Controversy over messianic congregation raises questions about PC(USA) evangelism

Whatever the wisdom of the Philadelphia project, what’s happened there also raises some significant big-picture questions about how the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approaches evangelism in the U.S. — a country that some once considered to be predominantly a Christian nation, but which in recent decades has seen dramatic change.

For some Presbyterians, the idea of evangelizing people in the United States — as opposed to China or Africa or Latin America — is sort of a new thought.

But presbyteries across the country are responding to immigration — reaching out, for example, to Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in the San Gabriel Valley in California, to Laotians in Minnesota, to Kurds in Washington state. Some of these ministries do work with (some might even say “target”) non-Christians — for example, an outreach program to the Hindu/Punjabi population in New York City or to Iranian immigrants from Muslim backgrounds in a number of states. What’s the right way to do this kind of ministry has been the subject of debate in more presbyteries than just Philadelphia.

Some presbyteries also are struggling with how to reach another huge group: U.S. citizens who practice no faith at all. These are the folks who sleep in or go for a run or fill the coffee shops on Sunday mornings while the churches are trying to fill the pews. Some went to church when they were younger, but dropped out; some are culturally Christian (they always celebrate Christmas) but have little or no experience with organized religion. For Presbyterians accustomed to thinking of evangelism as “over there,” the idea of talking about faith to one’s neighbors down the street, at a time when many Americans view church as irrelevant, may be as hard an adjustment as anything else.

Within the PC(USA), some also question whether the denomination has a strong enough sense of urgency about evangelism in the U.S. — whether the denomination has put enough resources and enthusiasm into this work, and whether Presbyterians even see it as theologically necessary.

Presbyterians have, historically, had a strong commitment to starting new churches in this country, said Chuck Denison, the PC(USA)’s associate for new church development.

From 1890 to 1900, Presbyterians planted 2,000 new churches in the U.S., 200 of them African American, Denison said. In 1903, if someone had asked Presbyterians, “How many of you remember when your congregation was founded?” many of the people would have stood up, Denison said, because three of every five churches were less than 40 years old.

But gradually, as the country grew older and more established, that began to change. In 1959, Presbyterians created 116 new churches. By the 1980s, the number had dropped to maybe 30 new Presbyterian churches a year.

“There was no longer a board of national mission, and the wind went out of our sails in a whole lot of ways,” Denison said. “The priorities went elsewhere and so did the dollars. We kind of settled in, then the mainline malaise began to hit.”

So now the denomination is looking to rebuild, to find new approaches to evangelism in a time of demographic change. Asked what grade he’d give Presbyterian evangelism in the U.S., Denison replied, “I’d probably give us an F, but we’re working on it. I’ve got high hopes. I think we’ll continue to decline for a while, but when we begin to look up again we’re going to look into all kinds of new models” — for example, clustering four or five fellowships under one roof, each “designed to zero in on a particular culture .. The cities are full of these diverse congregations,” Denison said. “It’ll no longer work to be the melting pot of the 1950s.”

Exactly how aggressive to be in reaching out — particularly to those from another religious tradition — is something Presbyterians are struggling to figure out.

In light of the intense battles within the PC(USA), some question whether Presbyterians have any theological consensus on why evangelism matters — whether, in part, there’s too much diversity on the fundamental question of whether faith in Jesus Christ, and Christ alone, is essential to salvation.

“A lot of Presbyterian churches are quite universal in their outreach — they don’t see any need for evangelism,” said Robert Pitman of Knox Fellowship, which conducts evangelism training schools for presbyteries and congregations. “We are a very divided church on that subject. The question at the center is ‘Is Jesus Christ the way or a way’” to salvation. “Is the Bible a record of what its authors believe to be true or is it the authority for faith and life? .. In other words, is there a need for evangelism?”

David Hackett of Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship works with “unreached people groups” around the world.

“It’s only within the last few years really that I’ve heard a lot of Presbyterians starting to use the E word again, evangelize,” Hackett said. “We had lost our way on what it is to be dynamic witnesses in a society that increasingly doesn’t understand Christ any more.”

Hackett gave this example from the heart of secular America. A Christian friend was in a jewelry store, and overheard the clerk showing a customer some crosses. “There are two different kinds,” the clerk explained. “One that’s plain, and one that has a little guy on it.”

One of the groups helping to fund the messianic congregation in Philadelphia is the Outreach Foundation, which supports Presbyterian evangelism around the globe. Although most of the Outreach Foundation’s work is done overseas, it has raised $9,000 for the messianic project and has committed to raising another $5,000 in 2004, according to Rob Weingartner, the group’s executive director. Avodat Yisrael also has received a grant of $40,000 from Trinity Synod and $75,000 from the General Assembly Council’s Mission Development Resources Committee.

To Weingartner, support of the messianic congregation is “consistent with our general understanding of the mission of the church, which is to share the gospel with all people, inviting all people to recognize and accept in a personal decision the saving Lordship of Jesus Christ … It wasn’t an attempt to target people who are of the Jewish faith, but rather an extended, consistent obedience to the Great Commission,” the instruction Jesus gives in the Bible to bring the good news of salvation to all the world.

How exactly that should be done, however — what’s fair and not fair in Christian evangelism — is stirring up lots of discussion (and, reportedly, might provoke some proposed overtures to the General Assembly for consideration by presbyteries). To those involved in interfaith relations and evangelistic outreach, the Philadelphia controversy raises a whole collection of questions about what’s important to be done, what’s too aggressive, what are the right questions to ask along the way.

For one, many presbyteries are starting outreach projects directed at people from a particular country, or a particular language or ethnic group. There is discussion about doing ministry “in context” — meaning not as one might find it in a typical Anglo-American Presbyterian church, but with the language and music and even traditions that would seem familiar and welcoming to people from a particular background or country.

But what exactly does that mean?

To what extent, for example, can Jews or Muslims be considered an “ethnic group” or a culture, rather than people of another religion? In Philadelphia, part of the rationale behind the messianic congregation is that it would be reaching out to people from a Jewish background in a way that will be culturally familiar to them, said Jay Rock, coordinator of the PC(USA)’s Interfaith Relations Office. “Now the people on the Jewish side say once you become a Christian, you’re no longer Jewish and you can’t have it both ways,” Rock said. “But the folks who are working there in Philadelphia say the Jewish culture includes Jewish religious music and synagogue symbols and it’s OK to use those cultural forms as the way to present the gospel. So there needs to be a whole conversation about whether that’s an accurate understanding of culture.”

And what if Presbyterian understanding of those issues is different from, or even seems offensive to, the groups with which it is trying to work — if it offends, for example, the Muslims or the Jews? What if they see themselves as the unwelcome targets for conversion, and are angry and critical of what Presbyterians are trying to do?

“Is that just to be expected?” Rock asked. “I have heard that voiced by some of our folks, Christians in mission have always met resistance and even persecution. And even Jesus wasn’t understood … It’s not clear. Some people would like to have it be real clear, but it’s really not.”

Another question, Rock said, is whether this kind of ministry — what the messianic congregation does, for example — presents the gospel in a clear and understandable way. In Philadelphia, the question is “Does it, by couching the gospel in a Jewish service with Jewish liturgy and the Torah scrolls and Hebrew and Jewish liturgical music, does it actually confuse or diffuse the gospel?” Rock said. “Is it actually a clear presentation of the gospel?” — an unvarnished message of salvation through Jesus Christ? “Or does it blur what the gospel really is in its effort try to make it palatable?”

And that’s not just a question that is being asked in Philadelphia, but in a variety of contexts — including, for example, in “seeker-sensitive” congregations that might not even have a cross in the sanctuary. What’s the importance of a recognizable, Reformed approach to liturgy? How much latitude in style of worship should there be?

And when the approach is something different, something contextualized, should the sign out front clearly say in some way, “This is a Presbyterian church,” so no one will be confused?

There is also, from an interfaith point of view, a bigger question — one that’s been discussed by Christians in mission work for a long time. It has to do with the theological understanding of whether God is at work in the lives those who are not Christian — and what that understanding means for both interfaith relations and for evangelism. Here’s how Rock framed that debate:

“When you reach out to people of another faith, are you reaching out to people who have no knowledge of God, or are you reaching out to people among whom God is already present? Is God absent with these people, these sort of `unreached people?’ Is God absent, do we really believe that, that the God who created all people and Heaven and the Earth and who Scripture says is never left without a witness … that God is not present in the lives of people of other faiths? Or do we think that God is present and then Christ might not be known, but God is present? So then the mission that’s called for is a totally different kind of mission. It still clearly calls for the articulation of the good news of Jesus and God’s refusal to abandon us, all that the gospel means. But it means that we’re called to communicate that believing that God is already present with these folks. So there’s got to be some kind of dialogue then, if we believe that.”

That understanding — that the mainline denominations are committed to interfaith dialogue, not just attempts to convert, and that Jews are seen as having a covenant with God — is part of the strong response the creation of the messianic congregation in Philadelphia has drawn. A policy paper approved by the 1987 General Assembly stated in part: “We affirm that the reign of God is attested both by the continuing existence of the Jewish people and by the church’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hence, when speaking with Jews about matters of faith, we must always acknowledge that Jews are already in a covenantal relationship with God.”

Cynthia Jarvis, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, collected 150 signatures in support of a statement contending that the approach Congregation Avodat Yisrael has taken is “misleading to both the Jews and to the Christians and … contrary to our own theological tradition.”

In an interview with the Presbyterian News Service, Jarvis said that “the denomination in its new-church development efforts is treating Jews the same as Koreans or Ethiopians” and that “it turns out that the Presbyterian church, the one theologically thoughtful denomination above all others, is now just one of the crowd.”

But others contend that doing ministry “in context” — in a culturally Jewish context, in this case — is appropriate and acceptable.

“If somebody came up and said we’re going to do Jews for Jesus and go after all the Jews we can find and lie to them and sneak around and trick them into Christianity, we wouldn’t be interested in funding that,” Denison said. But many who consider themselves Jewish ethnically don’t practice their religion, he said, and many from Jewish backgrounds are engaged in “a wide-open spiritual quest.” What Avodat Yisrael is doing is presenting the Christian message in a Jewish cultural context, he said — but “there was never the intent to go out and beat down the doors and convert Jews.”

(Denison also said, “I’m amazed at the response. I’m just dumbfounded. There are 40 people meeting on a Saturday night and it’s in the news in London.”)

Some also are talking about the lessons that Presbyterians are learning from others about how to do evangelism — and how some of that learning is coming from its encounters with Christians from other parts of the world.

The Outreach Foundation’s Weingartner has found that many American congregations have, through their interaction with Christians overseas, developed a new zeal for evangelism here in the U.S. “There’s explosive growth of the church in the two-thirds world,” while many Western churches are declining, he said. While helping churches overseas develop their own capacity for evangelism, “we ourselves are changed,” Weingartner said. “Our churches have a fresh vision for what it means to be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ right here.”

In part, Presbyterians may have a hard time thinking of evangelism in the U.S. because they’re used to Christianity being an engrained part of the American culture.

“A part of the reason it’s hard is there are a lot of churches that still don’t recognize that we have left Christendom behind,” Weingartner said. “I think there are a lot of Presbyterian churches that still — they would say we live in a Christian nation. If that ever was true, it’s not true now.”

Knox Fellowship, formed a decade ago to promote Presbyterian evangelism, does 60 to 70 percent of its work in the United States — including holding schools for presbyteries and congregations on how to reach out to the communities around them.

To succeed, argues Pitman, congregations need to have a mindset for outreach — they have to be convinced it really matters — and also a strategic plan for getting something done. But to start with, they have to be willing to go beyond their own walls — not just to reach out across the oceans, but to people right down the street.

“So many Presbyterian churches are ill-prepared and are waiting for 1957 to return,” Pitman said. “They’re waiting for the community to come to the church rather than the church being a body of Christians in mission to the community. As a consequence they have tendency to become clubs” — more concerned with keeping the institution happy than in reaching out.

Weingartner said he’s learned of the importance of telling people about Jesus, but doing it with “bold humility” — speaking out, but doing it in true relationship, so “we are treating people in a manner which reflects the love of God about which we speak.”

That means, Weingartner said, not just talking about Jesus Christ, but really living as Christians rather than relegating faith to a small compartment on Sunday mornings.

“For many Presbyterian churches, it is easier for them to think about mission in Kenya or mission to Portuguese Brazilian immigrants on the other side of town than it is to think about sharing the gospel with their neighbors,” Weingartner said. “I really believe that is a part of the witness the global church has to share with us. As I travel around the world … I consistently see Christians who live out the Reformed understanding of the sovereignty of God better than Presbyterians here in this country,” in that “they know that every moment has to do with God.”