In their book Total Church, Tim Chester & Steve Timmis discusse evangelism in a way a bit different than how we typically discuss it. Their overall point in the book is that the Gospel creates a type of “life together” (to use Bonhoeffer’s phrase). The community created by the Gospel is the basic orientation of each member of the church (he contrasts this with a church as a “preaching center” where people appear once a week to get their “spiritual groceries” and then go back to their real lives).

This works out in evangelism as the entire congregation is participant in evangelism. Rather than evangelism being a only proclamation, “Jesus died for you” (they by no means discount the actual proclamation), the proclamation is embodied in the congregation (all of them) (John 13:35).

The gospel word and the gospel community are closely connected. The word creates and nourishes the community, while the community proclaims and embodies the word. The church is the mother of all believers, Calvin asserted, in that she “brings them to new birth by the Word of God, educates and nourishes them all their life, strengthens them and finally leads them to complete perfection.” Martin Luther believed that “The church . . . is constituted by the Word.” He also likened the church to a mother “who gives birth to you and bears you through the Word.”

The evangelism he envisions is actually more demanding, not less demanding that what we typically think of as evangelism:

Continue reading →