The word “evangelism” sends me back to a building decorated with a hodgepodge of couches, tables, and chairs. The new sanctuary of my childhood church was not yet completed, so the sixth-grade Sunday school class met in a temporary building. Apparently, sixth graders could be trusted to walk across the parking lot, and we felt every bit of that validation of our maturity. On one particular Sunday morning, we had a guest teacher. We’ll call him Deacon Smith. He was not one of the “cool” deacons who looked the other way when he saw us crossing over to the donut shop down the street before Sunday school. He was one of the strict deacons whose voice was always stern and whose presence was intimidating. This particular morning, he had come to tell us that we didn’t love Jesus enough.
Deacon Smith was a member of the street ministry evangelism team. The bulk of his time teaching that morning consisted of him presenting, in his stern voice, a litany of questions about our evangelism activities or lack thereof. He asked us to raise our hands if we prayed at the lunch table, if we asked our friends at school if Jesus was their Lord and Savior, if we were willing to give up our Saturdays to join the evangelism team as they went knocking on doors. No raised hands. Only avoidant eyes and low uncomfortable sighs and laughs. After a few moments of awkward silence, he exhaled and shook his head. “You all just don’t love Jesus enough. And you don’t care if your friends go to hell.” More head shaking and a resolute, helpless shrug of the shoulders. The joy of the boundary-testing glazed donut had faded. The feeling of maturity gained in that walk across the parking lot was a distant memory.
On the surface, I was as indifferent to the weight of this message as my peers. At 11, we were just on the cusp of perfecting our laissez-faire teenage posture. But underneath the surface, I felt its weight. I was gutted.
Deacon Smith was a product of a particular paradigm. The paradigm encompassed societal, cultural, and ecclesial elements. He had been taught that the Great Commandment and the Great Commission are manifest in one way. He had been taught that sharing the good news of Christ was serious and severe business. I wish I could go back to the moment, with the grace of a more mature person, and see his heart amid the sternness. He wanted us to flourish, yet the message he preached made me flounder. I’m sure that my recollection of him is hugely impacted by the emotional and spiritual labor of the moment. Everything was black and white in my faith life then, but a part of me wanted to embrace something grayer. Something less defined was calling to me. Was sharing Christ a one-size-fits-all endeavor? Why did it feel as if my identity as a human being was at odds with this particular way of sharing Christ? At 11 years old, I did not have the holistic bandwidth to tackle these questions.
Gone are the days when I processed my faith based on black-and-white absolutes. I have found a space for a less defined pathway of sharing Christ. Commandment and Commission are foundational. How I define and experience them is much more expansive. This is a manifestation of how the Triune God continues to save. However, the tension remains in the body of Christ and for us creatures as we move through creation. Part of our identities—as human beings and as Christians—wants to tell the story of our salvation without a transactional distortion or agenda. We need pathways of recognition, reconciliation, and redemption to reclaim the heart and release the hurt. So we ask, what can an honest and integrated way of authentically sharing Christ-love look like? My own practice as a chaplain has led me to think about how understanding both identity and embodiment helps us reimagine evangelism in a new way.
I wonder what was at stake for Deacon Smith? Along with the call to Commandment and Commission, there was an identity aspect at work. He was invested and convicted. We can make assumptions about how he had been formed in a particular theology of evangelism. Based on his tone and presentation, we can also assume that the stakes of not enacting this theology in a specific way had consequences in his mind. The stakes were high for him—stakes of kingdom and of sharing identity.
Our encounters with God, faith, and lived theology are convicting. Our experience of Christ shapes us, and our understanding of interpretations of Christ shapes us. Culture also forms us. The Holy Spirit’s wind calls to us. As we vacillate between these influences, the discernment process can feel treacherous to our identity when it is tied to a transactional agenda rather than a sharing of Christ-love. The growing fruit is anemic when stakes and claims are planted in arid soil. The healthy, life-giving cells are too few. Identity begins to fight
for air.
Taking the liberty to speak for myself and the other sixth graders in the room that Sunday morning, we could not articulate our fully realized selves. We could experience the tension of accepting or rejecting Deacon Smith’s proposed action plan, but we did not know how to hold that tension. The stakes were hard to name because our sense of self was being formed. The core of our sharing-identities was being questioned, or so it seemed, and we were left weak. We were left with shame, indifference, and fear in response to another’s conviction. We were consumed by these emotions. Even if we were to charge out the door and take to the streets as radical evangelists with the fervor of Paul, the space created for the theology and practice of evangelism was not sustainable. Shame preaches shame when traveling, unaware, from person to person.
Sharing Christ, vocally and viscerally, is an experiment in creating space and holding space with humility and love. We offer what we have received. We birth what we have nurtured. Humility and love were not what Deacon Smith led with on that Sunday morning. Subsequently, they differed from what we took as we left class that day. This is not a condemnation of Deacon Smith but of how evangelism was taught and practiced.
I’ve been a chaplain for over ten years. Identity work in self-reflection and self-awareness is at the core of chaplaincy training and practice. Chaplains investigate their own stories as a resource in helping others with this kind of investigation.1 Chaplains learn to lean into self-reflection and self-awareness concerning their own life as a “living human document” in order to provide holistic care to others who want and need to do the same.2
Integration is a critical element of chaplaincy work. Chaplains integrate their individual beliefs and value paradigm within a caregiving paradigm that meets the care-receiver where they are and holds that space while engaging in interventions that invite wholeness. The goal is to do this work without an agenda, and we work hard to achieve that goal. Chaplains constantly function in action-reflection-action mode, moving with the moment as spiritual, emotional, and relational needs are assessed.
Evangelism, however, is not a tool in my chaplain tool bag. In fact, it is explicitly prohibited for board-certified chaplains. “Members shall affirm the religious and spiritual freedom of all persons and refrain from imposing doctrinal positions or spiritual practices on persons whom they encounter in their professional role as chaplain.”3 Yet, the presence of a chaplain is inherently a public expression of personal witness. Chaplains come from many different faith and cultural backgrounds. Who I am and what I believe show up in my caregiving practice. It is part of my job to know what I believe. Even though I do not evangelize, I embody Commandment. I hold Commission with an open hand. What does “making a disciple” look like in an expansive definition of teaching, leading, and following a Christ-formed life model?
The purpose of a chaplain’s presence is to embody and enact their beliefs and values, thus creating spaces for others to do the same. Most chaplaincy contexts are pluralistic. Even those that work in a seemingly Christian context—such as education chaplains—cannot count on monolithic expressions of how faith is processed and practiced. The interventions and outcomes of chaplaincy assessment and practice are admittedly not geared toward the “change” of the care-receiver but toward “stabilization” within the circumstance. This does not mean a competent chaplain is merely blown by whatever wind the care situation necessitates. Instead, the chaplain is rooted in their spiritual lineage and life while adapting to the present holistic needs of the care situation. It is the capacity to go deeper into one’s beliefs and values that allows a chaplain to see, hear, and honor the beliefs and values of others. With healthy holistic stakes, this same rooting brings Christ and speaks Christ even when verbal expressions are not the delivery method. As a Christian chaplain, I aim to “be” the gospel and know my role in the present moment.
When words and doctrine seem hollow and even cruel in a crisis, embodied manifestations of grace, mercy, and love represent Christ in a far more profound way. In a moment of crisis, the words often don’t matter. What words can provide comfort when the fragility and vulnerability of life on this side of eternity has imploded upon itself? What are the words that make suffering “okay”? In my experience, my words are not the bridge between breaths seeking healing and hope. My embodied love and discipleship are the bridge. I am there to be with the people amid the crisis. “Being with” is a theological and practical stance. I share Christ through the giving of a cold cup of water, a shared sigh of frustration, an outreached hand, or a shoulder on which to lean. Of course, verbal communication comes into play, but the motivation behind the words is what I have consumed and offered from my beliefs and values. I know that I have been formed by my love of Christ and my life as a follower of Christ. This knowledge rests in my body. It is my body that shows up in the way that I provide care.
Mark 14:22–24 invites us, viscerally, into a message of evangelistic embodiment:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
The bread and wine embody a new covenant of relationship. The act is the message. Paul exhorts us to reenact the message as a way of experiencing the relationship anew, with individual and communal reflection and awareness.4 We hold that space, nurture that space, and act from that space of constant renewal.
In the words of body theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, “A reorientation of Christianity must begin with a rediscovery of the body and its energies.”5 Perhaps the church, as we wrestle with re-engaging evangelism, can be guided by a chaplaincy-influenced embodiment framework of sharing Christ. Chaplains “show up” to the moment of discord and disconnect, having consumed, nurtured, and been formed by their beliefs and values. We not only carry the good news, but we also re-present the good news in tangible and intangible ways. We do our best to do this work with a humility that knows the care-receiver is the one who is shaping the agenda of the encounter. Yet the chaplain’s identity is a part of the witness of how that care is crafted. My chaplaincy practice is shaped by embodiment as an answer to spoken and unspoken questions. Additionally, one cannot help but embrace an embodied way of questioning. Stakes of identity must be acknowledged and reconciled so that one does not operate from a place of anemic self-identity or narrowly defined role-identity.
Some years ago, when I was a very new chaplain, I found my body in a space without air. It was a conference room. A family was being informed that their precious child would likely not survive the night. Family members and the lead physician were seated around a table while the other hospital personnel stood around the walls—nurses, social workers, other physicians, and a lone chaplain. The room was filled with sterility and coldness. White coats, clinical language, and doom. The life in the room was being choked out with every syllable of the offered prognosis. In my soul, I felt helpless. In my spirit, I felt pain—the pain of breaking hearts. Through my experience of Christ at that moment, my body reacted. As the physician spoke, I took timid steps forward, propelled by an embodied belief of accompaniment in pain. In silence, I placed my right hand on the right shoulder of this mother, and I took a deep breath. I had not even introduced myself before this moment, and now I was standing at her back like a sentry. She did not acknowledge my presence or hand, and my mind went on alert. My brain said, “You’ve intruded! Retreat! There’s nothing you can do!” My body would not let me retreat. Hand on shoulder, her choking breath inhaling and exhaling with my helpless breath. For a few moments, while the physician finished, the family asked questions and searched for hope. The mother did not ask any questions. As the meeting broke and the hospital personnel made their way to clear the room for the family to have a few moments alone, I took one final shoulder-touching breath and stepped back towards the wall. As I gathered myself and turned to walk out, planning to return in a few minutes to begin my “official” care of the family, the mother turned around and said, “Whose hand was that?” I met her gaze and lifted my hand. “You . . . helped . . . me breathe. Your hand helped me breathe.” I walked a nightmare with that family that night. My body sensed the apparent path of sharing Christ when my mind was too overwhelmed to know the way.
Although the hoped-for outcomes of chaplaincy practice and explicit evangelism work differ, connections of identity and embodiment can be translated between the two. Part of the reorientation of evangelistic ministry should include expansive definitions of whom we are bringing to the work and how we are offering the work holistically.
If I could return to that temporary Sunday school building, with its hodgepodge of arranged furniture, and meet with Deacon Smith today, I wonder if we might share our stories, bringing our identities and encounters of Christ into each other’s experiences. I think the with-ness of that moment would speak to the gospel. I believe that simply through that sharing of being, we would see Jesus.
Jaclyn Williams is assistant professor of the practice of preaching and chaplaincy. An American Baptist-ordained minister and an Alliance of Baptists-endorsed chaplain, her current research interests include incarnational and embodied preaching, performing artist training as spiritual practice, and resiliency resources in pastoral and spiritual care practice. Additionally, she has worked professionally as an actor and has trained in classical ballet. As a preacher, chaplain, educator, and performing artist, Williams is always curious about what it means to holistically walk out a life of faith in all seasons. This curiosity fuels her time in research, practice, and teaching.
The word “evangelism” sends me back to a building decorated with a hodgepodge of couches, tables, and chairs. The new sanctuary of my childhood church was not yet completed, so the sixth-grade Sunday school class met in a temporary building. Apparently, sixth graders could be trusted to walk across the parking lot, and we felt every bit of that validation of our maturity. On one particular Sunday morning, we had a guest teacher. We’ll call him Deacon Smith. He was not one of the “cool” deacons who looked the other way when he saw us crossing over to the donut shop down the street before Sunday school. He was one of the strict deacons whose voice was always stern and whose presence was intimidating. This particular morning, he had come to tell us that we didn’t love Jesus enough.
Deacon Smith was a member of the street ministry evangelism team. The bulk of his time teaching that morning consisted of him presenting, in his stern voice, a litany of questions about our evangelism activities or lack thereof. He asked us to raise our hands if we prayed at the lunch table, if we asked our friends at school if Jesus was their Lord and Savior, if we were willing to give up our Saturdays to join the evangelism team as they went knocking on doors. No raised hands. Only avoidant eyes and low uncomfortable sighs and laughs. After a few moments of awkward silence, he exhaled and shook his head. “You all just don’t love Jesus enough. And you don’t care if your friends go to hell.” More head shaking and a resolute, helpless shrug of the shoulders. The joy of the boundary-testing glazed donut had faded. The feeling of maturity gained in that walk across the parking lot was a distant memory.
On the surface, I was as indifferent to the weight of this message as my peers. At 11, we were just on the cusp of perfecting our laissez-faire teenage posture. But underneath the surface, I felt its weight. I was gutted.
Deacon Smith was a product of a particular paradigm. The paradigm encompassed societal, cultural, and ecclesial elements. He had been taught that the Great Commandment and the Great Commission are manifest in one way. He had been taught that sharing the good news of Christ was serious and severe business. I wish I could go back to the moment, with the grace of a more mature person, and see his heart amid the sternness. He wanted us to flourish, yet the message he preached made me flounder. I’m sure that my recollection of him is hugely impacted by the emotional and spiritual labor of the moment. Everything was black and white in my faith life then, but a part of me wanted to embrace something grayer. Something less defined was calling to me. Was sharing Christ a one-size-fits-all endeavor? Why did it feel as if my identity as a human being was at odds with this particular way of sharing Christ? At 11 years old, I did not have the holistic bandwidth to tackle these questions.
Gone are the days when I processed my faith based on black-and-white absolutes. I have found a space for a less defined pathway of sharing Christ. Commandment and Commission are foundational. How I define and experience them is much more expansive. This is a manifestation of how the Triune God continues to save. However, the tension remains in the body of Christ and for us creatures as we move through creation. Part of our identities—as human beings and as Christians—wants to tell the story of our salvation without a transactional distortion or agenda. We need pathways of recognition, reconciliation, and redemption to reclaim the heart and release the hurt. So we ask, what can an honest and integrated way of authentically sharing Christ-love look like? My own practice as a chaplain has led me to think about how understanding both identity and embodiment helps us reimagine evangelism in a new way.
I wonder what was at stake for Deacon Smith? Along with the call to Commandment and Commission, there was an identity aspect at work. He was invested and convicted. We can make assumptions about how he had been formed in a particular theology of evangelism. Based on his tone and presentation, we can also assume that the stakes of not enacting this theology in a specific way had consequences in his mind. The stakes were high for him—stakes of kingdom and of sharing identity.
Our encounters with God, faith, and lived theology are convicting. Our experience of Christ shapes us, and our understanding of interpretations of Christ shapes us. Culture also forms us. The Holy Spirit’s wind calls to us. As we vacillate between these influences, the discernment process can feel treacherous to our identity when it is tied to a transactional agenda rather than a sharing of Christ-love. The growing fruit is anemic when stakes and claims are planted in arid soil. The healthy, life-giving cells are too few. Identity begins to fight
for air.
Taking the liberty to speak for myself and the other sixth graders in the room that Sunday morning, we could not articulate our fully realized selves. We could experience the tension of accepting or rejecting Deacon Smith’s proposed action plan, but we did not know how to hold that tension. The stakes were hard to name because our sense of self was being formed. The core of our sharing-identities was being questioned, or so it seemed, and we were left weak. We were left with shame, indifference, and fear in response to another’s conviction. We were consumed by these emotions. Even if we were to charge out the door and take to the streets as radical evangelists with the fervor of Paul, the space created for the theology and practice of evangelism was not sustainable. Shame preaches shame when traveling, unaware, from person to person.
Sharing Christ, vocally and viscerally, is an experiment in creating space and holding space with humility and love. We offer what we have received. We birth what we have nurtured. Humility and love were not what Deacon Smith led with on that Sunday morning. Subsequently, they differed from what we took as we left class that day. This is not a condemnation of Deacon Smith but of how evangelism was taught and practiced.
I’ve been a chaplain for over ten years. Identity work in self-reflection and self-awareness is at the core of chaplaincy training and practice. Chaplains investigate their own stories as a resource in helping others with this kind of investigation.1 Chaplains learn to lean into self-reflection and self-awareness concerning their own life as a “living human document” in order to provide holistic care to others who want and need to do the same.2
Integration is a critical element of chaplaincy work. Chaplains integrate their individual beliefs and value paradigm within a caregiving paradigm that meets the care-receiver where they are and holds that space while engaging in interventions that invite wholeness. The goal is to do this work without an agenda, and we work hard to achieve that goal. Chaplains constantly function in action-reflection-action mode, moving with the moment as spiritual, emotional, and relational needs are assessed.
Evangelism, however, is not a tool in my chaplain tool bag. In fact, it is explicitly prohibited for board-certified chaplains. “Members shall affirm the religious and spiritual freedom of all persons and refrain from imposing doctrinal positions or spiritual practices on persons whom they encounter in their professional role as chaplain.”3 Yet, the presence of a chaplain is inherently a public expression of personal witness. Chaplains come from many different faith and cultural backgrounds. Who I am and what I believe show up in my caregiving practice. It is part of my job to know what I believe. Even though I do not evangelize, I embody Commandment. I hold Commission with an open hand. What does “making a disciple” look like in an expansive definition of teaching, leading, and following a Christ-formed life model?
The purpose of a chaplain’s presence is to embody and enact their beliefs and values, thus creating spaces for others to do the same. Most chaplaincy contexts are pluralistic. Even those that work in a seemingly Christian context—such as education chaplains—cannot count on monolithic expressions of how faith is processed and practiced. The interventions and outcomes of chaplaincy assessment and practice are admittedly not geared toward the “change” of the care-receiver but toward “stabilization” within the circumstance. This does not mean a competent chaplain is merely blown by whatever wind the care situation necessitates. Instead, the chaplain is rooted in their spiritual lineage and life while adapting to the present holistic needs of the care situation. It is the capacity to go deeper into one’s beliefs and values that allows a chaplain to see, hear, and honor the beliefs and values of others. With healthy holistic stakes, this same rooting brings Christ and speaks Christ even when verbal expressions are not the delivery method. As a Christian chaplain, I aim to “be” the gospel and know my role in the present moment.
When words and doctrine seem hollow and even cruel in a crisis, embodied manifestations of grace, mercy, and love represent Christ in a far more profound way. In a moment of crisis, the words often don’t matter. What words can provide comfort when the fragility and vulnerability of life on this side of eternity has imploded upon itself? What are the words that make suffering “okay”? In my experience, my words are not the bridge between breaths seeking healing and hope. My embodied love and discipleship are the bridge. I am there to be with the people amid the crisis. “Being with” is a theological and practical stance. I share Christ through the giving of a cold cup of water, a shared sigh of frustration, an outreached hand, or a shoulder on which to lean. Of course, verbal communication comes into play, but the motivation behind the words is what I have consumed and offered from my beliefs and values. I know that I have been formed by my love of Christ and my life as a follower of Christ. This knowledge rests in my body. It is my body that shows up in the way that I provide care.
Mark 14:22–24 invites us, viscerally, into a message of evangelistic embodiment:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
The bread and wine embody a new covenant of relationship. The act is the message. Paul exhorts us to reenact the message as a way of experiencing the relationship anew, with individual and communal reflection and awareness.4 We hold that space, nurture that space, and act from that space of constant renewal.
In the words of body theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, “A reorientation of Christianity must begin with a rediscovery of the body and its energies.”5 Perhaps the church, as we wrestle with re-engaging evangelism, can be guided by a chaplaincy-influenced embodiment framework of sharing Christ. Chaplains “show up” to the moment of discord and disconnect, having consumed, nurtured, and been formed by their beliefs and values. We not only carry the good news, but we also re-present the good news in tangible and intangible ways. We do our best to do this work with a humility that knows the care-receiver is the one who is shaping the agenda of the encounter. Yet the chaplain’s identity is a part of the witness of how that care is crafted. My chaplaincy practice is shaped by embodiment as an answer to spoken and unspoken questions. Additionally, one cannot help but embrace an embodied way of questioning. Stakes of identity must be acknowledged and reconciled so that one does not operate from a place of anemic self-identity or narrowly defined role-identity.
Some years ago, when I was a very new chaplain, I found my body in a space without air. It was a conference room. A family was being informed that their precious child would likely not survive the night. Family members and the lead physician were seated around a table while the other hospital personnel stood around the walls—nurses, social workers, other physicians, and a lone chaplain. The room was filled with sterility and coldness. White coats, clinical language, and doom. The life in the room was being choked out with every syllable of the offered prognosis. In my soul, I felt helpless. In my spirit, I felt pain—the pain of breaking hearts. Through my experience of Christ at that moment, my body reacted. As the physician spoke, I took timid steps forward, propelled by an embodied belief of accompaniment in pain. In silence, I placed my right hand on the right shoulder of this mother, and I took a deep breath. I had not even introduced myself before this moment, and now I was standing at her back like a sentry. She did not acknowledge my presence or hand, and my mind went on alert. My brain said, “You’ve intruded! Retreat! There’s nothing you can do!” My body would not let me retreat. Hand on shoulder, her choking breath inhaling and exhaling with my helpless breath. For a few moments, while the physician finished, the family asked questions and searched for hope. The mother did not ask any questions. As the meeting broke and the hospital personnel made their way to clear the room for the family to have a few moments alone, I took one final shoulder-touching breath and stepped back towards the wall. As I gathered myself and turned to walk out, planning to return in a few minutes to begin my “official” care of the family, the mother turned around and said, “Whose hand was that?” I met her gaze and lifted my hand. “You . . . helped . . . me breathe. Your hand helped me breathe.” I walked a nightmare with that family that night. My body sensed the apparent path of sharing Christ when my mind was too overwhelmed to know the way.
Although the hoped-for outcomes of chaplaincy practice and explicit evangelism work differ, connections of identity and embodiment can be translated between the two. Part of the reorientation of evangelistic ministry should include expansive definitions of whom we are bringing to the work and how we are offering the work holistically.
If I could return to that temporary Sunday school building, with its hodgepodge of arranged furniture, and meet with Deacon Smith today, I wonder if we might share our stories, bringing our identities and encounters of Christ into each other’s experiences. I think the with-ness of that moment would speak to the gospel. I believe that simply through that sharing of being, we would see Jesus.
Jaclyn Williams is assistant professor of the practice of preaching and chaplaincy. An American Baptist-ordained minister and an Alliance of Baptists-endorsed chaplain, her current research interests include incarnational and embodied preaching, performing artist training as spiritual practice, and resiliency resources in pastoral and spiritual care practice. Additionally, she has worked professionally as an actor and has trained in classical ballet. As a preacher, chaplain, educator, and performing artist, Williams is always curious about what it means to holistically walk out a life of faith in all seasons. This curiosity fuels her time in research, practice, and teaching.
Kirsteen Kim, Paul E. Pierson Chair in World Christianity, shares about the shifting landscape of world Christianity and missiology in the 21st century.
