Good News and Good Works by Ronald J. Sider

Author:Ronald J. Sider
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067000, REL030000
ISBN: 9781585583676
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 1999-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART 5

* * *

INCARNATIONAL

KINGDOM

CHRISTIANITY

9

DISTINGUISHING EVANGELISM

FROM SOCIAL ACTION

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

MARK 8:36

Even over the telephone, Raleigh Washington’s voice danced with joy. I had called to see if he could join the Board of Directors of Evangelicals for Social Action. (He did.) But first he wanted to tell me about 225 people that his church had led to Christ the previous week.

Raleigh Washington is now a prominent African-American leader of Promisekeepers, but for more than ten years he was the pastor of Rock of Our Salvation Church (Evangelical Free)—an inner-city, interracial congregation on the west side of Chicago. Intimately connected with the church is Circle Urban Ministries, a wholistic community center led by Glen Kehrein, a white farm boy from Wisconsin. Circle has a medical clinic with seven full-time doctors, a legal clinic with two full-time lawyers, a low-income housing program that has renovated millions of dollars of housing for the poor, and job-creation programs to build an economic base in the inner city.

That week of stunning evangelistic success did not happen in a vacuum. Hurting inner-city residents knew that the people inviting them to Jesus were the same folk who provided essential health care, housing for the homeless, and help in finding a job or finishing high school. And the community center staff knew that unless they could offer more than excellent medical or legal help, they would never get to the heart of the problems and produce lasting change.

For a time, in fact, Circle Urban Ministries did lose much of its evangelistic zeal. Theoretically, they believed in both evangelism and social action, but the second got most of their attention. When Raleigh Washington started planting a church in the heart of the community center in 1983, a wholistic balance was reestablished. Now when they sense a spiritual need, doctors and lawyers feel free to speak of Christ— or encourage the person to arrange a visit to one of the three chaplains who now work both in the community center and the church. The result has been a rapidly growing inner-city congregation with over three hundred members.

That is the kind of wholistic mission that is both biblical and effective. It is also the kind of ministry that illustrates a fifth model of the relationship between evangelism and social concern.

In chapter two I outlined four dominant models. All had major weaknesses. Now that I have explored the gospel of the kingdom, salvation, and conversion and developed biblical reasons for doing evangelism and social action, I am ready to develop a fifth model. This model, I believe, is fully grounded in the preceding biblical study. It also combines the strengths and avoids the weaknesses of the other four models.

Defining Evangelism and Mission

What is evangelism? The New Testament word evangelize is simply the verb form of the noun gospel. To evangelize, therefore, is to share the gospel. When a different verb is used with gospel in the New Testament, that verb is most often the word preach.

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