XPost: alt.christnet.theology, alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox, alt.religion.christianity
XPost: alt.religion.christian, alt.christian.religion
On 8 Jul 2017 at 6:39, Bill Black wrote:
On Sat, 08 Jul 2017 06:19:37 +0200, in alt.christian.religion Steve
Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
But most of us don´t even think of Orthodoxy and evangelism as
existing in the same book, much less in the same sentence. Most of us,
if we are honest, including myself, have had our attitudes about
evangelism badly mauled by the excessive, hyper-emotional, manipulative over-doing that passes for evangelism on the part of the TV and
mega-church gods and in some Protestant and Pentecostal churches.
Sometimes one cannot tell whether the purpose is to preach some gospel
or to demand donations as a demonstration of one´s faith. The mix of salvation, emotionalism, promises of prosperity and healing and the ever present request for money leaves an understandable bad taste in one´s
mouth, and has made not a few people say, if this is what `evangelism´
is, then I don´t want to have anything to do with it.
I have found that many Orthodox Christians confuse evangelism and
proselytism, and it is quite important to be clear about the
distinction.
I've written about it here:
http://www.orthodoxy.faithweb.com/evanpros.htm
so won't say more about that in this post.
Living in Kenya as I do, one cannot escape the presence of religion.
Almost everybody claims to be a Christian of one sort or another. This
is interesting in that Kenya also is one of the more corrupt countries
in the world, one riven by ethnic hatreds, with high rates of
promiscuity, domestic violence, alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse, etc. Which might lead one to suspect that for all the religious hoopla, Christianity actually makes little difference in the way people actually live and has little impact on the communities and cultures of
this land. But that is for another time.
That sounds familiar. It's much the same in South Africa.
The largest denomination in Kenya is the Roman Catholic Church. But the predominant style of Christianity that has overrun this country is Pentecostalism in its various forms. And a Pentecostal style has become
the preferred way of preaching, even in many non-Pentecostal churches.
And a Pentecostal style of `worship´, with a keyboard or a band and a worship leader with other singers dancing their hearts out, all miked
and blaring out of over-taxed loudspeakers, undoubtedly making a
contribution to the collective deafness of the community - all of these things, and especially the (very) loud speakers are being reproduced in church after church. Churches may not be able to afford to pay their
pastor, or take care of their poor, or construct a proper building. But
by golly they will have a keyboard and loudspeakers at the very least.
I have traveled over most of the country, and there is not a single
place I have visited that hasn´t had many if not most of their churches
in more-or-less Pentecostal mode.
The largest denomination in South Africa is the Zion Christian Church
(ZCC), and most of what you say is equally applicable here.
Over the last 30 years or so we have seen the development of a kind of
generic Protestantism, which people seem to assume is the normal, or
even the only form of Christianity.
I have two anecdotes to illustrate this:
About 20 years ago A Dutch Reformed acquaintance told me that a
Congolese theology student from the University of Pretoria wanted to
know more about Orthodoxy, so I went to see him. His name was Lefaria
Kimini, and I gave him a couple of booklets about Orthodoxy, but we
seemed to be talking at cross-purposes. He said he was starting a new
church in Pretoria and he needed musical instruments. He thought I was
coming to offer to donate them. He told me that Africans weren't like
white people, Africans needed musical instruments in worship.
That left me gobsmaked, because in my experience it was the other way
round. Apart from the Orthodox, white church congregations could not
sing without instrumental accompaniment, and black congregations
almost never used instrumental accompaniment.
About 10 years before that (in 1987) our fledgeling Orthodox community
was borrowing an Anglican chapel, and it was overlooked by the flat
where the black assistant priest lived. When we had the Easter Vigil,
he remarked that he had never heard white people sing like that, and
he did not know it was possible. They sang just like black people, he
said.
But Lefaria Kimini was the voice of the future, though I did not
recognise it at the time. So what you say is true here.
The other thing was four years ago, when we went to Namibia via
Botswana. We had had our passports stamped at the immigration office
and had to show them to the policeman who opened the gate. He asked
what I did, so I told him that I was a "Moruti" -- the Tswana word for
a church minister. He said, "Here we call that a Pastor."
American Neopentecostalism rules -- all over sub-Saharan Africa, it
seems.
All of which leads me to ask, when Orthodox Christians choose to do evangelism here in Kenya, how should we go about doing it? Should we organise pilgrimages and processions and carry icons around the
community whilst chanting? Should we run seminars to better acquaint
our neighbours with who we are and where we come from? It has been said
that funerals are actually a significant (and for many the only) point
of contact with Orthodox priests and services. To our credit (in my
opinion) the simplicity and beauty of our funeral liturgy compares
favourably with the way funerals are done in other denominations. But
this is more on the lines of exposure as opposed to evangelism.
We started a new parish on the basis of that. It sounds as though some
of the places you describe are in the diocese of my former colleague,
Bishop Athanasius Akunda, and he could tell you about the funeral of
Fr Simon Thamaga, whose neighbours were so impressed that they wanted
an Orthodox Church.
So if we Orthodox Christians want to introduce people to Jesus, and
introduce them to Orthodoxy, how then should we proceed?
People who think about mission strategy have always observed that
things go better if we Christians take steps to meet our neighbours
where they are (in terms of their context, assumptions, lifestyle,
issues, etc) rather than force them to come meet us where we are. This,
of course, means being willing to leave the comfort of the familiar and
to venture into territory that we are not used to experiencing. This
can be literally, in that we leave the confines of the Church and go to
where the people we want to reach are. In the UK where I lived, the
Anglican Church I was a part of would have regular `Pub Nights´ where we would have a team from the church go to one of the local pubs, share a
pint with the locals and use either a pub quiz or some other game as a
way to introduce spiritual issues into the conversation. This would
usually lead to several good conversations about Christ, Christianity, salvation and discipleship. In Kenya I have tried this approach in
several contexts and found an amazing openness on the part of people in
the various bars I´ve visited. I´m surprised that more Christians with
a heart for evangelism are not fishing where the fish are, so to speak.
And it´s not just in bars.
Not saying we shouldn't do that, but "centripetal" mission can also be effective. On a couple of occasions we encouraged people in our parish
to invite non-Orthodox friends and neighbours to Vespers, and then
have coffee afterwards and invite them to ask any questions they liked
about what they had seen. On one occasion we invited a bunch of
Protestants from the "Emerging Church" movement (mainly via blogs,
because that was the main form of contact). They had lots of
questions, and lots of the regular parishioners answered them, not
just the clergy. That gave them both practice and confidence in
speaking about their faith. That was in a middle-class suburb of
Johannesburg, which is different from rural Kenya, but one could work
something out. Three things impressed those visitors: the use of
space, the fact that the clergy played a relatively small part (no
"Pastor", as the Motswana policeman had in mind) and that there was
"nothing digital".
But I've seen the pub thing work too, though, like you, in an
Anglican, not an Orthodox context.
I was in a parish that used the Evangelism Explosion method of
training people in personal evangelism. It was developed by
Presbyterian in the USA, so I found its Calvinist theological
assumptions a bit much, but it worked. At one point we had to
demonstrate it to people from other parishes, so we did it in
Soshanguve (Bishop Athanasius can tell you what that is like too). I
led to trainees out to demonstrate it, and we walked into a house that
turned out to be a shebeen. There were two guys sitting outside in the
sun on beer crates, and I gave my demo gospel presentation to them,
and one of them poured his beer down the drain and came with us back
to the church, where I introduced him to the parish priest as a new parishioner.
I designed an outline of a gospel presentation that I hoped would be
more Orthodox and less Calvinist, but haven't set up training courses
yet!
The context for a baptismal liturgy in small town western Kenya.
But there is another way we can contextualise our evangelistic efforts
as Orthodox Christians. Again rather than wait for people to walk in
our doors and imbibe the Orthodox essence and fall on their face and cry
out that God is surely in your midst, we can also go into our
community´s religious and experiential space, one that has been staked
out by a veneer of Pentecostal style, and we can claim that space as our
own. In other words contextualization in Kenya no longer means
communicating the gospel in terms of an African Traditional Religious perspective that actually has almost entirely disappeared. That world
view is drying up all over the continent like a water hole in drought.
The common coin of religious experience these days is the hoopla of Pentecostal form, if not content. This is the wave-length that most
people are on, and this is the wave-length that most people are
responding to, at least initially. It may be incredibly superficial,
but it is where people are and what they know. Even some of our own
Orthodox parishes have introduced `praise and worship´ singing and
dancing after the Divine Liturgy. Imagine.
That is something we have talked of, but never actually done.
And you are dead right about the context and contextualisation thing.
I've also written about that in an article "Postcolonial Christianity
is a Neopentecostal Megachurch"
https://t.co/XMr8YDxyh5
If you read it, please forgive the repeat of the anecdote of Lefaria
Kimini and the musical instruments already recounted above.
However, one of the questions I have about that style of evangelism is
that those outside the church (who are, after all, the ones we are
trying to reach) already think it's mainly about money. So how would
we dispel such an impression?
So how do we reach our communities? We speak to them in a language they understand, using a format that they can comprehend, in a style that
won´t chase them away. That means we probably forgo Byzantine chant in favour of a keyboard, singers and loudspeakers. That means we probably
have our event in a place where local people gather. That means we
speak in a style that wont be a stumbling block to the audience. It´s
still Orthodoxy, but its not dressed in a cassock; rather it´s Orthodoxy dressed in local garb. And in this case, local garb is in Pentecostal
style.
Someone (I forget who) once said about evangelism, when predictability
is high, the impact is low, but when predictability is low, impact is
high.
My question: isn't that a bit predictable?.
On the other hand, here are some thoughts about Manic Street
Preachers:
https://khanya.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/manic-street-preachers/
I think that's enough for now.
I hope some others will also have some questions, comments, thoughts
and suggestions too.
--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com
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