Evangelism and the Gift of Missionary (Part 1)

Last week, as I was returning from Australia, I began to read Acts of the Holy Spirit by C. Peter Wagner (2000). The author is a former professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he served on the faculty for nearly thirty years. (Notable graduates of Fuller include Bill Bright, Rick Warren, John Piper and Rob Bell.)

Wagner’s book is a chapter-by-chapter commentary on the book of Acts with two special twists. First, he places strong emphasis on the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, discussing the extent to which these gifts are present in the Church today. Second, he deals extensively with issues of contextualization – the challenges faced by missionaries as they bring the good news of Jesus Christ into human cultures radically different from their own.

With respect to the Holy Spirit, Wagner began his academic career as a cessationist. That is, he believed that miraculous gifts of tongues, prophesy and healing ceased to be part of normal Christian experience after the age of the apostles. During his tenure at Fuller, however, he revised his views and became a continuationist, believing that many modern-day displays of miraculous gifts are authentic.

The tension between cessationism and continuationism is a fascinating and important subject, but we will leave that to another day. Here I will summarize some of Wagner’s comments on evangelism and culture.

Wagner describes three different kinds of evangelism, which he designates E-1, E-2, and E-3.

• E-1 evangelism is monocultural. An E-1 evangelist shares his faith with other people within his own people group. No significant barriers of language or culture are crossed.
• E-2 evangelism crosses mild cultural barriers. An example of E-2 evangelism would be an Anglo-American preaching the gospel in Australia.
• E-3 evangelism means carrying the gospel to radically different culture. For example, a Canadian missionary serving in China. Or a British pastor reaching out to Hindus and Muslims in London.

This classification as E-1, E-2 and E-3 is a fairly standard terminology not invented by the author. But he does make two major points which I found interesting and compelling.

His first point is that most converts to Christianity have been made through E-1 evangelism; this has always been the case, and it always will. E-2 and E-3 evangelism are necessary to sow the seeds of the gospel in a new place, but dramatic church growth will rarely take place until the message of Christ takes root among native leaders who begin to evangelize their own.

Examples of this are easy to find. For example, Protestant missionaries successfully brought the gospel to Korea in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but mass conversion of large numbers of South Koreans did not take place until indigenous Korean Christian movements (including UBF) sprang up in the 1960’s.

Another example is the rapid spread of Christianity in modern-day China. Missionaries to China are playing only a minor role in this; most of the growth is taking place through the multiplication of indigenous house churches.

Wagner argues that the gospel spreads more effectively and naturally through E-1 evangelism than through E-2 and E-3. When E-1 evangelism is happening, conversion to Christianity does not require newcomers to cross significant racial, linguistic or cultural barriers. They will not need to disavow their current ways of life to adopt radically new patterns of behavior presented by foreign missionaries. Most of their relationships with family members, friends and neighbors can remain intact. Wherever true E-1 evangelism is going on, as opposed to E-2 and E-3, the decision to accept Christ remains a religious decision to join the family of God, rather than a cultural or social decision to leave one people group and join another.

Wagner’s second point is that E-1 evangelism is a general mission given to everyone in the Church, but E-2 and E-3 evangelism is a special calling that only certain individuals have. There is little excuse for Christians not to engage in E-1 evangelism; in one way or another, every believer ought to be sharing his faith in Christ with the people around him. Therefore, a healthy church will usually be growing in numbers, because E-1 evangelism will be naturally taking place day in and day out.

But E-2 and E-3 evangelism are another matter. These are a specific ministry which require a specific gift. Wagner calls it the gift of missionary, and he defines it as follows: “The gift of missionary is a special ability that God gives to certain believers to use whatever other spiritual gifts they have in a different culture.”

Wagner estimates that only about 1% of Christians have this gift. He admits that this is just a rough guess, based on his own experiences and impressions. The figure of 1% is unimportant. His major point is that, while everyone in the church should be sharing his or her faith within the immediate community, E-2 and E-3 evangelism are a special mission to which only a few are called.

Interestingly, Jesus was an E-1 evangelist. He did not seem to have the gift of missionary. Or, if he had it, he chose not to use it during his three-year public ministry, because as he said in Matthew 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

And his twelve apostles were also E-1 evangelists. They ministered primarily to Hebraic Jews like themselves. On a few special occasions, God did use them to evangelize beyond their culture. For example, on the day of Pentecost, they received supernatural ability to communicate the gospel to Grecian Jews from many parts of the Roman Empire in their own native tongues. Another example occurs in Acts chapter 10, when God calls on Peter to evangelize the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was a Gentile. This was a special event, and Peter was prompted to do it by a special vision from heaven. Afterward, however, Peter seemed to return to his usual ministry to the Jews, and wholesale evangelization of Gentiles did not begin until the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries in Acts chapter 13.

Although we would like to think that the message of Christ breaks down barriers and creates unity in the human race, Christian history has shown — and the book of Acts also testifies to this — that differences among people-groups are stark, and significant hurdles must be overcome whenever Christians from one group attempt to evangelize another.

This is the fundamental problem of missiology. When E-2 and E-3 missionaries carry the gospel to another place, how do they contextualize the message and implement it there? Which of their own beliefs and practices are non-negotiable and must be carried into the new context, and which must be sacrificed to give the native peoples freedom to develop their unique identity in Christ so that the spread of the gospel is not hindered? There are no easy answers to these questions. The Bride of Christ has always wrestled with these issues, and until Christ returns, she always will.

The most significant example of this in the early church occurred when some Jewish Christians from Judea began to teach that circumcision was necessary for salvation and church membership. In their minds, this was a non-negotiable practice that defined them as God’s people. “If a new Gentile believer accepts Christ, why shouldn’t he be willing to be circumcised?” they thought. The influence of these Judaizers was so strong that even the Apostle Peter began to waver, until Paul personally rebuked him on this matter (Gal 2:14). The battle over circumcision reached a climax in Acts chapter 15, when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem to present their views to the Jewish believers. At this so-called Jerusalem Council, Peter played the pivotal role; he strongly urged the church to accept Gentiles as full members on the merits of their faith in Christ alone.

Most people are simply unaware of how deeply they have been shaped by their own cultural upbringing, by their own national and ethnic identity. This is why the missionary calling is a special gift. A missionary needs an unusual kind of discernment and willingness to sacrifice many values (even good ones) that he holds dear. Even the twelve apostles who were personally trained by Jesus had great difficulty with this. It was hard for them not to impose additional requirements on new believers from other cultures to make them resemble their own culturally influenced notions of spiritual maturity and piety. Therefore, it is perfectly understandable and natural to expect similar difficulties to be going on in our midst today.