There have been times in the history of the church when baptism and discipleship were forced on anyone who happened to live within the Parish districts of Church run countries. Anyone who did not submit to baptism would be excluded from the life and the economy of the Parish and at times such dissidents were punished physically as well, and even killed. Of course, after the Protestant Reformation, the church has taken a more enlightened approach to the discipling of the nations. We got it figured out that you can't really make anyone become a Christian, you've got to let them decide for themselves. And so we went into the world, by the droves, to preach the gospel to everybody we could manage to reach, in order to persuade them to be baptized and to become disciples of Jesus. Sometimes we threw in a few goodies to help the pagans make up their minds, some trinkets, some sweets, a school or a hospital. Now schools and hospitals are very good things of course; but by and large they were our schools and our hospitals. Even today, Christian missions own all kinds of properties throughout the world, properties which are not only owned but also operated by missionaries who report to Rome or to London or to Toronto and that's where all the decisions are made. That is of course the most efficient way to run a global organization, be it General Motors or Nestles or Imperial Oil or the Church of Jesus Christ. When I went to live in rural Kenya with my family in 1978, we lived in a house built by local Kenyans, in a church compound run by local Kenyans. We did our work under the direction of local Kenyans. That was some 20 years ago, and at time we were an anomaly. Such arrangements are still relatively rare in today's missionary world, although it is becoming more common; and it must become more common. Christians have to keep on changing the way we do our work in the world. We have to keep on changing our evangelism.

The word "evangelism" means to draw attention to the gospel. ("Evangel" is another word for "gospel.") Some say that evangelism means spreading the gospel (as if the gospel can be spread across the world like peanut butter on a sandwich.) But this is impossible. I have been an evangelist for 25 years and I believe very firmly that the gospel cannot be spread; the gospel can only be discovered. Jesus said that the reign of God could not be imposed on people from the outside, but that it exists within and among people. It can be brought out from within a person or a community. It can be encouraged to blossom and grow. But it cannot be brought in from the outside or imposed on people. Of course the same goes for any process of learning or personal development. Any good teacher will tell you that learning is a student's process of discovering knowledge. Unless that process is taking place, the student learns nothing. The teacher can try cramming knowledge into the student, but this simply does not work. The same thing goes for the gospel. Unless a person is actively involved in discovering what the gospel is all about, no amount of preaching it at them or spreading it over them will do any good. Believe me, I've tried that approach. Even this preaching that I do every Sunday has little effect. Can anybody here remember what I said in my sermon last week? It is only when I happen to touch on something that a listener is already struggling with, or already trying to figure out, that a gospel insight might be discovered.

Christian evangelism, Christian mission and ministry can best be done with the attitude of going to discover something. We gather in community, we discern our gifts and resources (we acknowledge that everyone has resources) and then we see what comes out of the pooling of our resources; we allow the gospel to emerge. Gospel happens when teachers realize that they have learned just as much and maybe more than their students. Gospel happens when a pastoral visitor realizes that they themselves have been blessed as much or more than the person they were visiting in the hospital. Gospel happens when the mission worker realizes that the Reign of God is blossoming in the place where they are working not so much because of, but much more so in spite of whatever they did in that place to deliver their religious goods. Now let me be quick to say that this doesn't mean we should not do the work of mission. Of course we should; if only to share the wealth that God has given to us. But when we do the work of mission we must do that work with great humility and utmost respect for the ones we are serving, and a readiness to learn, and an openness to discovering a gospel that we still need to learn ourselves.

When the Risen Christ told the disciples to go out into the world, that simply could not have been a mandate to create a Christian Empire. Nothing that Jesus ever taught and did shows that he wanted to build an Empire. Quite the opposite, Jesus constantly warned the disciples not to fall into that trap. Rather than being a Christian Empire, they were to be a servant church. Now I know that every institution is a bit of an empire in its own right, but I believe that we in the United Church work very hard at keeping our imperialism at bay. In our mission work, we have not gone to create clones of ourselves in foreign countries. We have tried not to assume that our interpretation is the only right way to understand the faith. We try to apologize when it is evident that people have been hurt by our institutional prowess. We truly believe that our partners in mission have as much or more to offer us as we have to offer them. And it is with these attitudes that we do our work here in Canada and around the world. Does this mean that we don't try to turn people into Christians or convert them to Christianity? Actually, it is not within our power to convert people. What is within our power is the exercise of our own faithfulness. And if we are faithful followers of Jesus, we will live with others in such a way that the gospel and the spirit of Jesus will work through our relationships. That work of the Spirit may well encourage others to live a new faithfulness also, and perhaps that faithfulness will lead them to call themselves Christian. But that should not be the motivation that takes us into relationship with another person. Our motivation should rest solely on our desire to treat the other according to our faithfulness, to treat them as Jesus would treat them.

I am a supporter of the United Church's Mission and Service Fund because we use that Fund to do mission in the world around us in keeping with the principles that I have reviewed today. One of the major issues in global justice is the distribution of wealth around the world. In the Northern Hemisphere of our world, which is the wealthy part of the world, people like ourselves who believe that the gospel calls for equity in the sharing of the earth's resources, have always tried to find ways to get wealthy from the North to the South. Normally we have tried to do this by giving our money and our time away to the people of the South. I have given a substantial part of my ministry in that effort and many of you have given of your money. In the last 25 years or so, we have discovered that one incredibly effective way to do global mission and to keep the money in the south, is through investment. That is what is done by the international Christian co-operative known as Oikocredit The United Church of Canada is one of 253 members of Oikocredit. And here in Ontario we have a support association of individuals and congregations which is another of those members. That support association is holding its annual meeting at Erin Mills United Church today.