Talking about Evangelism - Sydney Presbytery Mission Lab

“The UCA is awkward about evangelism”.

This is a statement that we hear often. Is it true? At our last Sydney Presbytery Mission lab in April we named various missional issues in the church that we’d like to talk through more carefully and evangelism or sharing faith was something that many people wanted to explore. So we decided to make “sharing faith” the focus for our second mission lab on 22nd October 2024.

We started off with four ten-minute TED style talks addressing skills that we need to share faith.

• How do I tell my story? (sharing with conviction)
• How do I relate well to people? (Being curious not judgmental)
• How do I share faith with young adults? (Be authentic)
• How do I ask good questions? (Be interested in people- do deep listening)

We heard that telling our story about how we came to faith with conviction is much better that using any kind of evangelistic “tract” or “app” or programme. People today want to hear genuine stories of transformation and there is a longing our society for mystery and meaning. We heard that we need to be respectful in our faith sharing and that a “hard” sell does not work in our culture anymore. How do we retain our identity as Christ followers yet respect the diversity in our culture? We might learn from Madeleine L'Engle’s words:

“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

We also heard from a panel of ministers and lay people on evangelism. We wrestled with “Should we even use the term evangelism?” and “Why it is so hard to share our faith?” What stops us? We told stories of when we have shared our faith well and when we have done that not very well. We challenged the colonising tendencies of previous evangelistic methods. Today many young adults seem to like the “evangel” but not the “ism”. So there is a longing for faith or spirituality in our society but are our methods outdated? Do we still have conviction?

We explored the 2009 Assembly definition of evangelism and most of us agreed with the tone. It stated that:

Evangelism is that non-coercive practice in which the church as the community of Jesus and in acknowledgement of his Lordship, embodies and proclaims the love and saving grace of the triune God. It does this in following Jesus’ way in its witness, worship and service. Bound to the way and purposes of the crucified One, the church must never allow its evangelistic practices to be predatory or violent, but always wanting the ultimate welfare of the ‘other.’ Evangelism is to be distinguished from ‘proselytism’ in that it takes place in faith sharing episodes that are separate from coercion. Every evangelistic endeavour must be reflective of God’s self-giving in Jesus (1 Cor. 2: 2). Evangelism’s task is to make the ‘other’ lovingly aware of what has been graciously given to the church for the sake of the world.

There is still so much to explore about evangelism today in the UCA but we agreed at the Sydney Presbytery mission lab on sharing faith that the UCA has some strengths when it comes to faith sharing in our culture. With conviction, authenticity, humility and courage we can share faith with our neighbours who are seeking meaning in today’s complex world.