The church has inherited the calling of the Old Testament people of God to be a ‘light to the nations’. This calling is apparent especially in the covenant with Abraham and the ‘servant songs’ in Isaiah. I would characterize it in simple terms as a calling to engender both Godness and goodness in the world: we are exponents of, and propagandists for, a God-centred righteousness. This sets us against both all forms of idolatry and all forms of injustice, whether personal, social, political, or environmental; but the calling should be understood first in positive terms: through the descendants of Abraham the world will be blessed.
How are we to understand salvation in relation to this calling? Strictly speaking people need to be ‘saved’ when something threatens their safety or existence. Israel needed salvation in the first century because the nation faced the devastating ‘judgment’ of Roman invasion. For the nation as a whole this crisis was a consequence of religious failure. For the small number who remained faithful to God during this extended eschatological crisis, suffering was a consequence of obedience. Jesus’ death was the supreme instance of one whose obedience to God resulted in suffering and death and his resurrection was the vindication of this faithfulness. Those who suffered subsequently as Jesus suffered received the same reward: resurrection and participation in the reign of Christ in the new age. Much of the New Testament language about judgment, repentance, atonement, suffering, hell, and resurrection presupposes this context.
There is a secondary sense of ‘salvation’, however, which is actually more relevant to the situation that we mostly face in the West today. The good news for the Gentiles was not that they could get to heaven but that they could become part of the people of God in the Spirit through faith. In many instances this put their livelihoods and lives at risk so that they too needed to be saved in the primary sense - rescued from death, if necessary through resurrection. But the goal of faith was to receive the Spirit, be incorporated into the people of God, and inherit the calling given to Abraham. We believe in order to know God now and be used by God to bless others.
In view of this I would suggest that evangelism can be understood on three levels. It is, first, the work of telling a story to the whole world that recommends both the creator God and the life of righteousness. The crux of this story is the episode that deals with Jesus and the immediate aftermath of his death, but the story is much bigger than this. It is the story of a righteous God who gives life, a story which should provoke wonder, curiosity, compassion, hope, worship.
Secondly, I think that evangelism should involve the creation and nurturing of a religious, cultural and intellectual space for the development of a God-centred righteousness outside the sphere of the church. This is a space where the story begins to make sense to people, where the light begins to shine and lure. Potentially it becomes an intermediate, cross-border form of community - in a much looser sense than we speak of the community of believers - corresponding to the religious interaction that took place in the outer courts of the temple or the community of ‘God-fearing’ Gentiles that attached itself to the synagogue. This would be a community of those who are drawn in some way to the God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, but who do not take upon themselves the burden of being part of a servant community. In a sense they are seekers but we recognize that the object of their seeking may never acquire the clarity or certainty necessary for them to take the step of commitment represented by baptism.
In this way the church, as the community of the living God, becomes the focus for a way of life, a spirituality, that in important respects draws on and benefits from the presence of God embodied in those who have the Spirit. We become interpreters of transcendence for people: we help them to understand the desire for God and for righteousness that is latent within them as creatures made in the image of God. And sometimes we will help people to take a big step of trust and become ‘imitators’ of the one who opened the door to God.
Thirdly, therefore, evangelism also takes the more familiar form of bringing others into the servant community of the Spirit so that they may experience the fulness of the life of God (the life of the age which has come) and in turn become agents of Godness and goodness in the world. The church makes disciples but not simply for the sake of increasing its numbers: the church makes disciples for the sake of others.
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