Will Evangelicals Regain the Vision of Their Past?
WCIU Journal: Community and Societal Development Topic
April 7. 2020
by Beth Snodderly
A re-working and updating by Beth Snodderly of Ralph D. Winter’s perspective and predictions
Ralph Winter was the founder of William Carey International University. He was instrumental in founding multiple organizations and publications such as the USCWM (now Frontier Ventures), ASM, EMS, WCL, Mission Frontiers, IJFM, and more. He passed away in May, 2009.
Originally published in the September-October 2007 edition of Mission Frontiers. Unless otherwise referenced, beginning with the section, “Evangelicals, Who Are They?” the wording of this paper paraphrases or quotes from this article.
The EMS theme asks, “What is the past and future of evangelicals in mission?” If Winter were living today, I think he might have asked, Is there is a future in mission for those the world now thinks of as “evangelicals”? Unfortunately, what the public is seeing from so-called evangelicals is not bringing glory to God. As Central European missiologist Peter Kuzmic said as far back as 1987 (republished in 2014):
The very make-up of a society supposedly built on Christian principles is undergoing a cultural and moral disintegration of unprecedented proportions. The Church known to the world appears to have lost the keys to the Kingdom of God. As a result, many, especially the young, seem to be saying, “Jesus Yes, church No” (Kuzmic 2014, 10).
The label of evangelical is being applied to what some would call charismatic extremists and to some fundamentalists whose focus seems to be on mental assent to certain beliefs. The media and many others realize evangelicals are supposed to have changed lives, characterized by love, by caring about the marginalized, by following what Jesus taught. For example, in 2018, the author of a liberal blog called Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter “real Christians,” in recognition of their successful efforts to eliminate Guinea Worm in South Sudan and Roslyn’s crusade for mental health care. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” says the author, and “same for those who work to eradicate terrible diseases.”
But they are not seeing these qualities they expect to see in Jesus-followers in the actions and words of some outspoken people who have the label, “evangelical.” This is giving the term, “evangelical,” a derogatory connotation in the eyes of the on-looking world. For example, they see see greed for wealth instead of humility in some mega-church pastors. Another example is this January 20, 2020 Twitter quote is from a former Baptist who now calls herself “a Buddhist who loves others.” She says this about a politically prominent “evangelical”:
Just one of those I used to refer to as “holier than thou” because they were arrogant about their faith and felt they could do anything they wanted as long as they go to church. Besides they reinvent thoughts of Jesus to authorize hate.
The evangelical world seems to be going through a winnowing process like Jesus talked about at the beginning of his ministry: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:12). Kuzmic describes the criteria for recognizing the difference between the “wheat” and the “chaff”:
The true nature and mission of the Church are marked by humble service, and recognition that we can claim no ownership of the things and people that belong to God alone. He is the King. We are to be his humble servants, always ready to obey his command and to do his will. Whatever exists outside this attitude has no right to be called the Church of Jesus Christ for it is out of tune with the Kingdom of God (Kuzmic 2014, 30).
Out of this winnowing process, a remnant of so-called evangelicals will still have a future in mission, even if under a different label. Winter described evangelicals’ rich heritage of faith and works that can still inspire and instruct us as we seek to bring the good news of God’s Kingdom to every tribe and tongue.
Winter first reviewed the history of the evangelical movement in America that started with a theology combining both personal salvation and social responsibility that glorified God. During the early 20th century, evangelicals largely withdrew from efforts to influence society and focused almost exclusively on salvation and escape from this world to the next. But now, as Winter predicted, the evangelical world has again taken an interest in societal impact, although with mixed results.
Evangelicals: Who Are They?
The word originated with the Greek, euangelion, meaning “good news,” and which was transliterated in Latin, Evangelium (The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06655b.htm). In the Protestant tradition, the word evangelical came to refer to a political party where the evangelici, adhering to the authority of the Bible, were opposed to the pontifici who supported the authority of the Pope. However, at the time of the Reformation other things were going on besides the tensions between two parties. There were the Anabaptists and later the Pietists; still later the Quakers, and eventually, the Methodists, who became a world force. As a broad generalization, all of these additional “third force” movements came to understand the word evangelical to mean more than correct belief. It began to refer to those individuals who had had a personal “evangelical experience,” by which they meant that something real had happened in a person’s heart and life not just a purely mental assent to a certain intellectual creed.
The concept of a “born again” experience came into its own when John Wesley, in 1738, sensed the warming of his heart as he listened to a verse being read out loud from Paul’s letter to the Romans. The verse spoke of people being “saved by faith.” It was not long before the idea of a need for a personal heart-warming “faith” experience was followed by a concept of an even deeper work of grace, a “second blessing,” “entire sanctification,” “infilling of the Spirit,” or “baptism of the Spirit.”
An Overview: Two Kinds of Evangelicals
What later ensued is a complex picture. It would seem helpful to distinguish between First-Inheritance Evangelicalism and Second-Inheritance Evangelicalism. The First was characterized by a broad dual social/personal spectrum of concern ranging from foreign missions to changing the legal structure of society and even war. The Second Inheritance focused mainly on the personal.
The dual emphasis was seen in America in the 1700s with the Great Awakening, which both exploded church membership and led to the Declaration of Independence. Later, in the 1800s, a Second Great Awakening brought thousands more into the churches, drastically overhauled society, and led to the Civil War over the issue of slavery.
These periods of time were significantly characterized by college-educated evangelicals in positions of civil leadership. This, Winter concludes, is the main reason they could readily believe not only in a profound transformation of individuals, but also in a wide range of different aspects of social transformation and God-glorification. They found it quite possible to tackle widespread evils and change social structure. But they also emphasized conversion of the heart.
However, this First Inheritance, after, say, 1875, gradually branched into two “reductions,” each concentrating on one of the two elements in the former concept of a biblical Christian service that emphasized both personal holiness and social transformation.
One reduction after 1875 continued to be social concern, that is, God’s will on earth, with a reduced emphasis on personal faith, and was, accordingly, less likely to call itself evangelical. Meanwhile, the followers of the personal reduction became the main stream of the Second Inheritance Evangelicals. They were mainly non-college masses swept into faith by popular evangelists—D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and others. But not being in a position of social influence they tended to turn away from the very idea of transforming society at a macro level. This, to Winter, is a very key point.
Second Inheritance Evangelicals became the majority in the evangelical stream. They significantly boosted church attendance in the United States and also created Bible Institutes, new denominations, and non-denominational churches. However, the mostly non-college educated movement had little stake in politics or social action, tending to suspect it as being “liberal.” Post-Moody evangelicals even banished the word, “kingdom,” from their vocabulary for a time. This led to a primarily “personal” Christianity, emphasizing a theology of “this world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.” This produced an opposite pole from the other reduction to primarily social action.
Thesis: A Recovery of First-Inheritance Evangelicalism
Winter’s prediction in 2007 was that since the evangelical movement has gradually gained more college education and social prominence (Bible Institutes having morphed into Colleges and then Universities), that the mainstream of evangelicalism (and missions in particular) would hopefully recover a broader perspective of its mission.
This new vision, Winter predicted, would mean moving from what has been dominated by a heaven-and-personal-salvation focus to a rediscovery of the earlier full-spectrum of the First Inheritance tradition. A theology that combines both personal “salvation” with vast social responsibility, Winter hoped, would increasingly mean a concern for the glorification of God in both individual and social transformation.
Mission history reflects that kind of integrated strategy, with missionaries bringing education and health care along with the gospel. We can see the dual emphasis in the Bible itself where Jesus validated and empowered His words by His deeds. This type of wide-spectrum faith contributed significantly to the development of America. Hopefully it may become typical of global evangelicalism with the same effect.
Winter hoped that the full spectrum of recovered First Inheritance Evangelicalism would go beyond a “holism” that often merely does good things to benefit humans. His distinctive emphasis in his last years of life was that in evangelism and missions we are recruiting soldiers to join in Heaven’s war against Satan, to free people from “the dominion of Satan” (Acts 26:18). As soldiers in this battle, and with transformed lives, we, and our new recruits, must seek along with Christ to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), Winter insisted. Then, our good deeds will, as in Matthew 5:16, glorify our Father in heaven.
To destroy the works of the devil is one major way in which our testimony of word and deed can glorify the true nature of our living God, our heavenly father. It is not an alternative to evangelism, it will make our evangelism more credible. It is to rectify our God’s damaged reputation. It is to avoid extending the implicit and embarrassing policy of almost constantly misrepresenting Him in our mission work around the world (Winter 2008a, 180).
In his last years, Winter included the need for believers to address the origins of disease as part and parcel of the basic mandate to glorify God in all the earth. He also warned that seeking to destroy the “dominion” of Satan must not be confused with the tendency to seek the “dominion” of society by means of worldly power. In effect, Winter was warning against what is now happening as Christians (labeled “evangelical” by the secular press) attempt to impose their agendas on society. By aligning with a worldly power that the on-looking world recognizes as having qualities contrary to Jesus’ teaching, these so-called evangelicals are giving God’s name a bad reputation. Winter often emphasized that it is our responsibility as believers to restore God’s reputation, not to damage it further! (Winter 2008c, 36).
Now let’s go back and look more closely at the earlier evangelicals to see what lessons we can learn from the past about what the future of evangelicals in mission has the potential to be.
PART I: First Inheritance Evangelicals
The Great Awakening
Evangelicalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was by no means oriented only to personal experience and the next world. In the United States in the early 1700s, a friend of John Wesley, George Whitefield, came from England to do powerful outdoor preaching. Whitefield had been part of the “Evangelical Awakening” which had transformed English society. His major impact from Boston to Charleston built upon the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and others. The new form of personal-experience Christianity that Edwards and Whitefield preached was so significantly different that it split the majority group, the Presbyterians, right down the middle for a number of years, one side reflecting the more intellectual Reformation requirements and the other side emphasizing an experiential and identifiable “work of grace.”
But in contrast to the almost exclusively personal-salvation oriented evangelicalism of the Second Inheritance, these early evangelicls engaged in major social reforms parallel to Wesley’s profound social impact in England. The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies actually forged a democratically governed church structure ranging from Boston to Charleston that was the background of the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention that provided for a single government over all the colonies. Without this democratically governed inter-colonial model, the birth of the new nation wouldn’t have occurred in the way it did. The crafting of the U. S. Constitution was done one block away from meetings redrafting the Presbyterian Constitution. Many of the same men were involved in both meetings. Many of the same phrases occur in both documents.
Among America’s leaders, the initially Christian vision for wholesale social change became so widespread that it was easy for many (whether spiritually alive or not) to be enthused by a this-world cause. Thus, by the time of the American Revolution, the spiritual roots of the Great Awakening had been virtually snuffed out by the political and military events going on between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the conclusion of the War of 1812 in 1815.
The Second Great Awakening
Many scholars refer to certain events of roughly 1815–1840 as the Second Great Awakening, which was a renewal of the earlier Great Awakening. In this second awakening we see the contribution of Charles Finney, an attorney who found Christ, and who very definitely believed in a “second work of grace.” Much of the United States saw the impact of his ministry as well as that of the “camp meeting” phenomenon, plus other itinerant preachers and many local revivals. It is significant that these spiritual events also did not ignore social transformation but fueled it, providing, incidentally, the moral outrage which underlay many of the events leading to the Civil War.
In many respects the most prominent event of the early 1800s in America was the unexpected outcome of the War of 1812. When the war was not lost but went to a draw in 1815, and Britain gave up its claim to US territory, people felt a sense of ownership of a vast land of they now considered their own. (They disregarded the original occupants of the land). This sense of freedom motivated all kinds of radical experiments—social, political, and religious—and it very dynamically sparked the imagination, vision, and even the rethinking of the Christian religion itself.
Oberlin College could be a case study. Established with the encouragement of Charles Finney and the financial resources of the wealthy Tappan brothers, it was both a fruit of the spiritual revival and also socially upscale. Oberlin was the first interracial school, the first co-educational school, the first vocational school, the first school to teach music, the first anti-slavery school, first temperance school, and so forth. No holy reform was outside their purview. For example, students believed that God would help them improve the efficiency of the Franklin Stove, and so they invented the Oberlin Stove. The entire period represented incredible ingenuity, innovation, and—most specifically—attention to what today we would call social transformation. In this mix, evangelicals were the main leaders—not the reluctant followers of secular initiatives.
It would be impossible to overstate the significant changes of direction of both the Christian movement and our nation between 1815 and 1850. By 1850, for example, virtually all of the states had banned alcoholic beverages. It was even true that vast numbers would not drink tea or coffee, so extensive was the counter-cultural application of Christian faith to everyday life. Dozens of reform movements sprang into life—ranging from the temperance movement, and the movement for the abolition of slavery, to a movement urging use of the whole grain in wheat flour (Graham flour–preached by a minister named Sylvester Graham), etc.
Both the Mormon and Adventist groups peeled off at this time. They differ greatly in theology but today they represent the typical revival concerns about food and health, which had become part and parcel of the mood of that period. If the Mormons and Adventists could not change society in general they could at least invent new societies!
It was understood back in the 19th century within major missions that there was no rift whatsoever between learning and gospel, or good works and gospel, or schools, hospitals, vocational schools, and the planting of churches. Missionaries of this First Inheritance Evangelicalism made tremendous contributions to the educational framework of whole countries like China, India, and Nigeria. Many mission hospitals were founded, and in fact many major hospitals in the United States were founded by churches. The residual momentum of the First Inheritance, lasted longer in the realm of missions than in the home churches.
PART II: The Evangelical Divide and the Emergence of the Second Inheritance
During a narrow window of time, transformation of society had been within the grasp of evangelical leaders and their followers, at levels of national influence. But after the time of Dwight L. Moody, from the back woods of Massachusetts, evangelicalism lost its influence on US society. Moody won millions of non-college people, including large numbers of immigrants, and evangelicalism became predominantly a lower-class movement. Eventually it was no longer true that people of faith ran the country. Bible Institutes (such as Moody Bible Institute) became the preferred education of the new movement rather than colleges.
By the 1920s, a veritable culture war was taking place within evangelicalism. Upper-class, college-educated people, who were still thinking in terms of social reform, were more and more often labeled liberal due to their social reform intuitions, whether or not they were liberal in their theology. Meanwhile among newer evangelicals, who were for the most part not college people, the very idea of reforming society seemed utterly impossible, theologically unexpected, and therefore objectionable.
From its beginning this Second Inheritance Evangelicalism, rather than emphasizing good works in this world, instead displayed a belief in a world getting worse and worse leading to a coming tribulation preceded by a pre-tribulation rapture. Social reform seemed illogical if the world was predicted to get worse and worse until true believers were raptured out of it. A “social gospel” became anathema. Thus, the dominant force of Second Inheritance Evangelicalism essentially went socially “underground” for 60 or 70 years.
PART III: The Recovery of First Inheritance Evangelicalism
Eventually the Bible Institutes, one by one, became Bible colleges, then Christian colleges, and many eventually became Christian universities. Then, as a result of this gradual reemergence of culturally-standard educational patterns, politics became once more populated by people of evangelical convictions. However, this increased social influence was unaccompanied by a theology corresponding to such new opportunities.
Empowered Evangelism
The informal theological intuition of thousands of loving missionaries had resulted in extensive “good works” around the globe. In the first five years after the Second World War, when 150 new mission agencies jumped into being, most of the new agencies were characterized as “service agencies” adding muscle to existing missions—technology like airplanes, radio, or literature to the already existing mission movement. This meant that all of this new vigor merely emphasized and supported what was already going on, that is, the preaching of an intellectual and emotional gospel plus an emphasis on restoration of individual fellowship with God.
While evangelicals have intuitively seen the need to support the relief and development activities of many evangelical organizations and denominations, it has been in some ways a non-theological recovering of one aspect of First Inheritance Evangelicalism, focused primarily on helping human beings, but not as yet as concerned for social transformation in general (e.g., eradicating diseases, fighting global slavery, rehabilitating science as a domain of God’s glory, etc.).
As evangelicals today work their way into social and even political influence, many other changes will take place in the context of mission. Thus, the future of evangelicalism and evangelical missions is likely to involve a difficult and painful shift away from decades of polarization between “social action” and a “spiritual gospel.” This shift, which is already taking place, has brought new opportunity and responsibility. As the 20th century wore on, many outstanding evangelicals ranging from John Stott and others in the Lausanne Movement tried very hard to point out that there can be no real dichotomy between faith and good works.
Eastern Europe missiologist and biblical scholar, Peter Kuzmic, commented in 1987 in his seminal article, “The Church and the Kingdom of God” (reprinted in 2014), “Though there is still much confusion and lack of theological precision, evangelical thinkers are beginning to explore with great urgency the theme of the Kingdom of God and how it relates to both the Church and the world” (Kuzmic 2014, 15). In this he echoes Ralph Winter’s similar awareness in labeling the late 20th and early 21st centuries a “Kingdom Era.” Winter wrote a year before his death in 2009, “Even now the awareness [of a Kingdom Era] is not yet widely shared. As before, it overlaps the preceding [missions] era in a transition of considerable heated debate and confusion, a transition from 1967 until 2000” (Winter 2008b, 308-16).
Obviously there is a theological problem here. We, of course, need to take seriously the fact that Jesus was concerned with handicapped people, sick people, children, women, Greeks, etc. and that His ministry embraced and encompassed those things. When He responded to John the Baptist, who wondered if He was the one to come, He sent back descriptions, not the text of His message, but simply a report of the good works He was doing. He did this not only as an authentication of His divinity, but as a demonstration of God’s character. His ministry was congruent with His own statement, “Let your light shine among men in this way—that they will glorify God when they see your good works” (Matt. 5:16). In the Synagogue in Nazareth Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1, 2: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”
Does that apply to 27 million men, women and children held as slaves in the world today? This is more than twice the number who were bartered during four centuries before slavery was (supposedly) “abolished” by Wilberforce. Does that apply to the lifting of the burden of 45 million man-years of labor annually destroyed in Africa alone due to the malarial parasite?
It has been said that because the gospel is a message of hope, the poorest must see some concrete reason for hope before they can understand the gospel. Words themselves have no power if they do not refer to reality. Jesus’ words were constantly accompanied and informed by the actions to which His words referred. Thus, just as faith without works is dead, so evangelism without works is dead. Unless words refer to works, to reality, they are worth nothing. Just as it is a Reformation myth that faith can be separated from works, so it is meaningless if words are separated from the reality to which they were meant to refer.
It would seem, then, that just as we believe that works ought to follow faith in the sequence of salvation in the life of believing individuals, it is equally true that in our outreach to unbelievers those very works displaying God’s glory better precede. We see this clearly when we recognize that the usual way in which individuals come to faith is primarily by viewing the good works of those who already have faith—that is, by seeing good works that reflect the power and character of God. Immediately after speaking of His followers being salt and light in the world Jesus spoke this very key verse we have already quoted, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Works are necessary to authenticate and demonstrate the true character of God. That is how people can see God’s glory and be drawn to Him. That is the true basis for empowering evangelism.
The potent continuity of word and deed is, furthermore, the mainstream of mission history. The stunning achievements of medicine and healing have demonstrated to potential converts not only the love of God for them, but also the power of God that is on their side against the forces of darkness. Thus, in order for people to hear and respond to an offer of personal salvation or a ticket to heaven, it is paramount for them to witness the glory of God in believers’ lives—seeing the love and goodness in their lives and deeds, and their changed motives and new intentions. That is the reality which gives them reason to turn away from all evil and against all evil as they seek to be closer to that kind of God and His will in this world.
Paul the apostle spoke of delivering people from the dominion of Satan (Acts 26:18). Peter summed up Jesus’ ministry by speaking of “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. (Acts 10:38).” This kind of demonstration of the person and the power of God certainly should not be considered antagonistic to evangelism. In most cases it is, again, the very basis of an empowerment of evangelism.
A “Relapsing” Christianity?
The potent continuity of word and deed is the mainstream of mission history. However, by taking a quick glance at the current record of “missions of good works” it is perfectly obvious that thus far no great dents in world poverty have been achieved by missionaries of Jesus Christ, even though their intentions and even their record is highly respectable.
It is true that once individuals find faith, they have often pulled themselves up by their bootstraps— through their honesty, abandonment of liquor and drugs, and their ability to build businesses of good will that would succeed. This has gradually lifted them up out of the poverty category into the middle class category, not just in England in the 18th century, but also in America and in many parts of the world. This kind of individual “salvation” is the primary focus of Evangelical missions today even though it may not be the whole picture.
For globally-minded people, good works must go beyond just personal good deeds to organized good deeds which will include, for example, the deliberate discovery and ex- position of the glories of God’s creation (Ps. 19:1-4) as well as serious concern for global slavery, poverty, and disease. Otherwise we will misrepresent the character of God and our proclamation activity will lack both credibility and authenticity.
Fortunately, it is apparent that there is a crescendo of concern for the serious problems of our world. The AIDS crisis has thrown us into serious contemplation about what can or should be done. Jimmy Carter, a Sunday School teacher, but not a formal theologian, mission executive, or missiologist, has actually done more than anyone in arousing world opinion to the need to eradicate diseases, not just extend health care after people get sick. That kind of vision is not, at this stage of history, something that can be credited either to Christian theology or to missiology, but rather to the energy and intuitive theology of a past president of the US who happened to be well known on a world level. Missions and churches have vitally helped but they cannot claim the initiative.
Believers in general have not been at the forefront of efforts to defeat evil. In all of our commendable haste to get to the ends of the earth and to the last group which has never heard the gospel, we may be overlooking the fact that the vast bulk of the Western world no longer believes in the Bible and no longer follows our faith—partly because of the absence of Christian leaders at the forefront of world problems. Does that mean our immense overseas achievements are going to be only temporary? Are we preaching a “relapsing” Christianity?
PART IV: The Future of Evangelical Missions
So what is the future of the evangelical mission movement? Winter believed that the mission movement— more so than the church movement—holds the key to a great new burst of credibility which could win new millions. The trend of philanthropy by some extremely wealthy people indicates the potential assistance of people in high places who have grown up in a highly Christianized society, even if they haven’t regularly gone to church. But what is crucially true is that they need to understand that their efforts will ultimately be ineffective without a minimum number of local trustworthy individuals to follow through on their major efforts. They need to realize that missions have a virtual monopoly on transformed individuals who can be trusted. Winter longed to see evangelical missions be able to give more direct, credible credit to Jesus Christ for the impetus behind the social transformations that they have been doing, are doing, and should be doing.
The work of Christ in the gospels, Christ’s references to the coming of the kingdom of heaven, and the present outworking in this world of the “Thy will be done” phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, are actually echoed by the Great Commission itself. Looking closely at Matthew 28:20, it isn’t just the teachings that Jesus commissions His disciples to pass on. It is the obedience to those teachings, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” This implies the conquest of evil when the Lord’s Prayer is read in this light: “Thy will be done on earth.”
The older missions with roots in the 19th Century have in actual fact been doing exactly what Jesus did, both demonstrating the love of God and inviting into eternal life all who yield to that love and that authority. The trouble is that the fact of this breadth of mission has not been as clearly theologized to the point where we would plan to tackle some of the bigger problems such as the wiping out of Guinea worm or malaria, problems which have existed under the very noses of missionaries for over a century.
In the case of Guinea Worm, 600,000 people were afflicted 20 years ago. Yet the number now is almost down to zero. Why? Because one Christian layman visiting in West Africa, not a missionary, not a pastor, not a theologian, decided to return to the U.S. and muster efforts to eradicate this pathogen, “to wipe it from the face of the earth.” That was Jimmy Carter (Winter 2001).
This new challenge for missions could lead to a drastic reduction in our annual outlay to care for diseased people (it being the chief factor in poverty). And it may radically add power and beauty to the very concept of the God we preach, and thus become a new and vital means of glorifying God among the nations.
Winter insisted that this extra breadth should not be seen as a divergence from preaching the gospel, but as an empowerment of the message of a gospel of God’s kingdom, which is the announcement of a “rule and reign of God” which must be extended to the whole world and all of creation. We must stand up and be counted as active Christian foes of the world’s worst evils. This is the biblical way, the way more than any other, in which missions have in the past and now even more so in the future can more powerfully and extensively than ever demonstrate who God is and what His purposes are.
This new, expanded influence may thus measurably help us re-win the West to “a faith that works,” and to a God Who is not doing bad things for mysterious reasons but a God Who opposes the Evil One and all his works—and asks us to assist Him in that campaign. It will no longer be the case of missionaries thinking that they have to use adroit language to cover up the “real purpose” of their work. Their real purpose will be to identify and destroy all forms of evil, both human and microbiological, and will thus be explainable in plain English without religious jargon. This will provide very solid common ground in almost any country.
Winter was optimistic that the future of the evangelical mission movement will be very bright indeed. As Adoniram Judson said, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” We must not forget that God is the one who asked us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Hopefully evangelicals can recover the earlier broader perspective of mission, moving from a primary focus on personal salvation and heaven to a rediscovery of the concern for glorifying God in both individual and social transformation. We are participating in God’s war against Satan, freeing people from “the dominion of Satan” (Acts 26:18). We do this by demonstrating the contrast between God’s rule and Satan’s dominion, winning their allegiance to our God whose character and will are portrayed fully in Jesus Christ.
References
Kuzmic, Peter. 2014. The Church and the Kingdom of God: A Theological Reflection. In First the Kingdom of God, edited by Daniel Darko and Beth Snodderly, 9-40. Pasadena: WCIU Press.
Winter, Ralph D. 2001. The Other Terrorists. Mission Frontiers (November-December).
_____. 2007. The Future of Evangelicals in Mission. Mission Frontiers (September-October).
_____. 2008a. The Roberta Winter Institute. In Frontiers in Mission: Discovering and Surmounting Barriers to the Missio Dei, edited by Ralph D. Winter, 177-80. Pasadena: WCIU Press.
______. 2008b. Seven Men, Four Eras. In Frontiers in Mission: Discovering and Surmounting Barriers to the Missio Dei, edited by Ralph D. Winter, 308-16. Pasadena: WCIU Press.
______. 2008c. Twelve Frontiers of Perspective. In Frontiers in Mission: Discovering and Surmounting Barriers to the Missio Dei, edited by Ralph D. Winter, 28-39. Pasadena: WCIU Press.
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