INCARNATION AND THE CHURCH'S EVANGELISTIC MISSION

Abstract

In the ecumenical conversation about and evangelism in the last decade, there is frequent reference to doing and evangelism in Jesus Christ's way. In 1989, the World Council of Churches (WCC) convened its conference on world and evangelism in San Antonio under the theme, Your Will Be Done: in Christ's Way.(1) In 1987, an international grouping of ecumenical-evangelical missiologists and church leaders met in Stuttgart to consider the forthcoming San Antonio meeting. Their purpose was to think about the evangelistic of the church and to prepare a statement reflecting their insights for the 1989 conference. The result was a book entitled Proclaiming Christ in Christ's Way, Studies in Integral Evangelism.(2) In 1982, the WCC's Commission on World and Evangelism presented its major statement, and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation.(3) It contains a section entitled Mission in Christ's Way. The reception of this language can be traced around the world. In 1991, for example, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted a document on and evangelism entitled Turn to the Living God: A Call To Evangelism in Jesus Christ's Way,(4) which specifically refers to the WCC statement of 1982.(5) This imagery, doing and evangelism in Jesus Christ's way, indicates a broadening ecumenical consensus about the relationship between the incarnation -- the actual way in which the Word became flesh or the model of Jesus' life -- and the way in which the church goes about its mission. Such an approach (incarnational is apparently a twentieth century neologism) raises a lot of questions, particularly at a time when, in some quarters, the incarnation is itself the theme of heated debate. Therefore, it will be helpful to examine carefully what is occurring theologically when we talk about mission in Jesus Christ's way. When we go back before the appearance of the WCC 1982 document, and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation, we enter into a period of several decades in which most western mainline Protestant traditions tended to de-emphasize evangelism as the verbal proclamation of the gospel with the intent to draw people to personal faith in Christ. The focus was generally more upon the church's social witness and involvement with broad agenda of justice and peace. Often evangelism was redefined as an expression of social witness, so that the word was used for almost anything a mainline denominational agency wanted to affirm. The American Presbyterian version of this process is called by Milton J. Coalter the rethinking, retooling, and restructuring of evangelism, which he dates from about 1963 on.(6) Throughout this period, however, thinking and writing about the of the church never completely disavowed the centrality of the church's evangelistic mission, as awkward as that central tenet of our confessional tradition might have been for some. The emphasis upon incarnational evangelism emerged in various attempts to define the church's witness in ways that sought to include both verbal proclamation and social witness. This approach has now established itself in the concept of mission in Christ's way. It is a genuinely helpful way of thinking, which does not undermine the evangelistic ministry of the church, but rather strengthens it. The emphatic use of this incarnational imagery in the 1982 WCC document, and Evangelism; An Ecumenical Affirmation, shows that such language had achieved a notable ecumenical currency. Such statements emerge from long and difficult processes of drafting and editing which draw together representatives across the full spectrum of churchly traditions and cultures. When they finally agree, then we have language that we can use in the multi-cultural, world-wide church with some hope that we all mean the same things when we say the same words. The publication of and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation in 1982 was a signal event for the theology and practice of mission. …