Those called and sent in our time have a mandate not unlike that of Abraham and Moses, and not unlike that of the disciples of Jesus, because the talk and the walk are in every time and place fundamentally the same.
Discipleship and Evangelism
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 2022-10-21 04:02:18.
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This biblical background now permits us to propose certain theological presuppositions for discipleship and evangelism:
1. That God calls and sends with authority attests to our common conviction that this God is entitled to such imperatives among us, that is, that God acts with appropriate authority in calling and sending.
2. The God who calls and sends is the God of the good news, the one who created the world and calls it “good,” the one who in Israel is manifested through wonders of emancipation and sustenance, wonders that constitute the dazzling miracles of Israel’s doxologies; this is the one evidenced in Jesus of Nazareth, who caused the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be cleansed, the dead to be raised, the poor to rejoice (Luke 7:22). The God who calls and sends has a long history of miracles of transformative goodness.
3. This God of creation and redemption, of newness and transformation, is a God with a concrete intention for the world, an intention of well-being that is articulated in concrete mandates and commandments, one who will be obeyed by those who offer praise.
4. This God who calls and sends is the originator, sponsor, and advocate for shalom in all the world; God summons creatures of all sorts to join in the enactment of that shalom.
5. This God of the gospel, evidenced in miracles and voiced in imperatives, is a counterforce in the world, a counter to all of the powers of death and negation that operate in every zone of creaturely reality. God calls us to disengage from those powers to which we have tacitly sworn allegiance and sends us to confront, struggle with, and defeat those powers for the sake of God’s counter-will in the world.
6. The calling and sending of God place us regularly in crisis because (a) we do not want to disengage from the powers of negation to which we are deeply inured, and (b) we do not want to struggle against those mighty powers. Thus a willing response to God’s calling and sending, in praise and obedience, entails sustained, disciplined, concrete intentionality.
It is the character, reality, will, and purpose of God that propel us into a crisis of discipleship and evangelism. The dominant script of our society wants to silence the voice of this God of miracle and imperative. Where the dominant script succeeds in eliminating God, moreover, the possibility of discipleship and the capacity for evangelism evaporate, because it is only the option of the good news that produces ground and opportunity for either discipleship or evangelism.
Discipleship
Discipleship is not just a nice notion of church membership or church education; it entails 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 2022-10-21 04:02:18.
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