mission as evangelism Flashcards
Whats evangelism?
From the earliest days of Christianity, people have tried to persuade other people to become Christians: this kind of mission is called ‘evangelism’.
st Paul example of evangelism
-first century CE, St Paul travelled around the Mediterranean, visiting synagogues and communities of people who did not know about Christianity, to tell them about Jesus Christ and often persuading them to join the community of Christians.
-For many people today, especially those Protestants who regard themselves as evangelicals, this remains the main task that the Church should undertake.
whats church missionary society?
-One example of a Christian organisation that engages in evangelism.
-was founded in 1812 after the merging of several other missionary societies.
what did the cms do in the 19th century?
-nineteenth century, the CMS sent missionaries to parts of the world where the majority of people were not Christian.
-They engaged in mission in Africa, Australasia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Japan and the Pacific Islands.
-Men were trained in Europe to teach from the Bible, and sent to live with their families in their mission field. They got to know the local people and learnt their languages, and offered health and social care as well as sharing their faith.
-set up churches and trained local people to be ministers, so that when they returned to Europe, the new local churches would continue.
-also set up schools so that local children could be raised and educated as Christians.
cms in 20th century
-continued their work throughout the twentieth century
-One way they funded this was to partner missionary families with UK churches.
-The missionaries would send personal letters to the church community in the UK about their work in the mission, and in return, the church would support them with prayer and financial support
- This meant that all members of a church could feel that they too were participating in missionary activity.
- Over time, the
CMS partners were less concerned with converting foreigners, and instead focused on supporting the work of local churches by helping to run outreach projects.
-For example, in Cairo in the 1980s, CMS missionaries worked alongside the clergy of Cairo Anglican cathedral to run child-care projects among the Christian ‘Zabaleen’, the people who earn a living by recycling rubbish in the municipal rubbish tips on the outskirts of the city.
-Christians are a minority in Egypt, so the missionaries helped them both to improve their living conditions and to remain firm in their religious faith.
The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM),
- organisation that engages in Christian Mission
-set up in 1890, and continues to engage in mission today.
-TEAM missionaries who are qualified doctors, nurses, pharmacists and teachers work in teams to set up and staff churches, hospitals and schools in countries where Christianity is not the local religion.
-medical care and education to poor families, they openly share their evangelical beliefs and encourage local people to attend their church services to learn about Christianity, in the hope that they will convert.
why was alpha course introduced?
-In the 1970s, secularism was on the rise and people were starting to be concerned about the fall in the number of worshipping Christians in the UK.
-In 1977, the vicar of Holy Trinity Church Brompton, in London, started a new course in evangelism, called the Alpha Course.
what is alpha course?
first at members of the church, but as it developed, he also encouraged them to bring friends and neighbours to the church. Each course involved ten weekly sessions, in which churchgoers and their invited non churchgoing guests shared a meal, listened to a talk about aspects of the Christian faith and then discussed it. The Alpha Course is not unlike a sales pitch for a business: it aims to persuade people that they want to buy into’ the Christian faith. It has since spread throughout the UK and around the world. The Alpha Course operates in a similar way to a franchise - churches buy books and recorded material to run their own courses.
