i just want to write something…with this new blog, i’m itching to write something. someone once told me, with blogs, you have to keep them up to date or people will stop reading it. i think that holds true. so, here goes…

i’ve been having an interesting conversation tonight with one of my youth via email on facebook. he asked me how presbyterians interpret the great commission found at the end of matthew. it turns out that in all his time at CPC, he has heard next to nothing about us telling people about jesus and who jesus is. this led him to wonder how we accept the call extended to us in the great commission. and you know what? he’s right…we don’t do much with evangelism. so, that begs the question, what do we do about it? but it also begs the question, how do we do it?

as presbyterians, we are sometimes uncomfortable with the word “evangelical.” i remember when i was on a pastor nominating committee my senior year in high school and we were writing up our CIF (church information form – which is kinda like a church’s resume). the committee wanted to describe our church as “evangelical.” my first, knee-jerk reaction was, “evangelical? really? i’m not sure i like that word.” they were surprised to hear me say that. i did have a bad taste for the word, largely because of religious television personalities (televangelists) and my less-than-holy experience with peers from the large local church. i thought it was a negative way to describe christians. i didn’t know what the word meant. i thought it was a “bad” word. ironic, though, since it is the greek word for “good news.” i had no idea what the word meant at the time, because my church did not use the word often and my exposure to it was limited to television and that local church. however, as my understanding of the word and the practice increased, so too did my appreciation for the word. we ended up using it in the CIF in the end.

presbyterians are not usually thought of as an evangelical people, but we strive to be. my home church, northminster pcusa (chattanooga, tn) had to be evangelical…they had no choice…they no longer served the neighborhood in which i had been placed 30 years prior. in order to survive, the church had to reevaluate its practice of evangelism to its neighbors. as presbyterians, should we wait until we have no other options left but to be evangelical, before we become evangelical? probably not. i’m still learning how to be evangelical. i hope that maybe i can pick up a thing or two from this youth who made this observation of our church, in addition to my evangelical, liberal, feminist girlfriend, Lynda, when she returns from Peru.

peace.