A faithful way for progressive Christians to do evangelism
APCE workshop by the Rev. Dr. Gini Norris-Lane makes the case for helping others deepen their relationship with the Almighty
LOUISVILLE — Is there a faithful way for progressive Christians to do evangelism?
That was the topic for the Rev. Dr. Gini Norris-Lane, executive director of UKirk Collegiate Ministries, during last week’s Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education, held online and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norris-Lane led a workshop that held space for participants to both listen and weigh in on a topic many Presbyterians find increasingly important, if a little uncomfortable.
Participants defined evangelism as sharing one’s faith, telling the good news, listening to others to see what their good news would be and mutual transformation. Norris-Lane asked, what do you think a person not in church would use as a definition? Responses included “conversion,” “preached at,” “judged” and “let me tell you how you need fixing.”
In her “Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism,” the Rev. Martha Grace Reese compares evangelism to a water pitcher. “Her theory is if you don’t believe in heaven and hell, other things need to fill the pitcher up, and so you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone and share your faith,” Norris-Lane said. “Alternatively, any negative experience or discomfort about evangelism creates a leak in the pitcher.”
She asked participants to discuss a few questions around their tables, including “what is filling your individual and community’s pitcher to overflowing?” and “what difference does it make in your own life that you are a Christian?” and “what negative experiences have you had that form the backdrop for your feelings about evangelism?”
One workshop participant recounted her two years with a group that put a premium on evangelism before she found her way back to the PC(USA). “During spring break we took gospel tracts” to people having a few drinks at a local bar, this person said. “I don’t think that was the most effective evangelism. It came from a place of ‘I’m better than you.’”
In Texas, where Norris-Lane lives, “what has happened in a larger narrative in our culture is that the Christian faith is anti-intellectual, and it’s mandated,” she said. “The Ten Commandments are in every classroom.” Her son, who’s 16, told her that most of his friends “don’t believe in dinosaurs because they’re not mentioned in the Bible.”
One thing progressive Christians have to offer to folks with that in their faith upbringing, she said, is “a way of understanding that not everyone has had our experience of love and grace and community.”
“A campus minister I know said the question is not ‘will I go to hell?’” she said. “It’s ‘where is hell on Earth, and how are we to address it?”
“Are we helping this person move into a relationship with God? Are we helping this person move into Christian community? If the answer to either is yes,” she said, “we are going to call it evangelism.”
She spent a few minutes discussing the PC(USA)’s 8 Habits of Evangelism: radical, worship, sacraments, prayer, justice, teaching, fellowship and generosity. “We have not articulated why we’re showing up in these ways,” she said, then asked: “How does this align with God’s work in the world.”
She closed with this quote by Henri Nouwen in his “Life of the Beloved”: “The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.”
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