‘Doing’ Evangelism: The Way Forward

Where are we going?

In our previous posts, we discussed how evangelicalism emphasized the evangelistic mission of the Church to a fault, such that it detached from the Church to become its own spiritual energy. We discussed how this energy became increasingly individualistic and driven by interpersonal persuasion to convert, and how this rhetorical shape made it susceptible to being co-opted by political causes. The marriage of the evangelical energy with political action in America, in particular, has spawned a kind of post-Chrisitan civic religion in the eyes of which the historical and traditional Church is seen as an enemy. 

We closed our last entry by noting how many have fled the evangelical world into the supposed safe-haven of traditionalism, only to find a kind of equal-but-opposite problem. As largely a reaction to evangelicalism, traditionalism is an emphasis on the “way-it’s-always-been-ness” of the Church. In healthy settings, this is a rightful sense of accountability to an often overlooked demographic of Christians–the faithful departed with Christ. In unhealthy settings, though, we see a distortion of ‘tradition,’ the communal apprenticeship in faith and practice over centuries, to become traditionalism, a means of preserving power and control in the wake of change. Without breaking from a reactive mode of living, Christians will bounce back and forth from evangelicalism to traditionalism until they grow weary and despairing. The unbounded energy of the former nor the arthritic inertia of the latter converge only to exasperate the soul.

So what are we to do to become properly evangelistic Christians again, and ones who don’t merely wind back the clock to earlier in the evangelical timeline, doomed to repeat the same tragic trajectory? The answer, as I suggested in the previous post, is ‘traditional’ but not at all in the inwardness of traditionalism. A more technical term for it is the ‘ascetical,’ the field of wisdom in the Church seeking the practical ways we are made disciples through time among a people. This is the way of knowing God that converts and conforms our lives to Christ, and becomes the foundation of our engagement with those who need to know Christ. In language very common at our parish, it is formation in a life of prayer in community that will make us stably, plausibly, and compellingly evangelistic as Christians. 

The Lord’s Pattern of Formation

Let’s look at how our Lord trained His own disciples. We can observe in the Gospel of St. Matthew a curious relationship between secrecy and boldness when it comes to discipleship. At times it can seem confusing: is Jesus telling us to keep to ourselves or to be outward? The answer, I believe, is in understanding the progression from habitual prayer to public works. First, our Lord is clear that the attentive disclosure of our hearts to God in secret is the taproot of authentic discipleship: 

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others…But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt. 6:5-6). 

Second, this attention to the interior life produces the character and content of the exterior life: 

“How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (Mt. 12:34-35). 

Third, we see that as prayer in secret transforms the heart to produce goodness, the public works of the Christian naturally proceed as a sign to the world: 

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden…In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that  they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 5:14-16). 

While our Lord exhorts us to both secrecy and interiority, He also expects His followers that they serve as beacons of His Kingdom before the eyes of the world. Through prayer, we become a sacramental sign of God’s presence and the body through whom He exercises His power. 

Prayer as the Anchor of Community

Following our Lord, evangelism clearly begins with prayer. The communion we share in secret with the Father through the Son in the Spirit is the very thing that bestows substance to all we then go on to do. Without this vital communion, the rest of our ministry is tilted toward frailty and vanity. Prayer is the experience of the life we have in God through Baptism. Prayer is the experience of conversion from our dying flesh and its attachment to the world to become spiritual again. Prayer is the participation and inculturation in that life into which we hope to invite others in evangelism. It is the substance of what we proclaim in the evangel.

Prayer, though it operates in the inmost part of our heart–the secret place of communion with the Father–is by no means a solitary affair. In this is something of a paradox. The kind of interior communion to which the Lord calls us can and must be exercised in community with our brethren in Christ. Common prayer is this very thing, the arrangement of an encounter in which we as ourselves and as one body meet with the Lord. The public nature of this prayer does not negate its validity after our Lord’s command. Liturgy is not, by default, a hypocritical performance (though sadly it can be). The praying life of the brethren together is the place where the graces of the Church are received, where they are formed, and from where they are extended outwardly.

Each Christian’s prayer life, if healthy, will draw them into the experience of praying together with the faithful. If we are praying in Christ truly, then we will participate in the Will of Christ, which is always that we become one after that Will. Authentic prayer issues forth in and anchors the community. It is the people into which the evangelistic grace will call the seeker. For this reason, prioritizing the health of that community’s life of prayer is of the utmost importance. To willfully permit dysfunction in our communities is not merely an inward problem, but a sacrilege against the grace of God which draws all to partake of new life in His Church. We cannot be serious about evangelism until we commit to living in a stable and mature life of prayer together.

From Community to Hospitality

Community is a function of communion with God as a people in a place. It is the good creation of God who converts an amalgam of mere individuals into a fellowship that shares His own life. As that community matures in prayer, the natural fruit of its life will be the likeness of the God whose life upholds it. The Church is the sacrament of Christ in this world. The next step in ‘doing evangelism’ is to cultivate a practice of hospitality, of making space for others and outsiders to come in. 

The way we have practiced this in our own community is through regular fasting and prayer. Fasting is the ancient discipline of making space–in the stomach and then in the heart. As we do this together, our hearts become practiced at regularly saying a meaningful ‘no’ to themselves, to not use up all their own space, to open that created space for the presence of another. We invite God into this space, and as we grow in it we will find that God invites into the space we have created for Him one who bears His likeness in ‘one of the least of these.’ As is our Lord’s habit, He makes one His little ones to sit in His place, and that is true as well of the place we have left Him in our heart. Christian hospitality is designating a tithe of our hearts, and by extension our communal fellowship, for purposes beyond our designs. And it is that space from and toward which the evangelistic work of the Spirit will move. 

From Hospitality to Evangelism

As we grow more comfortable with the space that is kept tidy and open for the Lord’s purposes within each of us and among all of us, we will find that the fasting and prayer and diligence to keep it open becomes for us a habit of watchfulness, of attentiveness to how the Lord is making use of that space. As is the case with anything to which we dedicate time and practice, familiarity grows and with it the opportunity to deliberately participate in the activity. Hospitality becomes more and more evangelism as it becomes a potential space for others to a place of active involvement. At last, the ‘doing’ part of evangelism is the fruit of our proficiency to tend for those whom the Lord invites into the space made ready for the season they are, in His Name, in our care. And it is when, engaged in this work, that we experience a sure sign of the Lord’s goodwill among us. We find that having offered ourselves to this work, and the sacrifice of what space we can offer in our fledgling attempts and ministries, we are graced with the multiplication and expansion of that space. As Leon Bloy quipped: “there are places in the heart that do not yet exist.” But we will find, through our faithfulness in few things, that we are made able to become faithful in much. The two-bedroom flats of our interior lives become mansions fit for the Lord and His brethren.

Conclusion

It is always a bit strange to me to talk of ‘doing’ evangelism. Evangelism is a natural property of baptismal life. All Christians are, by definition, evangelistic. It is surely the case that some are graced with an extraordinary form of this property, exercising spectacular boldness and zeal to proclaim the gospel out of the abundance of the life of Christ within them. But even for those of us who know this gift in the ordinary form, we are no less called to maturity, to grow in proficiency in our prayer, fellowship, hospitality, and evangelism. While there is abundant compassion in our Lord for those who toddle about before learning to stride in this Christian work, it is a calling on all of us that we evangelize as much as we can without worrying about how we cannot. 

I close with a call to hope and courage. In returning to evangelism from the evangelical parody of it, we are returned to a real thing with real consequences. Unlike the enclosed systems of ideologies, we cannot predict how our Lord will call us into evangelistic service, what the reaction of the world around us will be, or what the temporal cost such work may require. In returning to evangelism, we let go of much of our control and the delusions that attend it. But just beyond that fear is freedom, and we are still being taught what that life looks like. As St. John says, “what we shall be has not yet appeared.” That’s true for each of us and for all of us together. As persons and as a people, we are becoming what in Christ we have been made to be even now. He is in our midst and extending His salvation through us to a world that needs His new life. When He appears, may we appear with He wills for us to be.  Until then, let us labor on in the freedom for which Christ has made us free, the freedom to share the life we have received.
May it please our Lord, as we pray each week in our Litany for Evangelism, “to fill us with such love for one another that all may perceive in our midst the presence of Christ and be drawn into His holy fellowship and service.”