Evangelism has become a dirty word to some people and cultural changes are happening across the world, ones that I would normally label as ‘postmodern’, which raise new problems with how we share the Christian message. It’s these issues that Doug Pagitt tackles in his new book Evangelism in the Inventive Age.

‘Inventive Age’ is what Pagitt uses to describe the cultural shift we are experiencing – a new era that follows the ‘Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age and the Information Age’. For all the talk of ‘missional church’ and ‘evangelicalism’, how can we possibly tell people about Jesus without sounding like we’re bible-bashing, forcing people into a mold they don’t want to be in? Pagitt’s suggestion is that it is resonance that best describes what we aim for when we are evangelizing – not conversion. The key to this kind of resonance is framing the good news of Jesus in a way that connects with people, and Pagitt looks at this from two perspectives. Firstly, a very contemporary idea, the enneagram is used to show the primary passions and fears of the nine types of people it describes. Each of these is embraced by the good news, each of them has ‘points of connection’, resonances with the biblical story. Secondly, Pagitt looks at eight ‘vignettes ‘ (or stories) in Acts that show the values in evangelism that he suggests are appropriate for the Inventive Age.

This is the fourth book in Pagitt’s series on the ‘Inventive Age’, which I found out is actually aimed at church leaders. At about 110 pages it’s not a long or difficult read – Pagitt doesn’t presuppose that you’ve read all his other books or studied theology for decades to understand his references. This means that it’s very accessible to a wider audience than just church leaders – anyone with an interest in sharing the good news of Jesus who finds that it’s not as easy in 2012 as just pulling up a soapbox in speakers’ corner.

One of the things I find difficult about even the concept of evangelism in the postmodern context is balancing the idea that we are calling people to radical transformation as they meet God with the need to respect and appreciate the history and back-story of faith that the hearer has. Repent is not a word that Pagitt uses of his evangelism, despite the fact it comes up a lot more in the Bible than resonate. In the church context that I serve in, I can imagine a lot of people not being happy at losing the word repentance, yet for most outside the church it’s covered with impossible negative baggage.

The answer, I think, is in assessing what we mean by repentance. It’s become identified with a cataclysmic, one off, listing and rejecting of specific sins. That’s not the meaning I detect from Acts or the Gospels – rather, it’s about a continual process of lining your story up with God’s story. It involves re-seeing and re-telling the past, re-examining the choices of the present and  re-imagining the future. In fact resonance is a good description of that process – the energy of God is transferred to us as we tune ourselves to the frequencies he is on. Yet it does involve change, even if it need not mean cultural assimilation.

I don’t think I’m giving spoilers to say that Pagitt doesn’t just give a new tract or a new tent-meeting structure to solve all the problems of evangelizing in the inventive age. In line with the particularity and variety of this new era, that’s the homework that we have to do for ourselves. We would be suspicious of a gospel that in one form has all the answers for all people in all contexts. Pagitt instead shows that given the particularity of people we all have passions and fears that the gospel speaks to and tries to show that this way of evangelizing has its roots in the scriptures, in the Acts of the Apostles – which seems like a good place to start thinking about how to do evangelism!

The book resonated a lot with me, I think because of two main points of very strong agreement between myself and Pagitt. Firstly, he takes postmodernity or ‘the inventive age’ seriously – not as a threat or a panacea, just as it is, inevitable and of the same order as the Industrial revolution. It must change the way we act and think but it cannot destroy the good news. Second is his insistence that the message of Jesus is good news.It saddens me to hear Christians make caveats on who the good news is good to. Take for example how Pagitt describes the Jerusalem conference narrated in Acts 15, when the church wrestled with how to embrace both Jews and Gentiles.

Those practicing the acts wanted good news to be good for the hearer. The apostles’ assumption was that the role of an evangelist is to tear down barriers that keep us from God, not add more of them. Everyone meets God as he or she is able, and there’s nothing righteous about making it harder to do. (p102)

This book is for anyone who wonders about sharing their faith in a context where ‘traditional’ evangelism techniques seem hopelessly out of place. It will require you to think for yourself, it doesn’t give easy answers or ready-made programs your church can just implement. Christianity has, as Pagitt says, ‘always been a first name faith’ – you have to work out how it works in your place and time.

It is, to be sure, a complicated time in which to proclaim good news. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. (p108)

To make sure the FTC are happy, I have to tell you that I was given a free pdf copy of the book for review and that I wasn’t paid to give a positive review. Evangelism in the Inventive Age is released on February 1st 2012. For more information, have a look at Doug Pagitt’s website.