Elaine Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach. Baker Academic, 2008.
Referenced in: Approaches to Evangelism – Missional
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
The “dark night of the soul” is the metaphor coined by the 16th century Spanish poet, Carmelite priest and Catholic mystic, St. John of the Cross, in a poem and treatise by the same title. It is a way of understanding the journey one travels periodically from times of deep disillusionment, isolation, and despair to a recovery of one’s joy and intimate reunion with God that ignites renewed passion and action toward his mission. Here, Elaine Heath uses it to refer to the state of the contemporary church relative to evangelism.
Heath writes partly out of her experience as a college professor training a diverse body of students in evangelism. Most of them have a general mistrust and misunderstanding of evangelism based on unsettling images and experiences that seem exclusive, fundamentalist, hostile, and destructive. She endeavors through the teaching-learning relationship to help them see evangelism more positively.
“Real evangelism is not colonialism, nationalism, or imperialism. Evangelism rightly understood is the holistic initiation of people into the reign of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. The process of evangelization is expressed in three categories to the church by Jesus: preaching, teaching, and healing. Evangelism includes all aspects of the initiation of persons into the holy life, including catechesis, individual and corporate spiritual disciplines, participation in the sacraments (or ordinances, in some communions), and active membership in the life and mission of a local faith community.” (13)
She continues:
The proper context for evangelism is authentic Christian community, where the expression of loving community is the greatest apologetic for the gospel.” (13) She also ties evangelism to holiness. “To be holy is to be set aside exclusively for God’s purposes, to be the ‘olah or whole offering that is a living sacrifice, according to Paul in Romans 12:1-2. We are not set aside and made holy for our own pursuits; we are now in partnership with God in God’s mission. …The holiness of God’s people provides both hope and agency in the transformation of the world.” (13-14)
It is out of this integration of love and holiness that Heath proposes the instructive value of the ancient mystics:
“The great exemplars of holiness – the Christian mystics – are without exception the first and best teachers of the theory and practice of evangelism. Their contemplative vision of the love of God in the world shatter our programmatic and market-driven approaches to evangelism. Their passionate surrender to Christ exposes imperialistic, exploitive, and manipulative versions of evangelism, and highlights the falsity of accusations that evangelism is just one more way the church in collusion with the world. …These mystics are the incarnation of faith, hope, and love, the holy ones who can illumine the dark path on which the Western church finds itself.” (14)
Heath is careful to define what she means by mysticism, renouncing the idea that it is “essentially about private numinous experiences.” Instead,
“Christian mysticism is about the holy transformation of the mystic by God, so that the mystic becomes instrumental in the holy transformation of God’s people. This transformation always results in missional action in the world. The idea that mysticism is private and removed from the rugged world of ministry is simply false.” The great Christian mystics, “attained a radical degree of holy transformation as a result of their encounters with the Triune God. …Their inward transformation resulted in an outward life of extraordinary impact on the world.” They were “prophets with a vision for God’s mission in the world. Most of them suffered the rejections and persecutions prophets encounter from stiff-necked religious folk.” (15-16)
As mysticism relates to evangelism, Heath organizes the book according to the classical threefold contemplative path: purgation, illumination, and union. Part One, “Purgation,” argues that the church is going through a dark night of the soul. In the mystic tradition, this dark night is initiated by God and is therefore intended by be instructive and restorative, “freeing the soul from attachments that hinder the ability to receive and give God’s love.” (28) This is an excellent description of the dryness, fruitlessness, and loss of desire that characterizes today’s church. Part two, “Illumination,” describes a new way of thinking about evangelism after emerging from the purgation of the dark night, with an emphasis on “love as God’s meaning, holiness for the sake of the world, coming home to God’s love, healing, and the redemption of God’s creation.” Part three, “’Union,’ casts a vision for ways in which the church can take a contemplative stance, evangelistically living in union with God in day-to-day life.” (20)
Certainly this text will appeal to the mystically inclined. Non-mystics may stay away because of the title, which is unfortunate. This volume has much to commend. At the very least her description of purgation in Part One offers a very redemptive way of seeing the church’s current spiritual malaise. Evangelicals may not resonate as strongly with Parts Two and Three which describe evangelism in a more indirect fashion. Yet it provides an excellent description of the kind of qualitative grounding in God’s activity in the world that should undergird more active forms of mission. This book is what it claims to be, a contemplative entry into the missional work of evangelism, a work that is often fraught with hurried and programmatic disconnectedness from the presence of God. In this sense, Heath provides not only a needed corrective, but helps describe the nutritive soil out of which all missional work should come forth.
From the Publisher
Although each generation searches for effective ways to be salt and light, Elaine Heath argues that the church is currently in an especially difficult place – a dark night of the soul. She calls the church to embrace, rather than ignore, its difficulties and find different ways of doing outreach. Heath brings a fresh perspective to the theory and practice of evangelism by approaching it through contemplative spirituality. By looking to mystics, saints, and martyrs of church history—such as Ignatius of Loyola, Julian of Norwich, St. Francis, John Wesley, Mother Theresa, and Henri Nouwen – she suggests we can discover ways of thinking about God that result in a life of outreach. This book brings fresh insights to the theory and practice of evangelism by examining it through the lens of the classic threefold path of purgation, illumination, and union. Different ways of thinking about evangelism are drawn from the lives and teachings of the mystics, and different ways of practicing evangelism are then proposed via narrative theology. The result is a holistic perspective, offering a corrective to programmatic and consumeristic forms of evangelism so prevalent today. Here is a unique contribution to the discussion on evangelism in our postmodern world.
About the Author
Elaine A. Heath (PhD, Duquesne University) is McCreless Associate Professor of Evangelism and director of the Center for Missional Wisdom at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. An ordained United Methodist minister, she has served several churches and has taught at several seminaries. She is also the coauthor of More Light on the Path.
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