No Evangelical worth their salt would want to argue that evangelism doesn’t matter. For a movement so closely connected with the evangel that we enshrine it in our nomenclature, it would be a surprise if we said otherwise.
Whilst Evangelicalism has been notoriously difficult to define as a term, you would be hard pressed to find any attempt to do so that doesn’t land on our activist tendency to go and share the gospel.
Evangelical churches are busy places, aren’t they? There is so much to do.
There are, of course, all the usual rotas that one might be on: music, Sunday School, tea and coffee, welcome, etc. Then there are all the opportunities for mission and discipleship. Add to that the endless calls for training on every point of minutiae that ever takes place and, before long, you can find yourself swamped with stuff to do.
Most of us claim to want freedom. We don’t like being constrained. We want to do things our way, according to our pref-erences, how things suit us. We can get behind the concept of personal autonomy.
What we’re less happy about is when the autonomy granted to us is extended to others. Though we perhaps acknowledge the world would be a very boring place if we were all the same, there’s that little part of us that thinks – despite that – we’re basically right, the way we do things is best and so if everyone was a bit more like us the world would be a happier place. We are the arbiters of normal, moderate credible living and others are different shades of weird based on how closely they ape the way we do things.
Evangelism, über alles?
No Evangelical worth their salt would want to argue that evangelism doesn’t matter. For a movement so closely connected with the evangel that we enshrine it in our nomenclature, it would be a surprise if we said otherwise.
Whilst Evangelicalism has been notoriously difficult to define as a term, you would be hard pressed to find any attempt to do so that doesn’t land on our activist tendency to go and share the gospel.