Evangelism
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way… ( Luke 10: 1-3a)
This bible passage was the Gospel reading for last week and there was so many different directions I could have gone with this text in my sermon. I chose the “super hero” direction since it was the Fourth of July weekends and I wanted to point out that we all as Christ’s disciples are “heroes for Jesus.”
Another important direction I was thinking about going was the call to evangelism. Evangelism literally means “to share the good news.” We are talking about sharing the good news that the kingdom of God is here through Jesus Christ and that we because of His grace, we are forgiven!” This is the community that you belong to… one who celebrates freedom and can see the kingdom of God through our actions.
Evangelism for progressive Lutherans means inviting our neighbors into the life of the church. We are not as interested in saving souls as the evangelical or fundamentalist church is since we already trust they are saved by God’s grace. As the interim Pastor I would say the next big subject to review in this congregation is to focus more intentionally in our church community on invitation, on growth.
You may have heard the phrase, “what you pay attention to grows.” As progressive Christians I would like to think we pay attention to many of the right things in our ministry, like social justice and care of neighbor, but we haven’t always paid attention to evangelism and growth. And unfortunately, in a time where our nation is flooded with divisive legislation, immoral budgets, and various kinds of hate, it is hard to pay attention to evangelism when we are divided by the darkness of all of that.
Luke 10 is paying attention to something very different than the divisive thoughts of the day. The 72 are sent out and they are instructed to live the gospel in the communities where they travel, sharing the message of the kingdom of God in a non-coercive manner. Not “believe this to be saved” but rather “the kingdom of God has come near to you.”
I believe much of progressive Christianity has become avoidant of any kind of evangelism because they worry it will sound like coercive evangelism. We are at great pains in our community to not proselytize, to not bait and switch people by first “reaching” them and then using/abusing the connection to proselytize asking, “Are you Saved?”
But a non-coercive, open sharing of the faith, an invitation into a community that has given you life, into a kind of community you believe can stand as an outpost of the kingdom of God drawing near. Why wouldn’t we want to share that with others?
Have you ever noticed that those who are just believing to become active in your church and are not even members yet seem to be the best evangelizers of the congregation? Yes! Some of them are so on fire for the Lord that they want to share the new life they have found at Beautiful Savior! This is an indicator both of how hard it is for our current members to find ways that feel appropriate to us to evangelize without proselytizing, and how hard it is for others who may wish to connect to our faith community to actually do so.
We have a handful of people who are interested in becoming members of this congregation and yes… this is helpful for us to attain our goal to grow in regular worship attendance. I dream of more and more families finding their way to Beautiful Savior and more and more of you who are already connected at Beautiful Savior maintain your commitment to a weekly presence. Be sure to share your passion for this place!
I honestly believe there’s nothing that would be more empowering for all of us than to commit to being with each other each week. This has been possible ever since we have gone to worshipping at one service! Our attendance on the average has gone up! It’s not just the spirit of more people, it’s also that repeatedly people share with me how this presence improves their lives to worship, it centers them, and also that it helps them find their people.
Worship is the right place to begin. It puts before us an image more real than the one depicted by the world. The image of the cross. It offers us an image of a shared meal in Christ, a good shepherd who gathers in the lost and forsaken not to cage them, but to free and heal them. We need this imagery now more than ever. We need more, “Jesus loves you… deal with it!” than we need, “Do you know if you are going to heaven or to hell when you die?” This is our message of love and forgiveness… of GRACE.
What Jesus teaches the 72 is to go out and be him in the world. Go, stay where you are welcomed, eat with others, heal them, and share the good news that the kingdom of God is coming near. We can see hints of it right here, in this little community, in this place, such exciting glimpses it entirely makes sense we’d want to invite lots of others to come and see.
Would you like to gather with others who want to see this image together? Could it be healing? Could it make us more whole? AMEN