Vol 2: 30 Mission and Evangelism: Being Intentional and Deliberate

Today’s reflection continues with Ben Campbell Johnson’s Speaking of God: Evangelism as Initial Spiritual Guidance focusing on reframing of evangelism within a missional perspective.

One of the issues we seem to have with the task of evangelism is the intentional manner in which we are asked to engage persons in conversation about the Gospel. Johnson, however, rather than avoiding intentionality, expresses that engaging in evangelism as initial spiritual guidance is in fact a conscious and deliberate act.  He cites Morton Kelsey on spiritual direction.

“Spiritual guidance is the conscious and deliberate attempt to accompany other people on their journeys to and in God” (p. 26).

Johnson continues expressing: “Kelsey picks up on three important elements relevant to our effort. He emphasizes that guidance is a conscious and deliberate effort; it does not occur accidentally. He suggests that we accompany persons; we do not speak from a distance, nor do we initiate persons into the faith and then leave them. And, he emphasizes that guidance begins before persons know God and continues after they have begun to know who God is.” Johnson continues stating, “All these requirements apply directly to the task of evangelism and suggest the kind of soft, sensitive approach appropriate for many [people]” (p. 26).

Over the next three weeks I would like to unpack these three elements – today I begin with evangelism as spiritual guidance being “a conscious and deliberate effort; it does not happen accidentally.”

What this does not mean is that it is an invasive effort, barging in on someone else’s space. Being conscious and deliberate do not have to mean that we are boorish and in people’s faces. Rather, what I believe it means is that we are always conscious and deliberate in our efforts to speak of God as the Spirit of God leads in conversations – it means not to miss the opportunities the Spirit opens in the midst of our conversation with others.

To be conscious is to be continually aware – aware of who we are, aware of what God is up to in the world, aware of noticing what God is noticing, etc. To be conscious is to go about our daily lives – working, playing, shopping, eating, resting, sleeping, loving – always aware of God being part of our daily lives and daily living.

Too often where spiritual malaise creeps into American Christianity is when we live our lives unaware of God’s presence, God’s activity going on all around us. We live, as someone once stated, as functional atheists. We may state that we believe in God, but we live in ways which seemingly are unaware of God being part of our daily lives – we live “on our own” without God.

Therefore to be conscious in evangelism has more to do with us – about our being conscious of God active all around us, in us, and in the lives of others. Do we live our lives aware of God? Do we live our lives seeking to see, to notice where God is active, to notice what God notices? This takes the focus of our own lives and centers our focus on God and what God is up to during our waking hours. To proclaim, “this is the day the Lord has made,” is more than starting off our day with a skip and a smile – it is an intentional, conscious, and deliberate focus on centering all of who we are and all that we seek to do in God.

And, this choosing to be conscious of God, of Christ, of the Spirit, is what makes our consciousness deliberate. We are intentional about beginning our days, each and every day seeking to be conscious of God and God’s missional activity in the world. God, then is no longer a mere happenstance in our lives – our calling upon God when life gets tough, rather intentionally, consciously and deliberately we attune ourselves to the presence of God.

When our lives are conscious of God and deliberately focused upon God, then we cannot help but be aware of God in every conversation, every activity in which we are involved – and as a result, we will find God coming up more in our conversations – i.e., finding ourselves engaging in evangelism, especially as it relates to naming the presence of God in people’s lives – providing initial and ongoing spiritual guidance.

The reason we struggle so much with evangelism, and why I also struggle with evangelism, is when we are not aware of God in our lives, and when we are not deliberate about being conscious of God and God’s activity in us and around us. But when we live with a deliberate consciousness of God, we will be present to God and to others just as breathing is present to us in every moment of our lives.

My challenge to us is that we develop practices – Scripture reading, prayer, spiritual conversations – that shape us to be deliberately conscious of God in all we are and do.

Vol1:32 Called to be Present in the World

Roxburgh and Boren state that the first practice in the church demonstrating that they are sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign is the practice of presence (p. 108).

The gist of this practice is that it “highlights the specific things that mark God’s people as those who relate to him in a contrasting way” (p. 108).

As I reflect on presence, I believe that practicing presence is about how those of us who identify ourselves as followers and disciples of Jesus Christ are incarnational in the world – it is about how we live in the world. It is about how we go about in all we do making the presence of God visible in the world. These are not meant to be hidden practices, practices kept for the few behind closed doors; no these practices are meant to be lived out in the presence of those whom we want to reveal the presence of God active in the world, redeeming the world, making all things new.

The unique thing about the God who is I AM is that God desires to reveal himself through those whom God has called and sent. God uses people to reveal himself. God became a human being to reveal himself. God who cannot be fully comprehended by our finite minds, reveals himself through finite human beings.

And so, it is in our living, we either practice the presence of God, or we are practicing the presence of self.

We often make life about ourselves, making a name for ourselves, developing a reputation, a pedigree – I am guilty of this myself. We seek and strive to be somebody in this world – and many of us are indeed successful at this.

But if we confess that we are followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, who do people see when they look at us? Do they only see us, or is somehow Christ made visible in and through us, our actions? Is God made visible through the way we live life in relation to others? Are we revealing God who seeks to set humanity free, or are we revealing ourselves, where often we seek to set ourselves free at the cost of others?

Reflecting on the practice of presence, reminds me that my passion in life is not to make a name for Roland Kuhl, but to participate with others to make a name for God, to reveal God. This is what Jesus came to do – “those who believe in me do not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When they look at me, they see the one who sent me” (John 12: 44-45). Paul also expressed, what expresses my desire as well: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

In seeking to live a life that relates to the God of Creation, the God of the Universe, the one who is I AM, I need to be continually reminded that I am called to live my life in such a way, practicing the presence of God, through worship, through engaging God’s Story and Vision in Scripture, through connecting and listening to God, keeping my life open to God, being available to God for what God desires to do in and through me.

For me, this is not a diminishing of who I am, or what I will be, or the gifts and talents that are in my life – living in the presence of God enables me to discover fully who I was created to be – and only in the presence of God, magnifying God, revealing God, do I deeply discover who I am. I become fully human as I live practicing the presence of God – I do not wish to be marked in any other way, except to be known as a person who is known by God and is growing in knowing God – a God who is “mysterious, wild, [and] relational” (p. 109).