| Church DevelopmentA
Rose By Any Other Name
By Dr. Roger K.
Swanson
Director of Operation Evangelization
 Hanging
in my office, as in several other places I have noted in the Florida
Conference, is a copy of Kenneth Wyatt’s painting “Offer Them
Christ.” It depicts a white-haired John Wesley bidding farewell to
Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as they begin their journey to the
American colonies.
“Offer them Christ,” Wesley is reported
charging the new missionaries. Was this evangelism they were to be
about, or was it mission? The day of distinguishing between the two, I
pray, is over.
A congregation I once led took as its mission
charge “to honor and to offer Christ.” Our mission text was
Colossians 3:17. “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do
everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the
Father through him.” We did not differentiate between evangelism or
mission or ministries of peace and justice with which we were involved
in our community. The question was always the same: does this ministry
both honor Christ and give us the opportunity to offer Christ?
I do not believe everything that a church does
is evangelism. I do believe that everything a church does in which
Christ is honored and offered is evangelism, as well as mission. In
fact Larry Rankin [director of the Florida Conference Council on
Ministries’ Missions ministry] and I are encouraging the use of a
new term, missional evangelization, to describe what the church is
about in its manifold ministries in which Christ is honored and
offered.
If the truth be known, it has always been the
social ministry of the Church that has attracted the attention and
respect of unchurched persons. Even in the earliest centuries, we are
told by historians of the period, it was the active demonstration of
God’s love evidenced in ministries of mercy that won the Roman world
to Christianity.
In other words, a rose by any other name is
still a rose!
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