“Evangelism” is a word that often carries a negative connotation—of angry street preachers, or of post-church restaurant patrons who leave gospel tracts instead of tips. Be that as it may, evangelism simply defined is the act of telling others about the gospel/good news of Jesus and his Kingdom. In fact, evangelism of some form or another is commanded for every Christian! (For me personally it’s part of my job with InterVarsity to help give staff and college students a vision for evangelism, as well as the tools and techniques to do it skillfully in the context of a 21st-century university.) Recently, as I’ve been reflecting on the past few months, I believe there are four truths that we can observe about the 2020 election that also point to important lessons about evangelism.
1. Just like political advocacy, evangelism works best person-to-person in your current relational networks.
As part of my job, I often invite young adults to prayerfully consider who in their friend groups might be interested in discussions about faith and spirituality. The idea is that evangelism isn’t always about going up to strangers in grocery stores, but more often simply recognizing that God has already placed people in our lives with whom we have the opportunity to share his love and grace. To help students better understand this, I frequently ask them to physically draw a “network map” of all the people they’re connected to on campus (from their dorms, classes, clubs, sports, sororities, etc.), and to pray about who among them might be intrigued by Jesus. Invariably, students are surprised when they are drawn to someone they never dreamed would be interested in spiritual conversations, who ends up responding enthusiastically! Relational evangelism works because it builds on the foundation of your current friendships and relationships.
Thus I nearly laughed aloud when I read a news article about the 2020 election touting the benefits of “relational organizing,” which is functionally a very similar strategy to doing relational evangelism! To quote the article (which is lengthy and left-leaning but very interesting), “At its most basic, relational organizing is simply facilitating conversations between friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. Instead of relying on traditional strategies like door knocking, phone calls, or texts from strangers, it harnesses existing relationships to mobilize voters….[one] meta-analysis of voter turnout studies found that outreach from friends and family was three times more effective at mobilizing voters than a door knock.” While the article I linked to focuses on progressive groups, this political strategy is not inherently liberal or conservative. Instead, it relies on a simple truth: people trust people they know over anonymous phone calls or ads that they see online.
In fact, while the 2020 election has inevitably included more anonymous digital ad campaigns than ever before, there’s more and more evidence that these are not what made the difference in the end (for either party!). Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s much-vaunted “Death Star” digital ad strategy ultimately ran out of money months before the election, with little to show to it. On the flip side, in Miami-Dade County, Republicans utilized in-person, door-to-door canvassing of predominantly Latino neighborhoods while Democrats practiced social distancing and relied solely on digital communication. The results were clear, as Republicans racked up a surprisingly high number of votes in this historically blue community. Whether in the domain of spreading the good news about Jesus or a piece of good news about a political candidate, it is clear that in-person, relational organizing is supremely better than trusting to digital campaigns and algorithms. Those tools have their place, but should not replace the work of in-person organizing.
One final note on this topic–both relational evangelism and relational political organizing have as their key premise that each of us have within our friend groups people who disagree with us. Unfortunately, as people isolate more and more within their own bubbles, that becomes less and less true! There’s a sad reason behind why some Christians tend to evangelize their restaurant servers and people they meet on airplanes: those are literally the only non-Christians they encounter on a regular basis! Similarly, many Republicans and Democrats don’t have a single close friendship with someone of the other political party. If you’re seeking to be personally comfortable and never have meaningful interactions with people who are different than you, then that’s fine. But if you actually want to see other people understand and perhaps believe your viewpoint, then it is important to intentionally expand your networks to include more people who think differently from you.
2. As in politics, evangelism requires compelling communication and meeting people where they’re at
Another piece of my job involves helping staff and students know how to share the story of Jesus and his Kingdom in ways that make sense to the people they are communicating with. This can take many forms, such as asking good questions, listening well, sharing personal stories, eschewing confusing “Christianese jargon”, and knowing how to communicate core truths about Jesus in clear and concise ways. Perhaps most importantly, you need to communicate the next step for that person to make on their faith journey-which might be very small! A next step may be to try praying, to check out a church or Bible study, to ask a friend about some tough theological questions, or to do some more personal reflecting (and of course, some people are ready and excited to make a public decision such as becoming a Christian or being baptized, but these steps can’t happen unless these foundations are there).
In many ways, I would argue, these truths are also true when it comes to inviting people to consider supporting/voting for the political candidate/values you care about. We need to be able to communicate passionately but winsomely, inviting others to align themselves with our core beliefs without alienating them. One blogger writes:
“About the most significant election in modern American history, there is much we still don’t know. But some things are already becoming clear….Too many of us are not only unable to persuade people on the other side but also unwilling to try, uninterested in winning people over. Movements that agree on fundamental values need to learn to be better coalition allies to each other in spite of their differences….The fantasy that incremental change is most appealing to most people must be buried, and the prophets of real change must find the language and candidates to make the cause of social democracy less frightening to many Americans than it now is….We have ceased to be a country in disagreement; we are now a country of mutual disgust; and these widespread feelings of disgust essentially shut down politics. …The way out of this cold civil war is a politics that is thrilling, inclusive, substantive, visionary, galvanizing, empathetic, tolerant of different degrees of on-board-ness, and deft at meeting people where they are. Democracy is not a supermarket, where you pop in whenever you need something; it’s a farm, where you reap what you sow. Let’s plant.”
There’s a lot of great points in this paragraph that can also make connections to evangelism, but I especially love the farming metaphor at the end, which is a metaphor Jesus uses over and over. There is no magic factory or technique for introducing people to Jesus; like farming it takes hard work, time, maintenance, and in the end is a bit mysterious. Yet if we are faithful to do the work in casting a compelling vision and meeting people where they are at, whether in building our democracy or in introducing our friends to Jesus, there is certain to be a harvest.
3. Evangelism, much like political advocacy, is ultimately the pronouncement of a new ruler and a new Kingdom
Despite being a common term, most Christians are unaware of the original political and cultural connotations of the word “evangelism.” The Greek word from which we derive evangelism is evangelion / euangelion (note the root words eu = good, angelion = message.) One scholar defines it thus: “The original meaning of the word evangelion, “gospel,” is a technical term in Greek, meaning the announcement of a great military victory, or the rule of a new king or emperor. It’s the PR of empire, the announcement of good news of victory. As the imperial cult took hold, it was the standard word for any announcement of auspicious news about the emperor and the imperial family. This term figures in the vocabulary of the Roman emperors, who understood themselves as lords, saviours, and redeemers of the world. The messages issued by the emperor were called evangelion, regardless of whether or not their content was particularly cheerful and pleasant. The idea was that what comes from the emperor is a saving message, that it is not just a piece of news, but a change of the world for the better.”
Knowing this context, it thus becomes incredibly significant that Jesus and his disciples use this wide-spanning political terminology to explain the Kingdom of God. Following Jesus is not just a personal decision, nor one that only has private effects. To believe in Jesus is to believe that one now lives in a fundamentally different world, similar to (but much bigger than) the differences between a Caesar Augustus and a Caesar Nero, or between a President Trump and a President Biden. It’s not just about a new person in power, it’s about everything that new person represents.
Related to that, to proclaim a new ruler will be good news to some but bad news to others. When President Trump was declared president late on the night of Nov. 8, 2016, the next day was dark and mournful for many people (and joyful for others!). When President Biden was declared president at noon on Nov 7, 2020, thousands of people flooded the streets to celebrate (while others mourned or fumed privately). For Jesus, it’s clear for whom the announcement of his Kingship will feel like good news—it’s the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. For his very first sermon in Luke 4, Jesus quotes Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The flipside of that of course, is that Jesus’ Kingship is not automatically good news to those who are rich, comfortable, and powerful. In Luke 6 Jesus warns: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.” And that is why Jesus says that to follow him is to forsake comfort and ease, and instead embrace the way of suffering, the way of the cross.
Now granted that there are ways in which Jesus statements can also be interpreted metaphysically and not solely literally, the basic premise remains the same: sharing the gospel of Jesus should not be a story about a Santa Claus in the sky who wants to only live in your heart and give you a free ticket to heaven. Instead, it’s a radical pronouncement of the true ruler of the heavens and the earth, who is completely different than any other ruler, and calls us to live differently. Which brings me to my final point.
4. Like a president who’s been elected but not yet inaugurated, we too live in a transitory, in-between time where Jesus has already been declared King but has yet to return in his full power and glory.
A fourth thing we can learn about evangelism via the 2020 election comes from the period between the election and inauguration day. As is clear now (to most people), Joe Biden won the 2020 election but does not have yet full authority of the president. He is the “president-elect” which means that the authority is there waiting to be claimed and picked up on January 20, but constitutionally he is not yet the president-it’s still Donald Trump and he still has immense power! Now this of course is not unique to 2020; it has been true of every presidential transition. (In fact, in the early days of the United States, this interregnum period used to last until March, until the 20th Amendment was in 1933 passed to shorten it to January.)
In some ways, this in-between period can remind us of the state that we are in right now as Christians. Jesus 2000 years ago totally defeated sin, death, and Satan through his death on the cross and his resurrection three days later. However, although his kingdom was ushered in and initiated in many ways on that day, he has not yet taken full control of this world. In a sense he is president-elect and we are in the in-between period, the interregnum. Jesus has the rightful authority and is one day going to physically come back to earth, be fully inaugurated, and his kingdom will be fully present. But that is not yet the reality; we are still under the partial control of sin, death, and Satan (who is in this analogy a lame-duck president).
Moreover, similar to those in our world who still refuse to acknowledge Joe Biden as president-elect and may continue to ignore his authority after Inauguration day, there are many who don’t acknowledge Jesus as the as the Lord Savior and God of the world. (This analogy of course is NOT to compare Joe Biden to Jesus! Rather it’s just an illustration—one could have made this same analogy about Donald Trump back in 2016.) However for those of us who follow Jesus, we are called to pre-emptively consider ourselves citizens of his kingdom and to live as if we are already under the full reign of Jesus Christ. In a sense, just like President-elect Joe Biden has a “transition team” to help prepare the way for him being President, us Christians are essentially called to be a “transition team” to prepare the way for Jesus’ return. Among other reasons, that is why Christians are called to reject violence, greed, hate, and selfishness, and instead embrace the values of Jesus’ kingdom: generosity, sacrificial love, and selflessness. We’re preparing for the future ruler. That’s not the way the world works right now, but it’s a way of living that embodies what will be true in Jesus’ coming Kingdom.
For me, I would much rather be a part of Jesus’ “transition team” helping make this world ready for his reign than I would be part of Satan’s lame-duck regime, bitterly clinging to power and privileges that will soon disappear. If you’re not already, I invite you to considering joining me on Jesus’ “transition team”–let me know if you’d like to learn more about it! 🙂