The Mystic Way of Evangelism (Essay Sample)

Name:
Professor:
Course:
Date:
The Mystic Way of Evangelism
The Church is in the shadowy darkness of the soul making it lose its say in prophecy- its efficiency in the decree regarding the good news of redemption. In the recent past, there are deeper indicators of the vitality loss all over the world. The church has accommodated individualism, consumerism as well as competitiveness regarding the postmodern culture that is pervasive. This encompasses the lavish lifestyle of the preachers of opulence gospel, the ubiquitous and the pseudo evangelistic as the church focuses more on the Christian, who are more centered on having a better deal (Heath 25). The ineffectuality is seen by the renewal- intellect pastors chosen to dysfunctional worshippers, where they experience cruelty as well as contempt. Evangelism refers to the holistic start of individuals to the God’s reign as revealed in Jesus Christ. It is fundamentally relational, the love of neighbor outcome, for to holistically share the love of God is to love your neighbor (Heath 26). The valid Christian community is the proper context of evangelism, whereby the loving community expression is the utmost apologetic regarding the gospel. In the Church today, the Christian tradition mystics have vital insight, light as well as understanding to share. Indeed, the shared wisdom offers a different vision of going to church as well as outreach. The mysticism of the Christians involves the holy transformation of God’s mystic so that mystic becomes important regarding the holy transformation as well as redemption of the people of God. The suggestion that mysticism is confidential as well as removed from the world of ministry that is rugged is not true as it is perceived (Heath 28).
EXAMINATION OF THE CHURCH BY THREEFOLD TRAIL FAMILIAR TO MYSTICAL THOUGHT
A threefold trail familiar to mystical thought has been developed to examine today’s Church. It includes the Purgation, Illumination, and Union. Purgation is represented as "into the night," essentially an evaluation of today’s Church (Heath 30). This means that the Church has fallen into both numerical as well as divine torpor, moral irrelevance when compared to the normal cultural perspective of the Church of God. More expressly, the decline is indeed initiated divinely, meant to foster impatience amid formulaic religious conviction as well as instigate a deeper desire for a direct as well as the real encounter with God. Illumination looks into mystical wisdom in numerous ways: as the beacon pointing the way to love as the gospel heart; as the kenosis message that promises to free the Church from its numerous idolatries; as well as an assessment of consumerism that ultimately equip the Church in addressing the deep environmental predicament facing people today. Union helps in understanding how the church in the urban can reinvent itself along contemplative lives, among bi-vocational pastors, a reflective rather than the theology of juridical narrative (Heath 31).
DRYNESS AND FRUITLESSNESS
In America, the decline of mainline Churches, with a staggering loss of membership, the closing of churches, as well as a graying and dwindling of the flock has been underway for a long period. The prevalent failure to evangelize younger generations is seen in the rising age of clergy. The evangelicals think that with the growth of mega churches, the decline of the Church in America is limited to the mainline (Heath 33). There is a religious dryness as well as a flailing regarding looking for something satisfying the dryness in today’s Church. This is seen as a process by which the Church uses to de-idolize majority of its structures, buildings, customs as well as suppositions to get focus and come back to God. Through this, people can realize the mistake of pointing the finger to the moon rather than the moon itself. There is a belief that religion is simulacra, a representation in which the realism behind doesn’t no longer exist. There is also a reality in the assertion that people have built as well as worshiped hyped simulacra that need the stripping. Heath argues that the decline in the Church can be related to the heading of Israel into exile, the stripping away of statues, even the sanctuary worship itself, so that God’s people can realize again "I only am the ALMIGHT GOD"(34). Through this combined shadowy darkness of the soul, the mystics that have existed before use contain illumination that heralds a new dawn.
LOSS OF DESIRE
There is an increasing spiritual desert, in the night of increasing aridity. In all the ways worked to ensure that individuals join the Church, we realize that realize that the aim was to gain enough money to enable us pay the utility bills we incur. We go through the labels to define our own and other religious identity including the fundamentalist, saved, Pentecostal, Orthodox, Conservative, and Bible-believing. We then ask ourselves if this is what is meant by the term Church. We look around, grief-stricken as well as stunned at our significance. It is like the familiar religious furniture was put together into a great moving lorry and carried to a far country, but none of it fits into the new house, and the old house has been torn down and we are now foreigners staying in the world that we don’t know. This makes us ask ourselves why nothing is working anymore making us lose the desire to try (Heath 36). The unutterable weariness facilitates for some people, lay as well as the clergy, a disillusioned movement from the Church making them simply work away. Most of them do move for greener pastures, hoping the Church with the Anglican liturgy, or the Church with the praise band, or the Church with a better children’s program will fill the longing. For others, this giving up of what used to be is the start of a long bitterness, a grim campaign to stay in the Church but resist all things new, the thoughts, dreams, as well as plans for revitalization, all based on change. For some pilgrims hope still sparkles, though indistinctly, calling forth yearning for love as well as the community, for the spiritual life. Getting there remains the hidden mystery in the obscurity of loss. What is not obscure at this time, what is entirely clear to this weary but still hopeful pilgrims majority of the Church elements that seemed essential were mere fingers pointing to the moon. Heath argues that what a Church needed to be a Church as well as to be evangelistic, it seemed, were the organ, the praise choruses, wafers, the stained glass windows as well as little cups instead of intinction for communication, the bulletin, the altar rail, the women’s missionary society, the donor plaques fastened to every piece of furniture in the building, the hand bell choir, the youth lock-ins, the committees, the mother-daughter banquets, the vestments and stoles as well as the projector and the screen (38).
They were fingers that somehow became the moon. This is the second sign of the night: the striving, the flailing as well as the eventual loss of desire for what used to bring satisfaction; the relinquishment of old furniture along with the old house as well as the old country. This detachment is bound to the third sign in the night, which is unremitting longing for the God's presence in the heart of so much loss. The readiness for the God prepared through t...