Times have changed

About ten years ago, the relief and development agency that I worked for sponsored a young man from leading evangelical congregation on a tour around the world along with a few others chosen from all over the globe. The intention was that as they went around and saw the relief and development activities being done in the name of Jesus Christ in many difficult places in the world and how lives of people and communities were being transformed as a result, they would develop a perspective. That when they returned back to their lands and to their church, they would speak for what we today call “integral mission” , that the gospel is all about transforming lives in all dimensions : body, mind and soul.

One Sunday morning, pinned on the church notice board was a picture postcard written by this young, man from some picturesque location in Europe. He narrated briefly all that he had seen and experience d in his travels, and ended by saying that for all that the trip was really a waste because they weren’t doing any evangelism on the trip and no souls were being won. I remember cringing inwardly seeing that letter; but shouldn’t have – evangelicals were like that only.

Around the same time, we tried to influence a VBS class in the city to include at least one session on a Christian’s responsibility in society; in looking at events around us through heaven’s eyes as Jesus would and then respond to them according to the teaching and ethos of scripture. The stony look that the organizers and teachers gave was unforgettable. Similarly, when I tried to talk about my experiences with the Catholic Church (mostly positive), my doctrine conscious evangelical friends reached for their Bibles and sneered at me disdainfully, if not snobbishly.

It is difficult to exactly pin point when things began to change and evangelicals began to be accommodating and how this happened. Possibly when the first instances of persecution began happening in the late Nineties. This was still the United Front government but the BJP and its allies were on the ascendant. And of course the fundamentalist forces neither knew nor understood doctrinal niceties and they destroyed, killed and burnt churches of all denominations and persuasions. Perhaps it was the sudden dawning that if fundamentalist forces had to be appropriately countered , it was no longer possible to be confined to one’s denominational or theological positions that made evangelicals open up to embrace Catholics and “liberals” and other “social gospelers”. This embracing did not mean that each party abandoned their stated positions but certainly ushered in a wave of acceptance, tolerance and diversity that exists among God’s people.

It is similarly difficult to say when Evangelicals began to be accommodative of social concern ministries; not just tolerate them but actually embrace them and acknowledge that these are a valid expression of the Christian gospel. But when umbrella organizations of the evangelical constituency like EFI, began opening their doors to such an expression of ministry, a milestone had surely been crossed.

Of course, EFICOR had been birthed by EFI way back in 1967, but for a long time that remained the only entity that dabbled in developmental and justice issues and became an autonomous entity in little over a decade. But today, it would seem that we have traveled a long way. Today when we have programs like Viva which works with issues of children at risk operate under the umbrella of EFI, the leading evangelical magazine does a whole issue with homosexuality as the theme and the decadal Congress on Church in Mission has tracks like human trafficking, Christians in political engagement and Religious freedom, it seems that finally the evangelical community has finally made it to the new millennium.