So far I've been enjoying the reading for this course. For so long mission and evangelism have been blurry distinctions for me (see last post). Yet reading the first essay in "The Study of Evangelism" book has brought forth so many different views on this topic.
Currently my favorite view is seeing mission as the larger envelope in which evangelism is inside of, but evangelism as the heart of mission. Mission is the work bringing about and joining in God's work for the Kingdom of God. Arias's book has been great to rethink beyond just "soul saving" to announcing the Reign of God, or the Kingdom of God. Mission is everything we do to bring about this Kingdom of God for the Glory of God. And yet, within this mission communicating the salvation of Jesus Christ and His defeat over sin is the most important message we communicate. All the work that is being done in our mission hopefully leads and points to the evangel, the Good News, the proclamation of God's Reign now and forever.
So this begins to lead me to some more questions... what does communicating this message (what I call evangelism) look like? Does it always happen with our voice? Can mission happen without evangelism? Can we work and work and work, and never really communicate the Good News? What if our work starts to become separated from the Good News? Are we then just social activists, good caring people, or something similar? Is it the evangelizing, the bringing and communicating of the Good News, what makes our mission particularly Christian?
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