reactions on an emotional outburst

I got an e-mail with some critique on my outburst on evangelism. Especially my mock-up of the metaphysics with which the gospel are communicated, saying that I’m creating a caricature of evangelism with that.

So, if you are using the words I used in the post to spread the gospel… well, then I please don’t want to know about it, I think that’s totally unbiblical. But that’s just me. However, knowing the two methods/styles/call-them-what-you-will mentioned in the post, EE3 and Faithful Witnesses, I must add that this is not the exact language they would use. The idea wasn’t to make a mockery of them, and I therefore did not use the way’s in which they would communicate it. I was rather trying to make the point that our use of metaphysics might hinder some to communicate the gospel.

Now, as soon as we start talking about God, we use metaphysical language, but that language change over time. I just paged through Transforming Mission again, and came upon the place where Bosch (p188, working from Küng and Van Huyssteen) points out that in a new paradigm (Bosch was trying to make clear that we are entering a new paradigm, although he didn’t really use the word postmodernism when explaining the macro-paradigms, he did use it extensively when writing Believing in the Future), the entire field of theology needs reconstruction. Also, in Believing in the Future, he made the point that maybe the gospel was never really contextualized in Western society, which is part of the reason it failed in Western society.

So, here my plea for a total re-thinking of how we present the gospel, a total re-thinking of the language we use. And maybe this would then give people living in a new paradigm an ease to communicate the Jesus-story which many obviously didn’t have with most existing methods/styles/call-them-what-you-wills.

If I did offend you, however, I am sorry. And if you have found a way of communicating the gospel which work in your context, then please continue…