Join Michael Gewecke as he explores the fascinating history of evangelism from ancient times to the Middle Ages. Discover the challenges faced by the early church, the impact of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, and the spread of the gospel throughout Europe and beyond. Dive into topics such as the Crusades, the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the transformative period of the Reformation. Gain insights into how evangelism shaped the course of Christianity. Don’t miss out on this enlightening journey through centuries of church history!
Timestamps:
- 00:00:37 – Introduction and overview of the series
- 00:01:52 – Importance of region and the impact of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
- 00:09:04 – Spread of Christianity in Europe through the Benedictine Order
- 00:12:07 – The shifting centers of the Christian faith and the role of Alexandria and the Eastern Orthodox Church
- 00:15:18 – The Crusades and their impact on evangelism
Don’t miss this enlightening discussion that will challenge and inspire you to embrace your unique role as an evangelist. Subscribe now and join the conversation!
Don’t miss this enlightening discussion that will challenge and inspire you to embrace your unique role as an evangelist. Subscribe now and join the conversation!
Transcript:
00:00:00:37 – 00:00:21:49
Michael Gewecke
Morning, everyone. Good morning. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Glad to be together. We’re going to get kicked off. We are in the second part of our series here. It’s going to be a six weeks class. Calling it the E word, talking about evangelism. We’re beginning in the front end of this. Look at the history of evangelism in the church.
00:00:21:54 – 00:00:46:17
Michael Gewecke
And towards the end, we’re going to land on more of a theological and practical discipleship lens of evangelism. And so last week, we talked about evangelism from the perspective of the earliest church. Really looking in the book of Acts pretty much exclusively. If you missed that and would like to catch up with that, I have made a firm commitment that all of our Sunday school classes moving forward are online.
00:00:46:31 – 00:01:08:01
Michael Gewecke
So you will find that class online on the church’s website and only on the church’s website. So that’s where you’ll find that if you want to watch it or listen to it. Rather. I’m glad that you’re here today. Today we’re going to following a very micro Gorecki kind of girl. We’re going to try to cover 1800 years in one day.
00:01:08:05 – 00:01:26:33
Michael Gewecke
So you can imagine how well I’m going to do with that. But the reality is, if we’re going to push forward into the class, we had to keep a pretty quick pace. So we’re going to be looking very broadly. I’m not going to be throwing a lot of names that you, though, if you wanted to have a historical sort of read on this.
00:01:26:38 – 00:01:52:09
Michael Gewecke
I have a book that I can recommend that does a nice job of walking you through some of the different phases of this. I really want us to just get to some of the high points and to see it from a very high level. So I first want to sort of make sure that we all get a sense for the importance of region in the evangelical work of the church after the Book of Acts.
00:01:52:13 – 00:02:26:54
Michael Gewecke
What you need to know is that in A.D. 70, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome. Jerusalem is a very, very violent and volatile place. In the first century, it is full of a different forms of political protest and actual military uprisings. In fact, the the New Testament is colored by that reality, and we often miss it in our reading that Jerusalem was considered a place by the the Roman overseers as a place that needed to be tamped down.
00:02:26:54 – 00:02:56:27
Michael Gewecke
It needed to be a place highly secured, because if it wasn’t, people would lose their heads and they would go and they would essentially try to have armed uprisings. And in 8070, Rome had finally reached the end of its line. It had decided, following several substantial war riots and then attempted coups. They said, We’re done. And so they went in and they completely destroyed the temple.
00:02:56:27 – 00:03:19:24
Michael Gewecke
They just leveled it. And in fact, the damage that they did remains to this day. You have the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and that is at the hands of the Romans. So that’s their work. And what happens is it completely devastates the institutional Jewish church. So you want to think this the sad you sees and the teachers of the law.
00:03:19:24 – 00:03:41:36
Michael Gewecke
If you were with us in the Book of Luke study that we were doing online, those are the people that get named once Jesus gets to Jerusalem, it’s switches that no longer talks about Pharisees loops, which isn’t the Sadducees or teachers of the law. These are the very notable, very wealthy, very aristocratic, so old school religious leadership of Israel.
00:03:41:49 – 00:04:08:16
Michael Gewecke
They are essentially destroyed in A.D. 70 because their entire life revolved around the temple. All of their life revolved around the idea of the sacrifices happening in the temple. You remember Jesus when his parents brought him to be not baptized, to be dedicated, they had to buy these birds, right? And there’s these animals of sacrifice. Jesus turns over the table in the temple.
00:04:08:31 – 00:04:36:24
Michael Gewecke
It’s a highly profitable economics center in Jerusalem. And so once it’s destroyed that the center of that life disappears. So where does the Jewish tradition go? And the Christians who are worshiping with those Jews, they go into synagogues and synagogues are not region based. They’re all throughout there in rural Israel. There’s what we would call churches or congregations dotted throughout the landscape.
00:04:36:28 – 00:05:01:33
Michael Gewecke
Why am I spending so much time getting us ticked off when we have 1800 years to cover is because this begins the outward thrust of the Christian movement regionally. You can now watch as the Apostle Paul and his missionary journeys and all of those other missionary journeys. We don’t have log but we know happens that they begin to spread the gospel rapidly throughout the known world.
00:05:01:33 – 00:05:33:58
Michael Gewecke
In fact, there’s reason to believe by the year 100, there’s there’s good reason to believe that Christians are already having congregations in as far away as Great Britain or what we would call England all the way over to India and China. So the gospel has spread radically, but and this is what we’re going to move forward. The transition here very quickly is that the center of the Christian faith you might know of as being in Jerusalem up to 80, 70.
00:05:34:03 – 00:06:11:54
Michael Gewecke
But what happens when that city is utterly destroyed? Well, the center of the Christian faith moves south. So when it goes south, it goes south west. And it actually gets taken up in the middle of St Augustine and all of those. So center bishops were in Alexandria. So we especially those of us in the West, we we tend to forget that the earliest center of lasting Christian thought and leadership came from Africa, came from the northwest tip of Africa.
00:06:12:03 – 00:06:42:12
Michael Gewecke
And you might know of like the great Library of Alexandria and these kinds of things. Alexandria is formed following Help me Alexander’s Great Sword military movement. Right? He makes the city in his image in Northwest Africa. It becomes one of the longest ending peace centers. Why does this matter? So some names that do matter, though. The greats of the Christian faith, like Saint Augustine, who lived and worked in Alexandria.
00:06:42:12 – 00:07:07:15
Michael Gewecke
And it’s because of his writing that every Christian thinker following is essentially writing the theology that they do. You might not know this, but Luther and Calvin and the Catholic Pope and all of those people in the Reformation, the one person they all quoted when they were arguing with each other was Augustine. It what mattered was just across.
00:07:07:19 – 00:07:38:38
Michael Gewecke
Does a guest don’t agree with you? Or does he agree with me? And so what ends up happening is the Christian faith begins to be centered in Northwest Africa, and that is where a great amount of formation happens of Christian leadership. They then go and begin to evangelize all the way down the African continent itself. Simultaneously, you might know Antioch and that entire region are an incredibly great center of Christian life as well.
00:07:38:52 – 00:08:04:59
Michael Gewecke
And so there you begin to have this growing sort of secondary church. We don’t have a lot of time to talk about church history, but this does it is relevant. You have the Byzantine church made. So you have that church existing today. Two words, Eastern Orthodox. Right. So the Roman church has had this whole lot. What you might know is the Roman Catholic Church.
00:08:04:59 – 00:08:29:04
Michael Gewecke
Right? We have one actually here in town. That church, through a very strange historical kind of lineage, gets connected all the way back to the earliest church. But it’s not a perfectly connected lineage because of the way that history played out. The Eastern Orthodox Church has been functioning the exact same period of time, with their own leadership being traced all the way back to the disciples.
00:08:29:15 – 00:09:04:48
Michael Gewecke
Michael, why does this matter? Because the Eastern Orthodox are doing evangelism into the East all the way from the beginning of the faith. So it’s only later that Rome becomes the center of Roman Catholicism, essentially, once Alexandria itself is sacked, that theological religious power comes back. This sets up the middle part of history where essentially up to about 430 A.D. with Alexandria and with the library, with the dust and all of these people.
00:09:04:53 – 00:09:38:58
Michael Gewecke
Then we move into what historians would call the Middle Ages or what used to be called the Dark Ages. But the Academy decided it wasn’t nice to say that they were dark. We’re going to just call it medieval. So we’re looking at from about sixth century to 15th century. And I’ll be honest with you, if you look at it, it looks like a very strange period for Evangel ism because the evangelism in this period looks significantly like European monks doing European conversion.
00:09:38:58 – 00:10:14:53
Michael Gewecke
And then we when we think of Europe, I think we think of them as sort of a connected bloc. But I have to remind you or conjure into your mind a period in which Europe is a bunch of disconnected feudal lords. Right? And many of these bandits or very loosely organized tribes. And so the Catholic Church at this time has priests who think to themselves, we need to begin a missionary effort to convert these pagans, is what they would have called them.
00:10:14:58 – 00:10:43:41
Michael Gewecke
So they send out monks all around the European continent to do this work. One monk in particular was chiefly known for his evangelistic effort. His name was Benedict. He started the Benedictine Order. And if you’ve ever been to a monastery, it’s likely it was Benedictine. Now, now, there are many different houses within the Catholic Church. But the Benedictine order is one of the largest and it’s one of the most ancient.
00:10:43:46 – 00:11:04:57
Michael Gewecke
He sent monks and trained monks intentionally to go do this evangelistic effort all throughout Europe. Here’s the catch. There was very little success in Central Europe. I wish I had time to pull up a map for you so we can all be looking at this. But Central Europe was a very, very difficult place because, number one, the geography was hard.
00:11:05:02 – 00:11:34:48
Michael Gewecke
There are several mountainous regions and it was hard to get people into a place. And also the leadership there was generally violent and generally not interested in peace. So the idea that they were going to be civilized, this is what the monks said, civilized, that these pagans would be civilized. And ultimately, this was the big picture. They didn’t they were not interested in being subject to the leader of the Catholic Church who was and still is the pope.
00:11:34:53 – 00:12:07:28
Michael Gewecke
The pope was not just a theological figure, but a political figure, someone you couldn’t make claims about what you should and shouldn’t do. And so the tribes in the villas, these these pagan groups in the middle of Europe were uninterested in the pope making decisions for them. So the Benedictines are still doing all their work, and then they find extreme success as a group in a region who responded very, very generously to the proclamation of the gospel.
00:12:07:40 – 00:12:34:46
Michael Gewecke
And that was the people of Spain and Southwest Europe. And in this whole period, there’s this flourishing and this growing of the Christian faith. There, some of the most ancient sanctuaries are found in regions not just Italy, but Spain. And some of the reason for that is some of the early evangelistic success that eventually slows down because the evangelism hit some of the natural walls.
00:12:34:51 – 00:13:01:10
Michael Gewecke
There’s mountain ranges in northern Spain so that the gospel sort of finds a stopping point there through some of the Middle Ages. I promise we’re going to keep pushing on here. Bear with me, Francis. So as history keeps going, right, we have centers in Spain with centers in Europe, the Eastern Orthodox churches doing their thing. And now actually the the African church has begun some of its own work under its own title and and leadership.
00:13:01:10 – 00:13:27:25
Michael Gewecke
And that will be a history that we’re going to leave there. They’re doing their own thing. This then becomes a very, very interesting period of Christian history from about 1096 to 1291. But it’s fascinating. You’ll remember Y2K, right? This concern that the clock was going to flip and all the power generators are going to turn off and all the telecommunications can be done, Your bank accounts can be zero.
00:13:27:30 – 00:13:55:36
Michael Gewecke
There’s this real fear with the turning of of that millennium. Right. If we are in the interesting position of history that we can resonate with that. The year 1000 had its own kind of 2000 moment. They weren’t worried about computers, clearly, but they believed and it was regularly taught that the 1000 year mark was the return of Jesus, that that was the end.
00:13:55:40 – 00:14:22:24
Michael Gewecke
And so throughout the Roman Catholic Church at that time, which we have to remember, that was the church, right? You say I’m Presbyterian. They would say, What is that? Presbyterians don’t exist. If you’re a Christian, you’re Catholic in the Latin world at least. And for them, this reached all throughout the region. These teachings were widely disseminated. So. So the year 1000 was a time of great, fervent sort of revival in the church.
00:14:22:24 – 00:14:44:10
Michael Gewecke
There was a great about passion and energy related, and that extended to evangelism. The church just flung out missionaries as far as it could in the belief we’ve got to get people before the year 1000. But then history has a way of repeating itself. The world didn’t shut down in the year 2000 and I think you can guess it also did in the year 1000.
00:14:44:15 – 00:15:18:51
Michael Gewecke
And so there was a great kind of depression that followed following the year 1000, which then culminated beginning in the year 1096 or just 100 years after in the Crusades. We often don’t think of this as being connected in the history of the church, but the Crusades was ultimately a kind of reverse evangelistic effort because around the year 1000, the what would be Muslim nations from the east are doing well.
00:15:18:52 – 00:15:55:59
Michael Gewecke
And that’s not true of the Huns weren’t Muslim, but there were also several Muslim nations in the midst of this were successfully launching military campaigns or campaigns against the Roman Empire, which had now completely fallen. So the only. So while Rome is no longer a center of security and power, Byzantine still is, Constantinople still is. And so the Eastern Church has a period in which it is secure and growing and sending out missionaries while Rome is retracting and retracting and losing geographic distance.
00:15:56:04 – 00:16:27:09
Michael Gewecke
So there comes a time where the pope essentially makes an encyclical. Remember, he’s not just a theological leader, he’s a political leader. And he says with this new fervency that’s happening around 4000, he says, if you want to be a person of faith and you have power, you should go reclaim the Holy Land as your person who is capable of pushing back these non religious people invading our lands, it is becoming upon you to do so.
00:16:27:14 – 00:16:53:38
Michael Gewecke
So you have what is created essentially entire armies of people who respond to this call to push back Muslim what they see as Muslim advances and ultimately they do take Jerusalem. You say that’s a weird thing, Michael. They include an evangelism class. Does it seem like killing people is a form of evangelism? And I want to turn the conversation because that’s a very 21st century mentality.
00:16:53:52 – 00:17:15:27
Michael Gewecke
When we think of evangelism, we think of that, Hey, let’s sit down with someone. Let’s have a conversation with that. Let’s, you know, totally let let me explain to you why you should change your mind on this. This is our 21st century mentality when you believe that your faith was cultural, when you always said, well, I’m a Germanic Christian, right?
00:17:15:34 – 00:17:44:40
Michael Gewecke
Or when you said I’m a Spanish Christian or I’m an Eastern Orthodox, what would you identify your faith with, a specific tribal leadership or political identity? It was not a jump for them to say that I’m doing a good thing when I rid the world of people who aren’t that thing. If they’re unwilling to convert that I. I need to do my part to stop that, which results in some of the greatest travesties done in the name of Christianity.
00:17:44:40 – 00:18:13:28
Michael Gewecke
The Crusades is not just warfare in which horrible things happen in warfare across all time and places, but is actually the things that follow that even within the Roman church in which people are brutalized and they’re tortured and they’re put and interrogated by the church itself, people within the church, monks, priests, church members, something like almost what you might imagine the Salem Witch trials was happening within the Catholic Church in this time.
00:18:13:33 – 00:18:47:06
Michael Gewecke
So evangelism from that time in history, forward born, this kind of cultural state, because at the end of the day, it exposed that at that time the church was firmly intertwined. Yet its understanding that evangelism was a kind of cultural movement, that if someone was going to become a Christian, they had to give up their power, their political power, they had to submit to the pope, and then ultimately they had to change their culture enough to be reflective of the Catholic faith.
00:18:47:06 – 00:19:15:59
Michael Gewecke
And if you couldn’t do that, if you were unwilling to make those changes, then ultimately the effect was then we’re going to wage a crusade against you. We’re just going to get rid of you. This becomes a very dark kind of movement within the Christian church of around that you’re 1000. But then ultimately ultimately is going to move forward to something that you are very much more familiar with, I expect.
00:19:15:59 – 00:19:40:21
Michael Gewecke
And that is the Reformation. We’re only looking about 500 years after the Crusades that the reformers begin to have conversations about what it looks like to return to Scripture and as I said, to return to Augustine to begin to rethink what this theology meant all along. And then, of course, if you know anything about Luther and Calvin, they had nothing good to say about the pope.
00:19:40:26 – 00:20:07:10
Michael Gewecke
In fact, if you want to turn red, I encourage you to go look up. Just Google Luther or Calvin insults about the pope and anything that you’ve seen on social media pales in comparison. The thing the reformer said about the pope. Why? Because they ultimately believed that the pope needed to be stripped of his political power. I mean, they believed a lot of things about who you are rather relevant to this conversation.
00:20:07:15 – 00:20:46:34
Michael Gewecke
They believe that the pope should not be that kind of political overseer and ruler. So, yes, who the reformers sent their evangelists to the south that hard? You could you could easily get there. They sent the evangelists to all of the European kings and fiats, and ultimately they offered them a deal. The deal was you can remain Christian and now be Lutheran or you can remain Christian and now be reformed and you no longer need to be underneath the Pope and deal with all of that stuff.
00:20:46:39 – 00:21:14:15
Michael Gewecke
But you have to claim this theology as your own. So you might not know this, but if you want to do history into the Reformation, there are several battles and skirmishes and fights between Catholic lords and what become reformed or Protestant lords because ultimately it was a fight over who would have power over the people. Would it be the Pope or would it be the individual leader?
00:21:14:15 – 00:21:41:51
Michael Gewecke
And these reformers were offering a different way to allocate that power, because it’s the 15th century that Gutenberg invents the printing press and the reformers are one of the chief advocates and users of the printing press. And I, Michael, would love to have a conversation with all of you about the possible implications of that for the church in the 21st century and some of the communication advances that have happened.
00:21:41:51 – 00:22:10:55
Michael Gewecke
What are the implications of those in light of our past history? We don’t have time for that. So I know we all want to talk about it now. But here’s the thing that the the printing press does that radically changes the world view is it makes it so that Christians believe for the first time in history that the gospel can be read in the local language and should be understood by every person.
00:22:11:00 – 00:22:43:30
Michael Gewecke
This is this is a concept which is, I think, impossible for us to get into our heads. I think we we so take that for granted. Well, let me say something that’s going to confuse you. You know that the Bible of the Middle Ages are stained glass windows. You realize the reason stained glass windows were invented is so that the normal church attender would understand what the gospel was, why they could not read, and if they could read, they didn’t have a book.
00:22:43:35 – 00:23:14:48
Michael Gewecke
There is no book. What the printing press does is it makes the mass translation and the mass distribution of Bibles possible. For the first time in history, I will be 100% clear. This is 1500 years of church history before the printing press. So what what we struggled to understand, and I’m maybe making my point a little too strongly because I want to try to make sure that we see the dichotomy here.
00:23:14:52 – 00:23:56:01
Michael Gewecke
The first 5100 years of Christian history evangelism is about do you get the Lord or the King or the leader on your side? Ultimately, do they profess Christianity? Because if they do, yes, what happens? The nation becomes Christian. They build churches with Christian crosses in them. They bring in monks and priests who will teach the people. All evangelism essentially is about going into a nation group and trying to convince or trying to lead that leadership into the faith post reformation, post printing of the of the printing press and books and Bibles.
00:23:56:06 – 00:24:20:35
Michael Gewecke
The reformers suddenly go to families and individuals and they say, no, you’re job and responsibility has been since the first pages of Scripture. The New Testament has been to be people of faith. And so it should not surprise you. Not only were reformers the first to use the printing press, they were the first to advocate for public education.
00:24:20:40 – 00:24:50:56
Michael Gewecke
Why? Because if you had a book, it made no difference if you couldn’t read it. Now, this has led to a fast enabling change in evangelism across the world because Protestants, when they began to send out missionaries across the known world and by the way, Presbyterians come from those that evangelism work, you know, that press bit that the reform tradition did not begin in Ireland, where Presbyterian schism began.
00:24:51:05 – 00:25:11:07
Michael Gewecke
That was a missionary work that came over. And I also like to point out to you that it became popular because the people were angry at the King in England who was making demands against the people in Ireland. So what did they do? They said, well, forget it. KING We’ve got our own religion. And the king said, Well, forget you.
00:25:11:07 – 00:25:28:53
Michael Gewecke
I’m starting the Church of England. Hence we have an Episcopal church down the street, which I love the Episcopal. That’s not an insult. I just want to make this point is that ultimately there’s all of these power plays happening in the midst of evangelism, and it clouds this kind of personal evangelism that we even see recorded in scripture.
00:25:28:53 – 00:25:57:15
Michael Gewecke
I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m saying that the historical record emphasizes the political nature of evangelism until the Reformation. And so when Catholics would go into a community, a good example of this is when we have Christopher Columbus comes to the new world right? He brought with him priests. We forget this, but every thing that was done was done under the purview of the pope.
00:25:57:19 – 00:26:28:36
Michael Gewecke
So priests come to the new world. When they evangelize the new world, they don’t try to translate the Bible into the local language. They don’t even try to teach the gospel. They try to get the people to do this kind of religious observances related to Catholicism. When the reformers begin evangelism efforts in England and throughout Europe and then ultimately into America and beyond, what’s the first thing you think they did translate the Bible?
00:26:28:40 – 00:26:56:12
Michael Gewecke
What’s the first thing that they did distribute the Bible that is a hallmark of all of the evangelistic efforts that will come for the next 500 years when we kick off next week. And I really want to emphasize for you all that we have to, as modern Christians, we have to understand, like it or not, that our history is not 500 years old.
00:26:56:16 – 00:27:17:24
Michael Gewecke
We we like to think that because that’s what resonates in our worldview. It resonates for me. I forgot my Bible. It resonates for me far more that this is the core goal of evangelism. Hey, John, I have you read John 316 Let me read it to you. Let’s talk about what it means. That’s what that’s the modern imagination of John of evangelism.
00:27:17:29 – 00:27:47:52
Michael Gewecke
But for 1500 years, the church lived in an entirely different frame until the Reformation. And there is both good in it and there’s both great danger in it because you see things like the reverse of evangelism that happens throughout the Crusades. You see the kind of actual warfare that happens in South America, you know, of the the Catholic Church is sanctioning and calling for essentially ethnic cleansing in the name of evangelism of this.
00:27:48:07 – 00:28:21:01
Michael Gewecke
This is part of our history. And once we turn to the 20th century, which becomes a brand new historical movement of evangelism like never before, has the world when it turns 1900, has the world ever seen evangelism with the kind of passion, the kind of organization, the kind of funding that will happen beginning the year 1900? The global missionary movement is something that Christianity has never seen at that scale before, and it builds upon much of this history.
00:28:21:03 – 00:28:52:57
Michael Gewecke
It incorporates some of the good lessons. It also falls to some of its worse and what will ultimately happen is evangelism in the American mind will in that I don’t want to steal too much. So I’m going to end here for questions and then we’ll jump into this next week. But here’s a teaser for you. In the American mind, that’s where evangelism turns from a thing that you participate in or thing that that happens at the edges of your life.
00:28:53:02 – 00:29:17:00
Michael Gewecke
And it becomes a thing that you send checks to and you call missionaries, too, and then you send them to other nations to do that. The idea of evangelism then takes on a whole nother sort of cultural and historical bent at that. At that stage, as opposed to say this, I wanted to provide a little bit of a practical lesson.
00:29:17:15 – 00:29:40:25
Michael Gewecke
I tried to cover 1500 years in the day, so give me a little bit of a break up. I was trying to I want to offer you a little bit of a practical word on this. And I think if I was going to offer a practical way what we might learn from this section of history, I think one thing that we might learn is that neither the Protestants nor the Catholics got it all right.
00:29:40:30 – 00:30:04:54
Michael Gewecke
I think they both understood something very true. If you look at the Catholic evangelistic efforts throughout history, they tended to allow for local culture to be part of their expression of the faith. In fact, that’s one of the things that at its edges, the reformers complained about that ultimately, are these people really worshiping Jesus or are they worshiping Mary or they worshiping that statue or whatever?
00:30:04:58 – 00:30:28:44
Michael Gewecke
But you all know Christmas is a re appropriation of a pagan holiday. That was one of the monks encountering people, celebrating a very dark and dire pagan holiday and said, you have been worshiping on this day, we’re giving you a new feast. It’s the feast of the birth of Christ. And then history has a way of turning down.
00:30:28:57 – 00:30:47:12
Michael Gewecke
And now it’s a thing that Christians believe has been a part of the faith since our inception, when historically it’s not. I think there’s something good to learn from that. There are different expressions of the faith because they’re not yours doesn’t mean that they’re not good or helpful or faithful. We should have a more robust theology than that.
00:30:47:16 – 00:31:16:48
Michael Gewecke
On the flip side, the Catholics did, and we have to we have to admit, and I think at their best, the reformations of the 1960s and the Catholic Church will admit this. We also have to do better than if your king is Christian, you are Christian. Clearly, there is a individual responsibility taught in the New Testament. Clearly, the understanding and proclamation of the gospel needs to be made so that the person can understand it in their own language, in their own context.
00:31:16:53 – 00:31:39:34
Michael Gewecke
All of this matters, and I think that ultimately, at our best, we live somewhere in that tension, allowing people to make the faith their own, in their own place, and recognizing also that we make it accessible so that individuals can access that faith regardless of or not, of whether their leadership accepts it. I’ll also say this as a final note.
00:31:39:39 – 00:32:21:23
Michael Gewecke
I think this is Michael’s opinion. You can disagree about this. I think that the history, these 5000 years of history should give us some pause when we think of the evangelistic efforts of Christianity, to not think of the evangelistic effort as being nationally done. In other words, I would advise us to at least think critically about the idea of the United States sending missionaries that could be become a very dangerous sort of crossover because governments have different jobs than the what Calvin would call the invisible church that they have many functions, both as the keeping of peace, the organizing of the people.
00:32:21:36 – 00:32:48:07
Michael Gewecke
They have different values, no matter how closely they’re aligned with the values of faith. They have to do things the church can’t do, like wage war. So when you put it in the hands of the nationalistic structure, their job to evangelize, you’re putting in a structure that also has the power to destroy as one example, that the history that is complicated and convoluted.
00:32:48:07 – 00:33:22:28
Michael Gewecke
And I’d love to talk to you about the theology of the reformers related to state, but I do think there is a lesson Christians do evangelism, and sometimes Christian politicians do evangelism, but they’re doing it from the frame of Christian, not politician. That’s what I would submit to you, that that keeping those boundaries in place, I think we have good historical precedent to see why it helps and why it matters, because you end up in the year 1500 with reformers saying, Hey, Pope, you shouldn’t be levying taxes and waging war.
00:33:22:40 – 00:33:52:01
Michael Gewecke
That doesn’t seem like a thing that Jesus would have called Peter to do. When Christians power the idea of the expression of faith with a nationalistic identity that is a very old idea, that that’s a thing that happened in Europe for thousands of years. And and the idea, I think that I hear you speaking of is ultimately in the in the age of enlightenment, the rise of humanism, which we don’t have time to talk through these things.
00:33:52:06 – 00:34:19:56
Michael Gewecke
But ultimately you realize the same thing that animates the Reformation and gives the ability for people to proclaim the gospel to individuals is also the thing that gives for the first time in history, this had never existed before up to about the Reformation time frame atheism. No one was an atheist that exist. No one believed or had a concept that there was no God.
00:34:20:06 – 00:34:46:13
Michael Gewecke
You could believe that that that that God was wrong or that God was not right, but the kind of intellectual sort of belief that that deities were not a part of reality came with the humanistic, enlightened, which also gave rise and gave structure to the idea of the the reformers and the evangelical sort of efforts. The call I make here is very simple.
00:34:46:13 – 00:35:05:51
Michael Gewecke
I’m not trying to criticize or I’m not trying to throw anybody under the bus. I am trying to say I think the history of evangelism in the church is always good and bad, bundled together. If we’re going to be humble about it and we’re going to be honest about it, we have, in the sake of doing good things, had implications we didn’t intend.
00:35:06:03 – 00:35:31:58
Michael Gewecke
That’s happened every time, and that remains true throughout this long period of history. We, the crusaders, some of them, some of them were were bloodthirsty, and they were people who could be blessed and be promised a seat in heaven if they went and killed people. And they while doing so, some of them were truly believing that they were committing a spiritual act called for by God to preserve the Holy Land.
00:35:32:00 – 00:36:00:52
Michael Gewecke
They believed that they were they were going in to do this good work. And and that justified the pillaging and the violence and the destruction, which, by the way, the Catholic Church was doing to its own people. So so that’s that’s the point I just want to make for this section of history. It is largely a political evangelism in this time frame is largely a national political kind of effort done by the various branches of the Christian church.
00:36:00:57 – 00:36:21:29
Michael Gewecke
And that brings with it both good and bad. And we would look at that historically. We would have critiques. I think we would also have things to learn from it. I’ll close with this word. I really I’m a grateful for your clarification. I often make these mistakes and I say things that I’m thinking that you don’t understand. My wife would complain about this substantially.
00:36:21:34 – 00:36:45:40
Michael Gewecke
I want to be clear, but the time thing that we’ve covered today talking historically, you realize that representative, democratic government does not exist. Right? We’re all on the same page about this, that that is monarchs and kings and emperors and military rulers. So I won’t be when I talk about that nationalism, I understand that that connects to our current political conversation, all these things.
00:36:45:40 – 00:37:17:00
Michael Gewecke
And in some people that that is an anxious conversation. When we’re talking for 5000 years. But the idea of that being ideological does not exist. This exists in the form of royal treaties that exists. And the idea of very stratified political power not vested by the people vested by right of birth and power. Okay, so that is the context in which American evangelicalism evangelism is happening, which is mind blowing, I think, to us.
00:37:17:11 – 00:37:40:52
Michael Gewecke
And the is I linger here and I know this is hard to get our minds around. I know it is because we ask why is this relevant? Is because when we learned that there were people who lived radically different experiences of the faith in us, I think it gives us the ability to pull out of our experience of the faith and to ask some of the larger questions of the further distance, which helps give us clarity.
00:37:40:57 – 00:37:43:33
Michael Gewecke
I’ll make that case next week. Thanks for being here, everyone.