Redeeming Evangelism

Gotta say: this is one of the best articles on mission that I've read for a long time.

Redeeming Evangelism: Authentic Mission in the Church of England | Salisbury Cathedral: A lecture by The Very Reverend Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, on Saturday 13 July 2019

I warmed to it because it says a number of things that I've been saying and thinking for a while and draws them all into a bundle and sprinkles in a few insights more. It pulls out a few salient points of mission history as they affect the recent experience of the CofE. Most of all it unrelentingly takes a Misso Dei perspective: the idea that God is at work in the 'secular' and our role is to learn to spot it and to work out how we make common cause with it. 

It also discusses the concept of obliquity (look it up on this blog's search window and you'll find it's been of interest to me) and uses it to note how we tend to mishandle the church's approach to mission and especially evangelism.

There's a Harry Smart poem called ‘A Fool’s Pardon’ quoted towards the end which is very much to the point. It's challenging in language and in concepts, here's the first verse:

Praise be to God who pities wankersand has mercy on miserable bastards.Praise be to God who pours his blessingon reactionary warheads and racists.

Ouch -but I recognise in it a loyal characterisation of the grace of God.

I'm thinking very seriously about where I can put this into the essential reading for 'my' students of mission and ministry ...