Evangelism

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On Dec 3, 2011 the Evangelical Theological Faculty (Leuven) organized a day of conferences on Mission and Evangelism. I was asked to do a conference on the topic “Should We Talk Less About Evangelism?” Each of the four speakers had fifty minutes. A small interaction time was scheduled at the end. This was a nice opportunity and setting for me to continue testing my work on evangelism for the book in English I am hoping to finish in 2012. Then, hopefully, a publisher will pick it up.

John G. Turner. Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Working with students and on the historical and theological foundations of the contemporary discourse on evangelism, I try to read what’s available and good on these issues. After having read Meeting Jesus at University, I decided to read this book on Campus Crusade (recently renamed CRU, see also Campus Crusade International). Though the book dates back to 2008, I only discovered it recently.

As I have said before, I have not offered to present papers at conferences the last few years (bad career move!). I am breaking this habit. Since I will be at the Tyndale Fellowship NT study group this coming July and since there was a free spot, I volunteered to step in. My paper will be “The Great Commission (Matt. 28.19–20) in History and Today or Why the Great Commission is not the Duty of All Believers.”

There has been a lot of debate about the role of the Church and of the local churches in evangelism recently. Should evangelism be the priority, the main focus of the Church’s life and services? Answering these questions will of course depend on how we define “evangelism.”

It is a well known feature of the New Testament that it really does not say much about the responsibility of the local church in evangelism.

Mark Keown. Congregational Evangelism in Philippians: The Centrality of an Appeal to the Fabric of Philippians. Paternoster Biblical Monographs. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008.

“It was a shock to me in my early theological study to hear that Paul gives no direct appeal for general evangelism to his congregations. As I had heard innumerable sermons assuming this very thing and had preached such messages myself, this led to some serious self-questionning.” (p. 1).

Dutton, Edward. Meeting Jesus at University: Rites of Passage and Student Evangelicals. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008.

Evangelical student ministries have been around for decades, yet for the most part they have remained under the radar of critical and scientific work. Dutton’s essay, partly based on a doctoral dissertation in Anthropology of Religion presented at Aberdeen University (Scotland), is therefore a welcome addition to the literature on religion and higher education.

Dutton’s thesis is that university is a rite of passage, a corridor between two stages of life (hence the use of the term liminal, from the Latin limen, corridor). University is “a time when young people have their identities challenged, remoulded and even fundamentally changed as they become adults” (ix). These challenges and changes present an opportunity to mix with people of other social groups but also to join a structured and structuring movement like a Christian Union. The book “will examine the relationship between universities, the intensity to which they are a Rite of Passage, and the evangelical student groups within them.” (ix).

My present research work is spread mainly over three areas.

Publications

“Parole en Marche : La Parole de Dieu hors des murs de l'Église,” forthcoming, Revue Réformée, 2012

“Romans 1.20: Knowing God Through His Acts in History” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 100/1 (2009): 45–58