Serving Jesus with Integrity

Ethics and Accountability in Mission

Dwight P. Baker, Douglas Hayward, Dwight P. Baker, Douglas Hayward

• Editorial: William Carey Library
• Año: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780878088393
• Categoría: Théologie et religion
• Categoría: Ministère chrétien

The word "ethics" carries an aura of countervailing views, overlapping claims, uncertain footing, and seductive attractions. Some issues are as clear as the horizontal versus vertical axes in Sawai Chinnawong's striking painting, Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, that graces the cover of this book. At the same time—because we are involved, because our interests, our inclinations, our plans and relationships are at stake—the issues that engage missionary practitioners can be frustratingly labyrinthine, curling endlessly back on themselves. Evangelical missionaries and mission agencies are concerned about personal morality—and rightly so. But as the chapters in this volume attest, evangelical mission's ethical engagement extends far beyond simply avoiding compromising sexual situations and not absconding with the finances. How should we talk about others' beliefs and practices to ourselves? To them? How should we represent ourselves to others? What role does tolerance for ambiguity play in missionaries' mental preparation? How should accountability be structured in intercultural partnerships? Are there ways to enable organizational justice to flourish in mission institutions? What might integrity in short-term mission outreach look like? How does care for creation relate to mission? What role can a code of ethics for missionary practice play? Limited and fallible and marred by the fall, we need both guidance and admonition—and deep reflection on the conduct of evangelical mission such as is provided in this volume—so that we may serve Jesus with true integrity.

Part I:
Integrity in Message, Finances,
and Relationships

1

Reconstructing an Ethic of Evangelism for Twenty-first-Century Congregations

FRAN BLOMBERG

Significant shifts in worldview are characteristic of the day in which we live. They represent unimagined opportunities for reflecting anew on the ethical underpinnings of evangelism.

The Problem: The Modern Loss of Ethics

In the twenty-first century, evangelicals are heady about evangelistic opportunities, yet impoverished regarding our motivations and presuppositions for this activity. We have reduced ethics to justification of decisions within a pre-existing system and give little heed to analyzing the system itself. As we construct models of mission, we are driven to advance, grow, and “seize the moment”—a drive admirable in its potential to transform lives, but lamentable in its unthinking proclivity for some of the less biblical qualities of our culture.

In this chapter I focus on the ethics underlying the performance of evangelism, particularly within today’s U.S. context. By ethics I mean the virtuous character and lived convictions of a community that give the community its identity, give continuity to its story, and on these bases guide its morality and practices. Ethics is not simply what we do after we decide what we know; ethics is the dynamic process of discerning and then practicing what the Holy Spirit teaches the Christian community. Ethics navigates conditions of uncertainty and choice. Therefore our practice of ethics begins with our manner of understanding and learning.²

Modernity told us that we could discover meaning with absolute certainty; postmodernity exploded this notion with its own (certain!) claims of the relativity and incommensurability of worldviews. Modernity constructed systems; postmodernity deconstructed them. I propose that we welcome the opportunity to disencumber our faith and practices by casting off linkage to either modern or postmodern constructs for thought.³ We will then be able to reconstruct our beliefs, practices, and institutions with greater humility and perspicuity.

Before beginning such reconstruction, let me locate our current ethical stance regarding evangelism. Beginning in the eighteenth century as the role of Christianity in culture came under scrutiny, Christians scrambled to one of four tenuous positions to maintain a sense of worth in modernity:

First, biblical criticism and apologetics strove to show concord with scientific reasoning and to prove the intellectual respectability of Christianity. As important as these studies have been, critical realism and emerging global theologies demand the exercise of humility in conclusions put forward.⁴

Second, the church capitulated and accepted the role of chaplain to society.⁵ Her usefulness depended on her willingness to support the prevailing values of the dominant culture. In such a role, the prophetic voice of the church was stifled, and an evangelistic call to faith “deteriorated into a technique for maintaining Christian America.”⁶

A third perspective allowed that Christianity did not have scientific rationale, but could remain a useful “vendor of religious goods and services”⁷by offering society a discourse for expressing human longing and intuitive morality. Such emotivism merely expressed preference or feeling, with no rational grounds for making judgments.⁸ The assumed incomparability of worldviews meant that debate became an exercise in rhetorical persuasion and coercive argumentation, adversely affecting the ethics of evangelism.

Fourth, by accepting modernity’s lie that “freedom means autonomy,” the church supposedly liberated people from restrictive communal bonds and antiquated traditions. Salvation became a private affair with Jesus accepted as personal Savior, a “voluntaristic soteriology”⁹ in which each one was sole agent of self-actualization. As communal accountability and support waned, people were forced to find their own destiny in terrifying isolation.

Evangelism done within these distortions became an embarrassing appendage to the church rather than an integral part of its identity and nature. Without a concern to challenge modernity’s deepest values—consumerism and individualism—such “freemarket evangelism”¹⁰ has had adverse effects on the credibility and integrity of evangelism.

Such evangelism promotes a spiritual consumerism of “whatever works” for the individual. One constructs a pastiche of Christianity based on convenience and self-gain as much as conviction and self-donation.¹¹ Anticipated obsolescence and a constant search for new experiences subvert lasting commitment to Christ and his community. Rather than finding foundational security from being in Christ, the spiritual consumer is left with a fragmented life tenuously held together by “one accident of choosing after another.”¹²

A focus on meeting felt needs misses the power of the Gospel to change felt needs. Salvation and participation in the community of believers should alter the meaning of people’s experiences as they have understood them and should introduce new ways of responding to these situations.¹³ Simply meeting felt needs carries no guarantee that sin will be addressed and militates against abiding satisfaction in one’s relationship with a sovereign and loving God.

Evangelism reduced to a program rather than being integral to the nature of the church is highly prone to becoming an instrument merely for increasing the numbers in the congregation regardless of the means by which such “converts” are gained or the quality of faith they attain. Ethics demands that the methods of evangelism must be consistent with the character and methods of Christ, and the proper goal of evangelism is faithful witness, not a quantifiable number of converts or church members.

Evangelistic techniques can be exploitative, self-serving for the evangelist, and insensitive to human dignity—improperly imitating unscrupulous power structures. “If we are aggressive, manipulative, abusive, underhanded, lacking in integrity . . . confrontational, insensitive, distorting and provocative in our witness, then we are offensive.”¹⁴ Improperly motivated or practiced evangelism can in fact be sin.

The Proposal: Reconstructing an Ethic of Evangelism

To repeat, ethics is the virtuous character and lived convictions of a community that give the community its identity, give continuity to its story, and on these bases guide its morality and practices. Much, including foundational principles, is embedded in this definition.

From the outset, ethical evangelism must be construed as a practice and not reduced merely to an assemblage of discrete activities. Practices are complex, coherent, comprehensive, and corporate performances with “rewards” internal to the very doing of the practice, apart from any external benefit that might accrue. Evangelism as a practice has as its internal reward faithfulness to God, apart from the external benefit of converts, church growth, or other quantifiable markers. Ethical evangelism will call for conversion but never measure its success by more than faithfulness in witness. Evangelism as a practice recognizes that Christians are inherently martyria (witnesses) prior to engaging in any specific evangelistic task. As representative of God’s kingdom the church body is a corporate witness to a watching world. The life and example of such a community are themselves robust arguments for the truth of Christianity.

Christians live as a convictional community in which cognition, affect, and volition combine with integrity.¹⁵ Ways of doing must be consistent with the claimed outcomes of the actions; ways of being must be consistent with the claimed nature of the community. Under this rubric, holism in evangelism does not mean a democratically proportioned combination of proclamation and social action; it means a seamless meld of character and action that unabashedly and habitually shapes the community in Christlikeness.

Faithful evangelism points toward the kingdom of God, characterized by “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17 TNIV). Living toward justice, righteousness, and shalom requires rightly fulfilling the obligations of relationships¹⁶ and precludes any disingenuous attempt to make converts by means or methods not characteristic of God.

The convictional community must live virtuously, thirsting for integrity. Developing virtue requires a community of support and approbation; a Christian community without virtue may quickly degenerate into a self-justifying and self-sustaining institution without transformational ability.

Evangelism as a Practice

How does a virtuous convictional community ethically practice evangelism? Thinking of evangelism as a practice invites a number of observations.

Evangelism as invitation. Sarah Wenger Shenk asks, “How should we shape the Anabaptist village so it becomes an inviting home for those who wander homeless through the dead-end streets of post-modernity?”¹⁷ Her question is significant for all Christian traditions. Evangelism can be measured by the community’s proactive preparation to receive the wanderer, the outcast, and the obstinate. If the invitation is genuine, the faith community will have to be quite intentional in making room for those who respond, whose presence may well provoke challenges and changes in the community itself. Evangelism is successful when the invitation is issued to come and see how truth is lived out in the community of faith.

Evangelism as witnesses, not salespersons. The logic of being martyriais core to our identity as Christians. The faithful community, able to stand in contrast to the world and offer a viable way of living, is the most potent witness. Relationship, rather than “closing the deal,” reflects the ongoing work of God in our lives and therefore should be the basis of our outreach in his name. Brad Cecil of Axxess Church in Texas puts it this way: “We have decided to measure success by other means, such as, how long do relationships last? Are members of the community at peace with one another? Are relationships reconciled?”¹⁸ Christianity does not need to prove its intellectual superiority or its ultimate usefulness to society; it proves itself as it is lived authentically in the community of the church.

Evangelism as peaceful means toward peaceful ends. Isaiah declares the beauty of the one who brings good news and proclaims peace (Isa. 52:7). It is imperative, if we claim our goal is reconciliation of people to God, that we employ methods of reconciliation like those God himself uses. “The true people of God, the true family of Jesus, is not allowed to impose anything through force— neither internally nor externally.”¹⁹A misguided sense of urgency encourages us to use any means possible to compel people into the kingdom, but faithfulness to God’s character requires us to leave open the door for rejection much as he does. Pacifism in evangelism is not apathetic, but intentionally chooses forbearance and hope over the allure of efficiency and notable external²⁰ As long as evangelism is thought to have conversion as its goal, urgent salesmanship will engender coercive rhetoric. Slick performance strategies will compete with the performances of the world. Faith will remain domesticated by the values of modern marketing culture.

Evangelism as offering a countercultural alternative. Ethical evangelism must offer an alternative to the society’s status quo and its dominant idolatries. In the United States today evangelism must stand against individualism and consumerism, and certainly cannot employ these idolatries in its methodology. Ethical outreach offers an invitation to the unwanted to become part of a community, not limited to a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Countercultural evangelism does not compete with the resources or productions of the world, rather, it boasts in the cross and the cruciform sacrifice of the community on behalf of outsiders. Such evangelism makes its mark by “such deviant practices as sharing bread with the poor, loving enemies, refusing violence, forgiving sins and telling the truth.”²¹

Evangelism that offers the kingdom cannot do so by allowing people to remain friends with the world (James 4:4). In the modern cult of narcissism “lies the root of all other forms of idolatry: we deify our own capacities, and therefore make gods of ourselves and our choices.”²² Those genuinely ready to consider commitment to Christ must be encouraged to disavow allegiances to the world, to willingly limit choices to those that set them apart in holiness.

Evangelism as embracing patience as resistance and suffering as triumph. Patience is a powerful form of resistance that declares that exploitation and guile are unworthy means for demonstrating the grace and power of God. Patience in evangelism declares that the imago Dei in each person imparts dignity worthy of respect and that God woos by reconciliation and peace. How hard it is for those of us who possess resources, strength, and acumen to submit to patient witness rather than to manipulate the situation to ensure “winning” the lost on our terms. To be patient in evangelism chafes. Yet ethical evangelism cannot “prey on weakness, nor does it victimize those in need by trading its help for their ‘conversions.’ It does not ask for sacrifice from those who have already been sacrificed by the world.”²³ It is for the evangelist to suffer for the lost, not ...

Índice

• Introduction
• Contributors
• 1. Reconstructing an Ethic of Evangelism for Twenty-first-Century Congregations
• 2. An Approach to Financial Accountability in Mission Partnerships
• 3. Seeing Through a Glass More Clearly: The Moral and Evangelistic Imperative of More Accurately Representing Other People’s Religions to Ourselves
• 4. Ethics and Accountability in the Mission Community
• 5. Internet Pornography and Missions
• 6. The Dynamic Relationship Between Ethical Compromise and Ministry Effectiveness
• 7. “Deleadered”: Ethical Removal of Leaders in Mission Organizations
• 8. Seven Stealth Ethical Issues Flying Under the Radar of Many Mission Agencies
• 9. Organizational Justice: Perceptions of Being Fairly Treated
• 10. Ethical Guidelines for Church Planters: A Suggested Proposal
• 11. Some Ethical Considerations About Short-Term Mission
• 12. Sustainable Missions: Ethical Principles for Holistic Practice in a Broken World
• 13. Truth and Storytelling: It Is Important to Get the Facts Straight
• 14. Ethical Issues in Missionary Filmmaking: Cinematic Tropes of Power and Perspective
• 15. The Missionary and the Camera: Developing an Ethic for Contemporary Missionary Photographers
• 16. Holding Missionaries Accountable: A Proposed Code of Ethics for Missionaries Based Upon the Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association
• Index
• Endnotes