Evangelical?

The word evangelical seems to have become a slur in the mainstream media these days. They only utter it in a spirit of disdain. This begs the question, do they know what it actually means, and how are they interpreting it? Then again, does the average churchgoer even know what it is supposed to mean? Or is this just another example of terminology getting twisted over time due to the lack of education? The term itself is derived from the Greek word euangelion, which literally translates as “Good News.” In the broadest literal sense, the English word refers to Spreading the Good News of the Gospel via outreach. Another form of the word evangelism. 

For the longest time, it was used synonymously with Protestants, since they believed they were the keepers of the true gospel. Later on, the idea often gets tied to specific religious organizations and historical movements like the Evangelical United Front, the Holiness Movement, and the Evangelical Alliance. They often had very specific theologies and doctrines tied to them. Putting emphasis on salvation, sanctification, atonement, and holiness. Many of these early groups were interdenominational, with the main goal of unifying the Protestant church rather than outreach. There was often an anti-Catholic sentiment behind some of them as well. However, the Roman Catholic Church did eventually adopt the word evangelism as originally intended. So it’s no longer exclusively a Protestant term anymore.

These days it seems to be applied to churches who maintain traditional doctrine and theology. Juxtaposing themselves against a trend of watering down Biblical principles to make it more palatable to the masses. All for the sake of numbers and maintaining institutions. At least there is an attempt at actual outreach there, albeit a misguided version of it. This seems to only fuel the trend of the so-called traditional Evangelical Church narrowing the gospel to defining righteousness, and telling people how to live in a cold systematic way. This begs the question, where is the “Good News” for the poor in spirit? Where is the image of a loving Messiah who wants to bind up the broken-hearted, so they can find freedom from being captivated by their own nature. Where is the Christ that wants to release us from the darkness of our own bad decisions? Where is the Jesus who comforts those in mourning for the temporal things of this world that we foolishly put our hope in? Let alone a church reaching out to the wounded person in need of God’s love. Those in need of a hand up from a true disciple, not just criticism from an armchair missionary.

This seems to be what is triggering the mainstream in their contempt of evangelicals. From their point of view, they are like, you claim to be about love. Yet your actions are impatient, unkind, rude, arrogant, angry, and critical. You are the ones who appear to be misguided and lost. So we will fight your fire with fire, and redefine love as we think it should be applied. So they aren’t even listening when we tell them their path is shallow and will lead only to being brokenhearted, spiritual captivity, emotional darkness, emptiness, and mourning.

But before I conclude, let me make this clear. The grace and love side of our creed is meant to make us whole again, so we can be enabled to become righteous. It is not a place to linger indefinitely. Yet if we skip over that and go right to righteousness, we only set people up for failure. It is like building your house on the sand, it just won’t hold up over time. This is the opposite extremism I spoke of earlier.

Again, if Evangelical and gospel both mean good news, why are we treating it like old news? This Old Covenant ideal of, this is the standard, live up to it, atone for it when you fail, or be destroyed. All this does is rub salt in the wounds of the broken. It kicks people while they are down. So ultimately, this is what the secular world thinks when they hear the word evangelical. So it’s no wonder they see nothing good in it, and we are losing ground in our mission.

The Visual PARABLEist