Super Bowl
In 2015, down 28-24 with one minute left, the Seattle Seahawks completed an incredible 33 yard catch to take them to the five yard line. The announcers claimed it was one of the best catches they had seen, especially against the Patriots. I lived in the Pacific Northwest at the time, and the party I was at was rocking. Hugs, tears, chanting, and spilt drinks filled the living room. Surely, they had just won the game. They had Marshawn Lynch, the best running back in the league who had the toughness and grit to make those last five yards and defeat the Patriots. In fact, on the next play, Lynch ran it to the one yard line. They had three more chances to move the ball 36 inches. They had done it.
Except on the very next play, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson threw an interception. The Seahawks, after four quarters of hard work and incredible feats, came one yard short.
In my party in Southeast Portland, the tears of joy turned into tears of anguish. What just happened? Why did they get so cute? Why didn’t they pound it in?
The Last 36 Inches Matter
This became a metaphor for the first several years of our lives on mission in Portland, Oregon. We did lots of missional work, but the gospel wasn’t going out.
We built lots of relationships with neighbors and friends. We invited them into our home and showed amazing hospitality. We stopped on the sidewalks and asked great questions to get to know them. We deepened friendships. We knew their griefs, joys, stories, and lives.
We created community and belonging through cookouts, parties, and Thanksgiving celebrations. We had big parties for Halloween. I literally wrote a book on missional living based on what I was learning at the time.
Don’t worry; it wasn’t just relational work. We also met tangible needs. We partnered with local schools to do landscaping work and built a grief garden in collaboration with the school counselor to create a space for middle schoolers to decompress during the day.
Honestly, if anyone could boast in the missional life, it was us. We cared for refugees, we joined soccer clubs, became regulars at breweries, coffee shops, and grocery stores. Friends with pagans? Check. Caring for the poor? Check. Building community? Check. Being super nice? Check.
Proclaiming the enduring hope and peace found in the person of Jesus? Well…we didn’t want to be pushy, insensitive, or insincere. 1
We fell 36 inches short. Incredibly good work. All the caring for the poor was genuine and worthwhile. All the love in relationships was sincere and significant.
However, when it came to proclaiming the most life-giving news we could share to our agnostic, atheist, or apathetic friends, we were opting out.
Missional Without Messaging
There is a near settled assumption within the missional church that the mission of God and “expanding the kingdom” is separate from evangelism, which is optional.
Hospitable without sharing your faith. Do good works for the poor, but don’t share the gospel. Recycle, without speaking of the resurrection.
Or, to use language a different way—you can be missional without gospelizing.
I see another danger in the separation we’ve made from gospel centrality and evangelism…as if they’re different words or terms, when in fact, they’re the same word at different points in history.
The Gospel Requires Messengers
The word “gospel” is a translation of Euangelion—Good News or God-Spel in old English. Evangelism is the transliteration of the Greek word into English with the addition of “ism” to make it an active noun. I know that’s a bit dense, so maybe a story of how this word functioned in the ancient world is better.
Along a Middle Eastern road and within ancient towns, they could hear the panting breath of a young man running. From some distance they saw the faint cloud of dust kicked up behind him. Arriving, he puts his hands on his knees to recompose himself while a crowd gathers, knowing he’s an evangelist. Once he’s ready, everyone who is present listens to the gospel: “The king has won and defeated the enemy! The war is over and we can enter peace. All is well.” He goes on to tell the story of the battle, the next steps toward peace, and the implications on their lives. Then this young soldier would pull up his cloak again, and race to the next town.
This is the image and vocabulary Jesus chose to describe His message: gospel. The word means important heralded news, frequently used as the message shared by messengers coming from the battlefield to update the villages and towns within the kingdom.2
A gospel is a newsworthy event that must be shared. It’s news that changes the lives of those the news is intended for, whether they hear it or not. If you missed the announcement in the city square, the realities of the announcement still affected you.3
If you were to say, evangelism isn’t my thing, what you’re really saying is gospel speaking isn’t my thing. Or, good news telling is not something I do.
There’s now been over 20 years of a resurgent gospel-centrality movement, and lots has been written by smarter people than me—like Tim Keller, Bob Thune, Tim Chester, and more—but I want to state what often is overlooked: you can’t be a gospel-centered church if evangelism isn’t a constant expression. If a church or community is centered on the lasting message of hope, grace, and salvation in Jesus, then that community will be messengers of hope, grace, and salvation.
Put more positively: every gospel-centered church will be an evangelistic church. The gospel is what will come out to those who believe and those who don’t.
The Path Ahead
In my new, short ebook When We’re Missional But Not Evangelistic, we explore some reasons why even very missional churches struggle to actually share the gospel. Then, we discuss the contextual realities of sharing the gospel in our cultural moment, including the deeper questions being asked today. Finally, we turn to what sharing the gospel looks like, what’s needed to help people in the process of coming to faith, and how a community with different gifts can together make the gospel clear.
*This article is an excerpt from Brad Watson’s new ebook When We’re Missional But Not Evangelistic, available now inside your Saturate membership.
With discussion questions included for each of the five chapters, this thoughtful, short read is great for any community on mission to engage and process together, or for leaders or individual disciples to prayerfully consider for their own leadership and disciple-making. Click here to start reading!
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Footnotes:
- My friend, Jonathan Dodson’s book, Unbelievable Gospel, does a great job addressing these objections, and if you’re so inclined to engage evangelism more, I highly recommend it. ↩︎
- Ancient examples include the death of an adversary, announcements wars are over, rewards, new ascensions to thrones, etc. Bird, The Gospel of the Lord. 6-7. ↩︎
- Furthermore, the use of gospel and kingdom inseparably tie the two together, and in fact, they were tied together, even before Jesus. As many have argued, the proclamation of good tidings of God’s arriving Kingship ought to be placed within the eschatological Jewish hope of restoration. Jesus’ gospel proclamation is kingdom proclamation. For example: N.T. Wright is “Jesus and the Victory of God”, Scot Mcknight in “A New Vision of Israel”. In brief see, Bird, 14. ↩︎
