The Uniting Church in Australia national Network for Mission & Evangelism, for which I’m deputy convenor, just hosted a weekend conference on evangelism in Adelaide. Attended by 120 people from across the country, it’s the first national conference on this subject held by the UCA in 15 years.
The Uniting Church is not strong on sharing faith while expecting anyone to respond. We do OK with theology, public theology even. We’ve got a thing for inter-faith dialogue. But anything to do with invitation, recruitment, proselytisation or conversion is steered away from. There are some good reasons for this. We’ve seen too many evangelistic campaigns marked by spiritual abuse. We’re aware that we live in a pluralistic society in which criticism of the world beliefs of others can be seen as offensive.
I suspect that many Uniting Church members shy away from inviting others to explore faith because they’re not convinced that Christianity is a great product worth sharing. I’m with these people. Modern evangelism of the 20th century, with its narrow focus on personal (individual) assurance of life after death, (individual) acceptance of God’s forgiveness, and (individual) repentance from sin, has condensed and distorted the gospel of Jesus. However our suspicion of encouraging the individualist piety of others has made it hard to imagine that others might make a personal response to the invitation of God.
Andrew Dutney this weekend held the mirror up to the UCA’s ageing profile and loss of nerve re connecting with those out side the congregation. John and Olive Drane reminded us that we need to rediscover our creativity and courage in relating to new communities. Vicki Balabanski invited us to unpack Paul’s language of salvation and gospel. We need more clarity in our language, imagery and story telling. “If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?”, is Paul’s quote from 1 Corinthians 14:8, written in the context of choice of language for clear communication.
We had a lot of seminars and workshops, led by practitioners, including my 90 minutes on “Engaging the Gospel”. I was able to sit in on two sessions (providing IT support) led by members of Adelaide Congress Ministry (Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress). The most significant take away for me was the connection between personal stories, community stories, the recovery of language and the fostering of creativity.
The national network of mission and evangelism is next meeting in November, with a focus on multi/cross/inter-cultural flavours.