In 2010, Wycliffe College introduced into its M.Div program a so-called “pioneer stream.” The advertising cited the writings of missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, and his call to the church in the West to rise to the challenge of a post-Christendom world, and then concluded: The kind of leadership that was required for established, healthy churches in […]
Pioneering Ministry: an Apologia and a Case Study Read More »
Evangelism has been a preoccupation in many mainline denominations over the past twenty years or so. On one level, this may simply have been a panic reaction to declining numbers and the feeling that evangelism is one way to “get people back to church. My own church, the Anglican Church, was not untypical in proclaiming
Evangelism in the Augustine’s Confessions: Ancient Light on a Contemporary Subject Read More »
In 1984, Haddon Robinson, then President of Denver Seminary, gave an address on the topic, “The Evangelist and the Theologian.”[1] He observed that evangelism and scholarship have generally been estranged during the past two hundred years, to the detriment of both. Yet, Robinson argued, the church needs both “scholarly evangelists” and “evangelistic scholars.” He pointed
Towards Scholarly Evangelists and Evangelistic Scholars Read More »
A double strand The title of a book tells you a lot about where the author is coming from. There are two books I use in teaching evangelistic preaching which illustrate this very nicely. One is a book of essays entitled Mastering Contemporary Preaching. (Do you get the picture? Preaching is something which can be
A Tale of Two Williams: Willimon and Hybels, and the Nature of Christian Mission Read More »
Listen to the Audio: In 1959, C.S.Lewis wrote to BBC producer Lance Sieveking, who had apparently proposed that a movie be made of The Chronicles of Narnia. Here is part of Lewis’ response: I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into
Are “The Chronicles of Narnia” an Evangelistic Text? Read More »
By way of putting this paper in context, I should say that Lewis has been one of my most formative influences from the time I read Mere Christianity as a teenager. I was on staff with IVCF for 26 years, and the last 10 of those were as a campus evangelist, giving lectures on Christian
C.S.Lewis: Premodern, Postmodern and Modern Read More »
It has become commonplace in discourse about evangelism to say that evangelism is a process. That is, people come to Christian faith gradually, through a series of influences, and over a period of time which may take months or years. Jesus’ own frequent use of the imagery of sowing and reaping is sufficient testimony to
Process Evangelism and The Significance of Questions in The Gospel of John Read More »
First of all, I should state that my main interest in this subject is the atonement in evangelistic preaching. By that, I mean preaching whose intended audience is those outside the Christian faith; I mean preaching whose primary intention is to teach, intrigue, draw and challenge the hearers to open their minds and hearts to
Preaching the Atonement Read More »