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The Evangelist as a Companion
Today on the Feast Day of John, Apostle and Evangelist, we are sharing an extract from Anglican Evangelists: Identifying and Training a New Generation. In this extract editor Martyn Snow writes about his own experiences of his vocation to ministry and how to be a 'true evangelist' we must accompany people on their own journey rather than just being there for a crisis moment.
What then is the work of an evangelist? To return to my own experience for a moment, I discovered, eighteen years in to ordained ministry, that I had a clear sense of calling to the particular work of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in everyday situations (the pub, the coffee shop) as well as training others in this work (my ‘Big Conversation’ weekends are always done with a team of curates, ordinands and local Christians). When I meet people in these everyday situations, I am determined to do more than simply ‘pass the time of day’ with them. I listen, I seek to respond with compassion and grace (in the way Jesus did in his conversations), and then I seek to connect and ask probing questions that begin to link what they’ve told me with the story of God’s purposes as revealed in the Scriptures and supremely in the person of Jesus Christ.
This doesn’t mean that every conversation leads to someone being ‘converted’. I have had various people over the years tell me that if I were a true evangelist, I would be regularly praying with people as they ‘make a commitment’. Well, quite apart from the fact that this suggests one very particular understanding of conversion, it also doesn’t match my experience or the context of twenty-first century Britain. Yes, there have been a number of occasions when I felt it right to suggest to someone that they say a simple prayer offering their life to God. However, most usually, I have simply tried to find ways to continue the conversation (often through an enquirers’ group or some other church activity). I am quite a fan of Rowan Williams’ definition of evangelism as ‘journeying in conversation’, and of his answer to the interview question imagining a conversation with a man at a bus stop: “My bus leaves in two minutes. Tell me about the resurrection in the time remaining”, to which he is reported to have said: “I think I’d have asked the man where he was going, then said that I’d accompany him on the journey.”
A true evangelist, then, accompanies people on this journey rather than simply being there for a ‘crisis moment’ (important though the latter often is). In my experience, people have come to know the love and grace and mystery of God in a variety of ways, but most often it involves long-term relationships, together with ‘ritual, rhetoric and role’. These four elements, according to a study conducted by Tory K. Baucum, provide the ‘culture of faith’ or the ‘evangelistic womb’ where trust in Christ is birthed.“Rituals give integrative ways of identification and connection with the new way of life; rhetoric provides an interpretive system, offering guidance and meaning to the convert; and roles consolidate a person’s involvement by giving him or her a special mission to fulfil.” Baucum’s study is based on a comparison of Alpha and early Methodism. He concludes that people are transformed “by changing primary reference groups and embracing their new meaning systems and learning to abide in the new plausibility structures which undergird the new meaning.” As well as Alpha and the Methodist ‘class’ system, there is a similarity here with other approaches to catechesis and the process used at different points in the church’s history to prepare candidates for baptism.
Other writers who have followed a similar approach include Michael Moynagh who is part of the UK Fresh Expressions team. He has proposed a ‘companionship model’, suggesting that just as Jesus is the divine Word (John 1) speaking the word of God with the authority of God, so also, he “speaks the word of the obedient creature in response to God.” Jesus then is the ‘interlocutor’ between God and humanity, embodying within himself two-way communication – from God to humanity and from humanity to God. Moynagh then expands on this approach to argue that “the Church is to inform the world that God wants to be in conversation with it… [offering] the invitation to join the conversation of the Trinity.” This involves the church being present wherever people lead their lives – not just physically present, but culturally close, speaking the language that people understand, using the thought forms of the people with whom we engage. This work of ‘translation’ lies at the heart of the calling of the evangelist – just as Jesus translated God’s call and invitation through the incarnation.
Extract from Anglican Evangelists, edited by Martyn Snow
For twenty years, the Archbishops' College of Evangelists has affirmed and supported Anglican evangelists. This book, marking the College's twentieth anniversary relaunch, relaunches the College with a clear focus on identifying and training new evangelists.
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