Hi Johan,
I like how you differentiate proselytism and outreach from evangelization. They're all related of course, but as you note, they bespeak different attitudes and expectations. The actual definition of Evangelism that you give here sounds good as far as it goes but I worry that it would break down when people started arguing the details (What is the "Christian good news"? What do we mean by "community"?) There's all that messy stuff about discipline and authority and what makes a Christian and just how strictly we take the Bible, etc.
I'd love to hear an extended definition. It surprised me when I read the "Core Values" put forth by the Behr's Simple Churches ministry to be ones even this liberal Friend can sign off on: "Leadership over Location, Ministry over Money, Converts over Christians, Disciples over Decisions, People over Property, Spirit over Self, His Kingdom over Ours." I've not met them but at least online they seem to be Friends who aren't worried about whether we're called Friends or not.
These terms sound different to different types of Friends even before we start defining them. How does that play in? I love to use the word Evangelism around FGC Friends, because it makes everyone squirm a little and prompts them to think about why we have issues with that sort of language. If I were among Evangelical Friends I'd probably throw out liberal terms to see squirms. It's not like I want to cause trouble, it's just that I think that the work Christ calls us to do in our communities and in the world straddles the ideological divides we Friends have constructed for ourselves. That's not to say the divisions are artificial--the East Coast yearly meeting reunifications in the 1950s have made our identity hard to articulate. But I often feel led to be Evangelical, a Liberal, a Christian and a Universalist all at the same time. I suspect Christ would give us all a good talking to if he were to return in person (he's already doing it through the Holy Spirit, wouldn't you say?), and what Fox, Woolman, even Gurney and Wilbur, would say. I can't even imagine the browbeating we'd get from Margaret Fell, she was quite the rhetorical firecracker, you always knew where you stood with her! I think I'd chaff in whatever branch of Friends I found myself in. But the point I'm trying to make is that even embarking on an effort to define "Evangelicalism" will be met with differently by different groups of Friends. I'd love to hear you flesh out your definition and see if we could get something that would help us better articulate where we sit with Christ and where we sit with community.
You've probably seen this, but for your readers here's a post on my site responding to More about Boldness. I've also submitted a FGC workshop proposal with lots of squirmy language, Strangers to the Covenant.
Thanks you for all of your work on behalf of the Spirit, it is a blessing.
In Friendship,
Martin Kelley
This page is moderated by Johan Maurer as part of the "Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies" project, supported during the academic year 2003-04 by the Ferguson Quaker Fellowship program of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. Johan has a minute of service from Reedwood Friends Church.
