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'Love Feasts' and Living Water in a Dry Land: a Call to Evangelize

Episcopal News Service. July 25, 1991 [91161]

Jan Nunley

"The judgment upon mainline churches is that they could all be better evangelists, if they were prepared to receive the people that God has invited," thundered the Rev. James Forbes at a General Convention open hearing on evangelism. "But many times we want prepackaged Episcopalians as the object of our evangelistic effort," Forbes said.

Forbes, senior pastor of New York's Riverside Church, used story and song -- and silence -- to drive home his point: The good news of Jesus Christ is that all creation is included in God's invitation to a "love feast" -- including people of color, lesbians and gays, and other "outsiders."

Forbes' powerful preaching moved the audience to laughter, shouts, and enthusiastic clapping as he held forth on what he called "the best good news." Calling on the group to "cease listening to me," he paused for a minute in silence for the group to "listen to see if there is a word that God has to say to you," resuming with the singing of the spiritual, "Amen."

Then Forbes launched into his main message, taken from the book of Isaiah and the gospel of Luke: "God wants to get our attention to remind us that God is interested in both nourishing and fulfilling our lives. God is primarily invested in a big feast that God is arranging for the whole creation... This is the best news, the best evangel, in the whole world, as incarnated in Jesus the Christ," he said. "My job as an evangelist is to come to the feast myself, and then feast at the table only long enough to come back to those in the streets and lanes of the city and say that I have a good news message for you."

But not everyone is interested in the "love feast," observed Forbes. "Sometimes the church is not able to be about its evangelistic work because some of us are like the elder brother" in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), "so busy maintaining our own system of values, so legalistic in our understanding, so self-righteous in our mode of being, that when the love feast is extended to someone that you don't like -- someone who is different from you, of a different class, orientation, of a different ethnic background -- you can say, 'I ain't coming to that party."' Mainline churches should be willing to change such things as liturgy and language to accommodate the people God sends, Forbes said, and if they're not, "I'm praying for you."

'Whom should we evangelize?'

Carrying Forbes' theme of inclusivity in evangelism were several speakers who identified themselves as members of Integrity or involved in ministry to lesbians and gays.

"I bring you the question: Whom should we evangelize?" asked the Rev. Jennifer Phillips, deputy from Massachusetts. "Is the reign of God really like a mustard seed, that has grown large enough to be a tree with room for all the birds of the air -- including the odd ducks like you and me -- or is it a closed society?" The Rev. Gary Ost of The Parsonage, a ministry to lesbian and gay San Franciscans, called evangelism "a witness of unconditional love."

Others who testified called for support for various resolutions facing the convention. Favoring a resolution affirming the Decade of Evangelism (A-059), the Rev. Whis Hays of Youth Quest warned against the degeneration of the evangelistic message into "a gospel of self-fulfillment." Two of the speakers were members of what one called "a truly silent minority," the deaf community.

Bishop Christopher Epting of Iowa, vice chair of the Standing Commission on Evangelism, found the testimony "very affirming of what we've done. I'm not sure a whole lot will be changed as a result." Chair Joan Bray of Connecticut thought the testimony was "well thought out" and recognized their report as "inclusive, but very clear" about the centrality of Jesus Christ in evangelism.

The General Convention adopted the following resolutions on evangelism:

  • Call the church to continuing commitment to this Decade of Evangelism (A-059a).
  • Reaffirm commitment to the fullness and uniqueness of God's self-revelation to humankind in Jesus Christ, while remaining aware of God's self-revelation outside the church (A-060a).
  • Call upon dioceses and congregations to give serious attention during the Decade of Evangelism to enrichment of the ministry of word and sacrament in the congregational life of the church (A-061).
  • Affirm the continuing development of evangelism ministries among Asiamerican, Black, Hispanic and Native American peoples (A-065a).
  • Challenge every diocese to identify and evangelize ethnic groups or immigrant populations that have no indigenous Christian churches (A-067a).
  • Direct Mission Operations staff to gather research about ethnic groups in the United States and abroad that have no indigenous churches (A-066a).
  • Affirm the ministry of evangelism among the aging (A-070).
  • Call upon all dioceses and their congregations to make every effort to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to young people and call them to decisions for Christ (A-069).
  • Support the family as a primary participant in the church's evangelism efforts (A-071).
  • Commend members of the Anglican Communion who are called to exercise the ministry of evangelism (A-076).
  • Provide for licensing of Church Army evangelists by diocesan bishops or the ecclesiastical authority (A-133).
  • Request resource materials that will relate 50/50 giving and the Decade of Evangelism (A-190).
  • Accept the report of the Standing Commission on Evangelism (D-091a).
  • Call for establishing 1,000 new congregations by the year 2000 as part of its commitment to the Decade of Evangelism (D-106).
  • Adopt a statement giving thanks for all those who are committed to the work of evangelism (D-012s).