There is saying in the UNIX world that "no news is good news". The context was that when a program finished running, if it did not print out any output, you could assume everything worked. Actually the saying goes back to King James I. Anyway: here I am talking about the gospel - that is, the good news. But in some churches it seems that the gospel has fallen out of fashion. There is no longer any good news preached...which is not good news at all, in any sense of the phrase!
Further confusion abounds in that many Christians are unsure as to what the good news actually us (i.e. see previous blog post). Others are more sure as to the news, but believe that "no news is good news" - in other words, they will not share the gospel unless forced at gunpoint. We are somehow led to believe that (Apostle) Paul would have done a better job if he had just stuck to making tents and waiting for his customers to ask why his tents has fish logos sewn all over them, or something. At least that way he would have not started all those crazy riots...
OK, sarcasm aside, many folks these days would say they are not sure about sharing the good news, but they are down with this Missional church thing. Certainly I am happy to stand up and be counted in the missional church camp. But I also think we need to continue to emphasise the importance of sharing the gospel: no news is bad news in this case. So, it is in the context of discussing where "sharing the good news" - evangelism - fits into missional church that I have posted this comment on Rupert's blog, and I encourage folks to join in the conversation. Please comment on Rupert's blog if your comment is relevant to this discussion there, otherwise feel free to comment here.
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2 comments:
hey alastair - thanks for the link. just to clarify, i am certainly NOT saying that we shouldn't share the gospel. This discussion over at my blog is really about HOW we do that, rather if we do that.
I think in all the discussion it is important to remember that we all want to see people healed, restored, live in the benefit of the Kingdom, and be connected to Jesus.
What we are talking about is:
* the nature of the gospel (as you previous post shows, there is some disagreement or divergent views on this).
* how to best introduce people to Jesus.
I am aware that there are people who have deconstructed faith so much, that they don't see any need to be evangelistic or missional - they don't seem to have any desire to see people introduced to Jesus. I think that advocates of missional church are not the same, and should not be confused with this group.
Rupert - I have amended my blog post to clarify what is being discussed at your blog. I think it was a little misleading before.
Thanks for underlining the baseline that we are all (hopefully!) working towards...
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