Evangelism Now Embarrassing for Most Says Baptist Leader

Evangelism—seeking converts to Christianity—has become an embarrassing issue for most mainstream Christian churches, a leading Baptist from the United States has told delegates at the 18th Baptist World Congress."These days evangelism has fallen out of favor for the mainline denominations," Randy Springer, of the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board, told several hundred Baptists gathered at a "fellowship luncheon" on the subject "Evangelism and Baptist identity." He stressed, however, that Baptists must continue to evangelize, "even if it's politically incorrect, even if others don't want us to."Today is the third day of the Baptist congress, which is being organized by the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and is being held in Melbourne, Australia. The congress ended Sunday.Springer's church, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), is, with 16 million members, most of them in the southern states of the US, the biggest and one of the most conservative and evangelically-minded churches in the BWA.One of the SBC's current priorities, Springer said, was to evangelize inner-city regions in the US. However, when the SBC decided to send volunteers into Chicago, one of the main cities in the northern part of the US, clergy from other denominations had written to SBC leaders asking them not to do so as this could upset the religious balance and cause conflict in the city.The clergy had said that the SBC was welcome to do work with the poor or perform other aid work, but said "if you intend to seek converts, don't come." However SBC leaders had insisted on the need to witness to Christ in Chicago and had gone ahead. The issue had prompted much national coverage by the media, and, Springer said, "millions of people heard about the Gospel of Jesus Christ" because of the controversy. The delegates at today's luncheon expressed delight and astonishment as Springer and leading pastors from Kenya and Bangladesh gave accounts of thousands of conversions to Christianity in their region. Evangelism is a key element of faith for Baptists, but there is a wide range of views within Baptist churches worldwide about methods and tactics for seeking converts. A retired pastor from another Baptist church in the US—where there are 14 Baptist denominations—approached Ecumenical News International (ENI) after the luncheon and said he was "shocked" by Springer's comments that did not reflect the views of American Baptists outside the SBC."I am sure that there were some Baptists among the mainline Christians in Chicago who opposed the SBC initiative," said the pastor, who did not wish to be named. The moderator of today's discussions, Tony Cupit—and Australian pastor and director of evangelism and education for the BWA, which is based in the US—told ENI after the luncheon that while the official membership of the 196 Baptist conventions and unions affiliated with the BWA was 43 million, the Baptist community worldwide actually numbered about 100 million. This figure included children in Baptist families who had not been baptized—in many Baptist churches believers are not baptized until adolescence—and many others who also considered themselves Baptists but were not on church rolls. In Australia, for example, the Baptists' own figure for official membership was about 65,000, but the Australian government's latest census—in which all citizens were asked their religious affiliation—showed that 200,000 Australians considered themselves Baptists.Cupit said the figure of 100 million worldwide made Baptist churches the biggest Protestant denomination in the world, with larger constituencies than Anglicans, Lutherans and the Salvation Army.Cupit, who for the past nine years has supervised official statistics on Baptist membership for the BWA, said that the Baptist community was growing at a considerable rate. "Nine years ago there were [officially] 33 million Baptists. Today there are 43 million. That's 33.3 per cent growth in a decade."Asked why there was such a strong emphasis on evangelism in Baptist churches, he said "because that is what Christ has called us to do." He added that the "great commission"—Christ's call to his disciples to go and preach, recorded in Matthew's Gospel (28:19-20)—had become "almost an article of faith" for Baptists and other Evangelical Christians. But Cupit stressed that evangelism should be directed "to those who would hear … you don't press your case to those who don't want to hear it."Asked by ENI about a controversy in India, where late last year Hindus expressed anger over a campaign by the Southern Baptist Convention in the US asking its members to pray for those living in the "darkness" of Hinduism, Cupit said the BWA did not make judgments on affiliated churches, though some people thought the timing of the BWA campaign, launched just before a major Hindu religious festival, was "undiplomatic."Asked further about Baptist evangelism in Eastern Europe and Russia, where the predominant Orthodox churches have criticized some non-Orthodox churches for trespassing on Orthodox "canonical territory," Cupit said that what mattered for Baptists was that people should enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ. "We are not into making people into Baptists," he said. "If a person found a relationship with Christ in the Orthodox Church, we would rejoice. It's not the denomination that is important, it's faith in Christ." He also said that Baptists and Orthodox had much in common, in particular an emphasis on Christology and the role of the Holy Spirit.But Cupit said Baptists claimed the right to share their own understanding of their faith with people who wanted to listen, though Baptists should do so with "courtesy, sensitivity and discretion." He pointed out that Christ had told his followers to go out into all the world and preach, "not just the parts where you're allowed to."The theme of the 18th Baptist World Congress is "Jesus Christ Forever. Yes!"Copyright © 2000 Ecumenical News International. Used with permission.

Related Elsewhere

See our earlier coverage of the Baptist World Congress and the Southern Baptists' Chicago initiative.

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