Ethical Evangelism

If I had to choose just one cardinal virtue for ethical evangelism, it would be: Honesty.

Ethical evangelism at its simplest involves making sure that what you are saying and doing are consistent with what you believe. 

It’s worth having a conversation as a church about what you believe about being a Christian. What difference do you think it makes? A lot of people out there have a caricature of evangelists which means they assume we think they are going to hell if they don’t believe, though very few churchgoing Christians actually hold that view. But if you don’t think that, be prepared to explain why you want to share the good news of God’s love. Honestly, what difference do you think it will make to them? And start that conversation by being honest about what difference it makes to you.

Be honest with the person you are talking to about your own faith and doubts. Be honest about your own religious experiences, whatever they may be. Be honest about the bits you struggle with, too. Don’t give them ‘the script’ or try to second guess what the right answers might be, or what you think your Vicar would like to hear you say - have the confidence to trust that the story God has given you, in all its naked truth, is enough. Like the story of Jesus feeding thousands with the five loaves and two fish, all we have is all we can share - and when we offer that to God and to the world in all its simplicity, we can be astounded at how it is more than ample to feed all who are hungry.

Here are three specific ways in which I believe honesty in evangelism is important:

1. Be honest about what an event will involve. Obviously, when you are planning an outreach event, think about what will attract people. Don’t do what you already do that isn’t working - instead, think what you would genuinely and enthusiastically invite your friends to, whether thats a community BBQ or a comedy night. And if you decide to have an explicitly evangelistic element to the event, don’t ambush people with it. Make it quite clear that, for example, the quiz night will also include the chance to hear the bishop as an after dinner speaker for 10 mins, or that the BBQ will include community hymn singing, or the Halloween tour of the graves in the cemetery will include an explanation of the Christian view of life after death. Don’t force people who weren’t expecting it to sit through a testimony when that’s not what they thought they were invited to.

2. Be honest with yourself about what you want. Our evangelism must never treat other people as a means to an end. This is really hard for clergy who feel constantly judged on the numbers attending, but recruiting new members so that we look good as a growing church is not a noble reason to evangelise. We can’t remove our less noble motives, but we can take care not to let them drive us into theologically dodgy territory.

In particular, be careful to avoid the toxic combination of spiritual and financial abuse. We all know that one of the many mixed motivations we have nowadays to grow our churches is that we need more people to be giving to keep the doors open, the roof on and at least a very part time priest employed. But we must never give the impression that giving will affect the issue of someone’s salvation. Gods grace is free and poured out without demanding anything in return - though God  longs for our response of love, we don’t need to prove that to anyone. 

If you want enough people to come to church for the church to remain viable, though, there’s no harm in being honest about that. How sad if it closed and people said ‘we’d have come if we’d known’.

If what you really want are Friends of the Church to increase your giving base, then be honest about that and consider starting a friends group. You might then find you have a group of people who are happy to be ‘flying buttresses’, supporting the church from the outside. Don’t despise them but welcome them, and free yourself to talk to others about your faith without the financial pressure. You may even find that the long term relationships you build are a good basis for gentle conversations about faith in the future.

3. Be honest with yourselves as a church about your capacity for growth and what you can realistically offer. In small businesses, as many of your congregations will know, periods of expansion and growth are the most dangerous time. Think carefully about how many new people you as a church have the capacity realistically to absorb, at this moment, and be honest about the level of support you can offer. There’s no point offering perfect pastoral care and a listening ear in your publicity, or holding out the promise of making loads of new friends, if the ten people at your church, including you, are up to the eyeballs with friends and pastoral care already. With the best will in the world, if ten needy new people showed up craving meaningful friendships and significant pastoral care, could you actually deliver? You may need to train and develop new lay leaders first, or at least have identified people who can step up if and when needed. And be honest about the limits of what the church can provide, or you risk disappointing people (and at worst ‘inoculating’ them against Christianity - ‘tried that once’). If what you can realistically offer are simply quiet, contemplative services, just say so. You may attract the person who has avoided the threat of being expected to join in loads of things for years, but would love to come if that’s all there is to it!

Be honest - to yourselves, to God, and to those you speak with.

This article was commissioned for Country Way, the magazine of Germinate, the Arthur Rank Centre. The link to the online edition is Here

A Poem: Work-Life Balance

It’s astonishing how the image 

Of a few balanced stones

Has come to be our icon

Of tranquillity, serenity, calm.

It sells us expensive spa days,

Sweet-smelling oils,

Pedicures, purifying rituals, peace.

You try balancing four stones. Go on.

You’ll get there, eventually.

And as your hand flutters

Over leaving the final adjustment just so –

Someone will glance by, admiringly, and say

‘I don’t know how you do it!’

And your hand arrests them from coming nearer,

As you watch the entire edifice tremble

At their footsteps,

At your breath.

The Zen of this moment

Isn’t the calm serenity of the advertisements -

A holding of all things in cosmic balance,

A resting place of quiet calm.

No; it’s in your hovering awareness

Of the inherent instability of the system –

It’s entropy -

It's in accepting the uncertainty of not knowing when

The certainty of the fall will come.

Compost

When the shit hits the fan,
When the bullshit bingo is over,
When you can only smell steaming piles of horseshit,

Wheel a barrow into the meeting room.

Shovel up the crap for the compost heap.
Mix it with all the other odds and sods of daily detritus -
Carrot peelings, pea pods, rotten bits, slime -
Add the bulky bore of routine maintenance -
Grass cuttings, loo roll inners, shredded statements.

Trust the alchemy of the soil
And the worms’ patient processing
To turn it into rich black honeycomb
Smelling of promise and roses and tomatoes.

When the shit hits the fan
Try to think of it
As muckspreading.

Poem: Meditation on Psalm 131

The second in a series of poems that I wrote whilst on retreat, undertaking the first stage of the Spiritual Exercises, at St Beuno's earlier this month. I shared this poem at St Bride's this morning:

Meditation on Psalm 131

‘Like a weaned child at her mother’s breast’ –

I sigh into you in contentment.

Not with the rooting hunger

Of breastfeeding, that single-minded devotion

That knows only need and turns blindly for its source –

That’s had its time, and will no doubt have its time again.

But now is for enjoying the stillness

Of knowing myself to be held;

Choosing, in simple desire,

To clamber onto your lap,

Lay my head against your shoulder,

And feel your cheek, your arms, your body

Envelop me – above, around, beneath.

Now is for relaxing into one another,

Both accepting, both offering,

This gift of presence.

Now is the time to feel my breathing slow

In time with yours;

To know that this is the Alpha and the Omega,

The beginning and the end.

This is the place I belong, the place

I have been longing for.

From here I will go out, in time,

And to here I will return.

My only prayer is an almost wordless yearning

That nothing may tempt me to forget,

To diminish this, from a distance, as a childish indulgence,

A mawkish fantasy,

That’s all very well, but has no place in the real world.

I want more than anything to always know,

In the very depths of my bones, as I know now,

That this is more real than any of the fantasies

On which I have constructed my life.

This is humility;

Not a performative fawning,

But this raw acceptance of my want of you.

This is not an intellectual proposition,

Or an argument to be won.

It is humiliating to discover,

After all my research and questioning,

After all my jealous frustration

At my inability to frame you in words,

That it comes down only to this –

My need, and my simple acceptance of my need,

To rest in your embrace.

A Poem: Verum Corpus

There is no greater awkward joy

Than to celebrate communion one-handed,

Clasping a child in your other arm.

Feeling its small, warm body

Conform itself to your curves; feeling yourself

Move that one side of your body

Into the universal jig that all flesh

Doesn’t know it knows 

Until a baby is put into its arms.

One hand splayed against the soft heaviness of head and neck,

The other outstretched in prayer -

You make God real 

in flesh and blood, 

bread and wine -

Tangible, fragile, consumable.

(One small corner of your mind concerned to do this with all possible dignity

To placate those who may feel the baby detracts

From the seriousness of the occasion –

Another, wondering if dry-cleaning would remove

Baby sick from the shoulder of the antique chasuble,

Should need arise)

In that moment, you are both the baby and God.

Feeling all God’s fierce and tender protectiveness

As these tiny, fragile things are held in your hands –

Feeling all the infant’s fierce and needy grasping

To be held, protected, loved.

Clasping a miniature fistful of chasuble

Against being dropped.

Offering a mere handful of bread,

Against being alone.

Afterwards, I know, I will hear

Both complaints and sentimentality.

But this moment is neither sentimental nor profane.

If I had a spare hand, I would take off my shoes.

For here God is speaking ‘I AM’ into my very body.