Evangelism as Worship: Instead of Working “for God,” Engaging in Ministry “to God"
Abstract
Worship provides a helpful lens through which we can re-orient the practice of evangelism for those who have become overburdened by the task. When we focus on evangelism as a command to fulfill, we risk placing an over-emphasis on human effort, agency, and control. In the process, we miss the doxological source of evangelism, and its worshipful telos. Fortunately, when we look at worship in a broad sense, as the whole of life (individually and communally) oriented to God, enabled through our union with Christ, and empowered by the Spirit of God, we discover that worship offers a large expanse within which we can re-frame evangelism. I propose that Don Saliers’ four theses of worship, expressed in “The Travail of Worship,” provide a helpful way for us to re-think evangelism. First, Saliers proposes that worship is oriented to the glorification of God being “God-oriented, anamnetic, and doxological” (28). Second, worship reflects Hebrew and Christian scriptures, particularly as revealed in the redemption narratives of Jesus Christ. Third, Christian worship is always “culturally embodied and embedded” (29). Fourth, Christian worship involves “our whole life,” where “formative and expressive dimensions of Christian worship are dependent upon the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit” (29). My contention is that these four theses are also helpful descriptors of evangelism. By closely connecting worship and evangelism through these four theses, evangelism emerges from our practice of worship, an extension of God’s invitation to vibrant doxological living offered those inside and outside the Christian community. Thus, we are no longer burdened by working “for God.” Instead, we become freed from an over-emphasis on human agency so that evangelism is offered as a testimony of worship “to God” and a testimony of witness to our neighbor.
Work Cited:
Saliers, Don E. “The Travail of Worship in a Culture of Hype: Where Has All the Glory Gone?” Journal for Preachers 24 (2001) 28-32.
