Chaplain Mike preaching in Cuttack, India. 1997
Just in case you’re wondering . . . I believe in Christian mission.
One of the greatest debts I owe to my evangelical background is that it gave me a heart to serve others. To be sure, I have often been critical of evangelicalism’s priorities in the ways it goes about serving, and I have been particularly concerned that the movement’s pietism (see yesterday’s post), with its inherent impulse of separatism can take believers out of the very world in which they should be immersed and serving, but I have no doubt that the activist bent in evangelicalism is something its followers learned from Jesus. This activism is one of Bebbington’s four native characteristics of evangelicalism, and in my view, it is probably the movement’s greatest strength.
Just pondering this brings back a host of memories and thoughts. I think I will just share some of them with you today.
How evangelicalism gave me a heart for service and mission
The impulse to serve is strong in evangelicalism. There is an energy and concern for others that moves evangelicals to do a lot of good in the world.
The missionary force that grew out of the Student Volunteer Movement and the rise of faith missions in the late 1800’s was formidable. In the 20th century, leadership given by InterVarsity and the Lausanne Movement, the establishment of parachurch ministries like Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade, and Navigators, Bible translation ministries like Wycliffe, and mercy ministries like World Vision have flourished. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is synonymous with mass evangelism efforts. The “culture war” efforts of the Christian Right were not something new in America; in many ways, culture warriors have merely replicated the kind of moral concern and political activism practiced by 19th century social movements for the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and prohibition. Many of the key leaders and participants in those movements were evangelicals.
Many evangelicals go by the slogan that Christians are “saved to serve.” We once attended a church where every person who joined the church was introduced as someone who had stepped forward to “roll up his/her sleeves to help us win our community for Christ.” Another church I pastored was instrumental in founding and supporting a Crisis Pregnancy Center. I know a church that, at least at one point, was giving 60% of her income to missions.
Washing the feet of our Indian brethren. 1997
We have friends all over the world because of their obedience to the Great Commission, and because of them I’ve had opportunities to serve in places I never dreamed of seeing. I have had opportunities to preach Christ in suburban churches, on inner city front porches and downtown missions, in the hills of Applachia, and to crowds of youth at camps in Brazil and at schools in India. I once sat in a small house in a central Indian village and talked about preparing for baptism to the first group of Christians that ancient village had ever known. Even in my youngest days as a minister, I was blessed to give words of encouragement to pastors in Haiti, some of whom had walked for three days to get to the conference, and who slept on hard wooden benches or on the ground when they got there just to hear the Word of God.
Some of our closest friends have made choices through the years that made my jaw drop. Damaris and her family went to Kyrgyzstan, of all places, and reached out to their neighbors with both spiritual and practical concern. Another friend received a degree in international business, and then was challenged by a missionary to consider what God might have in store for him. A few months later, he and his wife and four young children got off a plane and moved into a home in Shanghai. While his company paid the bill for a few years, they helped start a Christian school. This is the same couple who once served their neighbors in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing development in inner city Chicago. I once played music for morning devotions while a friend preached to a group of carnies in south Florida. This was made possible because a group of loving Christian folks in RV’s follows the carnival workers for months to all the county fairs and sets up ministry stations where they can come for a hot meal, medical and dental care, haircuts, and a clothing tent — and a word of Gospel encouragement. I met a lady once who started a ministry to unfortunate folks who are deaf, blind, and mute.
The school where Michael Spencer taught, and where Denise and daughter Noel still work, was founded over a hundred years ago to help bring peace to families in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. It now serves students from all over the world, many of them non-Christians, who come for a quality, affordable education in a distinctively Christian community.
On a mission trip to Brazil once, I found myself weeping as I stood and surveyed the sanctuary of a small village church. This congregation lived in the poorest village in that part of Brazil. The members brought their offerings and put them in a big basket in the front of the sanctuary each Sunday, and little of it was money. It was usually food from their gardens or clothes their children had outgrown, all to be distributed to “the poor.” On the side wall, there was a bulletin board with at least a half a dozen pictures on it. These were the missionaries this church supported!
Some of the people I admire most are friends who are workers for India Youth for Christ. These lovely people, in the midst of growing economic opportunity and prosperity in that land, have signed up to live on about $100 a month to reach young people with the Gospel. Traveling to India over the years changed our lives. Few things have meant more to my formation as a human being and follower of Christ than developing friendships with fellow ministers in India and serving alongside them as we preached, sang, did medical work, and reached out in various ways to give Christ to others. One of those friends brought a tear to my eye when I met him a few years ago. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a small square of cloth that had been cut from a terrycloth towel. I had given it to him and a group of ministers many years before, after I had preached on John 13 and then we knelt and washed the feet of our Indian brothers. We wanted to let them know that we had come to serve them. I challenged them to carry that scrap of towel with them always, to remind them of Christ washing our feet and calling us to do the same for one another. Years later, my friend still carried it. He still remembered. I was humbled. I knew he had been faithful. Had I?
I am thankful for my evangelical heritage that stresses service in the name of Christ for a lost and hurting world. Frankly, on the congregational level at least, I don’t think there is another tradition that comes close to evangelicalism in encouraging people to serve, especially with regard to being vocal about the faith, sharing the gospel, planting churches, and pursuing distinctively Christian vocations.
There are aspects of evangelicalism’s activism and participation in mission that can be rightly critiqued. If you want to read about some of the problems I’ve encountered, a good place to start would be the post, “My Issues with Evangelicalism: (3) Mission.”
Today I just want to say that I am forever grateful for those who have taught me and exemplified for me the way of Christ, who came not to be served, but to serve.