After years of speaking, writing, and personally practicing evangelization, I am moving on. I’ve come to the conclusion that evangelization doesn’t work any longer in a postmodern age. I have officially retired from evangelization.
But, I’ve found a second career. It’s in “immanuelization”. In reality, it’s evangelization (just in case you were beginning to write a nasty response and declare me a heretic!). Immanuelization is a form of evangelization that speaks to the postmodern age.
The name Immanuel means “God with us”. The prophet Isaiah prophesied the birth of Jesus when he announced, the virgin will be with child and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14). In order to reach us, Jesus became God’s real presence on the earth.
Similarly, if we hope to reach the present generation, we, too, must “immanuelize” by being God’s presence to our world. This is not a new concept. The Apostle Paul described the church as the body of Christ. In other words, after Jesus ascended back into heaven, we were called to be Jesus’ presence in the world.
Immauelization means that as individuals and as parish communities, we’ve got to start looking a lot more like Jesus. Propositional or universal statements of truth do not persuade postmoderns. The title “body of Christ” or “the one, holy, catholic church’ means nothing if their lived experience of us says something very different. We can’t just talk about God’s love—we’ve got to be God’s love. We have to trade in our tendencies towards blasting out disembodied truths to incarnating the presence and message of Jesus. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being real.
Immauelization means we speak with our presence. It means that we live up to our billing. Jesus said the world will know us because of our compelling lives of love. (John 13:35). It means taking on the character of Christ by exemplifying the fruits of the Spirit in all our dealings with others (Galatians 5:22,23). In other words, our presence is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
The call to immanuelization is a call to being. It begins with the immanuelizer. It’s a call to real discipleship. It’s a call to forming real communities of disciples.
Roy Petitfiils
June 11, 2010
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June 11, 2010
Kevin Driscoll
June 24, 2010
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June 24, 2010
Pat Villa
June 29, 2010
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June 30, 2010
Redefining Evangelization
October 26, 2010