Evangelicals are well known for their commitment to the Lordship of Christ, their embrace of the authority of Scripture, living a life of piety, and their involvement in witness and service (Bloesch 1988). It is hardly an overstatement that contemporary Evangelicals are quite activistic.
While Radical Evangelicals (Langmead 2004, 93-115) share the above characteristics, their understanding of witness and service takes on some further challenges. In the following of Christ, they seek to be an incarnational missional presence in serving the poor. One such group, Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, seeks to live five missiological principles: incarnation, community, wholism, servanthood and simplicity (Jack 2009, 7).
To live a life of radical identification in the slum communities of Asia’s major cities is a major challenge. That some workers end up discouraged, burnt out or broken, should hardly surprise us (Craig 1998, 182-3). As a consequence, some years ago, Servants added five values to their missiological principles: grace, beauty, celebration, creativity and rest (Jack 8).
The addition of these values is, in my opinion, a recognition of the need for a more sustainable lifestyle and form of service. This is probing for a missional spirituality that animates one’s relationship with Christ, enriches one’s life in community and empowers a person for the long obedience in the work of evangelization, justice, peace-making and social transformation.
The focus of this article, then, is to show what sources Radical Evangelicals may draw on in order to deepen and enhance this move towards a more sustainable way of following and serving Christ.
In a nutshell, three sources of inspiration and animation will be briefly discussed: scripture, some themes in the long tradition of the church in history, and the value of one’s communal lived experience as a serving community.
Before we explore these sources of inspiration we will need to explain who are the Radical Evangelicals and define what we mean by a missional spirituality.
Radical Evangelicals
Radical Evangelicals emerged in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as a broad-based movement of Christians who sought to integrate evangelism and the work of justice, live incarnationally among the poor, form Christian communities and critique aspects of Western culture and the Church.
The term came into prominence at the 1974 Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization when some two hundred delegates calling themselves “The Radical Discipleship Group” drew up a Response to Lausanne which called for a greater focus of the work of justice and service to the poor (Langmead, 94).
This diverse and global Evangelical movement emerged due to a complex set of contributing factors. These included: exposure to the counter-cultural movements of the 1960’s; involvement in new forms of urban mission among people alienated from church and society; interaction between Third World Radical Evangelical theologians and practitioners and their First World counterparts; impact of Charismatic Renewal opening people to the creative work of the Spirit; and exposure to more radical theologies such as Anabaptist theology and that of the liberation theologians.
To get some sense of what this global movement is about, it is important to note some of the theological emphases of Radical Evangelicals. These centre around the following themes: salvation is both the gift of Christ’s grace and the call to serve God’s Kingdom purposes in the world; salvation thus issues into a discipleship that is expressed in an imitatio Christi that calls Christians to live the way of Christ in the world; salvation is never only personal in that it also calls us into community and solidarity; this community is the missional people of God sent by Father, Son and Holy Spirit to be a sign, servant and sacrament of the Reign of God; this community in Christ is a community of worship, formation and identificational service to the world.
Radical Evangelicals place themselves in the whole story of Scripture since it reveals a God who is both wholly Other and who is wholly involved in the world sustaining it and redeeming it. At the same time, they are particularly impacted by the social justice vision of the Pentateuch; the OT prophetic vision of shalom, justice and the new community; the theology and praxis of the Jesus Movement as portrayed in the gospels; the in-breaking of the Kingdom in the power of the Spirit as told in the book of Acts; the Pauline Vision of new life in Christ in the new community beyond culture, class, gender and economic differences and the nature of the fallen powers that need to be exposed, resisted and redeemed; and finally the vision of hope in new heavens and a new earth.
In the light of these biblical and theological emphases, Radical Evangelicals see themselves as a prophetic counter-community in the world while being wholly engaged in the suffering and brokenness of the human community. Thus they practice radical hospitality. They seek to be a healing presence. They are committed to peace-making and the work of justice.
Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor is but one small but significant band in this diverse movement whose global key proponents include Renay Padilla, Orlando Costas, Vinay Samuel, Jim Wallace, and Ronald Sider (Langmead, 94). Servants’ significance is illustrated by the fact that of the ten Radical Evangelical leaders in Australia and New Zealand referred to by Langmead, five are associated with Servants (Langmead, 94).
The challenge of living this kind of discipleship and mission clearly calls for a sustaining biblical vision, community and spirituality.
Defining Missional Spirituality
It is important that we gain some clarity as to what we mean by a missional spirituality.
By mission we mean joining in and cooperating with God’s redemptive, healing and transformative activity in the world (Bosch 1991). Radical Evangelicals are not comfortable with narrow definitions of God’s work in the world. The work of salvation blesses not only individuals but also communities. Evangelization and the work for justice go hand in hand (Ringma 2004). Soul saving and earth keeping are part of one mission.
By Christian spirituality, we mean the motivation and shape of a life of following Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit (Cunningham & Egan 1996, 22-28). Here also narrow perspectives are not helpful. Christian spirituality is not simply about prayer or meditation. It is about the whole gestalt of one’s life (Ringma 2003). The inner and outer dimensions of life belong together. Prayer and politics are within the gamut of one’s spirituality.
In the light of this we may define missional spirituality as follows: it is a way of life in Christ through the Spirit, supported by the community of faith and the spiritual disciplines that animates our whole life and our witness and service.
As a way of life, missionary spirituality, therefore, is not simply about praying for certain outreach or service projects. It is also about a prayer-filled life. And since it is a way of life in Christ – a cruciform life – it is not limited to some years of special missionary activity. The whole of life is to be in the service of Christ and needs to be animated by the sustaining Spirit.
Since a missionary spirituality is through the Spirit, it is more than hard work and self effort. It is a way of life and service that is initiated by the Spirit and sustained by that same Spirit. Moreover, such mission and service is not a solo effort. It is life and witness and service in community. It is joining hands with God and with others in the service of the neighbour. As such, missionary spirituality is a communal spirituality sustaining and fructifying acts of solidarity in the service of the poor.
Missionary spirituality is a way of life and service that embraces a disciplined life and the practice of the spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation, fasting, contemplation and service (Foster and Smith 1993). What is of note here is that prayer and fasting are not simply a means to service but a way to God. And service is also a way to grow in God and not simply the outworking one’s relationship with God. Put differently, both prayer and service are ways to deepen one’s relationship with God and ways to express love to the neighbour.
Segundo Galilea expresses this well in his notion of the double movement of contemplation: the movement of transcendence and immanence. In the movement of transcendence we are invited to the contemplation of God face to face in the practices of biblical reflection, prayer, the practice of silence and the gift of revelation. In the movement of immanence we are invited to contemplate the hidden face of Christ in the faith community, the neighbour, the stranger, the enemy and the poor in the gift of service (Galilea 1994).
To put that in other words, in the movement of transcendence we meet with the God who nudges us to serve the neighbour and in serving the neighbour we are drawn to be with God in prayer and renewal.
Thus prayer and service belong intimately together. The spiritual disciplines and the work of justice are connected. Both are forms of worship and both are expressions of service. In the words of B.P. Holt this is “integrating one’s life in the world with one’s relationship to God” (Holt 1993, 3).
In summary, missional spirituality is relevant for all God’s people who seek to be witnesses and servants of Christ. Those who seek to serve Christ in particularly difficult circumstances, such as the Radical Evangelicals, don’t partake of a different spirituality but may well need to deepen that spirituality and express it in relevant ways in the challenges of serving the poor and the work of justice. This means, for example, that Franciscan spirituality can inform, shape and animate a member of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, as well as an urban community worker, an academic and a politician. But how that form of missional spirituality is outworked will vary in each of these different settings.
Biblical Themes
Christian spirituality and the more specific focus on a missional spirituality has its roots in the biblical story. In the long history of the Christian Church this story has been appropriated in different ways leading to the rich spiritual traditions of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Reformers, the Jesuits, the Methodists and so on.
Beginning with the Old Testament we see that the themes of presence, redemption, peoplehood, and service are important themes. These could be reduced to the absolute basics of salvation, community and mission. But whatever the themes, the story is clear enough: God reveals himself, redeems a people who live in the worship and obedience of Yahweh and who are called to be a light to the world and a blessing to the nations (Isai. 42:6).
Within this frame there is an emphasis on the vision of God on the part of individuals (Gen. 15:1-2, Ex. 33:29-35, Isai. 6), and a sense of God’s presence in the corporate life of Israel’s feasts and festivals (Deut. 11:1-3). But despite the emphasis on presence there is also the sense of God’s absence (Ps. 22:1-2, Ps. 44:23-24) and the notion of wrestling with God (Gen.18:16-33, Job 40:2-4).
At the same time, the pages of the Old Testament are full of examples of individuals who pray (Gen. 15:2, Isai. 3:10, Ps. 51:1-2). Thus we see the complimentarity of personal prayer and a liturgical spirituality. And in the outworking of both we see the theme of prayer (Neh. 1:4-11) the practice of fasting (Lev. 16:29-30, 2 Chron. 20:3, Isai. 58:6), the practice of meditation (Ps. 119:15) and the spirituality of Sabbath (Ex. 20:11, Deut. 5:15).
Within the frame of this kind of personal and corporate spirituality we see two important themes that make a missional spirituality more concrete. The first is a spirituality of liberation. This is the Exodus theme. Having been freed by Yahweh’s redemptive activity (Deut. 15:15), the people so blessed, are to extend to others the same kind of liberation goodness (Deut. 15:12-15). This is most clearly expressed in the Old Testament social justice legislation (Sider 1978, 78-86) and particularly in the vision of the Year of Jubilee (Kinsler & Kinsler, 2000).
The second theme is that of a prophetic spirituality where in the midst of the kingship of Israel and the growth and increasing dysfunctionality of Israel’s power and the neglect of covenant and the growth of social inequality, we hear the call to restoration and renewal. This call for renewal became all the more pressing in the hegemony of priest, false prophet and king with the totalizing of religious and political power rather than the way of life of the people and its institutions based on Yahweh’s call to covenant and obedience (Brueggemann 2001). This spirituality calls for attentiveness to Yahweh, discernment of the signs of the times, a willingness to be misunderstood and to suffer, courage to proclaim what was not popular, a passion to challenge corruption and a vision to see the new age of Yahweh’s blessing.
Clearly these two specific themes within its broader framework constitute a source of inspiration and direction for Radical Evangelicals, who in the midst of a world of injustice, seek to proclaim liberation and be a prophetic people.
When we turn to the pages of the New Testament the themes are not so very different, except for the Christo-centric emphasis. In summary we could say that the vision is one of new people in Christ, the formation of a new community in Christ, living the way of Christ in the world and thus being agents of change and transformation (Mott 1982).
More particularly focusing on the theme of spirituality we note the centrality on a Christological spirituality focused on a Christo-mysticism of what it means to be in and to live in Christ (Rom. 6:3-5). This is immediately augmented by a communal spirituality. Conversion to Christ involves the embrace of the body of Christ, the community of faith. Baptised into Christ by the Spirit, one is also called to water baptism and incorporation into the Church (I Cor. 12:13, Gal. 3:26-28). This means that both our spirituality and mission are shaped and sustained through worship, word, eucharist and fellowship.
Furthermore, the New Testament reveals an incarnational spirituality. This means first of all that the way of Jesus is formed in us (Gal. 4:19). Thus Jesus’ baptism, infilling of the Spirit, love of the Father, prayer life, proclamation, healing, community building and concern for the poor become our way of living and serving. And secondly, incarnational spirituality calls us to identification, being part of a group of people, joining with and serving a particular community, and particularly joining with the poor.
These themes are sustained by the practice of the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, a voluntary asceticism (I Cor. 7:29-31) and nurtured by life in the Spirit (Jh. 16:14, Rom. 8:15-17).
The more specific emphases are clear: love of God and love of neighbour (Mt. 22:37-40) and service to the least as a way of honouring Christ (Mt. 25:34-36).
What we have pointed out so far regarding some biblical themes in both testaments is merely suggestive. It is far from exhaustive.
But the points I wish to make are clear enough:
* Radical Evangelicals need to root their vision for life for service and for a missional spirituality in the biblical story.
* The vision for mission and the contours for a missional spirituality do not begin with the events following the day of Pentecost. These are embedded throughout the entire biblical story.
* The theme of God’s redemption leading to salvation of a people who live in faith and obedience and service is foundational to the whole of the Bible.
* That witness, ministry and service need a particular orientation is clearly spelled out in the concept that we are to do God’s work in the world.
* That mission and service call for empowerment and sustenance is clearly what a missional spirituality invites us into.
Because the themes in scripture for living the life of faith, life in community and a life of service and witness are so rich, it should not surprise us that in the history of the Christian church something of this richness is displayed in the various Christian missional spiritualities that have emerged. To some of these we will now turn.
Drawing from the Tradition
Just as the discussion of themes in the biblical story was only suggestive, so the pointing to the rich history of Christian spirituality and its missional emphases, will be necessarily brief. The purpose is simple enough. It is to say to Radical Evangelicals don’t draw only from one tradition or from the more obvious historical examples. For example, Radical Evangelicals have much in common with Franciscan missional spirituality, but they can also learn much from Benedictine spirituality or Anabaptist themes.
This then brings us to the title of this article: Drinking from Many Fountains. And here are some of the traditions that Radical Evangelicals could draw from in deepening their life in Christ, their participation in Christian community and in empowering their life of witness and service, particularly in their work among the poor.
1 – The Desert Fathers and Mothers
There are many challenges for Radical Evangelicals in this movement with its beginnings around 250 A.D. which saw solitary hermits leaving ‘material comforts, worldly politics and secular social distractions’ to live in the Nile desert region living lives of ‘uninterrupted prayer and great physical mortification’ (Waddell 1998, xxvii). In time, this movement gave birth to what was later to become monastic communities (Waddell xxviii).
While this movement was largely a response to the post-persecution setting and the Constantianization of the Church which led Christians to find new ways of living in radical identification with Christ, it provides some key challenges for contemporary Radical Evangelicals and for a missional spirituality. These challenges may be summarized as follows:
* following Jesus may involve leaving one’s social setting and one’s job;
* to do this calls for a gospel critique of the dominant values of society and of the institutional church;
* the call to the desert is a call to renunciation and relinquishment. This involves a spirituality of asceticism;
* the challenge of prayer is not so much that we do nothing but that we recognize that personal and social change does not come about primarily through our activism but through the energizing and fructifying work of the Spirit;
* to live and serve on the margins of society provides a new way of reading the gospel, understanding the purpose of the life and the nature of one’s mission;
* this life on the margins gives birth to a new spirituality which moves one away from the triumphant Christ to serving the fragile Christ in a desolate world.
* and finally, from the Desert Fathers and Mothers we learn that to be a radical one needs to be a contemplative. Sheer immersion in activism won’t make us effective, but a new vision and passion will. These come from the places of prayer, solitude and contemplation.
Clearly the Desert Fathers and Mothers and their formative wisdom is relevant for present day Radical Evangelicals as they seek to leave their jobs in the West and enter the slums of major Asian cities to be an incarnational presence in serving the poorest of the poor.
2 – Benedictine Spirituality
St. Benedict of Nursia (480-546 A.D.) founder of the Grant Monastery at Monte Cassino began a way of life in community which was crystalised in his Rule (Fry, 1998) which has powerfully shaped monastic communities up to the present.
This way of life represents a balance between prayer, reading and learning, practical daily work, the practice of hospitality and the formation of those seeking this vocation.
While Benedictine Monasteries are a different kind of community to that of Radical Evangelicals, because the latter are specifically oriented to living amongst the poor, much can be learned from the Benedictines (Chittister, 1990).
One of the most basic lessons for Radical Evangelicals, who are so often focused on seeking to do the extraordinary in their mission and ministry, is the vision of the blessedness of the ordinary or the sanctity of the rhythms of daily life. The ordinary, such as preparing a meal, should not be seen as a distraction but as a priestly task. So the challenge from the Benedictines is to live the ordinary extraordinarily well. This means living a spirituality of daily life as a form of worship and service.
Living the ordinary well – and surely there is much of the ordinary living in the slums of Asia’s major cities – calls us then to live God-mindful lives. This means in both the excitement of a major missional project and in chatting to neighbours and in doing basic house duties, we are invited to be open to see and hear what God is saying and doing. Attentiveness is clearly a key theme.
While the vow to remain single may not be a primary vow for Radical Evangelicals other Benedictine vows with particular application are appropriate. These include the vow of conversatio Morum, the commitment to live a life of ongoing openness to God and the work of the Spirit resulting in a life of continuous conversion and transformation. They also include the vow of obedience in that Radical Evangelicals serving the poor both want to obey God and the gospel, but also submit themselves to community practices, priorities and ministries.
The traditional vow of stability practiced in Benedictine Monasteries is also appropriate for Radical Evangelicals. To live incarnationally in serving the poor and to bring shalom to a particular urban poor community is not the work of five minutes. It is the long haul of learning language and culture, befriending a community, working with them for change and transformation, doing the work of witness, building a faith community, addressing employment issues and working for permanent housing. This is like running a marathon. This is a long obedience. After two years of not too much happening one may want to move on. The vow of stability invites us to stay.
Two other important themes can be learned from the Benedictines. The first is the gift of rhythms. They seek to live a life of prayer, study and work. All three are integrated and important. All have to do with loving God and the neighbour.
Radical Evangelicals tend to live lives of imbalance. They are project-focused and activist. Their mantra is that there is so much to do, needs are so great, injustice is so rampant. And while this may be true, this cannot be the only dimension of one’s life and focus. Thus life needs to be brought into a greater balance so that life becomes not only more sustainable but also more joyful despite the challenges of poverty.
The challenge that the Benedictine vision brings to Radical Evangelicals is to more fully embrace the spiritual disciplines, including the spirituality of prayer and the spirituality of Sabbath. Prayer should be foundational both in its private and corporate forms and this is living in the friendship of God and in God’s purposes. Thus prayer is both nurturing and missional.
The spirituality of Sabbath is more than simply building into one’s life a time for rest. Rest so often stands in the service of work in that we rest to gain strength for our work. Sabbath, however, which is ‘time out’ which we can build into our day and week and so on, is very different to rest to gain energy for more work. It is holy leisure. It is God-oriented. It is renewal not for work per se but for life, for attentiveness for celebration.
All of this is meant to contribute to a more integrated way of living life. Thus while work is a given for so many Radical Evangelicals, prayer remains an ongoing challenge. And this needs to be complemented by the spirituality of study. This is loving God with all our mind.
This is particularly relevant for Radical Evangelicals as they seek to learn culture, to do community work and work for social transformation. This requires a lot of learning. But this too needs to be balanced with learning from scripture, theology and spirituality.
3 – Other Christian Traditions
So far we have briefly drawn on only two important Christian spirituality traditions and have attempted to show how these are relevant for a missional spirituality for Radical Evangelicals.
This is only a small beginning but hopefully is suggestive and productive enough to invite further reflection on other traditions of Christian spirituality. This I propose to do in a subsequent article where we will explore both Protestant as well as further Roman Catholic spiritual traditions.
Making Sense of our Own Lived Experience
A Radical Evangelical movement such as Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor has the opportunity to integrate three dimensions. It is to live and work in the biblical story seeking inspiration, direction and hope. It can draw from the distilled wisdom of the long march of the church in history which, when it was healthy, always combined a vision of God and neighbour, prayer and service and spirituality and the work for justice. And it can make sense of its own journey of life, prayer and service and develop some of its own distinctive spiritual practices in the light of Scripture and the tradition of the Church.
Let me briefly sketch out what that might look like:
* Servants, like other Radical Evangelical groups, has its own history of calling, community and mission. Some of this has appeared in book form. Much of it is in the memory of its members. Important themes could be gained from these writings and from interviewing Servants’ workers.
* Servants has its own distinctive five missional principles and its five values (Jack 7-8). A whole tradition of thinking and practice has developed around these principles and values. These could begin to form the basis for liturgical readings and reflections.
* Servants’ teams and workers in their journey of community and mission repeatedly go back to certain Scripture passages, sing certain hymns and find certain prayers helpful and relevant. This rich resource can be tapped in developing certain resources and practices that reflect this heritage.
* Over time in various Servants’ teams and in the forums which draw all workers together every three years, certain forms of celebration have developed. These forms could be generalized across the movement as a whole.
While all this may sound like an unhealthy process of routinization, it can be a way of retaining one’s heritage and creating a communal missional spirituality. This can include songs, scripture readings, readings from other spiritual resources, prayers – including prayers of lament, eucharistic practices, meal celebrations, fasting, foot washing, liturgical dance and many other spiritual practices that reflect both the life of the community and the nature of its service in the places of inequality and deprivation in Asia’s slums.
Conclusion
Radical Evangelicals, including Servants, are known for their incarnational ministry in service to the poor. As such, they are known for their self-sacrifice and their activism. And given the great needs of the poor in major Asian cities, the challenge to do more is always there.
But Radical Evangelicals need to live a sustainable lifestyle of community and service. Therefore, to focus on a balanced way of living in the light of some of the Benedictine themes is important and complements the radicality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers that is also part of Radical Evangelicalism and the Servants’ ethos.
Moreover, Radical Evangelicals should be known for more than their activism. While we want to learn from them how to do community development, plant urban poor churches, train urban poor workers, do micro-economic development and work for social change, we also want to learn from them regarding Christian community, the practices of prayer, the other spiritual disciplines and a life of piety, simplicity and wholeness. In other words, we want to learn from them how to follow Jesus and to live lives to the glory of God, in communities of mutuality and care, in radical hospitality and in service of the poor. From living such lives new resources of spirituality will emerge to bless the body of Christ.
[Charles Ringma is Emeritus Professor of Missions at Regent College, and serves as an advisor to Servants on the Board of Elders.]
Works Cited
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