint, regardless of how goofy, can find a sect to match, even if the flock communes through a modem. It is now a convert’s market. Dislike the Catholic Church’s stand on sexual morals (57 percent of all Catholics do)? There are plenty of other Chris­tian denominations that will be happy to tell you you’re right, and the Church that has nestled you in her bosom is wrong. Think the sermon or homily grows more tedious every week? Get cable, and every Sunday morning you can have your choice of 15 sermons, at least one of which ought to make you laugh, make you cry, and make you feel you were right all along. Sick of hearing about steward­ship and tithing? There are scads of churches (most of them electronic) that will send you free cassettes and enter your name in the Lamb’s Book of Life for as little as $5 a month. This is Christian consumerism, spiritu­ality as a leisure activity. Any day now I antic­ipate some trendy entrepreneur patenting an Ignatius of Loyola Exercycle: It firms up the soul as it tightens up the quadriceps, and you never have to leave the comfort of your base­ment. Of course, old Screwtape understood the advantages that accrued to his cause when the faith of a Christian is purely spiritualized and privatized. In a letter to his protégé Wormwood, he advised, “Keep [your sub­ject’s] mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his at­tention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the status of his mind…. Encourage this.”

It would seem as if the Church, being mindful of her responsibilities, would do ev­erything she could to discourage this, even if in the doing she offended prospective members and caused them to seek spiritual solace elsewhere (perhaps among the many autobiog­raphies of Shirley MacLaine). After all, it’s no act of love to feed a neurosis, much less a heresy. And certainly it seems as if those who regard human beings as sacred souls and evangelism as a sacred trust would acknowl­edge how destructive the privatization of faith can be to the believer and to the community, and would thus refuse to accommodate it, much less sanctify it. But what if the chief end is to attract warm wallets (“Moo…”)? A recent United Methodist publication gives some tips on how to evangelize those all-important 77 million Baby Boomers:

Like any other group competing for scarce time among a group with fragmented attentions, [churches] can do three things: First, they can adver­tise. That means spelling out loudly and clearly where they are and who they are. Second, churches can let people know what benefits they offer. That doesn’t mean just worship. That means social activities for singles or child care for hard-pressed parents. Also, baby-boomers want you to be specific. They don’t respond to gener­alities. For example, it is far easier to get them to adopt — figuratively — a specific homeless person than to get them to contribute to the faceless poor. Third, churches can provide customer service. And that doesn’t mean just welcoming new people when they appear, but being flexible in meeting their needs.

In other words, cut the cloth to fit the customer: Tailor a personal religious experi­ence (we hardly dare call it a faith) that will accommodate the Boomer’s lifestyle, insure his entertainment, cool his fevered brow, and provide him a guilt-relieving social agenda that comes with its very own bag-lady. God forbid we should mention the cross.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with churches providing child care or special pro­grams for singles. These can be authentic forms of ministry. But under what mandate of God are churches compelled to offer bribes? How convenient do we have to make it before people will follow Christ? Have we no faith? Don’t we trust the Holy Spirit?

Recently a group of local clergy — a Lutheran pastor, a Methodist minister, an Episcopalian rector, and I — were graciously granted permission to hold a retreat at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. The Dominican House has its reliquary elements, ritual, and discipline grounded in an older, sterner age. This is, from all indica­tions, one tough order, the kind that could (and did) produce an Aquinas. Yet, at each of the gathering times, I was struck by what seemed a fairly large number of young nov­ices. I asked our guide about that — after all, I had heard the number of religious was de­clining. “You should have seen it a while back,” he said. “One year we had exactly one entering student.” What, then, had they changed? “Nothing,” he said. “We were faith­ful.”

Later that day, as we were walking out­side, I pointed to a handsome neo-Gothic building in the distance. “That’s where the [members of the thus-and-so order] are,” he said. The name was familiar. I asked, “Aren’t they the ones who got Guido Sarducci to do that recruiting ad for them?” Sarducci, for those who don’t know him, is a very secular priest, a comic creation of actor Don Novello. The ad featured Fr. Sarducci guaranteeing free meals for life at Italian restaurants (“We’re not talking subs, either.”) to anyone who entered the priesthood. I thought the ad was pretty funny. But then, I’m Protestant. I asked, “How’s their order doing?” My guide hesitat­ed for a long time, trying to find the right words. “Well,” he finally said, “I’m not sure how many serious people cared to join them.”

This is the dilemma: The Church is called to evangelize, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, but above all else, the Church is called to be the faithful Bride of Christ. Insti­tutional maintenance is not the raison d’etre of evangelism; and neither numerical growth nor decline is a reliable indicator that God’s will is either being done or undone. Seeing human beings as sacred souls very often means break­ing their hearts, which risks driving them away; seeing them as cash cows requires doing all within one’s power to keep them content and in the clover. If a church fervently strives to do God’s will, there will inevitably be those within it who fall away. This is not a new story: On that first Good Friday, how many apostles accompanied Jesus to the cross? As Phillips Brooks once told a group of seminary students, if a cleric’s primary aim is to keep his parishioners satisfied, he shouldn’t be serving a church; rather, he should be cob­bling shoes to fit them and painting bad portraits to flatter them.

Evangelism that caters to the baser spirit­ual instincts — to the privatization of faith, to self-interest, to convenience, to the Zeitgeist — may be an evangelism that, in the secular sense, is wildly successful. It may very well pack the pews and cram the coffers. But it will, in a very fundamental way, have cheated those whom it seeks to convert, and been un­faithful to the Gospel of our Lord. When Jesus called the first apostles — “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” — he wasn’t promising them a pension; he was summon­ing them to a job. Chesterton’s memorable line, “The Christian ideal…has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried,” has not ceased to be true. The demands of the Christian faith are hard, because the world is hard, and the Church must stand against it. An evangelism that caters to the appetites of the world is ul­timately an evangelism that betrays the ones for whom Christ died.