PLAGIARISM FREE "A" WORK IN 12 HOURS

CHAPTER 18

Evangelism: A Pastoral Theological Perspective

J. Patrick Vaughn

It began as an infection in her gum. Six weeks later Janice, a seventy-five-year-old member of my congregation, lay comatose in an intensive care unit. She had developed a particularly virulent strain of pneumonia, and the doctors gave her no hope of recovery. I visited her the night before she died. When I walked into the waiting room, I saw her brother and sister. I sat down and listened to their shock and dismay. Soon, I realized that the sister, Laura, had not spoken. She seemed withdrawn, and I wanted to offer her an opportunity to express herself. When I asked how she was feeling, she responded, “My eyes hurt.” I inquired further. She released a heavy sigh and replied, “Too much water running.” In four simple words Laura verbalized the anguish of her family.

Pastoral theology is concerned with shepherding, with the healing, sustaining, and guiding dimensions of ministry. It seeks to integrate insights and reflections gleaned from the disciplines of both the social sciences and theology in order to understand and better serve the community of faith. Unfortunately, those engaged in the ministry of shepherding have not consistently and intentionally imagined themselves to be evangelists. In this essay I propose that when evangelism is theologically grounded in the suffering love of the Triune God, the image of evangelist promises to shape and powerfully inform the ministry of pastoral care and counseling. The evangelist is the one whose primary concern is “too much water running.”

Metaphors and Obligations

In Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care Don Browning offers a model for theological reflection that facilitates the development of a biblically faithful and theologically coherent understanding of evangelism.1 In an attempt to reintegrate moral reasoning with the church’s ministry of care, Browning suggests that ethical reflection operates on five levels. The first is termed the metaphorical or symbolic level. This is concerned with issues of ultimate reality. The second level asks questions of obligation. This is the level of principle.

Browning argues that level one impacts and informs level two. The manner in which a community envisions God will mold how that community understands who it is obligated to be and what it is obligated to do. A church’s ministry is largely influenced by the metaphors it employs to give an image to ultimate reality. “The vision,” Browning observes, “colors all that we say and do. It affects our moral thinking. Even though it does not determine it in all

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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respects, it deeply influences the way we regard and care for one another.”2 Communities live by the way that they image ultimate reality. Their obligations to act and serve are formed by their shared vision of God.

Browning’s model suggests that the ministry of evangelism begins with an inquiry concerning the very nature of God. As Terence Fretheim has noted,

it is not enough to say that one believes in God. What is important is the kind of God in whom one believes. Or, to use different language, metaphors matter. The images used to speak of God not only decisively determine the way one thinks about God, they have a powerful impact on the shape of the life of the believer. They may, in fact, tend to shape a life toward unbelief.3

The symbols a community employs to image God powerfully shape and form the nature and practice of ministerial obligation. Pastoral theological reflection upon the ministry of evangelism begins with the very nature of God as captured and expressed in metaphor.

The Metaphor of the Cross

For Christians, the cross stands as one of the central metaphors in the faith community. Jürgen Moltmann has even suggested that it “is the test of everything which deserves to be called Christian.”4 The cross reveals a God whose love is so great that God experiences painful suffering in and through the divine/human relationships.5

The cross reveals that God suffers because of human sin. The priests and politicians, the religious community and Roman government were incredibly threatened by Jesus’ life and ministry. He reached out to the poor and outcast, sat at table with tax collectors and sinners, ministered to the abused and beaten. Believed to be heretical, seditious, and dangerous, he was finally rejected even by his most trusted confidants. Human sin and rejection nailed Christ to the cross.

The cross reveals that God suffers with humanity. In his pain, brokenness, and victimization, Jesus identifies with all who experience pain, brokenness, and victimization. He aligns himself with all who know abandonment and forsakenness. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. In short, the God who suffers with men and women is a God of compassion. Compassion literally means to “suffer with.” Andrew Purves has noted that the Hebrew word for compassion is rachamim. It is

derived from another Hebrew word, reckem which means womb or uterus. The literal meaning of compassion, then, is the womb pained in solidarity with suffering of another. The feeling of deep kinship with another is understood now is an intimate and physical way as the wounding of the womb. The wounded womb is the core of the biblical meaning of compassion. At its most basic, compassion represents a feminine characteristic of God.6

While men and women know suffering, God knows suffering in a profoundly deep and interior way.

The cross reveals that God suffers on behalf of humanity. Jesus’ death brings the hope of a

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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right and renewing relationship with God as well as with other men and women. God the Father surrendered the Son to death that he might become the Father of all people. The Father willingly endured the pain of losing a beloved Son that all men and women might become God’s children. Similarly, the Son willingly entered into the suffering and death of the cross to be the “brother and savior of all who are condemned and accursed.”7 The cross transforms relationships that are marred by sin. It is a transformation that involves divine pain and suffering. The God of the cross is a God of suffering love.

The metaphor of the cross also captures the Trinitarian nature of God. In The Trinity and the Kingdom, Moltmann attempts to develop a sociological understanding of God.8 He rejects a view of the Trinity that envisions God as either a supreme substance or absolute subject. Such interpretations narrowly view God as either an arbiter of power or an ultimate, solitary individual. In contrast, Moltmann argues that the doctrine of Trinity describes a God whose very nature is communal.

In the Western church this doctrine has traditionally been formulated as an attempt to maintain the unity of God. Moltmann believes, however, that God’s unity has been so radically asserted that the inner differentiated persons of the Godhead have been virtually collapsed into a solitary entity. He argues that God’s unity can be more powerfully and faithfully understood in terms of perichoresis, a mutual indwelling. In describing this form of unity he writes,

An eternal life process takes place in the triune God through the exchange of energies. The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, that they are one. It is a process of most perfect and intense empathy. Precisely through the personal characteristics that distinguish them from one another, the Father, the Son and the Spirit dwell in one another and communicate eternal life to one another. In the perichoresis, the very thing that divides them then becomes that which binds them together.… The trinitarian persons form their own unity by themselves in the circulation of the divine life.9

God is one, but not in a homogenized, monolithic, inaccessible, uniform, unvaried manner. God is one in a dynamic, passionate, relational, mutual indwelling of persons in love. The doctrine of the Trinity “describes God in terms of shared life and love rather than in terms of domineering power. God loves in freedom, lives in community, and wills creatures to live in community. God is self sharing, other regarding, community forming love.”10 God is not a lone monarch ruling in solitude. God is a covenantal God who governs in and through and as community, ever seeking to bring others into relationship.

In the cross of Christ the suffering love and communal being of God are supremely embodied and expressed, for “here the love of the Father which communicates itself becomes infinite pain at the sacrifice of the Son. Here the responsive love of the Son becomes infinite suffering over being rejected and cast out by the Father. What happens on Golgotha extends to the depths of the Godhead and therefore shapes the divine life forever.”11 The cross reveals the depth of God’s desire to enter into community with men and women. This communal God willingly endures suffering and death so that humanity might be renewed, redeemed,

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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and restored. The cross reveals a Triune God of suffering love. This is the evangel which evangelists seek to share.

Obligations Concerning Evangelism

Again, obligations arise out of metaphors of ultimate reality. Browning has written, “It is not only in theology but, to a surprising extent, in the modern psychologies as well that the way we metaphorically represent the world in its most durable and ultimate respects influences (although not necessarily determines in all respects) what we think we are obligated to do.”12 The cross reveals a Triune God of suffering love. I believe that this metaphor powerfully shapes the community of faith and gives birth to certain principles concerning the ministry of evangelism.

First, the metaphor of cross enlivens the community of believers to share the good news of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is born in the very nature of God, not in particular commandments or laws. The church shares the evangel because the God that she worships is a God who is community-building, other-seeking, other-affirming. The Triune God of suffering love deeply hungers for fellowship with women and men. Charles Gerkin has noted,

Yahweh does not choose to stay apart from the affairs of the world, but chooses rather to be actively engaged in the world of human affairs seeking to fulfill Yahweh’s own purposes. The God of Israel is an active, passionate God concerned for the preservation of the community of God’s people and the welfare of all. Said plainly and straightforwardly, the God Yahweh does not choose to stay aloof from the affairs of the world. Yahweh moves out from Yahweh’s self in acts of compassion and justice. So also should Yahweh’s people.13

The church is fundamentally and primarily motivated to engage in the ministry of evangelism because of who God is, a Triune God of suffering love. The very nature of God shapes the people of God into a community that ever seeks to share the good news with others.

Second, evangelical endeavors shaped by the metaphor of the cross will be personal and relational. Gimmicks, manipulation, threats, and stale, pre-packaged methods of proclamation are not acceptable. The God of relationship desires relationship. This suggests that the evangelist will not share the gospel simply through direct proclamation. He or she will share the evangel with an empathic ear and a deep, compassionate willingness to listen to others. Such openness and sensitivity to the other are essential in the establishment and development of genuine community. In other words, the good news of Jesus Christ simply cannot be communicated from a distance, whether that distance is provided by a large imposing pulpit or emotional unavailability. The good news is shared through a relationship that reflects the perichoretic nature of God.

Third, the metaphor of cross suggests that evangelical endeavors will be acutely sensitive to human experience, especially the experience of pain and suffering. God so attends to the condition of men and women that God weeps when they weep and rejoices when they rejoice. People’s pain and needs are important to evangelists because they are important to God. The faithful evangelist will be open to the particular plight of God’s children, offering the gifts of

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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intimacy, presence, and the willingness to suffer with another in a situation of hurt and brokenness. Even as God enters into the world of human experience, so too will faithful evangelists seek to enter more fully into that world.

Surprisingly, through faithful attempts to share the good news, the evangelist will also be nurtured, nurtured by the God who is already present in the other person’s life. When Christ told his disciples that as they ministered to the “least of these” they were ministering to him (Matt. 25:40), he was speaking from the perspective of the suffering love of the Triune God. In the relational embrace of people’s hurt and pain, evangelists may hope to be embraced by the presence of the God they serve.

Fourth, because God is a communal God, the sharing of the gospel will involve the work and commitment of the fellowship of believers. It will not suffice for an individual or committee or governing body to engage in sharing God’s love. Evangelism is the privilege and responsibility of the entire church. It depends upon a network of mutually supportive men and women.

Fifth, evangelism informed by the metaphor of the cross will recognize and respect limits. There is in the Godhead inner differentiation as well as love and respect for the integrity of the other persons. Personal boundaries are not transgressed. Evangelists will also respect an individual’s or family’s or even community’s boundaries. In Hopeful Imagination Walter Brueggemann comments on the obligation to respect limits. He remarks,

Those in ministry have a terrible temptation to take responsibility for others, to do for others what they will not do for themselves. We have a difficult time having enough freedom to disengage ourselves, to let others be free when they are wrong, to let others be free to fail, even when they are surely headed for destruction.… A ministry of vitality requires that we be deeply concerned for and utterly free from other people.14

Evangelical efforts may include both verbal and nonverbal invitations to relationship. Adopting biblical imagery, evangelists will knock at the door (Rev. 3:20), but, in recognizing the integrity of the boundaries of the other, the door will not be knocked down. Though perhaps not perceived or understood by the evangelist, she or he trusts that God is already in the home, abiding in rooms of pain and brokenness. When the door does not open, evangelists trust that God continues to be at work in those persons’ lives. When the door does open, they trust that it is God who has turned the knob. Recognition of limits not only ensures respect for the dignity of others, it also serves to release the evangelist of unnecessary burden and responsibility. Ultimately, God is responsible for humanity not those who serve God.

Finally, since God suffers because of human sin and rejection, the witness of evangelism is obligated to confront evil and sin in the world. On a social level, evangelism involves confronting forces that dehumanize and kill, powers that seek to strip away human value and dignity (e.g., racism, ageism, militarism). On a personal level, this involves gently, relationally, and firmly holding people responsible for their lives, enabling them to recognize, face, and repent of the pain they have inflicted upon themselves, upon others, and even upon God. As Ben Johnson has written, “The church, because it is the body of Christ, must always

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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concern itself with mission and evangelism, because Christ came to save lost persons and to redeem the world.”15 The metaphor of cross thus calls the evangelist to resist the polarization of social activism and personal commitment.

Pastoral Caregivers as Evangelists

Perhaps out of concern for therapeutic neutrality, those who seek to serve as shepherds have seemed reluctant to image themselves as evangelists.16 This is understandable given the distorted view of evangelism in popular culture and in certain expressions of the faith community.17 Yet, this is also sad and unfortunate. Because the evangelist is the one who bears the good news of the Triune God of suffering love, the image of evangelist offers to shape and inform powerfully the ministry of pastoral care and counseling.

As evangelists, pastoral caregivers are obligated to be concerned with developing personal relationships. The shepherd knows his or her flock by name (John 10:3). The essence of any pastoral encounter is the establishment and nurture of a personal relationship. This is perichoresis in action. In the homes of parishioners, in hospital rooms, and in the counseling office, it is this appreciation and deepening of relationship that offers the hope of healing and restoration.

As evangelists, pastoral caregivers are obligated to be sensitive to human experience, particularly need and pain. Pastoral care and counseling are inherently evangelical because they are forms of ministry that tend to brokenness. Shepherds care for their lost and wounded sheep. As a friend of mine is fond of remarking, “Personal hurts require personal healing.” When we ministers listen to the agonizing cries of the sick, the dying, the divorced, the depressed, the grieving, we are not simply being kind or polite. Through our care and sensitivity we are sharing the suffering love of the Triune God. We are, indeed, serving as evangelists.

As evangelists, pastoral caregivers are obligated to be involved in communities that offer mutual support and encouragement. Pastors, chaplains, and pastoral counselors are not Lone Rangers. Our ministry is vitally dependent upon fellowship with our brothers and sisters. The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, for example, are organizations that seek to offer guidance, consultation, supervision, and support in an attempt to serve the people of God as faithfully as possible. This is not simply psychologically prudent but theologically mandated.

I think it is important to note that such community involves not only caregivers, but extends to care receivers as well. In my opening illustration I described the anguish of a grieving family. The sister lamented that her eyes hurt because of “too much water running.” Through our sharing we formed a community; I believe that I was only able to reach out to them in their brokenness because of my own personal experience of a sustaining community. I have several colleagues with whom I regularly meet to share my joys and sorrows. I also shared this particular pastoral encounter with my Clinical Pastoral Education group. They

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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listened and helped me to tend to my own sense of loss. The metaphor of the cross reminds us shepherds that it is only as we are engaged in mutually fulfilling and supporting communities that we are enabled to reach out to our wounded and hurting sheep. In short, this metaphor issues serious challenges to individualistic approaches to pastoral care and counseling.

As evangelists, pastoral caregivers demonstrate a respect for boundaries and limits. Emotional defenses are respected. A counselor, chaplain, or pastor does not force someone to share areas of life that he or she may want to protect. Daniel Migliore has defined sin as both pride and self-rejection.18 Both reflect a lack of respect for limits. In the former the boundaries of the other are neglected. In the latter the boundaries of the self are neglected. Engaging self, neighbor, and God in deeper and more fulfilling ways is made possible only through struggling with one’s limits and boundaries.

As evangelists, pastoral caregivers confront sin and evil. Since such confrontation is generally associated with social action and social causes, it might well be asked if this is really possible in a hospital room, a counseling center, or the front porch of a parishioner. The answer is unequivocally affirmative. In these very places self-destructive and/or suicidal impulses are confronted, the physical and emotional abuse of spouses and children is challenged, the lack of concern for oneself or others is contested, and the gods who deny pain and relationship are defied.

I have long been uncomfortable with and suspicious of those who call themselves evangelists. As I have allowed the metaphor of the cross to touch and move me, however, I have discovered a deeper appreciation for evangelism. l now feel comfortable with the role of evangelist. While certainly appreciating and using insights gleaned from the social sciences, the role of evangelist reminds me that pastoral care and counseling are fundamentally shaped and informed by the faith community. It is as an evangelist of the cross that I offer empathy to a woman grieving the death of a sister or listen to the anger of a woman who has been abused, or reach out to a child who has a serious illness. It is as an evangelist of the cross that I participate in community that I may engage others in community. It is as an evangelist that I lift up the hope of God’s presence in the midst of the brokenness and pain and suffering of human life. In short, the role of evangelist has moved me to reclaim and deepen my appreciation for our theological heritage.

In addition, I believe that those of us engaged in the ministry of pastoral care and counseling have an important word to offer the church. We can challenge the church when it settles for slick marketing techniques and avoids the suffering love of the cross. We can question the church when it engages in evangelism as monologue instead of dialogue. We can remind the church that healing comes not through assent to a particular doctrine but through the struggle and development of a caring relationship. We can model for the community of faith a form of evangelism that strives to be responsive to the metaphor of the cross. As evangelists we hold forth good news for the church!

Carroll Wise has defined the ministry of pastoral care as “the art of communicating the

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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inner meaning of the gospel to persons at the point of their need.”19 This is the essence of evangelism. My hope is that those of us engaged in the ministry of pastoral care and counseling will more and more image ourselves as evangelists. Who is an evangelist? Quite simply, she or he is the one who seeks to share the good news of Jesus Christ by tending to the experience of those who cry out, “Too much water running!”

1. Don Browning, Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), pp. 47-71. 2. Browning, Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care, p. 59. 3. Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. 1. 4. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 7. 5. Though I focus on the New Testament on the cross, it is important to remember that the Old Testament also bears

witness to a God of suffering love. See Fretheim, Suffering of God, pp. 107-48. 6. Andrew Purves, The Search for Compassion: Spirituality and Ministry (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1989), p.

69. 7. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel and Jürgen Moltmann, God — His & Hers (New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. 68. 8. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981). 9. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, pp. 174-75. 10. Daniel I. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

1991), p. 64. 11. Moltmann-Wendel and Moltmann, God — His & Hers, p. 68. 12. Don Browning, Religious Thought and the Modern Psychologists (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), p. 20. Browning

asserts that systems of psychological investigations are not morally neutral, and he illustrates how metaphors inherent in various modern psychologies do give birth to certain obligations regarding human life. He then creatively compares such obligations with the obligations shaped by Christian faith as expressed in the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr.

13. Charles V. Gerkin, Prophetic Pastoral Practice (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), p. 134. 14. Walter Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), p. 51. 15. Ben C. Johnson, Rethinking Evangelism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), p. 79. 16. I certainly do not intend this to be a categorical statement. However, in reading, training, and conversations with

pastoral counselors and chaplains, I am impressed by the lack of the intentional and consistent appropriation of the image of evangelist.

17. Ben Johnson has observed that certain interpretations of the meaning and practice of evangelism focus on “saving souls from hell.” He terms this “evangelicalism.” It is actually a perversion of evangelism. See Rethinking Evangelism, pp. 15- 19.

18. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, pp. 130-35. 19. Carroll Wise, The Meaning of Pastoral Care (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 8.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-10-26 12:09:07.

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