Evangelism After Christendom
By Bryan Stone
Brazos Press
If to evangelize is to offer good news and the feet of the bringer of the welcome message are "beautiful" (in the words of the prophet Isaiah, 52:7), why is this so often not the case in today's world? For many people, evangelism is neither welcomed nor warranted, and the evangelist's feet are anything but beautiful. For some, it is synonymous with intolerance or an attitude of superiority. For others, it evokes the sad and shameful history of forced conversions, crusades, and Western imperialism and so has become a "dirty word."
Bryan Stone, who is currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Boston University School of Theology, has written the most comprehensive and challenging book on evangelism I have ever read. Ten chapters divided into five parts unfold Stone's carefully argued quest to "reclaim the E-word as expressing something positive, vital, and beautiful about the Christian life" in a world where it is often feared, if not loathed, as a belligerent attempt to coerce others to our way of thinking.
The argument of this book is that the "prevailing model of practical reasoning employed to a great extent by contemporary evangelism is inadequate to the Christian faith, ecclesiologically bankrupt, morally vacuous, and tyrannized by a means-end causality that is eschatologically hopeless insofar as it externalizes means from end." More than just pointing out the flaws of much that is called evangelism today, Stone works hard to reconstruct evangelism for a "post-Christendom, postmodern era." He asks, "Might evangelism be a practice that calls forth the highest in creative energies, intellect, and imagination of Christians rather than a crass exercise in marketing the church to consumers within a world of abundant and competing options?" and he does not equivocate in his sure affirmative answer. The church must not give in to the "temptation to acquiesce to the world's demand that the gospel be good news on the world's own terms."
To illustrate his understanding of evangelism as a "practice," Stone (drawing from McClendon) compares it to a game. A game has four necessary elements: an end or goal, the means to the end, the rules by which it is played, and the proper attitude in playing. There are three sorts of "non-players":
1. Cheats (who recognize the goals but not the rules),
2. Triflers (who recognize the rules but not the goals), and
3. Spoilsports (who recognize neither).
Only players observe both rules and goals. The application to evangelism? Evangelistic cheats focus on the end (usually the external end - number of converts) and disregard the integrity and virtues intrinsic to evangelism. Evangelistic triflers go through the motions but are disconnected from the aims, motives and attitudes of true evangelism, resulting in sheer busyness. Spoilsports give up on it altogether and do something else claiming, perhaps, that it is evangelism. Stone warns that whenever "evangelism is pressed into the service of external ends (power, influence, church growth, [it] is subverted from the outset) it loses even when it wins - indeed it loses because it wins."
The dominant image of evangelism for Stone is "witness." Evangelism is ecclesial. "Throughout history, as Scripture testifies, God calls and forms people that, through its worship and obedience, is itself God's message and offer to the world - a living 'letter,' as Paul puts it."
This is not an easy book to read. But it is an important book that I think pastors, evangelists, and church leaders should take very seriously. In his introduction, Stone confesses that he is tempted to claim that his 335 page tome "is little more than a gloss on the thought of [John Howard] Yoder" or an introduction to his theology of evangelism and he engages Yoder's prophetic thought thoroughly throughout. Along the way, he draws a host of thinkers into the rich conversation - names many Christian leaders and thinkers will recognize: Alisdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, James McClendon, William Willimon, Walter Brueggemann, William Abraham, and Lesslie Newbigin, to name a few.
The blurb on the back of the paperback edition of Stone's book includes the following comment by another professor of evangelism and prolific author, Leonard Sweet:
"Not often, but every now and then, a book comes along that not only draws together the literature of the last thirty years but also pushes the conversation forward for decades to come. Stone has written such a book. Everyone writing in the field of evangelism cannot go around, only through, this masterpiece." Everyone seriously reading and thinking would do well to follow suit.
Originally from the United States, Dave Hogan serves as a co-pastor in a local church in Singapore and works with his wife, Debbie, as a counselor in a private practice.