Introduction
What
does it mean to be an evangelical these days? For many, Christian and non-Christian
alike, the term "evangelical" has been robbed of the distinctive freight it
once carried - and understandably so. Back in the 40's if you joined ranks
with the evangelicals you were distinguishing yourself from other groups of
professing Protestants. But with the changing of the times has come a blurring
of the lines. The rising popularity of the ecumenical movement has quickly
engendered a theological minimalism that, instead of distilling the gospel,
has all too often had the effect of watering it down. And American evangelicalism
in particular is inundated with card-carrying members who nevertheless wouldn't
know what to make of it if they heard someone else labeling them with the
very nomenclature they've (perhaps unwittingly) espoused by affiliating with
their local church. So is an evangelical simply someone who goes to a Christian
church on Sundays and hangs around for the potluck once a month? Is an evangelical
just someone who doesn't smoke, chew, or date the boys who do? Can someone
become an evangelical by giving cognitive assent to a modicum of propositional
truth about God and Jesus? May someone legitimately join the ranks of evangelicalism
simply by walking an aisle or praying a prayer? Or perhaps to be truly evangelical
one needs to have more of a concern for the poor and oppressed than for doctrinal
soundness? What is an evangelical? A straight answer seems increasingly difficult
to elicit.
And yet by the very origin of the word, we can tell that an evangelical is someone who identifies himself with the evangel - the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. OK - now we're getting somewhere. But at the same time, we get the sneaky suspicion that recognizing an evangelical as one who believes the evangel is merely to beg the very question that is at the root of all the confusion: What exactly is that evangel? What is the good news of Jesus Christ according to the Bible? And once we come to an agreement on the precise nature and definition of this gospel, what place should it occupy in the local church, and how should it function? Pull up a chair and we'll see if we can sort through it together.
