Sense and Sensibility: Two Dimensions of Pioneering Evangelism

[This message was given at the close of a half-day conference with EMF at my church, Freeschool Court Church, Bridgend, Wales, on 19th November 2022. I had been asked to stand in for my friend who was not well.]

We have been listening throughout the morning to the great challenge of taking the glorious message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the dark continent of Europe.

And what a challenge it is!

How can we be faithful in reaching Europe with the gospel in the 21^st Century?

It seems to me that there are two miss-steps we can make as we think through that question:

1.     It all comes down to strategy. We need to research the European scene in careful detail, analysing the social demographics, and interpreting the cultural themes that dominate the minds of her people. Then we need to assess methods of engagement, adopt successful models, manage our ‘human resources’, train a rising generation in the latest in effective mission techniques, invest in dynamic technologies, and develop a sustainable support base to ensure that we can always affirm that “God’s work, done in God’s way, will never lack God’s supply.”

2.     It all comes down to the Holy Spirit. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to lead the ministry. If we are truly spiritual people, we will be filled with the Spirit and we will be able to operate in the power of the Spirit rather than in the power of the flesh. In the spirit of the Proverbs, if in all our ways we acknowledge him, he will direct our paths. And in that way, we will taste success in in such a way that has never before been seen in the history of missions. The Spirit will give us Europe. 

Now, these are really caricatures, and in practice we may be hard pressed to find such extreme thinking in reality. But we can readily find examples of churches and organizations who have adopted one or the other of these models as their general approach.

Why do I say these two approaches to ministry in Europe today are miss-steps? For a simple reason: each, at least in these stereotypical forms, leaves no room for the other. They are totalizing. All you need, say both camps, is this. They are Shredded Wheat approaches: nothing added, nothing taken away.

How should we move forward in the great task of disciple making 20 centuries after the Lord first gave his disciples his final instructions? 

It seems to me that we need to have a two-dimensional approach. And I think we can see that very clearly in the story of the way the gospel first came to the mainland of what we now call Europe, around the year 50AD. Turn with me to Acts 16:6-15.

So in this wonderful story, we observe two dimensions of pioneering evangelism – with apologies to Jane Austen – sense and sensibility:

1.    Sense

Imagine the scene: Paul and his companions are walking through the hot, dry interior of what is now called Turkey. Where are they going? They were not wandering around the Mediterranean Basin in a random manner. 

If you look carefully at Paul’s movements throughout the book of Acts, you will be struck that Paul was intentional in all he did. Remember how he was sent out from Antioch, and how he and Barnabas “went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus” (Acts 13:4)? Why did they go there on their first excursion? We are not told, but that fact that we are told that Barnabas was from Cyprus surely gives us a very strong clue. That was Barnabas’ place. He knew it well. He had connections. They could stay with relatives. He understood the Cypriot mindset and could help Paul to avoid some of the faux pas that every cross-cultural worker knows so well.

But where do they go when they land in Cyprus? The port towns of Salamis where they landed and Paphos from where they sailed for Perga in Pamphylia to the north. And that is what we see on all Paul’s gospel journeys – he makes for important cities and when he arrives proclaims the gospel, often staying until he is kicked out.

Clearly, Paul and his companions were seeking to evangelise according to a plan, according to an approach, according to a strategy. They were in other words, using their sense. Using their God-given gift of intelligence.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans he tells them that he had “planned many times to come to you” (Rom 1:13). At the end of his letter, he outlines his whole approach to his ministry: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation” (Rom 15:20). Then he tells them of his ‘plan’ to visit them on his way to Spain (24). 

In the same way, Paul discusses his plans to visit the church in Corinth (2 Cor 1:15-17).

Now this is important. As we have seen, there are those who suggest that strategic planning is unspiritual. They criticise those who spend time researching the people among whom they are hoping to witness. “Just go out and see how the Spirit leads you,” they say. Strategy is unspiritual.

Not so to Paul. And that is why he and his companions, Silas and Timothy, were on their way through the interior. They had revisited the cities at which they had previously preached: places like Derbe and Lystra. And now they are heading west. Where are they going? They are heading to the Roman Province of Asia. Now that is not the vast continent we call Asia today. Asia in Paul’s day was a much smaller region – a Roman Province. And, more importantly, Paul is heading for Ephesus, the principal city of the province. How do we know that? In v. 6 we read that they had “been kept by the HS from preaching the word in the province of Asia.” But there is further evidence: this verse begins a new act in the drama of the Acts of the Apostles. You can see it is a new act because the previous verse is one of Luke’s summary statements (5).

So Asia is mentioned right at the beginning of this section – of this act. Paul is wanting to preach in Asia, and especially at its principal city, Ephesus. He doesn’t manage to get there at first but gets diverted – more on that in a minute. But after he and his team travel all around Macedonia and Achaia they do in fact end up in Ephesus (19:1). Finally, phew, they arrive in the great city and have such a fruitful visit they end up staying for over two years (19:10). And so Luke can wrap up that act in the drama by showing how Paul’s plan had been successful, even though he had had to get there in a convoluted manner (19:20).

So really, Paul’s ministry in Macedonia and Achaia could be described as a diversion from Paul’s plan. But what a diversion it was. And that leads us to the other dimension of pioneering evangelism:

2.    Sensibility

By this I mean, sensitivity, or the ability to perceive the leading of the Spirit.

Paul and his companions “were kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia” (Acts 16:6). That would mean nothing if they hadn’t been prevented from carrying out a plan. In the next verse we read that they “tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.” 

We are not told in what way the Holy Spirit had prevented them from ministering in Asia and Bithynia. Perhaps there was a word of prophecy. Or a dream. Or maybe it was circumstantial, a river in flood across their path, for instance. We are not told. But whatever it was, Luke tells us that it was the work of the Spirit. And they recognised it as such. That is what I mean when I say they had sensibility, or sensitivity.

And so they pass by Mysia and make their way down to the port city of Troas (8). And it is there, during the night, that Paul has a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’ (9). Well, you would think with such sensibility as Paul evidently had it would be a no-brainer. But read on and how do we find them responding to that vision (10)? Don’t miss it. They “concluded that God had called [them] to preach the gospel to them.” How did they do that? They must have talked it over. Paul could be very strong when he needed to be. But he did not issue a directive. He mulled it over with his companions, Silas and Timothy and now also Luke.

I love that about Paul. He planned, he strategized, he used the sense that God had given him. But he was also sensible – sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit in extraordinary ways. And even with such extraordinary leading, he still discussed it with his companions. Wouldn’t you have loved to be part of that team? No heavy handedness, no throwing his weight around, no abuse of power. A far cry from the way that some gospel workers operate.

So, they put to sea and arrive in Neapolis (11). And after disembarking they make their way up the hill on the outskirts of the town, and down the other side, heading inland through the Macedonian scrubland to find the Egnation Way, the Roman road that linked the eastern part of the empire with Imperial Rome itself. And after a few hours of walking, there it is.

They join the road with its marble flagstone heavily rutted by the chariots and carts of numerous Roman legions, and head west for the important Roman colony of Philippi. They can see the rocky hill of the Acropolis up ahead, above the city. And finally they arrive at their destination. It is a small city – less than half a mile across and packed with houses, administrative buildings, a market place and forum, and off to their right, at the foot of the Acropolis, the amphitheatre whose acoustics no doubt Paul was eager to try out.

And we are told that they stay there several days. They need to rest after their journey. No doubt also they are praying that the Lord would open up a door of opportunity for the gospel.

And so it is that, on the Sabbath, they make their way passed the prison on their right and out of the city, and ten minutes later arrive at a small river, where, just as they expected, they find a place of prayer (13). And it is there that they speak to the women who have gathered.

And then read this: “One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth.” And then these wonderful words: “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” (14).

And that is how the gospel first came to the European mainland.

What Can We Learn from This?

We must always resist the temptation to reduce the ministry that the Lord has given us to a single dimension. It’s not sense or sensibility. It is sense and sensibility. And that means we can learn two lessons for our ministry in Europe today:

1.     The Lord has given us minds. And one of the works of the Spirit in the life of a believer is to elevate our minds so that we can think clearly and be wise in the way we act. So it is entirely appropriate for us to do our demographic research and our social analysis and our cultural interpretation. Because that is a God-glorifying use of our rational faculties. That is why, a few weeks later, Paul could say to the Athenian philosophers, “As I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD” (Acts 17:23). What a thing for the zealous Jew Paul to do! Before he came to Christ, he would not have been seen dead near a detestable idol. But now the Lord had liberated him from that scrupulosity. He would observe their artefacts. He would read their poets. He would find points of contact, the bridges of God, and he would cross them with the gospel. He was not worried about being polluted by false religion. He would reason with everyone who would want to engage with his message.

2.     The Lord has not left us as orphans. He has given us his Spirit. You remember the last words of our Lord before he was taken up into heaven in front of his disciples: “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Spirit would lead them. And he would ensure that the gospel would ring out across the globe. Even to Europe, and the other ends of the earth. And sometimes he will do that by diverting us away from our best laid plans and sending us to a country controlled by the mafia, a university controlled by the thought police, or a sink estate where no one controls anything.

May the Lord give us grace to use the gifts he has given us and the wisdom and sensitivity to recognise when he will have us go out of our comfort zone and step into the unknown, trusting him to lead us. Amen.

The Southgate Fellowship: Conceptualising Our Priorities

TSF engages with the thorny issue of how to define and delineate the mission of the church. Rightly, they emphasise the need for people to put their faith in Christ:

67a) We affirm that people have needs of all kinds, but that every person’s greatest need is for faith in Christ and repentance from sin to the glory of God in Christ Jesus.

So proclamation of the gospel is paramount.

But mercy ministry is also important. Many have tried to conceptualize the relationship of mercy ministry with the ministry of proclamation.

TSF’s position is thus:

74a) We affirm that to separate mercy ministry and ministry of the Word is to be out of accord with Christ’s commission. 

74b) We deny that either form of ministry is an isolated or exclusive priority. 

74c) We affirm that in the church’s mission to the world, it is biblically informed wisdom which will recommend the order and leading priority of Word or deed for each occasion.

That encapsulates well my own view which has been argued best by Tim Chester in Good News to the Poor.

What place does the incarnation have in the theology of ministry to the poor?

TSF includes a good set of affirmations and denials on the incarnation of Christ (§§40-42). I think their prime concern here is that a maximal doctrine of incarnation has often been used to underpin various forms of liberation theology.

It seems to me, however, that the statement goes too far in this denial:

42c) We deny that the sui generis incarnation of the eternal Son of God offers a proper analogy for construing contextualisation as ‘incarnational’.

They argue, rightly of course, that it is logically impossible for those who already have flesh to be enfleshed and go on to argue that the “use of 'incarnational' to describe Jesus as a model effectively undermines the sui generis character of God becoming flesh in Christ.”

But that ain't necessarily so.

The incarnation of the eternal Son of God is indeed sui generis (of its own kind).

However, if we accept and preach that, which we must, then any comparison of his incarnation and that of the intercultural communicator is, by definition, understood analogically. So, when Paul instructs the Corinthian believers to “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1) surely no one argues that Paul was hoping to give his life a sacrifice of atonement. Rather, he could follow Christ’s example by having “the same mindset as Christ” in his humility (Phil 2:5-11).

So, an incarnational approach to intercultural ministry is one of foregoing one’s rights, of clothing oneself with humility.

Far too much cross-cultural ministry goes on without any serious attempt to identify with the host community; more so today than ever before because of the ease of travel. I have a sneaking suspicion that people who argue against the incarnation of the Son of God having any bearing on contextualization do so because they do not want to spend the long time necessary to embody the gospel in that host community. I hope that is not the case, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is.

Perhaps, in God’s providence, the coronavirus pandemic will deter short-term, low-commitment, shallow ministry among underserved communities.

My prayer is that it doesn’t also deter long-term, high-commitment, in-depth ministry. Because it is chiefly through such gospel communicators, sharing their lives and not just their words, that people come to see the beauty of Jesus. I don’t really care if the word incarnational is used for this sort of ministry or not, so long as it happens.

Learning from Roland Allen (and Paul) Today

It is over a century now since Roland Allen, a British former missionary to China published Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours? (Download a free pdf of the book here: http://ia700300.us.archive.org/35/items/missionarymethod00alle/missionarymethod00alle.pdf.) Not many books are still in print so long after their initial publication. So what makes it so significant? In this book, Allen compares Paul’s approach with those that were common at the turn of the 20^th century. Contemporary methods were heavily influenced by colonial attitudes oftentimes manifesting a superior spirit towards native believers. There was a reluctance to give authority to local believers. Often it was felt that converts needed long periods of instruction before they were baptized and given membership of a church. Mission control over native churches was a given.

Although Allen was a High Churchman this does not seriously affect the expression of his missionary principles (‘Methods’ is actually a misleading title) except in perhaps one respect which we will note later. He was hot on the work of the Spirit in mission and the centrality of the Word and so his principles fit easily with a Reformed approach. He abhorred the pragmatic approach that focussed on the overwhelming difficulties in the way of establishing churches and believed that missions had failed because of obstacles that they had introduced.

Allen’s Argument

 

The chapters of Missionary Methods are logically arranged and seek one by one to answer the question, What was the reason for Paul’s success?

1.      Introduction.

2.      Strategic Points. Paul deliberately made the most of the administrative, linguistic, and cultural advantages available in the Roman system.

3.      Class. Paul did not have a strategy of approaching the elite of the societies he was reaching out to.

4.      Moral and Social Condition. The spiritual, moral and social condition of the first century Mediterranean world was just as corrupt as any society you will find on earth in the contemporary context. Paul had no advantage over the contemporary scene.

5.      Miracles. Paul’s miracles were significant but their significance must not be exaggerated.

6.      Finance. Allen makes three assertions concerning Paul’s use of money: (1) he did not seek financial help for himself; (2) he took no financial help to those to whom he preached; (3) he did not administer local church funds.

7.      The Substance of Paul’s Preaching. Allen draws out a number of lessons from Paul’s preaching: he was sensitive to his hearers; he didn’t blast them; he was no inclusivist; he preached the wrath of God; he did demand of them a moral and spiritual change and was not content to merely sow the seed; and finally he preached for individual change but also for social communion.

8.      The Teaching. Allen asserts that much contemporary mission work of his time teaches new believers to rely not on the Spirit but on the missionary.

9.      The Training of Candidates for Baptism and Ordination. Teaching followed baptism. This does not mean that the rite was carelessly administered. Allen concludes that Paul admitted only a few people of known reputation who showed real faith then handed over the admission procedure to those men. Likewise in the appointment of elders.

10.  Authority and Discipline. The churches were not dependent on the apostle but neither were they independent of him.

11.  Unity. The churches that Paul founded were one in spirit. Paul refused to make them one in form or structure. Allen also points out that nowhere does Paul “establish a priori tests of orthodoxy”.

In the last 3 chapters Allen seeks to apply the principles he has expounded to the contemporary situation. 

Analysis

 

It is impossible in a blog post to do justice to Allen’s thought. However, it is important to see how Allen both built on previous work and paved the way for later thinking on contextualization. Clearly Allen was drawing on the work of a half-century previous by Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson with their call for churches in mission situations to become indigenous. Allen’s emphasis on the work of the Spirit is refreshing and shows up the lack of theological grounds for the overbearing nature of much missionary control, at least in the past—but one wonders about situations today too.

Allen asserts that the modern missionary, like Paul, should move on from planting a church much earlier than has traditionally been the case. He must leave the new church to the care of the Spirit. Here I think Allen takes a big risk. One can certainly sympathize with this approach. The security of the new church certainly does not depend on the presence of the missionary. Still today, so many years after Allen’s thinking was published missionaries are often found to be in a situation for decades, eventually leaving a stunted and impoverished church.

But should a missionary up and leave after just a few weeks or months? Here Allen surely overstates his case. Paul, after all, often had to leave a new church not by his own choice but because he was drummed out of town, such as at Thessalonica and Berea (Acts 17). Furthermore, sometimes he did in fact choose to stay for a considerable time, as at Ephesus (Acts 19). Allen clearly has, here, misrepresented Paul. Allen’s theological contentment with leaving the new church so quickly must be found in his High Churchmanship. For Allen leaving a new church with the Sacraments for their nurture was enough. No evangelical will surely be content with that. The Lord’ commission included the injunction to teach the disciples to obey all that he had commanded them (Matt 28:20). That implies ongoing ministry, whether by the church planter or by those he has trained and equipped.

Nevertheless, Allen’s insistence that new believers have the Spirit and can therefore be confidently commended to the Lord and left without missionary control is a principle that is still as needed today as it was when he stated it.

The work of Roland Allen stands squarely in the stream of precursors to the contemporary missiological debates about contextualization. His work came out of reflection on his contemporary situation and almost a century later still deserves a careful reading.