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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Ralf is a 24-year-old student who now lives in East Berlin, his having been brought up in an atheist family. However, he encountered a thriving young church where he began his spiritual journey. One day, he decides to be baptized. In his baptismal service he tells his story of how he began to believe in Jesus Christ and the gospel. His parents also attend this service. For them, it is a new and strange experience. His mother begins sobbing as Rail is being baptized. Everybody is touched by her emotional reaction. However, after the service Ralf's mother explains her tears. She was appalled at the fact that her son, who is a smart boy, had got caught up in such a questionable thing as the Christian faith. (1)
This is the East German religious context, where only about 20% of the population belong to any kind of church. Most people have had no contact with Christian churches during their whole lifetime. They have forgotten that they have forgotten God. (2) Wolfgang Huber points out that we live in a mission field context. (3) We could also say that we live in post-Christendom.
In this paper I would like briefly to present the rediscovery of mission in German churches. Then I want to name a number of deficits in traditional academic theological education. Thirdly, I will give a short overview about the history and structure the Research Institute for Evangelism and Church Development, and stress a number of prominent theological issues of theological education in the area of evangelism. Lastly, I will try to show how we teach evangelism in Greifswald.
1. The rediscovery of mission in German mainline churches
Mission has been on the agenda of German churches since the late 1990s. This has probably much to do with the crisis of the churches in the east and the west of the country, with their decline in numbers and lack of resources. However, this crisis seems to be a chance for renewal in our church. The Chinese have two meanings for the word "crisis", viz. danger and chance. In our churches we are experiencing both; it is a dangerous time of transition and a chance for renewal.
In Germany, 1999 saw the rediscovery of mission. At the Lutheran Church's general synod in Leipzig in that year, (4) the country's top theologian Eberhard Jungel delivered a thrilling talk about mission and evangelism. (5) He claimed that a church will fall ill if it does not follow God's mission in the world. The church has to breathe in and out; it has to reach out and bring the gospel to those who have never heard the good news, or who have heard but not responded. The aim of mission is to bring about a prayerful response and the transformation of life. Finding faith means that we learn to see our lives in the light of Jesus Christ. The synod agreed with what Jungel said, and decided to encourage the German churches to prioritize mission and evangelism in the coming years. Now, as you know, synods come and go, and their resolutions rarely have much influence. This was not the case with Leipzig, and since 1999 we have experienced an increasing interest in mission, and an increasing desire to learn about mission and evangelism.
By the way, we perceive that this is an ecumenical rediscovery because we notice a parallel development in the Catholic Church, and one represented, for example, by the bishops' statement "Zeit zur Aussaat: Missionarisch Kirche sein" ("A time for sowing: How to be a missionary church"). (6) I should also mention the ecumenical paper published by the Council of Christian Churches in Germany (ACK): "Gemeinsam zum Glauben einladen: Aufbruch zu einer missionarischen Okumene" ("Sharing the invitation to believe: Getting ready to become a missionary ecumenical movement"). (7)
Perhaps I should mention that we adopted ecumenical definitions of these terms. In the tradition of missiologist David Bosch, (8) we see mission as the general and all including mission Dei. God is a missionary God. His concern is for the whole world and he wants to restore this world to peace and justice, and the recognition of his grace and glory. That is the kingdom of God. This missio Dei includes word and deed; it is diakonia, koizonia, martyria and leiturgia. In the missio Dei, there is justice for the poor, there is worship, there is pastoral care, and there is Christian fellowship. However, at the very heart of mission there is God's longing for men and women who begin to trust him and to honour him. There is God's longing for lost people. That is why evangelism is one aspect of mission but it is an aspect at the very heart of God's mission. Evangelism is giving an account of the gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:15); it is the explicit invitation to trust God and to live as a disciple of Christ in his church.
Of course, Germany did not turn out to be a mission paradise[ I should mention that, of course! There is a controversial debate about the 'M' word in Germany. Churches rediscover their mission, as we will see in a minute, but others disagree. Many local churches follow a "business as usual" approach and do not care for the missional dimension. Others really do not know how to evangelise. Some academic theologians and church leaders do not follow the new path because they recall their bad experiences of evangelism. These people remind the church of how often evangelism, with its psychological pressures and threatening messages, has proved to be dangerous, even violent. It is the bad reputation of a certain evangelistic style that worries people within the church.
For us, this is an enormous challenge. We have to teach evangelism, and in our context this means:
(i) We have to develop a theology of evangelism that is appropriate to our churches' convictions. Traditional evangelism sometimes tends to display a questionable theology, e.g. concerning crucial aspects of our creed...
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