At our Diocesan Convention this past October, we committed ourselves to a year of prayer and preparation to inaugurate L.I.F.E., Leadership In Faithful Evangelism, our way of formulating our commitment to the 1990’s as a Decade of Evangelism. As we begin this new year and decade, I bid your prayers for Leadership In Faithful Evangelism.
In commenting on prayer, St. Teresa of Avila observed, “All that should be sought in the exercise of prayer is conformity of our will and the divine will, in which consists the highest perfection.” By beginning with prayer, we open ourselves to God’s will, call and vocation for us as God’s messengers and evangelists. By beginning in prayer, we set aside our agenda and ask God to instill in us his agenda, his word and his redeeming love.
As Anglicans, we are fond of quoting the dictum that, “The law of praying is the law of believing,” which results in a law of living in the world. The Book of Common Prayer structures our prayer life through petitions, invocations, adoration, penitence and thanksgiving, all of which reminds us that ministry is dependent upon the grace of God. As such, prayer is preparation for ministry, to include the ministry of evangelism. We pray that God will work in us and through us as evangelists who carry God’s message and not our own. Such prayer and preparation will not end with the end of the year 1990. If we are to be faithful to the task of evangelism, prayer as preparation needs to be a part of our ongoing daily life. rule and discipline as evangelists.
Last month I sent several collects and intercessory prayers for evangelism to each of the churches in the Diocese with the hope that these prayers, intercessions and petitions will be used in a regular way as a part of both corporate and individual devotions and worship. It is my hope that, through common prayer, we might better understand our common ministry as evangelists in the state of South Dakota.
Prayer provides a focus and helps attune us to the needed preparation for the vocation of evangelism. Such a focus is a turning from our own concerns about increasing numbers or dollars to God’s message for the reconciliation and inclusion of all persons into the Christian family.
We will hardly be effective evangelists or faithful messengers if we do not understand the message or confuse our message with God’s message. For this reason, it is important that we prepare for L.I.F.E. in a variety of ways.
Last month, all congregations, commissions and committees of the Diocese participated in an exercise which attempted to relate evangelism to the various functions and tasks of ministry. In addition, these diocesan groups related how we have tended to define evangelism with the Episcopal Church’s definition, “The presentation of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, in such ways that persons may be led to him as Saviour and follow him as Lord within the fellowship of the Church.”
I had an opportunity to participate in one such exercise during a vestry meeting of the Cathedral in late November. I was struck by the quality, depth and commitment revealed in the conversation and discussion. One obvious, but essential realization was that in all preparation we need to share our own experience of the risen Christ in our lives as individuals and churches.
Preparation for evangelism moved beyond canned presentations to risking and sharing our own stories, our own experiences of the divine and our responses to God’s love. If we are to witness, if we are to share, if we are to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, we are called upon to share that in a very personal way, both as individuals and church families.
Such sharing requires preparing, rehearsing and articulating our own stories of salvation and how they relate to the larger story of salvation that we find recorded in Holy Scripture and disclosed in our tradition. Such sharing, as preparation, is perhaps best begun in the various groups which constitute the Diocese, be it a vestry, ECW group or diocesan commission.
Let me suggest that we prepare for evange1ism this year by sharing with one another what Jesus has meant to us and how the Church is central in our lives as individuals and members of families and communities. I suspect that such sharing in a caring and nurturing environment will help us more boldly to proclaim our stories and God’s story of redemption with persons outside our church.
Said differently, evangelism – sharing the message – telling the Good News – like preaching or singing, or teaching, requires practice. If we are to be effective storytellers, messengers and sharers of the Good News of Christianity, as experienced in the Episcopal Church, we need to practice sharing that Good News with one another.
I also know, through experience, that when we share our stories, even with persons we know very well, new realities and new structures of grace emerge. A benefit that we can expect from Leadership In Faithful Evangelism as our expression of the Decade of Evangelism is that we will be renewed individually and as members of the congregations and diocese through our sharing. It is in the sharing that we are opened to receive.
In this new year, I call you to pray and prepare for L.I.F.E, that we all might have life and have it more abundantly as we open ourselves to one another in God’s presence in the words of our common prayer for evangelism:
O God, Creator, Sustainer and Sanctifier of all LIFE: Renew in us such love for you and your creation that we may provide courageous and effective Leadership In Faithful Evangelism for the Diocese and state of South Dakota. In this new decade, make us prophetic and caring evangelists in word and action that we all may have life in Jesus Christ. Amen.