Coffeehouse Theology is a multi-generational Christian Formation discussion group at St. Stephen’s in Huntsville. As facilitator, I don’t pick the topics for discussion; the group does. We began meeting once a month in an actual bricks and mortar coffeehouse several months before the COVID-19 pandemic began. After the quarantine, we moved the discussion to Zoom and began meeting once a week. Recently, I asked the group to suggest topics that they would like me to respond to in writing. This is the first of those Coffeehouse Questions. To join us live, subscribe to receive email updates at St. Stephen’s website.
Many years ago before the Studio Arts Building burned and when Mancha’s was still up the hill on 20th Street behind Louie, Louie, I would sometimes sit on a bench at Five Points South in Birmingham. I was too young to visit any of the bars in the neighborhood (legally anyway), so listening to the folk singer busking across from the pagan statue at the fountain was the extent of the entertainment unless someone decided to sit down and talk which wasn’t necessarily welcome considering the weirdness of Southside in those days. One memorable night, a man confessed that he was considering killing his wife’s lover. In retrospect, it seems to foreshadow pastoral conversations to come though I must admit that nothing I’ve encountered in ordained ministry rises anywhere near talking a total stranger out of committing homicide. I think that my protests convinced him not to carry out his plan. At least, I never saw him on the news afterwards.
The other danger around Five Points South was uninvited encounters with evangelicals out witnessing in a target rich environment. The truth is I was probably more a danger to them than they were to me. I had left the Baptist Church two or three years before, though it seemed longer, and was in the process of deconstructing myself not only as an evangelical but also as a Christian. The reconstruction of my faith didn’t begin for several more years, though that seemed longer, too.
One night a polite young man with vaguely Jesus-y hair and beard joined me on my bench near the pagan fountain to share the Good News. I don’t actually remember our conversation, but I do remember not feeling any aggression or judgment from the man. We just talked about faith. I even admitted to still being a person of faith though I didn’t have any use for organized religion or the institutional church. I suppose I was a “None” before it was cool. He clearly hoped that I might “invite Jesus into my heart,” but I had already done that in Eighth Grade without much fanfare. He ended our talk by saying that he hoped I’d find a church, and he cautioned me against relying too much on an overly intellectual faith before moving on. Looking back, his style of witnessing may have been more Christlike than I realized.
I remembered that story as I considered the Coffeehouse Question, “How do we talk to others about Jesus?” Although I might quibble about the motivation and necessity for his form of evangelism, the man I talked with on Southside got some things about sharing the faith right. How we talk to others about Jesus should be rooted in kindness and compassion. We should do our best to meet the other person where they are which is exactly what Jesus does. We should allow room for disagreement and safe space for the Holy Spirit to work which leads to a related question which is, perhaps, just as important. Why do we talk to others about Jesus?
Evangelism, sharing the Good News, is vitally important for the Episcopal Church. We no longer have the luxury of putting up a building, painting the doors red, and expecting people to just show and worship with us. That is at best magical thinking and at worst pathological nostalgia. There are many dubious reasons to do evangelism. If we think people’s immortal souls are in peril if they don’t join us, we’ve missed the point. If we want new people to join us so that we can add more pledge units to the parish, we’ve failed at both evangelism and stewardship. If we think in terms of a cosmic quid pro quo, we are bound to be disappointed.
Evangelism is rooted in transformation, renewal, and resurrection. Simply put, we encounter the Risen Christ and then can’t help sharing how that changes us (and, no, I can’t always explain exactly how that works). I suspect that we all have stories that we could share about how our faith has changed us or why we remain a part of our particular faith community. Telling those stories is both how and why we do evangelism, and it requires courage and vulnerability. It requires us to recognize the light of Christ within us which is not always as comfortable, warm, and fuzzy as we might think. We have a tendency to resist change even when it’s in our best interest, but the realization that the Holy Spirit is, indeed, working within us and among us helps us recognize that change is not only possible but is in fact necessary for our spiritual growth.
And as we grow, as we take up our cross and follow Jesus daily, as we let the Holy Spirit lead us deeper and deeper into the waters of baptism, we realize that we are changing. We don’t think about ourselves or others in quite the same way. We begin to think that God is calling all of us to be the people we were always meant to be. We begin to suspect that we are all God’s beloved children and nothing that we say or do will ever change that. In other words, the Good News that Jesus has called us to share is much better news than we ever imagined; it transcends the personal and is rooted in the notion of cosmic redemption. It is not the story of individuals saying, doing, and believing all the right things to earn a trip to heaven when they die. The Good News we share is that in Christ and through Christ God is making all things new. The how and the why of talking to others about Jesus flows out of a Divine Love that first reduces us to silence and then compels us to share the story by living it.
To reduce the transformation, renewal, and resurrection that we find in Christ to the merely personal and human is to miss the point.
Peace,
Jeff+
The Reverend Jeffrey K. Evans 