What would you do if you knew the Lord was coming back tomorrow? Fundamentalists would stage an evangelistic crusade; 'mainliners' might visit the sick; charismatics would have a revival meeting, radicals organize a protest march. Martin Luther said he'd plant a tree...

An inappropriate response would be to hold a consultation on evangelization.

The great commission ('Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations') is not just individual, but corporate: 'Preach the Gospel to all creation' (Mark 16:15, RSV, NIV). In the Johannine version of the 'great commission' Jesus says to his disciples, 'As the Father sent me, so I send you' (John 20:21). Here is both a command and a pattern for evangelism. The church's mission in the world is to be like Christ's. He was born into the world, lived in the world, and died for the world. We, too, are called to a humble, sacrificial identification with those to whom we are sent.

'Mission' includes everything the church is sent into the world to do. Biblical mission involves three concerns: compassion for those the New Testament calls the lost (evangelism); compassion for the hurting (mercy) and compassion for the powerless (justice). These three concerns are highlighted by Micah (6:8) and Jesus (Matthew 23:23) as being essential to an authentic biblical faith. Justice has to do with our relationships to worldly powers, mercy our relationship to others' pain, faithfulness our relationship to God's plan. Mission in the Bible involves three modes: word (what we say to others for God); deed (what we do for others in the Lord's name); and sign (what God does to corroborate his word through our words and his works through our deeds).

The church exists by mission as fire by burning (Emil Brunner). 'The church is in mission as a planet is in orbit' (Webster). The whole church - not just evangelists or cross-cultural missionaries - is in mission. Church and mission are one. Mission is the outcome of our relationship with our living God and our concern for the world, as effect to cause, as stream to source. Or, to change the metaphor, the gospel cries out to be proclaimed as music cries out to be played. The very birthright of every human being entitles them to know of God's gift beyond words and the possibility of a new humanity. God's people are called to declare the wonderful deeds of him who called them out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:10).

A church with a well-balanced missionary program - balanced geographically between 'home' or local community ministries, and 'overseas' or foreign missions, and also between the various components of mission, justice, mercy and evangelism - is a healthy church. There aren't too many of them. I have known 'missionary' churches which do not relate much to people in their own vicinity. Then, too, there are many congregations which don't have home-grown overseas missionaries in their prayers and budgets. Conservative churches have their 'gospel meetings' but aren't committed to biblical justice. 'Mainline' churches may have study groups to look at justice issues, but have ignored the 'lostness' of people without Christ. Other churches have volunteers to run Thrift Shops, or Meals-on-Wheels, but can't name any recent converts. It's the devil's job to polarize churches in all these areas, making them exclusive to one another. It's the Spirit's quest to unite all these elements.

The ministry and mission of Jesus are prototypes for us. In his Nazareth synagogue encounter Jesus gives his manifesto for mission (Luke 4:14-30). We note there that his mission was to be 'spiritual', evangelistic, compassionate, liberating, and a ministry of justice. Notice Jesus' (and our) good news is for 'the poor'. So we begin by asking 'Who are the poor, and how would they define good news?' Recent evangelical Christianity has become too individualistic, reflecting what Robert Bellah calls the 'ontological individualism' of our western culture. The 'social ecology', says Bellah, has been damaged and urgently needs repairing. Americans have been too preoccupied with their own private interests - freedom, wealth, and power - but have neglected the common good. The gospel is more, much more, than 'receiving Jesus as your own personal Saviour' (a phrase not in the NT).

Evangelism without mercy and justice produces moralistic Pharisees (outward behaviour is the criterion of godliness), or antinomians (there's enough grace to cover all my sins so I can do as I like). Major on mercy and neglect of the other two and you may become a do-gooder: doing good to others for your sake rather than theirs (paternalism). Remember Thoreau's warning: If you see someone coming to you with the intention of doing you good run for your life! But if you work for justice and neglect the other two you may become a Zealot.

1. JUSTICE

This is essentially the Gospel's critique of ungodly power, of culture without compassion. Culture is the sum total of a community's customs and values, which give it a sense of identity and continuity. No human culture is totally bad or totally good: so we must challenge what is evil and affirm what is good in all cultures. As the Lausanne Covenant put it, culture must be tested and judged by scripture; because humans are God's creatures, some of their cultures will be rich in beauty and goodness; because they are fallen, all of them are tainted with sin and some are demonic.

A 'cult of culture' develops when religion validates culture and society without bringing them under judgment. A certain social order becomes 'right' and therefore 'Christian' and cultural values are divinised. The prophetic dimension of our Hebraic-Christian tradition is lost. Love of neighbour becomes voluntary and is divorced from justice. Members of congregations are spared the pain of ethical examination of how structures and systems may be the instruments of injustice. The preacher is told to 'steer clear of politics' - and still be biblical and prophetic! Such churches may claim they are 'neutral' and maintain the status quo: but there is no such thing as neutrality. Churches choosing to support what already exists may be supporting an ungodly system. Then, too, churches may contribute to the status quo by being preoccupied with their own internal affairs - administration, doctrine, buildings, finance, authority, liturgies etc.

When the church marries the spirit of this age, it will be widowed in the next. Jesus promised we would face trouble, because his kingdom's values were in conflict with those of the world. 'Do not be conformed to the world', Paul warned (Romans 12:2). We are to be 'faithful in the alien', as Luke 16:12 reads literally. This earth and its cultures are not our final home. We are not to abandon the earth, but rather apply God's standards in it.

Paul says that when we are united in Christ Jesus the barriers between races, slaves/freepersons and sexes are removed (Galatians 3:28). A Christian can no longer pray the words of the Jewish daily thanksgiving, 'I thank thee O Lord that thou hast not made me a Gentile, a slave or a woman.' This principle - that we are all united in Christ, and that racist, economic, and sexist divisions have been obliterated - has taken a while to catch on in the church. The evils of racism were confronted radically by the early Christians. It took another 18 centuries to come around to abolishing slavery; and we're working on the problems of sexism in this century. Actually, we're still struggling with the other two as well: the morning worship-time in the U.S. has been called the most segregated hour in the nation's week, and the Dutch Reformed church in South Africa is very reluctantly dismantling its institutionalised racism. (I met an intelligent white Pentecostal Christian in South Africa who told me he believed blacks were created by God to serve whites!). In the area of economics, white western Christians are among the wealthiest people in the world. They are potentially the most powerful lobby in the world: but they don't lobby governments in the area of wealth-redistribution. In Australia, the most effective recent lobbying efforts have been about a proposed 'bill of rights', consumption tax, and a fringe-benefits tax, at a time when we had record stockpiles of unsold grain, and are giving less of it away than at any time for 25 years!

Justice is all - and only - about the uses of power. Injustice is the mis-use, non-use or abuse of power. In the Bible justice is personal (living a righteous, just life), forensic (relating to matters of law), and social (our treatment of the poor). The Bible is full of God's concern for justice, from his holding Cain accountable for the murder of his brother in Genesis, to a similar accountability by the secular powers persecuting Christians, described in graphic imagery in the Book of Revelation. For Jesus the two key Kingdom values were justice and love (Luke 11:42). It is interesting that evangelical Christians rarely agree with Micah or Jesus when asked to highlight what are for them the most important doctrines: outside of the Wesleyan, some Catholic, and a few conciliar churches' creeds or statements of faith, I can find no evangelical 'doctrinal basis' before the Lausanne Congress (1974) that explicitly mentions justice or love!

A church that is alive is concerned with much more than persons 'making decisions for Christ'. Jesus came to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the jubilee. Churches and missions have a remarkable history of helping the poor in hospitals and orphanages, schools and developmental projects. But a closer reading of the prophets and of Jesus lead us to another question: why are they poor? Justice is sorting out what belongs to whom, and returning it to them. Justice is the practice of entitlement for the weak and incompetent. [Walter Brueggemann, Sharon Parks, Thomas H. Groome, To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986, p.5, 20].

Moses is not just leading a band of slaves to freedom: rather he was posing an alternative consciousness to the 'royal consciousness' of the oppressors [Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978].

God is a 'lover of justice' (Psalm 99:4). He cares for the poor and marginalized, so we should love them too (Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Psalm 72:11-14, Psalm 82).

Micah, a village peasant, raises the issue of justice with the powers in Jerusalem. As always, the issue of justice is raised from below: wealthier people are too preoccupied with questions of prosperity and security. The leaders have arranged things the way they are: they operate the systems which give access to and control life-goods. The Jubilee (Leviticus 25) offers the cancellation of debts, so that failed ones resume their place of respect, power and dignity in the community. The redistribution of land (Micah 2:1-5) is also a matter of justice. 'Those of us who benefit from the inequalities in the world have incredible blind spots and will struggle to keep those spots blind' [Brueggemann et. al. p.17].

'The truth is that in our society most of us have a disproportion of social goods and social power. And we fear the loss of our disproportion. We do not ask how we got it or what it does to others... We like the system because it preserves and legitimates the present disproportion which is in our favour.' [Brueggemann et. al., pp.20,21]

Black leader Rev. John Perkins, tortured and almost beaten to death when he tried to intercede for co-workers at a Mississippi jail, said 'There's something built into us all that makes us want to be superior. If the blacks had the advantage, they'd be just as bad. So I can't hate whites. The problem is spiritual; black or white we all need to be born again.' ['Power and Empowerment', in Transformation, Vol 6, No. 4, Oct/Dec. 1989, p.1.]

'I am a shepherd who, with his people, has learned a beautiful and hard truth: our Christian faith does not separate us from the world; rather, it immerses us in the world... It is a caricature of love to try to cover over with alms what is lacking in justice, to patch over with an appearance of benevolence when social justice is missing. True love begins by demanding what is just in the relations of those who love.' So said Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was shot to death while preaching to his people during Lent 1980. Six of his priests died violently, and many more of his people. He believed that by far the greatest number of his people were poor because El Salvador's economy and society were structured to keep most people poor and a few people rich. The injustice of the society he lived in was not something he could tolerate as a Christian, much less as a pastor. [James R. Brockman, 'Archbishop Romero's Spirituality', Praying, March-April 1990, pp. 4-9].

2. COMPASSION AND MERCY.

Jesus and his followers were concerned not only about 'saving souls' - evangelism - but helping others deprived of necessary daily needs. Unfortunately Christians have sometimes emphasized one or the other of these two areas of essential ministry, rather than both: what Rene Padilla calls 'an unbiblical divorce between the kerygma and the diakonia'. A theological understanding of Christian social concern begins with the character of God. He is a 'social God' (Kenneth Leech), relating within the community of the Trinity, and, in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, with his creatures on this planet. Jesus came with a mandate to preach, liberate and heal (Luke 4:18-19) and commissions his followers to do the same as he did (John 20:21). So the church adopts Jesus' stance towards others: that of a servant. And it will be called to account at the Great Judgment relative to the presence or absence of ministries of compassion to the poor (Matthew 25:31-46).

Who are the poor? They are people who have no 'place'. The materially poor are deprived of a place within the bounty of the community; the lonely, the imprisoned, or the emotionally poor do not have a place within a loving family or community; the politically poor do not have a place in the decision-making processes of their government; refugees are 'displaced', without a part of the earth to call their own; the spiritually deprived do not have a place in the Kingdom. Our Christian compassion must address all these problems. The meaning of Christian 'hospitality' is simply our opening up our hearts, our lives, our homes, our communities, to the 'wretched of the earth'. Hospitality is providing a place for Jesus, who is still poor today.

I once asked some very poor rural Brazilians what made them anxious or fearful. A sad-looking mother said, 'I cannot warm my children with just one blanket.' A man who had the face and hands of half a century's hard labour said, 'I toil and toil but have very little to show for it'.

I was very moved. What do I say to them? Maybe my tears spoke louder than any words. I felt helpless, but I also felt a solidarity with them in their despair.

'Compassion' comes from the Latin pati and cum 'to suffer with'. The church takes Jesus as its model for compassion. Twelve times in the Gospels Jesus or his Father-God are said to be 'moved with compassion' for worried and helpless people (eg. Matthew 9:36). Our Lord sends us his followers into the world to 'be compassionate as your Father is compassionate' (Luke 6:36).

How does compassion work? In the same way God's does: he sends Jesus into the world to be with us. He emptied himself and became our servant (Philippians 2). That gives us dignity: we must be worth a lot if he is willing to be our slave! He says to us: 'I will be with you always until the end of the age' (Matthew 28:20). We are not alone.

So compassion is more than sympathy - 'feeling sorry' for the poor. It's not 'pity' for someone weak or inferior. Compassion is a 'doing verb' - relieving the pain of others, not just emoting about it. It's more than 'helping the less fortunate' - that's elitist and paternalistic.

Compassion, says Matthew Fox, is the world's richest energy source. A few days before his death, Rabbi Heschel said, 'There is an old idea in Judaism that God suffers when we suffer... Even when a criminal is hanged on the gallows, God cries. God identifies himself with the misery on this earth. I can help God by reducing human suffering, human anguish and human misery.'

But there's so much pain - where do I start? In the Matthew text describing Jesus' compassion (9:35-38), our Lord then turns to his disciples and says 'There's so much to do, and so few to do it, PRAY!' The first thing to do is to pray! Prayer tunes us in to the heart of God. Prayer helps us focus on others and their needs. Prayer turns frustration and anger into hope. A by-product of prayer is peace, without which we will never act appropriately in an unjust world.

3. EVANGELISM.

The world has 11,500 ethnolinguistic peoples: 2000 of these do not have a viable Christian church and witness. However, on this day 83,000 people will join the church. In this year about 23 million more people will profess Christ's name. Mission statistician David Barrett estimates that as many are 'newly evangelized' each day as are born (360,000). He has noted 2000 global and regional 'AD 2000' plans to evangelize various people groups. But the painful fact is that 53,000 people leave the Christian church from one Sunday to the next in Europe and North America.

Evangelism, says missiologist David Bosch, is that dimension of mission which seeks to offer every person, everywhere, a valid opportunity to be directly challenged by the gospel to explicit faith in Jesus Christ, with a view to embracing him as Saviour, becoming a living member of his community, and being enlisted in his service of reconciliation, peace and justice on earth.

Evangelism is 'one beggar telling another beggar where to get food' (D T Niles). Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). The Lord is patient, because he does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants all to turn away from their sins (2 Peter 3:9). It is God's desire that all hear the Good News in such a way that they will turn from idols (ie. living for anything other than God, 1 Thessalonians 1:9). In the terms the New Testament uses people either 'perish' or are 'saved' according to their response to this Good News. And we, his people, are commissioned to preach it! What an awesome responsibility!

Evangelism is more than words. Although we generally use the word 'evangelism' to describe 'an action of verbal communication in which the name of Jesus is central, the New Testament gives no authorization to assign primacy to words over deeds' (Lesslie Newbigin). (Some, like the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus, who follow in the steps of Pere Charles de Foucauld, communicate the gospel in silence).

Evangelization is not proselytization. However I can think of all kinds of Christian churches that need evangelizing: * Christian countries, because of secularization, which have become post-Christian, in need of a second evangelization; * syncretistic animistic groups with the slightest overlay of Christianity (I stayed in a village in Mindanao which is visited by a priest about once a year); * Christian sects who regard all other Christians as apostate; * evangelical churches like some Southern Baptist communities in the Deep South, with their special brand of evangelical nominalism and racial bigotry; * mainline Protestant churches devoid of any vestige of spiritual life: social clubs with a thin veneer of once-a-week religion; * doctrinaire evangelical churches without any concern for biblical justice; * 'social justice' churches strong on radicalism but weak on holiness.

Evangelism and teaching belong together: so evangelists will have to be good theologians. Evangelism must be followed by discipleship, the formal instruction of converts. In your church children, youth and adults should be invited to join 'faith development classes' or 'Christianity Explained' courses.

Good evangelism is more than apologetics, which attempts to give a reasoned defense of the Christian faith. Apologetics cuts down trees; evangelism builds houses! Evangelism is more than imparting organized doctrine: as John Stott puts it, you have to win a person's confidence before you can win their soul! Do what Jesus did: minister to a 'felt need' first - loneliness and poor self-image, sickness, hunger etc. Stott told a conference on evangelism in Britain: 'Christians are more like the pharisees than Jesus. We keep our distance from people. We do not want to get hurt or dirty or contaminated'. But good evangelism is more than being friendly: I come across 'friendly' churches that can't name many people who have committed their lives to Christ in the recent past. (Reason: new people change the chemistry of the group, and we unconsciously freeze them out of our social life). Good evangelism is more than inviting your neighbour to a 'mission' at the church (although these are valuable - your church ought to have regular special evangelistic efforts, appropriate to the culture of the people you are aiming to reach). Evangelism is relating as Jesus did to people day by day, week by week. The best evangelism is done by new converts: they still have the most non-Christian friends! And the best evangelistic churches are where people truly love one another, especially across racial, social, cultural and other barriers which previously divided them.

Evangelism must not be defined in terms of results. Indeed the apostolic preachers sometimes 'evangelized' villages or towns, and there is no indication that those who heard the word were converted. But God save us from complacency and futility. The obstacles to effective evangelism are great - they have to do with the substance of the three temptations of Jesus: economics, the miraculous, and politics - but the opportunities are great too. The world will be evangelized anyway: God can do it without us.

Old religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam and new religions and sects are making their presence felt, sometimes with amazing force. In the U.S., for instance, the New Age movement has a very impressive network for the dissemination of its ideas, values, and attitudes. According to a recent report, millions of copies of Shirley Maclaine's three autobiographies have been sold, 23% of the population believe in reincarnation, and 25% believe in a nonpersonal energy or life-force but not in a personal God... Even in a secularized society people long for transcendence.

The greatest hindrances to evangelism lie within the church. Let us work towards cooperation between all members of the worldwide church to eliminate duplication, bigotry, and the scandal of a divided church before the world. 'We humbly confess our pride, prejudice, competition and disobedience that have hindered our generation from effectly working at the task of world evangelization' said the communique of the Global consultation for World Evangelization, Singapore, January 8, 1989. So renewal and evangelism should go together: the Spirit is both a Holy Spirit and a missionary Spirit. Some Christian sects have a greater commitment to mission than to holiness; pietists may have the opposite problem.

Christian faith must strip itself of Christian religion. We can use religion to escape from God. The church, as Bonhoeffer said, is 'Christ existing as community'; 'it is that section of humanity in which Christ has already taken form' . So Bonhoeffer proposed a number of ministries to be practised within the Christian community: the ministry of holding one's tongue, meekness, listening to others, active helpfulness, bearing the burden of others, freely speaking God's Word to another when the moment is right, exercising authority based on loving service, and aural confession from one Christian to another as each attempts to live under the cross.

The most overtly 'evangelistic' Christians are the fundamentalists, who have a more literal view of hell. As we move towards the 'universalist' end of the theological spectrum ('everyone is/will be saved'; 'if there is a hell God will empty it') evangelism becomes almost non-existent. Three other theologies which hinder evangelism: 'hyper-Calvinism' (God saves who he wants to save, and rejects the rest, there's nothing we can do about that); anti-proselytism ('even if they are only nominal members of my church don't you preach to them'); and the view that 'all religions are valid, Christianity doesn't have all the answers'.

Clericalism - the monopoly of public ministry by an 'ordained' elite - is another hindrance to evangelism. Peter Wagner (Your Church Can Grow) says 10% of all Christians have a special evangelistic gift, but only about one half of one per cent are actively using it. The great American preacher Lyman Beecher was asked how he was able to accomplish so much in his church. 'Oh,' he said, I preach on Sundays and four hundred of our members preach every day.'

Let us boldly seize the opportunities. The task is still unfinished. 'Christians owe the message of God's salvation in Jesus Christ to every person and to every people.' (World Council of Churches' Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, 'Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation', 1982). We have more resources (eg.literature, money, technology) than ever before. But even without much money, and with almost no financial help from abroad, 4000 Indonesian Christian leaders met in 1988 and after several days of earnest prayer and prolonged discussion pledged themselves to share the Good News with every person in their country by the year 2000, and also train at least 5000 to serve in other countries as evangelists and church planters.

The acid test: list all the young people and adults who have come to Christ, joined the church and are growing in their faith in the last, say, ten years. Write down their names. In the 'Great Commission' Jesus gives his followers (Matthew 28:19-20) there are four 'action verbs' - going, making disciples, baptizing, and teaching. But only one ('make disciples') is in the imperative mood, and therefore the 'main command'. Our central purpose is not merely to win 'converts' but to make disciples! In the end, an evangelistic lifestyle arises out of the reality of our experience of Christ. If he has really changed our lives, that's great news, and we'll want to share it!