No More Delegating Up!

Currents is pleased to publish the Hein Fry lectures of 2004.  These lectures are given annually at all eight ELCA seminaries and many of them in the past have also been published in this journal.  The planning committee asked two of our most distinguished New Testament scholars to discuss the biblical basis for evangelism and to identify scriptural foundations on which a Lutheran theology and practice of evangelism might be constructed.  Their efforts focused on Matthew, Luke-Acts, and the epistles of Paul.

Reading these articles uncovered a sense of urgency. Not a nervous, defensive, market-driven urgency, worried about declining numbers, but rather Paul’s “necessity is laid upon me” or the clear command of Jesus to make disciples.  The authors do not offer new techniques, but urge instead that the church go public from its center, or they even speak of the conversion of the church—toward the world.  Will evangelism remain peripheral to Lutheranism, or will it become its hallmark?

Edgar Krentz  discusses Paul, the best-known, first century missionary in his first essay.  Paul’s self-designation as “apostle” illustrates mission as being sent out.  As an “apostle,” Paul was not a self-appointed emissary. Paul’s mission was born on Easter:  the resurrection of Jesus reveals who the true God is and what God is like.  Evangelistic proclamation based on Paul will preach Jesus as the one who reveals God’s character and being to us, and so calls us to faith in God through Christ.  The announcement of a future filled with hope is integral to Paul’s message, and he believed that Christ had made a radical change in human history.  Even Paul’s collection for the poor had an evangelistic purpose.  Paul stand for unity in diversity, for tolerance that can live with difference.  Paul was clearly concerned about winning people for Christ among the nations, as Rom 1:5 shows.  Mission is deliverance and emancipatory action, and Paul uses the language of freedom in Galatians 5 and of slavery to God as freedom from the tyranny of law in Romans 8.  Paul’s proclamation of the good news includes hospitality that results in community.  How can we recover Paul’s sense of urgency about evangelization?  “Necessity is laid upon me!” Paul said.  Often our witness is quite peripheral to our daily existence.

Edgar Krentz focuses in his second essay on making disciples in the gospel of Matthew, thus endeavoring to understand this gospel from its ending.  In his claim to authority in Matthew 28, Jesus is the kosmokrator; resurrection has given him new status.  Making disciples should be an activity of every disciple’s everyday life, not the special task of set-apart people.  “Disciple” is the only imperative in the Great Commission passage, making discipling an urgent part of life.  As the earlier sending of the twelve in chapter 10 makes clear, evangelization continues the proclamation and activity of Jesus.  In Matt 28:19 discipling reaches a new stage with the target now being all the nations, no longer limited to the children of Israel.  Baptizing is followed by teaching since it is acts of goodness toward the marginalized that demonstrate one’s piety.  Our preaching must contain didactic aims, if Matthean texts are to guide us.  Jesus is “God with us” only as the resurrected Lord, and he is “with us” until the realization of the coming age.  Jesus does not leave the world or the church in Matthew via an ascension, but remains with us.  Following in the spirit of Matthew 28, we need to create a Lutheran identity that regards evangelism as a hallmark of its being.

David L. Tiede answers two questions in his first essay:  What commission is God giving the church’s evangelism today, and do Lutherans have wisdom to bring to this calling?  We all face two paradoxes:  Christendom is in decline and world Christianity is rising; and today is an age of technological prosperity and spiritual anxiety.  Luke-Acts is the story of how God turned Israel from merely preserving itself into an instrument of God’s saving light for the nations of the world.  If we as a church read the Bible together, it will renew our faith and open our lives to the world.  There are three ways in which Luke’s distinctive witness empowers and transforms a Lutheran theology of mission and evangelism.  1. The apostolate is authorized witness to Christ crucified and raised.  Our apostolic witness speaks of God’s promise and whose world it ultimately will be.  2.  Justification is God at work in history; God’s justification of the ungodly is the missio dei.  3.  The conversion of the church is God’s turning it toward the world.  In a merchandised world that is lonely and unforgiving, God’s dominion calls the church to turn outside of its insular holiness, to be converted into apostolic communities.

David L. Tiede observes in his second essay that evangelism today is not about guarding Lutheran boundaries of doctrinal purity, but about going public from the center:  Christ crucified and raised.  In his sermon in Athens, Paul makes a classic Jewish judgment against idols, but he was also on the firing line with the philosophers, calling them “unknowing” in their worship even as he also heard the spiritual longings of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists.  Paul affirmed the goodness of God’s creation.  While human beings are groping upward to find God, God has dignified the whole earth by Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Paul echoes the promise of Jesus to his disciples and Peter’s promise to Israel:  God has exalted Jesus at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.  A central benefit of the resurrection is that we also are called and sent as collaborators in God’s creation of the world.  Evangelism today means practicing Christ’s extravagant hospitality of welcoming sinners and sending saints into their callings to be the hands of Christ in their lives in the world.  Paul in Athens illumines the good news in at least three ways:  The God who created the world has restored us to it.  God is not far from each one of us.  God will have the world judged in righteousness.  Our lives as citizens are called beyond the politics of self-interest to justice for the least.  In raising Christ Jesus from the dead, God has given the world back to us, and us to the world.

I still remember one of my seminary professors polemicizing against the unofficial, but widespread Lutheran Übertragungslehre, the doctrine of transferring ministry from the people to the pastor.  Let Rev. Sally do it!  Let Rev. George do it!  In every organization, secular or religious, the easiest way to delegate is up.  But if indeed the gospel is about equipping God’s holy people for their ministry and changing them into collaborators with God in creating the world, we, they, all of us have work to do in telling the story and demonstrating our piety by acts of goodness to the marginalized.  The missio Dei does not mean that God is the only actor.
            And let the people say...the story.


Ralph W. Klein
Editor