Outreach in Love (xxii)

FPC, Lowvilee, NY

This is the twenty-second posting in this series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here), and the previous posting (xxi) is (here). We take one more look at the eighth and final criterion, which reads, "The church is an evangelistic community where the gospel of Jesus is constantly made visible by its preaching, its witness of the members, and its Spirit-empowered life of love."

In the last posting, I rounded off on the evangelism that one finds on mission fields and among evangelical churches.  We have to modify such criticism by remembering that in the last 40-50 years the American evangelical movement has been remarkably successful by every measure of statistical success and has pumped huge amounts of religious energy into American society.  It is far from all good, but it is also far from all bad.  The indications are, as I've noted in several postings over the course of things, that contemporary evangelicalism is diversifying, changing, and losing steam.  At the end of the day, revivalistic church growth strategies can only take churches so far, as evangelical churches are now beginning to learn.

Mainline churches, so-called, generally don't talk much about evangelism and do even less about it.  Fewer and fewer churches have evangelism committees where the great majority do have mission or outreach committees.  That's how mainline churches "do" evangelism—through social action, community outreach, and service to those beyond the church.  For sure, this emphasis on service does not lead to church growth, if by church growth we mean statistical growth and winning converts.  On the other hand, it is a mark of mainline commitment to Christ that has important consequences for society.  When, for example, a flood of Vietnamese refugees arrived on our shores after the Vietnam War, it was primarily the churches that welcomed the refugees and helped them get started in American society.  In doing so, they consciously sought to fulfill Christ's injunction to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  One thing that receives less attention than it deserves is the fact that mainline church members are often deeply involved in various helping and service agencies, and many of them see their vocations as opportunity to serve in the name of Christ.

So, the bottom line is that if we mainline folks were better at evangelism and the evangelical folks were better at social service (and they already do a fair amount), we'd probably both be better off as would our society.  Amen.