After three days of making friends, comparing notes, hearing testimonies, and brainstorming their dreams, might 75 Presbyterians hope to create an evangelistic future for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?  Most of those attending the Grow the Church Deep and Wide:  Evangelism Consultation at Stony Point Center on November 10-12 hoped for that very thing.

            Moreover, they planned for it.

            After listening to “conversation sparkers” on their first day together, and then beginning their second day listening to a panel reflect upon those sparkers, participants broke into discussion groups. Actually they formed “open source” groups around topics of interest, then migrated to other groups, with some folding and others growing, and then into broader aggregated groups, all in pursuit of subjects and categories they hoped would help grow the church deep and wide.  As conference director Rick Ufford-Chase explained, they were adapting online open source technology for use not as virtual reality but with real flesh-and-blood people. 

            Groups formed initially around such topics as “praying about and identifying co-worker-evangelists in the congregation,” “reaching out to international students,” “how presbyteries can train and support pastors to lead evangelism,” “essentials on folding new people into the Christian community,” “revitalizing Presbyterian churches,” “reaching Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers,” “evangelizing the LGBT community,” “the transforming power of Jesus,” “measurement: how do we grow the church in numbers?” “doing dialogue on open spaces,” “unbinding the gospel,” “talking about God’s dominion without using domination language,” and “developing a multicultural internship program.”

            Conferees reported their insights during intermittent times back in plenary.  One theme that emerged was a call to tell the story. Whether labeled as a “testimony” – a positive term for some, a turn-off for others – or a witness, or a spiritual journey, most everybody acknowledged that Presbyterians need to be encouraged to tell what a difference Jesus Christ has made in their lives.

            Tim Hart-Andersen, pastor of the 3,000-member Westminster Church in Minneapolis confessed “the arms length way I’ve dealt with Jesus through much of my life and,” he added that he wanted to “repent of that.”  He added, “Getting people in touch with their own stories is so important.”

            Stan Ott, director of the Vital Churches Institute and one of the conversation sparkers, reflected that he has been hearing lots of conversation around helping one another to speak about the faith not only with those outside the faith as well as with those within the church. He mentioned specific resources such as Tom Long’s book Testimony and fellow participant Christopher Walker’s Web site [www.evangelismcoach.org]. “What does it mean to model our faith?” he asked participants.

            Another theme focused on discipleship. Ufford-Chase recounted how much conventional wisdom claims that you need to make it all so easy to producing growing churches. He disagreed. “Many Presbyterians have realized the combination of raising the bar and making church grow.” 

            He pressed that point later on: “I have no interest in evangelizing someone if it doesn’t appear to make any difference in the way they relate to the world.  If they’re going to remain so enculturated with the mentality of empire, then what difference does it make?”

            John Nelson, a ministry intern at Church of All Nations in Minneapolis agreed. “We are finding that people are fleeing mega-churches to come to our much higher commitment church.”

            A third theme elevated the importance of hospitality and welcoming of people unlike ourselves. Raafat Girgis, the GAC Associate for Multicultural Ministries, admitted that he presses this point wherever he goes. “We cannot absolutely separate evangelism from cultural diversity and to reaching out to everyone and all.” Of course, he admitted, “People often say to me, ‘Well, that’s your agenda.’ I respond, ‘Yes that’s my agenda.  What’s keep you from making it yours?’”

            Probably the clearest theme and greatest enthusiasm in the conference resonated around the desire to cultivate a movement, not an institution – in spite of the fact that this event was co-sponsored by the General Assembly Council, and several attendees came from the denominational offices. Eric Hoey, associate for evangelism in the GAC, shared with the Outlook that people in the PC(USA) are “recognizing a new way of doing ministry:  it’s not top-down. In an era when people hunger for community, they want to figure that out together.” As it is in Web technology, “they want an interactive feel.”

            In planning the conference, he said, “our hope was for a hunger for evangelism. I think that happened. We didn’t fill people’s notebooks with information. We know where to get that. I just felt today put the icing on the cake.”

            Will this generate anything more than 75 individuals dispersing to their own separate, disconnected worlds?

            Well one final set of discussion groups set out to brainstorm next steps. One group volunteered to prepare language for a covenant that participants could sign. A couple of groups proposed meeting again in a year, or even in six- month intervals for five years. Others proposed the development of a national network of evangelism facilitators. All made note of the Web site for further input and resourcing for the follow through – and not just for themselves but for Presbyterians denomination-wide:  http://e.vangelize.us

            Many expressed promises to pray for the church to fulfill the conference theme: growing deep and wide.   

            As the conference drew to a close, Hoey, who had kept a low profile throughout the three days, rose to share his reflections. With deep emotion, he said, “I had never dreamed that this would come out like this. My prayer ever since taking this position at the GAC has been that God would raise up a movement with a passion to evangelize the world … and to change our denomination. When the Spirit of God shows up and gives us marching orders we can’t just sit here.”

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