Healthy Evangelism: What Does it Look Like? (Part 2)

So, churches are in decline, and the number of self-identifying Christians is going down in Canada year by year. Why? There are lots of answers, some cultural, some intellectual, some experiential.  

But here’s an explanation we don’t often think about: We don’t provide places for people to begin. We seem to think that the average secular person, or even someone exploring their spirituality, can simply walk into a Sunday morning service of Eucharist and decide within the hour to be baptized. Yes, yes, I know it can happen—thanks be to God, such miracles occur—but only a small minority of people come to faith that way. 

Some readers will remember when government money was made available to install ramps to make churches more accessible to those with physical handicaps. I’ve often thought it’s too bad we don’t take equal trouble to create spiritual ramps, to enable easy access to those who find the steps to regular church life too difficult or intimidating.  

Continuing from last month, here are some that have a proven track record: 

1.Introductory courses 

In the last thirty years or so, courses teaching the basics of Christianity have become very popular. There are many of them available from all across the Anglican spectrum, from Bishop John Spong’s Living the Questions (on the theological left) all the way to Rico Tice’s Christianity Explored (further to the right).   

The most popular course is undoubtedly the Alpha course, which has been taken by millions of people around the world. I was at an evangelical Anglican church not long ago and, in the prayers of the people, I couldn’t help noticing that they prayed for five adults who were to be baptized the following Sunday. I asked the priest where the five had come from, and she answered, “We just keep doing the Alpha program, and they keep coming!” 

Alpha is not to everybody’s theological taste, however. But when John Baycroft was the Bishop of Ottawa, he said to his clergy, “You don’t have to do the Alpha program—but if you don’t do it, you have to do something better!” Which seems to me a fair enough challenge. 

Some clergy have invented their own courses, with names like Christianity 101 and Christianity Rediscovered. I used to say to students at Wycliffe, “You should have some introductory course like this as part of your regular annual program, where you are teaching the faith to beginners.” After all, where else are beginners to begin? 

 2. Celebrating Valentine’s Day 

When Harold Percy was the Rector of Trinity Anglican Church in Streetsville, one of the church’s annual traditions was a dinner and dance at a nearby banqueting hall on the Saturday closest to Valentine’s Day. “Where is the evangelism in that?” you may ask. Well, between the dinner and the dance, Harold would preach a sermon. “Oh goodness,” you may say, “how inappropriate! How manipulative! Taking advantage of a captive audience like that!”   

But wait. The sermon went something like this (I have never forgotten it): 

You may be wondering why a church would celebrate Valentine’s Day. Churches don’t generally do anything special for Victoria Day or Groundhog Day, so why Valentine’s Day? The reason is that Valentine’s Day celebrates love, and we believe love is one of the Creator’s best gifts to this world, so of course, we want to celebrate. And on a Sunday, some of us gather at Trinity Church over on the High Street to learn from the God who created love how to be better lovers. So, if you ever feel that you would like to be a better lover, we would be delighted to welcome you to Trinity one of these Sunday mornings. And now, let’s get on with the dance! 

 I would say that is one of the best and briefest evangelistic sermons I have ever heard. It’s succinct, it highlights just one important aspect of Christian faith—learning to love—and it encourages people to respond without pressure and even with a little humour. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s brilliant.  

3. Circumventing the Watchful Dragons 

I have a friend, now a university professor, who grew up in a strongly atheistic family. Then one day, he discovered C.S.Lewis’s Narnia stories and began to devour them in secret in his basement. This led him to put his trust in Jesus, to join a lively church, and ultimately to get ordained. C.S.Lewis knew what he was doing.  

Lewis himself grew up as an Anglican, but declared himself an atheist by the age of fifteen, and remained so for a further fifteen years or so. Having come back to faith, he felt himself called to defend the faith, which he did through non-fiction such as Mere Christianity, but also through fiction like the Narnia stories. This is how he described his motivation:  

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. . . Supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.  

That image of the watchful dragons is a powerful one. It’s not uncommon for people to react negatively to talk of church and religion negatively: “I don’t want to talk about that stuff.” “Church is full of hypocrites.” “I believe in science, not faith.” That’s the watchful dragons, breathing out their fire, and it’s often successful in repelling even the most gracious witness.  

But the Narnia stories don’t access the heart through the mind. They follow Emily Dickinson’s advice, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” They circumvent our intellectual objections and speak directly to the imagination and thence to the heart. Not that the intellectual issues disappear, of course, just that they may come later. 

We could do much worse as evangelists than to recommend The Chronicles of Narnia to a non-church friend! 

To be continued.