In This Issue: Moving the Bible Back to the Middle
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Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.
Moving the Bible Back to the Middle
By Shane Bennett
We have some lively moral debates afoot these days: stem cell research, gay marriage, euthanasia, global warming, and global domination. Someone stops you and says, “Tell me your opinion on stem cell research.” Will your response include either explicit or implied references to the Bible?
I think this is an issue for all believers, but particularly important for those of us who embrace God’s purposes for his blessing and glory to extend to all peoples. Our opinions, positions, views, thoughts, ideas, and arguments must have their origin and anchor in the Bible.
John Stott says, “Whenever Christians lose their confidence in the Bible, they also lose their zeal for evangelism. Conversely, whenever they are convinced about the Bible, then they are determined about evangelism” (“The Bible in World Evangelization,” page 18 in “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” – Notebook).
Stott goes on in this article to share four ways in which the Bible is indispensable to world evangelization. I wonder if perhaps many of us could use a Stott-inspired challenge to move the Bible back to the center of our consciousness.
Mandate for World Evangelization
We live in a time when it is increasingly uncool to say that some things are simply true – true for everyone, everywhere, every time. Whether or not we believe them has no affect on their truth. If you believe in absolute truth, you may be considered at least uncool. If you go on to say, “There is truth, and I happen to know it,” at least in part, you will be thought to be pompous and arrogant. If you go further to say, “And knowing this absolute truth, I’d be happy to share it with you,” you are imperialistic. So what’s a believer in Jesus to do?
How will you respond when a coworker sees End of the Spear, and tells you, “Well, I think they deserved to get speared to death. Who did they think they were, trying to impose their religion on those people?” Or maybe this summer you are leading a short-term team in a different culture and a sincere Peace Corps worker comes over to your table at a cafe and asks, “Why do you guys come over here and try to change these people? They have their religion and seem to be happy with it. Can’t you just help with the hunger and education issues they’re facing?”
Stott says our mandate is the whole Bible. It is found:
• in the creation of God (because of which all human beings are responsible to him)
• in the character of God (as outgoing, loving, compassionate, not willing that any should perish, desiring that all should come to repentance)
• in the promises of God (that all nations will be blessed through Abraham’s seed and will become the Messiah’s inheritance)
• in the Christ of God (now exalted with universal authority, to receive universal acclaim)
• in the Spirit of God (who convicts of sin, witnesses to Christ, and impels the Church to evangelize)
• in the Church of God (which is a multinational, missionary community, under orders to evangelize until Christ returns). The biblical mandate for world evangelization cannot be escaped.
Message for World Evangelization
The Bible gives us the basic message of the gospel. God created everything. He desires to be worshiped by those he will redeem from every nation. He will rule a kingdom over all kingdoms. Jesus came to earth, died, and rose from death to make the way for God’s purposes to be fulfilled and his promises kept.
Stott challenges us to hold and deliver this message with a commitment to the fact of revelation and a commitment to the task of contextualization. The core message is the same for all, but the way it finds life and grows is as varied as the kaleidoscope of cultures living on our planet. Stott’s challenge to us is “to combine fidelity (constantly studying the biblical text) with sensitivity (constantly studying the contemporary scene). Only then can we hope with faithfulness and relevance to relate the Word to the world, the gospel to the context, Scripture to culture.”
Model for World Evangelization
Not only does the Bible tell us what to say, it also tells (and shows) us how to say it. While we have wonderful and telling examples of evangelism in the lives of the Old Testament heroes, the New Testament followers, and in the corrective and challenging letters of Paul, the best example of missionary evangelization shines through the life of Jesus.
Many of us have been on short- or long-term mission projects in challenging places. The climate was oppressive, both physically and spiritually. The food was different; the language and customs puzzling. In sum, the place was quite different from home. Can I ask that our whining be tempered by considering the relative leap Jesus made by coming to live amongst us? You may have felt like a child in your new culture. Jesus actually was. You may have left family and the comforts of home. Jesus left the Father who made all comfort! Whatever we may suffer, we have a good example gone ahead of us; we join with noble ranks.
Stott says of Jesus: He identified with us, though without surrendering his own identity. And the principle of identification without loss of identity is the model for all evangelism, especially cross-cultural evangelism. Jesus gives us a wonderful model for telling this great message.
Power for World Evangelization
Finally, Stott tells us the Bible gives us the power necessary for evangelization. I presume that there are missionaries in the world (and mobilizers?) for whom it was all they could do to simply get out of bed this morning to face another day. The work God calls us to sometimes demands supernatural perseverance. (Maybe one of our best prayers for missionaries is that God will give them the strength and hope to press on until the harvest begins.) We need power to persevere.
We also may find ourselves needing power to deal with spiritual situations that take shapes we are unfamiliar with in our home culture. I’m thankful for the Bible’s examples and promises regarding power.
Stott reminds us that the strong man has been bound by one who is stronger still, and who by his death and resurrection disarmed and discarded the principalities and powers of evil. And if we feel weak? Good. I sometimes wish we were weaker. Faced with the forces of evil, we are often tempted to put on a show of Christian strength and engage in a little evangelical saber rattling. But it is in our weakness that Christ’s strength is made perfect and it is words of human weakness that the Spirit endorses with his power. So it is when we are weak that we are strong (1 Corinthians 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
So I’m challenged these days with the significance of the Bible, its centrality to my life and ministry, and Stott’s challenge to repossess it by diligent study and meditation, to heed its summons, grasp its message, follow its directions, trust its power, and to lift up our voices and make it known.
Care to join me?
Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.