Vol 2: 32 Mission and Evangelism: Open to Seeing What God is Doing in Us

Ongoing reflections relating to Ben Campbell Johnson’s Speaking of God: Evangelism as Initial Spiritual Guidance, which focuses on reframing evangelism within a missional perspective.

We have been exploring what it means to reframe evangelism as a conversation involving giving initial spiritual guidance or direction to people with whom the Spirit connects us.  Yet, I realize that I often am more quickly ready to provide spiritual guidance to others than receiving spiritual guidance in my own life.  To be missional in evangelism, we need to be ones who are also open to have others name the way God is active within our lives. 

A missional approach to evangelism involves learning to hear what God is doing in our lives.

Spiritual conversation is a two-way street – it is not only about our talking with others, or actively listening to what is going on in others (see last week’s post); it also involves being open to listen to what God is doing in us.

How do we expect to be aware and sensitive to how God is at work in others if we are not aware and sensitive to how God is active in us?  In sharing or naming where God is active in others, the conversation will inevitably turn to others asking how God is active in us.  Will we be able to respond?

Engaging in evangelism through a missional perspective is not only about “doing evangelism” as if it is a task in which we “do something” in the presence of others, no, it is about being open to the good news of God in our lives as well – or perhaps first and foremost: transforming us, shaping us, challenging us, empowering and equipping us, sending us to participate with God in God’s mission. 

Our lives are a laboratory for exploring how God is active in the world – we discover God active as God is active in us.  In naming or giving words to God’s activity in us, we begin to share our story that is being shaped by God’s Story.  God’s Story gives us a vocabulary, a framework for shaping our story.  We find the Exodus event describing desert wanderings in our own lives in which we discover God, disobey God, and rediscover God.  The parable of the Prodigal, gives words and meaning to the times we run from God in our lives.  Reading the psalms gives prayers and praises to times of despair and rejoicing in our lives.

As we learn to listen, see, hear what God is doing in us – as we learn to share this story of God’s Story in our lives, we become persons who become more adept to seeing, hearing, noticing how God is at work in the lives of others with whom we live among day to day.

Listening, being aware of God being active in us, is not an act of selfishness, but rather an act of awareness that equips and enables us to be aware and help others be aware of how God is active in them.

Missional evangelism then is a communal activity – requiring our being open to God’s activity in us, as we seek to be aware and lead others to be open to God’s activity in them.  This is how we walk together opening up our lives to the re-creating and re-storying activity of God in our lives and in the world.

May we develop our awareness of God working in us – to give us eyes to see and ears to hear God at work in the all of humanity.