Emerging Mission by John Finney, DLT, London,
2004 (ISBN 0-232-52496-3) Rrp $34.95.
Reviewed by Gerald Davis
John Finney’s Emerging Evangelism commends itself
quickly. It is helpfully structured, the theological
grounding is secure, and he has taken commendable
account of the appropriate experts and reference
points. John Finney, Anglican Bishop of Pontefract,
was the “Archbishops’ Offi cer for the Decade of
Evangelism”.
Evangelism is almost a dodgy word, though, isn’t
it? An analytical review of this book will be of little
use to Australians, so instead some observations
which one hopes will be encouraging.
The name Finney evokes Charles G Finney,
among the founders of the Keswick Convention
movement, who was sometimes cited as the
yardstick of open evangelicalism in Australia thirty
to forty years ago. John Finney does not disclose any family connection, but he does offer a helpful,
and not ungenerous, critique of the earlier Finney
(pp 60 extended, & 70).
He has assumed that evangelism and mission
are close. Beyond safely citing the Booths
and Shaftesbury, he thrice quotes the more
contemporary David Bosch of South Africa who
saw evangelism as an integral element of mission,
and it is clear he has understood Professor Bosch’s
extensive writings. John Finney’s concluding
passage is memorable:
“A Church which is stripped is uncomfortable.
The old easy chairs are being disposed of and we are
being asked to move out into the world, and finding
the atmosphere bracing. David Bosch said “Christians
find their true identity when they are involved in
mission”, and we are discovering that to be true. In
this book I have tried to underline width. The broader
gospel flows from the width of the being of God, and
the less restrictively defined Church is shaped by the
whole people of God in the world.”
David Bosch died in a motor accident in Holy
Week, 1995, so cannot be consulted, but I expect
he would have said a loud “hear, hear”, to that (in
Afrikaans).
Finney has looked at the pattern of mass
evangelism, which was the only model most of us
knew up to about 1980, and gently donged a few
myths. For instance, did you know D L Moody
distrusted altar calls?
“We fear that in those [post-altar-call] enquiry
rooms men are warmed into a fictitious confidence.
Very few of the supposed converts of enquiryrooms
turn out well. Cast yourself on Christ ere
you stir an inch!”
(I can almost hear the late William Auchterlonie
Hardie, a strident critic of Billy Graham in ‘59,
echoing that!)
The Alpha program (and its equivalents) get
Finney’s accolade for the last decades of the 20th
Century, at least. “ . . . a further step forward was
taken during the Billy Graham campaigns [in
England] in the 1980s. It was felt that many British
people were so far away from the faith that, after
making a decision in the stadium, they needed to
be steered towards a small group for learning and
integration into the church. They proved their
worth: research after the campaigns showed that
72% of people who went to a nurture group went
on to full membership of their local church while
only 23% of those who did not join made that
transition”.
You’ve tried an Alpha or other enquiry group,
and been discouraged after two or three courses
saw failing outcomes? Well, Finney reports (page
80) the first course in a community attracts the
faithful, and by the third it has run out of steam
— at that point half of all English parishes gave up.
But by the fourth and fifth course, “the numbers
of newcomers increase and the course begins to
impact the whole life of the church. Numerical
growth is stimulated or decline slowed”. Finney
encourages the idea that nurture courses be
shared between co-operating churches of the area,
ecumenically.
Listen to local evangelism’s opponents:
“There is one area which is all too often missed
in books about leadership. Long ago I came across
this dictum: ‘Operate in the negative force field.’ ...The
largest airliner can rev its engines until everyone
around is deafened but it will not move an inch
unless someone takes away the chocks... In pastoral
situations it means that I should try to talk as much
with those who disagree with me as those who
support me. It means we should face objections
before proposing some course of action rather than
being bewildered when they are fired at us later.”
Stuart Piggin, historian and long-time warden
of Robert Menzies College, Macquarie, has argued
that there is considerable evidence that the growth
of the churches in Australia has been triggered by
spontaneous “revivals” (a difficult term which needs
a 21st Century update) when the Spirit of God has
taken hold of a community and transformed it
into an agency of mission. He can cite a couple of
hundred instances.
I believe Stuart is right, and that, instead of
feeling guilty about failure in evangelism, we look
searchingly for the signs of God’s intervention in
our communities and enjoy the surfing of the
waves when we may.
Gerald Charles Davis was founding editor of Church
Scene and is a Life Member of the Australasian
Religious Press Association.