Anglican Evangelists: Identifying and Training a New Generation

By Martyn Snow

For twenty years, the Archbishops' College of Evangelists has affirmed and supported Anglican evangelists. This book, marking the College's twentieth anniversary relaunch, relaunches the College with a clear focus on identifying and training new evangelists.

This book then, marks a significant transition. The thirteen authors work in a range of contexts and come from different traditions within the church. Their focus in this book, is less on the nature of evangelism, and more on the calling and gifting of the evangelist. In different ways they reflect on the questions: what is an evangelist? How should the church identify and affirm evangelists? How do we train evangelists? How do we enable evangelists to equip all God’s people to witness to the kingdom of God?

The thirteen contributors are all practitioners, and this is reflected in their range of experience and writing styles. Some take a deeply biblical and theological approach. Others reflect on their personal journey and learning. Others offer practical insights and a helpful reframing of the initial questions. All of them are fervent in their plea to the church to recognise the unique calling and gifting of the evangelist and reflect on how this gift is received and passed on within the church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Jun 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780281083657

Martyn Snow

Martyn Snow is the Bishop of Leicester and Chair of the Archbishops' College of Evangelists.

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ANGLICAN EVANGELISTS

Identifying and training a new generation

Edited by

Martyn Snow

Published in Great Britain in 2019

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

www.spck.org.uk

Copyright © Martyn Snow 2019

The authors of the individual chapters included in this work have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as such.

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Every effort has been made to seek permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book. The publisher apologizes for those cases in which permission might not have been sought and, if notified, will formally seek permission at the earliest opportunity.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780281083657

Typeset by The Book Guild Ltd, Leicester

First printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press

Subsequently digitally printed in Great Britain

eBook by The Book Guild Ltd, Leicester

Contents

Preface

1 Time for a fresh look? Identifying and training Anglican evangelists Martyn Snow

Part 1

What is an evangelist?

2 A vision for 1,000 new evangelists Dave Male

3 The character and spirituality of the evangelist: busting some myths Jenny Mooby

4 The evangelist and social transformation Steve Hollinghurst

5 Evangelists in Catholic parishes Damian Feeney

Part 2

Training evangelists?

6 Training evangelists in the local church John McGinley

7 Training evangelists to reach the parts the Church doesn’t often reach Jane Truman

8 Can theological colleges train evangelists? Greg Downes

9 Evangelism across cultures Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy

Part 3

THE EVANGELIST AND THE WITNESS OF THE WHOLE CHURCH

10 The evangelist in the parish church: enabling all baptized Christians to be witnesses Margaret Cave

11 The pioneer evangelist: when and how to speak of Christ Ed Olsworth-Peter

12 The evangelist in the cathedral: speaking of Christ with gentleness and wisdom Stephen Hance

13 The evangelist in the digital world: telling stories to those who know little of Jesus Adrian Harris

Afterword: confidence

Preface

For twenty years the Archbishops’ College of Evangelists has affirmed and supported evangelists whose work has either been national or regional (i.e. across more than one diocese). Some very well-known names have been and continue to be members of the College.

However, in the build-up to our twentieth anniversary, the Council of the College of Evangelists reflected on a number of changes taking place in both society and church. This is not the place to rehearse them all in detail – several chapters touch on the changes in society, and Dave Male in particular explores the setting up of the Evangelism and Discipleship Team in Church House, London – but it is fair to say that the Council considered the changes significant enough for us to rethink the purpose of the College.

In Autumn 2019, we will be re-launching the College with more of a focus on identifying and training new evangelists. Members will still be experienced evangelists whose ministry is recognized by the national church, but they will covenant to give time and energy to an emerging generation of new evangelists.

This book, then, marks a significant transition. The thirteen authors work in a range of contexts and come from different traditions within the church. Their focus in this book is less on the nature of evangelism and more on the calling and gifting of the evangelist. In different ways they reflect on the questions: What is an evangelist? How should the church identify and affirm evangelists? How do we train evangelists? How do we enable evangelists to equip all God’s people to witness to the kingdom of God?

The thirteen contributors are all practitioners, and this is reflected in their range of experience and writing styles. Some take a deeply biblical and theological approach. Others reflect on their personal journey and learning. Others offer practical insights and a helpful reframing of the initial questions. All of them are fervent in their plea to the church to recognize the unique calling and gifting of the evangelist and reflect on how this gift is received and passed on within the church.

For too long, the church has talked about evangelism and encouraged Christians to get involved in evangelism, but failed to equip them for this task. In part, this is because we have failed to recognize the unique role of evangelists in equipping all baptized Christians to speak about their faith and point people to Jesus Christ. Unless and until the church identifies and trains evangelists both for the work of evangelism and for the work of equipping all God’s people in their witness, we will struggle to get beyond the guilt inducing patterns of the past.

No book can cover every angle, and we are acutely conscious that we haven’t got the full diversity of contributors that would be necessary to reflect the considerable breadth of the church. Nevertheless, those readers who delve in to all thirteen chapters will detect significant differences of theology, style and substance. Therefore, we hope this will be a useful contribution to the ongoing debate within the church about how we ‘proclaim afresh’ in this generation the good news of God in Jesus Christ.

So whatever your background, and whatever the context for your work, we hope you will hear God’s call afresh and consider how you can contribute to training and forming Anglican evangelists who will shape the church, even as they make their appeal to those who have yet to encounter the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Martyn Snow

Bishop of Leicester

1

Time for a fresh look? Identifying and training Anglican evangelists

Martyn Snow

The accidental evangelist

Eighteen years after being ordained a priest in God’s church, I discovered a strange sense of a new calling. Gradually it dawned on me that I not only enjoyed talking to people about faith and the big questions of life, but what I said, and maybe the way I said it, seemed to connect with people outside the church and lead them to want to know more. Sometimes they ended up joining a church; and sometimes they described having an encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Yet in all cases, I found myself, even as an introvert, strangely energized by these conversations.

You may think this is rather strange. Isn’t this what every ordained minister should be doing or, indeed, every baptized Christian? Why should it take me eighteen years to discover this? And does this really make me an evangelist (whatever that term might mean)?

Well yes, I would hope that every baptized Christian is doing this in the sense of answering a question from a friend while sitting in the pub or while chatting in the office canteen. I am a firm believer that every Christian should be ready and equipped to have what I call ‘everyday faith conversations’, or what St Peter refers to as giving an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3.15). Many Christians do this regularly in their workplaces and social networks, and many clergy do this as part of their ministry (particularly, of course, those who work as chaplains in our prisons, hospitals, universities and other organizations).

Yet does this make you an evangelist? I want to explore some of these questions – what is an evangelist, why does the church need evangelists, and how should we train evangelists (acknowledging that others in this book will give slightly different answers)? My argument is that the church not only needs to pay much more attention to the evangelists gifted to her by God, but also needs to put significantly more resources in to training these key ministers so that they, in turn, can equip all baptized Christians for these ‘everyday faith conversations’. At this moment in the history of the church, we urgently need many more evangelists (for the sake of the church as well as the world), but an object (or a person) only becomes a gift as it is passed on, received as an expression of genuine friendship and enjoyed by the receiver. How then might the Church of England receive the gift of the evangelist in the coming decades?

I start with my own experience because I hope it might encourage you to take a fresh look at this subject. I thought that I knew what an evangelist looked like (and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me). Yet it was only as I entered a new season in my life that it dawned on me that God might actually be calling me in a new and unexpected way.

The new season in question was connected to becoming a bishop. I didn’t have much idea of what this new role was about, but I did know that I wanted to spend time with God in prayer and spend time in conversation with ordinary people talking about Jesus Christ. So, I started on a programme of parish visits in which I asked the local clergy to ensure that I spent as much time with people who didn’t come to their churches as with those who did. These have now evolved into ‘Bishop’s Big Conversation’ weekends and I do everything from visits to schools and colleges (ensuring there is time for conversations with individuals and small groups, as well as the usual assemblies and classroom visits), men’s breakfasts, afternoon teas in the care home, guest services and – always the highlight – an evening being ‘grilled’ in the pub.

My last visit to the pub involved lots of banter and jokes. The place was packed – maybe because the vicar had offered a free pint to anyone who texted in a question for me (in the end the landlord provided all the ‘free’ pints, as he said he was grateful for someone coming to answer all the questions he usually gets asked!). However, I spent the whole evening having one conversation after another with individuals and small groups wanting to explore questions of faith. Some were from Christian backgrounds, but had bad experiences of church. Some had ‘spiritual experiences’ that they struggled to articulate, but wanted to know what I made of it. Some had intellectual questions (although I always wonder what personal experience is behind the question). Some wanted to share experiences of grief or pain or longing or desire. I’m fairly sure that very few of these people would have thought of visiting a church to ask these questions, but because I was there, on their territory, they opened up to me.

By the end of the evening I was exhausted (and probably a little worse for wear – it’s thirsty work listening for four hours!). Yet I was strangely energized – the sort of energy that comes from doing something which connects with your gifts, your passions, your style of working and, most fundamentally, your calling. Of course, I still have to do the meetings and the emails and all the other things that are expected of clergy and bishops, but if you ask me when I feel most closely aligned to my calling, it is on these occasions when I chat about faith with people in a pub or a coffee shop. I think that might make me an evangelist.

Calling and gifting

All that I’ve said so far relates to my calling or vocation. John Wesley referred to his ‘ordinary calling’ and his ‘extraordinary calling’¹ – the first was connected to ordination, the second to his work as an evangelist. I wonder how often ordained clergy stop to review their calling during the course of their ministry? Sometimes we act as if God’s call comes only once in life. Could it be that a great many clergy are overlooking their ‘extraordinary calling’?

And what of lay people, who often find their ministry in church is publicly affirmed while the rest of their lives is ignored by the church? Could it be that for many (or most!) their calling is to the workplace, or their social networks or their homes? Maybe if we recognized this as a calling, we would value it much more highly and give much more attention to the question of training people for ministry among those who don’t come to church. We may not all be evangelists, but we are all called to witness to God’s kingdom. Imagine if every baptized Christian truly saw themselves as commissioned as an ambassador for Christ in their everyday lives!

Calling, or vocation, is an important theological theme, which I include deliberately at the outset of this book. As Walter Brueggemann has said: the God to which the [Bible] bears testimony is a God who calls, who disrupts the lives of settled people, who gives them a vocation that marks life by inconvenience and risk.² We are given so many examples of this in Scripture, from Abraham to Moses to the prophets to Jesus. God’s call comes to diverse people, in many different ways, at various stages in life. Primarily, it is a call to live in relationship – to love God and neighbour.

The God who calls is also the God who sends. Abraham and subsequently Israel are to be a blessing to the nations. Moses is sent to confront Pharaoh and so set the people of Israel free. Jesus is sent by the Father and in turn sends his disciples, As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’ (Matt. 10.7). Brueggemann continues:

of course, it is huge leap from these biblical summonses to our own time, space, and circumstance. Nevertheless, we imagine that the same calling God calls ‘men and women of all ages, tongues, and races into his church.’ The call is not to join an institution or to sign a pledge card; it is rather to sign on for a different narrative account of reality, one that is in profound contrast to the dominant account of reality into which we are all summarily inducted.³

All of us then are called by God, and as we respond to this call and draw near to God, we find ourselves sent out in to the world to be with and work with God in a world of great beauty and need. This is the pattern Jesus taught his disciples – they were to be with him and to be sent out to proclaim the message (Mark 3.14).

Yet if all are called and sent in this general sense, what then is the specific calling of the evangelist? The New Testament scholar Alistair Campbell has suggested that the title originally denoted men and women who in the earliest days of the church, experienced a sense of commission from the risen Lord to go and preach the Gospel, first in Palestine and then further afield.⁴

This was a larger group than the ‘apostles’ (in the sense of the twelve plus Paul) and was a different calling to that of deacons, presybters or bishops. Campbell suggests the title evangelist (Greek noun: euaggelistas), which is rare in other literature from the same period, was created deliberately to link to the Gospel (Greek noun: euaggelion), which these people proclaimed (Greek verb: euaggelizesthai). It was "the name given by the Pauline circle to a person who, not being himself (sic) an apostle, went about preaching that message and by means of it bringing new communities of believers in to being."⁵

Alongside this sense of commissioning or calling, we also need to hold the concept of gifting. The New Testament has frequent references to the risen Lord Jesus Christ giving gifts to the church (both collectively and individually). The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Eph. 4.11).

Evangelists then, are a gift to the body of Christ, the saints.⁶ They are part of the foundational unity of the church (Eph. 4.1–6), the ascension gifting of the church (4.7–11) and part of the means of attaining maturity and fullness in Christ (4.12–16). Quite clearly, not everyone is an evangelist, but equally clearly, the work of an evangelist is strongly connected to the church. This is an important point worth stressing at the start of this book – the gift of the evangelist is as much about equipping the saints in their witness as it is about proclaiming the Gospel to those who have never heard. The task of witnessing to God’s kingdom and of helping all people hear God’s call is a commission given to the whole church. Yet evangelists have a specific calling and gifting to set an example and equip the church for this work.

This is a hard message for some evangelists – I have heard many say, I get so frustrated with the church, I’d much rather spend all my time with non-Christians! While understandable, this approach simply won’t do. If the evangelist isn’t equipping others for ‘everyday faith conversations’, then they have not understood the purpose of their gifting. This is also a hard message for the church. We are so conditioned to employing ‘professionals’ to do certain work on our behalf, that we assume that the evangelist (the ‘enthusiastic individual who can talk to anyone’, as someone put it to me recently) does this work on behalf of the church, i.e. so others don’t have to. Enabling both evangelist and church to reflect on how they give and receive their respective gifts is an urgent task in today’s church.

How then does this sit with the role of clergy in today’s church? Should all ordained ministers be evangelists? Again, the answer is ‘yes’ in the sense of doing the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4.5). This instruction to Timothy comes in the context (the section begins at 3.10) of the example of Paul (particularly as regards persecution and suffering); the difficult nature of the work in a God-rejecting world; the power of the Scriptures to lead people to salvation and to equip people for good works; and therefore the centrality of proclaiming the message, encouraging and teaching. Timothy then is to do the work of an evangelist by preaching and teaching since, as Campbell says, "the evangelist is to be defined not by his (sic) audience but by his message, a message which comes as teaching, proof, correction or appeal depending on where it ‘finds’ its hearers."⁷

Once again, it is worth stressing that those clergy who state adamantly I am not an evangelist (as I once did!) cannot absolve themselves from the responsibility of doing the work of an evangelist, i.e. teaching and preaching in a way which leads people to Jesus Christ, and equips the followers of Jesus Christ to witness to him in their everyday life situations.

It is also the role of clergy to have regular ‘vocational conversations’ with Christians, seeking to discern the gifts and calling of each person. Those identified as evangelists can then be released to set an example in evangelism and mentor and coach others in this work. The evangelist remains accountable to their Incumbent (regular meetings to ‘give an account’ of how they are sharing the Gospel in words and actions, and how they are training others). The Incumbent takes responsibility for ensuring that the wider body receives the gift of the evangelist (affirming their ministry publicly, praying for them, and helping the evangelist tell stories in such a way that they shape the wider narrative of the church).

The evangelist as