Friends United Meeting |
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By Johan Mauer
In communicating the faith and practice of Friends, is it better to emphasize the importance of conversion, of a commitment to Christ, or is it more effective to begin with the ethical and social testimonies?” This question was the beginning of my evangelism project. After a year of nagging Friends with my questions about Quaker evangelism, I can’t claim simple answers, but I can see at least the tentative start of a conversation we badly need to have.
My nagging was conducted from the safety of my temporary home at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England. I received a Ferguson Quaker Fellowship for the academic year 2003–2004, and chose “Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies” as my research subject. However, my interest in this topic goes back perhaps to my service on the Outreach Committee of Ottawa Meeting in Canada in the mid- 1970s. My more specific interest in getting Friends to discuss the topic openly dates back to two incidents.
The first incident took place during Friends United Meeting General Board meetings in Richmond, Indiana in 1993. I overheard two Friends discussing the “rainbow church” diversity vision of the Chicago Fellowship of Friends where Steve and Marlene Pedigo have served for years to build an interracial fellowship that is genuinely evangelistic and genuinely Quaker. The people I overheard were negative about this Chicago vision—it was not the way to build a substantial church. I didn’t see a way at that time to break in and challenge them, nor to bring them together with the church they were criticizing, but the gnawing need for a wider dialogue was born.
The second incident was more public—the publication of Esther Schrader’s article, “A Glitzy Spin to a Gentle Faith,” in the Los Angeles Times in August 1997. The article linked the controversial expansion plans of Yorba Linda Friends Church with the supposed general trend among California’s evangelical Friends to discard old Quaker ways in favor of (as I summarized the charge in a Quaker Life editorial in 1997), “...rock music, glossy promotion and blatant appeals to affluent individualism.” I had a personal interest in this article since Schrader had interviewed me in the process of writing it and had done her best (it seemed to me) to get me to say that these California Friends were not really Friends at all—an evaluation I didn’t share.
I decided to try to kindle an open discussion in my Ferguson Fellowship year at Woodbrooke. My methods were not scientific. I sent my four questions about evangelism (including the one about priority of conversion vs. priority of ethical testimonies) far and wide, to individuals and groups, including Quaker Life readers. I sacrificed the controls of a true research survey in favor of a wider dialogue.
Instead of a traditional manuscript for my Fellowship “product,” I put up a web forum so more people could not only read about the topic of evangelism, Quaker style, but could easily add their own public replies to my questions, comment on related topics and read each other’s replies. The forum can be accessed through this website:
http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/evangelism.htm.
In addition to the website, I spoke about Friends and evangelism to a group at Britain Yearly Meeting sessions, to several local meetings and to Woodbrooke’s trustees. In the United States, I gave three presentations in North Carolina and helped develop an adult forum series for Reedwood Friends in Portland, Oregon.
In correspondence and in visits, I have seen that many Friends are suspicious about evangelism. It’s something “Friends don’t do”; it’s associated with hucksterism and manipulation in many minds. Genuine evangelism is none of this and is, in fact, the most important of all Friends testimonies, the one in which all other testimonies are rooted. The separation of the ethical testimonies from their evangelistic origins was an unhappy development among Friends, leading to confusion in our theology and a weakening of our public appeal. What do I mean by evangelism? It is the persuasive communication of the Christian good news, accompanied by an invitation to experience the community formed by that good news. Evangelism is incomplete without access to the community that is formed by the message. The elaboration of this definition would involve understanding what makes a message persuasive—what builds genuine credibility, including the quality of the relationship formed between the evangelist and the hearer.
I contrast evangelism with proselytism, which can be defined as the process of inviting a person to change their religious allegiance from one faith to another, not necessarily taking into account whether that change would be fundamen- tally good for the person being proselytized. When I hear the old cliche that “Friends don’t proselytize,” I agree, and then say, “but we do evangelize!”
I also contrast evangelism with outreach, defined as the process by which the faith community makes its resources available to meet needs outside that community. It is a good thing as far as it goes, and it might be a part of evangelism, but outreach doesn’t necessarily involve making our spiritual resources available, and too often it doesn’t involve providing access to the community itself.
Without statistical controls, it is hard to generalize from Friends’ participation in my project so far, but the diversity of the responses is interesting. About 55 Friends contributed to one or more of the topics on the web forum, of whom 28 commented on evangelistic priorities. I divided those responses into four categories:
“Conversion or the salvation message comes first.” 9 responses (3 women, 6 men)
“The testimonies should come first.” 4 responses (3 women, 1 man)
“Both—the conversion invitation and the testimonies are not divisible.” 10 responses (2 couples, one vote each; 2 women, 6 men)
“It depends.” 5 responses (4 women, 1 man)
Friends from all major branches and from several countries participated; some of the essays are thoughtful and deserve wider circulation and discussion. The website will be available indefinitely for further comments. Two of the weaker aspects of the project might yet be corrected. First, there have been too few exchanges on the forum among participants themselves on each other’s postings, without being arranged by me. Second, the topic on “speaking from experience” (first-hand experiences of evangelism as Friends) has received too few responses. The use of the Internet as a tool to get these results out, while giving wider access than a traditional library-bound manuscript, has its limits. For those who have no access to the Internet, a booklet-style version of the contributions is available.
My hope is that, one way or another, many more people will continue the conversation on effective evangelism after the manner of Friends.
Johan Maurer is a freelance writer and Friends minister living in Portland, Oregon.
Brief excerpts from the Forum:
“There will come a time in every person’s life in which they will be given the opportunity to choose. We must be ready and comfortable to act when that moment presents itself.” (Larry Kinser)
“I believe it is more important to teach the central role of Christ first so the ethical and social concerns have a meaningful, strong base from which to carry out those concerns. Even though the ethical and social concerns are placed in a secondary position there needs to be a balance in order to have the witness of love and commitment to correct those inequalities that surround us in our world. Without the love, empathy, selflessness, humbleness and dedication to assist in correcting the suffering and injustice around the world our message of Christ (evangelism) becomes hypocritical.” (Lyle Wheeler)
“It is more important to emphasize Christ’s central role and then introduce the issues of Christian growth, character and ethics. This is so because there was a reason God sent His son Jesus Christ. It was that man was not able to live righteously on his own. Biblical history is a record of beginnings and deteriorations for all who did not worship the true God.” (Oliver Kisaka)
“When it comes to evangelism, if our lives don’t speak, then nothing else we say will probably matter. In my experience, those outside the church find this admission honest and refreshing. It usually moves the conversation to a place where people are challenged to experience Christ for themselves, rather than comfortably dismiss the hypocrisy and failure of many who claim the name of Jesus.” (Mike Huber)
“If good works of justice, charity and righteousness are not based in the Spirit they become an ego trip that often is very dangerous. Spirit goes first.” (Violeta Tribandiene)
“Which is more important, Truth or Justice? The truth is, you can’t have one without the other. I think evangelism is similar. Jesus brought together proclamation and demonstration in his message about the Kingdom of God being at hand. If the message is to remain true, proclamation and demonstration cannot be separated. And frankly, the demonstration that is often needed (and perhaps most clearly seen) is in social and ethical concerns.” (Bob Carter)
“Christ ushered in the new Kingdom and continues to reveal himself through participants in that Kingdom who are called to witness to the Ever-Present One within culture to transform culture. It doesn’t seem that the emphasis of the central role of Christ should be separated from the ethical and social concerns to which the Kingdom directly relates.” (Becky Towne)