Evangelization and Christian Unity

If you live and work in religious circles, you've probably read your share of books about evangelization.  Perhaps you've even been to a conference or two.  For some, you take this word to mean sharing your faith or your "spiritual story" with others.  For others, you might understand evangelization in its broader context, the dynamic and correlational interplay between revelation and culture, between gospel and the world.

What probably hasn't made the latest "top ten" list for evangelization, one we certainly might not expect, has to do with another word we should be familiar with - ecumenism.  Drawn originally from the Greek word oikoumene which means "the whole inhabited world", Christian ecumenism seeks and promotes unity among the world's Christian churches.  One of Jesus' final prayers is powerfully ecumenical, "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have love me" (Jn 17:23).  Here Jesus presents Christian unity as a central concern of God's heart, "that all of them may be one" just as Jesus is one with the Father.

Yet what is equally compelling about Jesus' prayer is that evangelization is intimately related to the unity of the Body of Christ.  The missional upshot of Christian unity is that the world may believe in the essential message of the church, that in Christ Jesus we find salvation and eternal life.  Jesus does not pray that we hone our testimonies or sharpen our preaching (as important as those things are).  Of all the things that Jesus could have prayed about in his final hours he chose to exhort the budding church to overcome their differences, forgive their trespasses, and live in unity with one another.  This will let the world know that Jesus is truly the Son of God, sent by the Father to proclaim the loving message of the kingdom.

What does this mean for the mission of Young Life today?  What does it mean for our efforts to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith?  It means that faithful obedience to the Great Commission assumes that we "go and make disciples of all nations" as one body and in one Spirit.  The Apostle Paul calls us to "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph 4:5).  In his first letter to the Corinthians, he proclaims famously that "though all its parts are many, they form one body" (1 Cor 12:12).  In other words, our commitment to evangelization must be grounded in our commitment to Christian unity.

The Catholic Church understands ecumenism as one of its most precious callings.  "The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council" (Decree on Ecumenism, 1).  Gone are the days that Catholics and Protestants question the legitimacy of one another's rightful claim as sons and daughters of God.  The Council proclaimed boldly that "all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ's body, and have a right to be called a Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers [and sisters] by the children of the Catholic Church" (Decree on Ecumenism, 3).

Our deepest identity, Protestants and Catholics alike, is that we are sons and daughters of God, made in God's image to reflect to the world God's saving message of love and beauty in Christ.   We are, truly, one body in Christ.  If we wish to honor the heartfelt prayers of Jesus our Lord, if we have any hope for evangelization in the world, we might start by "becoming who we are" - one body of the one Lord.  The world of adolescents and adults alike will know that Jesus is among us when they witness Protestants and Catholics, Evangelicals and Anglicans, conservatives and progressives, united in faith, hope and love to the glory of God the Father.