Necessity Is Laid on Me: The Birth of Mission in Paul (Theology Studies) (Speech‪)‬

I am honored to be a speaker in the Hein Fry lectures this year, since evangelism has stepped front and center in the life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. On May 9, 2003, Bishop Mark Hanson sent an e-mail titled "Reflections on Evangelism" to clergy in the ELCA in preparation for the August churchwide assembly. That assembly adopted "Evangelism Strategy: Sharing Faith in a New Century: A Vision of Evangelism in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." (1) The Hein Fry lectures this year are related to this stress on evangelism. The committee asked David Tiede and me to identify especially promising scriptural foundations on which a Lutheran theology and practice of evangelism might be constructed and/or to discuss "the biblical basis for evangelism." I will be spending most of my time in the first, not the twenty-first, century. Although I will make a few comments about the relation of the first century to our own, I leave it to the respondents (and now, the readers) to think through implications for evangelism now.