Words'nTone

My paper on Evangelism and Social Action, which I presented at the 2008 Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in Providence, RI, has been published in the Africanus Journal’s recent edition. I am honored and humbled by their kindness in asking for and publishing this paper as an article. You can obtain both the article and the Journal online through the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary website, the Boston Campus.

     A number of years ago my pastor had a great idea to get people to come to church. One Sunday morning he asked us to list on the 3 x 5 card in our bulletin topics that our friends would like to hear. He was planning a “relevant and practical” sermon series during the evening services. The pastor hoped the topics would interest our non-churched friends if there were some “practical” value to them. This was a no-brainer for me, so, without hesitation, I wrote down “workforce development” and “poverty,” topics that would interest my friends. Some weeks later, I asked the pastor if he had seen my 3 x 5 card. He acknowledged he saw my topics and then made this comment, “That’s your area.” For sure, these areas are mine in the sense that I work within the social service world, and, in particular, a Community Action Agency, whose mission is to alleviate the causes of poverty and move families toward self-sufficiency. At that moment, I realized I needed to develop my own “theory of evangelism” as it relates to the Christian faith and issues like “workforce development” and “poverty.”
     The pastor’s comment was in line with a history of dissonance over the Church’s social responsibilities and how the Bible speaks to issues of poverty…click here for the full article...and scroll down…