evangelistic

Clothing the Gospel — The Arts in Missions

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Worship and evangelism are central to the Christian faith, but worshiping God is much more than attending church on Sunday, just as evangelism is much more than saying religious words to an unbeliever. As artists, our missionary strategy needs to employ every available means of communication—speaking, listening, playing music, storytelling, using parables and proverbs, dancing, drama, visual arts—as we seek to make men, women, and children worshipers of God.

When we plan effective evangelistic strategies, we often talk about homogenous groups, unreached peoples, and church growth. But in all this, mission agencies and churches must analyze regional and national cultures in the search for missing keys that will open communities to Christ. One vital key rarely considered is the role of artistic communication in reaching a culture and helping the church grow and reproduce itself within that culture.

Culturally Appropriate Worship

When believers worship God and express their faith in a familiar and culturally appropriate way, the unchurched take notice. Previously unreached people become more receptive to God’s Word and the worship of the true Creator when they see and hear and experience worship, not only in their own language, but also in their own music and story forms and artistic patterns.

Western missions have generally assumed that, to adequately understand the Bible, you must know how to read it. Translation efforts, combined with literacy training, have been valuable in many cultures. But experts estimate that up to 75 percent of the world’s people don’t know how to read. That means the literary approach to evangelism cannot do the whole job. We must in­tegrate artistic communication methods into our normal ministry thinking.

We need Christians with special sensitivity in the arts to find their way onto the mission field and into the development of mission strategy. We need to help missionaries and churches clothe the gospel in culturally appropriate forms and avoid the unconscious mistake of promoting only Western forms of communication and styles of worship. Maybe in this way we can break through cultural barriers that have been difficult to penetrate with traditional methods.

We must stimulate the use a wide range of indigenous communication forms such as music, drama, storytelling, painting, architecture, mime, pup­petry, crafts, festival, chant, movement, ritual, the arrangement of space, and body language, among others. In all these ways, the arts convey an important understanding of life, its problems, pos­sibilities, truths, fears, and mysteries.

Practical Implementation for Artists and Musicians:

  • Make yourself available, no strings attached, to church leadership so that they will be able to use your artistic gifts as they need them.
    • Be a servant, not a star.
    • Do a short-term mission assignment as soon as possible.
    • In conjunction with your local church, pursue some kind of street work, campus ministry, etc., as soon as possible.

Practical Implementation for Mission Agencies:

  • Focus on developing indigenous worship, encouraging churches to use forms of worship that are culturally appropriate.
  • Assign missionaries to take lessons in some craft or art form from a national.
    • Promote the development of new ethnic-Christian celebrations, honoring God and highlighting the gospel in the context of such important events as birth, parent-child dedication, conversion, baptism and marriage.

Jews for Jesus has done this by creating a new Jewish-Christian wedding ceremony, as well as a circumcision ceremony. These ceremonies have elements of both Jewish and Christian traditions, with an emphasis on biblical truth framed in familiar cultural forms. By doing this, the gospel is proclaimed quite strongly in the context of joyous celebration, and without denying—or in any way pulling one away from—neutral cultural norms.

Practical Implementation for Local Churches:

  • Artistic communication is not just for the mission field. Are your forms of worship and evangelism culturally appropriate to your community?
    • Spend as much time planning the worship service as the pastor spends preparing the sermon. Develop a worship team for better planning.
    • Make a point to develop methods of non-literary, non-academic communication for your worship times. This will create an environment where unchurched people will feel more comfortable. Direct the service to the believer, but don’t make it so “in-house” that you exclude visitors.
    • Emphasize the participation of the worshipers more than the performance of the choir, soloists, and preachers.

Practical Implementation for Colleges and Seminaries:

  • Develop interdisciplinary degree programs for train­ing specialists in artistic communication.
    • Arrange for faculty and students to be placed in domestic cross-cultural short-term ministry situations.

It’s time we let God use us in more creative ways to evangelize the world. When we do, many more will see and fear and trust in him (Psalm 40:2–3).

Billy Graham Crusades

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In 1949 Billy Graham, a Southern Baptist minister, launched his first major evangelistic crusade in Los Angeles. Prior to this, he had served as an evangelist for Torrey Johnson, the founder of Youth for Christ, in small crusades around the United States and even Great Britain. It wasn’t until his eight-week series of services in Los Angeles, however, that he became the most famous preacher in America. Each day the crowds grew larger as a number of popular celebrities, members of the press, and local politicians came to see what the fuss was about. He was also aided by his willingness to include all local churches in his crusade, a pattern he has continued throughout his ministry.

Impact: The list of accomplishments achieved by Billy Graham during his fruitful life is too long to itemize. What can be said with certainty is that from publishing to mass media to education, he has used every tool at his disposal to spread the Gospel. The result is that an estimated 100 million people have heard him preach and over two million have made a commitment to Christ.

Whitefield, George

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George Whitefield (1714-1770) was one of the great names in evangelism. He was born in Gloucester, England, and entered Oxford in 1733. Here he met Charles Wesley who shared his desire for utter commitment to Christ and for holy living. After his ordination in 1736, he began a ministry among the outcasts of society, including a fruitful campaign in the local prisons. Since his views of ministry differed from that of the established church he was not offered a position so he began open-air preaching, presenting the Gospel in public gatherings to great acclaim. This early success set the stage for his life’s work, which included numerous evangelistic crusades in the British Isles, Europe, and America – sparking tremendous revivals wherever he went. He eventually broke from the Wesleyan movement after embracing Calvinist doctrine and founded the Calvinistic Methodist Society. He joined Jonathan Edwards in launching the Great Awakening in America.

Torrey, Reuben Archer (R.A.)

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Reuben Archer (R. A.) Torrey (1856-1928) was a renowned Congregational evangelist and author. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey and studied at Yale University. After serving briefly as a pastor in Ohio he moved to Germany to study at Leipzig. In 1889, Dwight L. Moody asked him direct his new Bible institute, later named after its founder, and to fill the role of senior pastor at the Chicago Avenue Church, now the Moody Memorial Church. He remained here for 12 years, helping to build both into thriving and influential institutions. He performed the identical task in Los Angeles where he was dean at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and pastor of Church of the Open Door. During his lifetime he conducted numerous worldwide evangelistic crusades and was a frequent Bible conference speaker. He wrote more than 40 books. His impact on two major Bible colleges and churches, his many speaking engagements, and his popular books helped define and develop the evangelical church during the early 20th century.