Dialogue or Evangelism with Muslims: a simple trade?

There is a mini fuss kicking off about the place of evangelism amongst Muslims. Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has spoken out about the need to have a strategy for evangelism to Muslims and suggested that the church has been far too diffident in that direction. His comments have provoked a fellow bishop to warn that evangelism "contributes nothing to our communities". What do you think?

Stay with me with this thread while I make my point; whatever you do, don't duck out too early for fear of misunderstanding me! Now I'm someone who normally gets a little jittery when Michael Nazir-Ali starts talking about Muslims...but he has got a point. Is the church a little like liberal newspapers that will gladly have a pop at other religions, but never satirise Muslims for fear of a backlash? There's not much integrity and courage there. And what kind of one-dimensional dialogue and community relations are established when a major dimension of our identity (and this is a mutual identity!) is the injunction to proclaim our faith to the other?

For me it is a no-brainer that we need to embrace evangelism and continue to think through our proclamation to all faiths and none. It's also a no-brainer that we should be thinking through strategies for dialogue and good community relations, though. The more pressing questions relate to the issue of what kind of dialogue and what kind of evangelism?

So, I'll applaud Michael Nazir-Ali, but add a vital qualification. If the Bishop of Rochester wants to resource an influx of folk bearing tracts and standing on podiums doing anti-qur'anic polemics into areas like mine (Muslim-majority) then I will agree to disagree. If he's talking about resourcing church communities that can confidently love and serve their Muslim neighbours unconditionally while unashamedly explaining the hope they have in Jesus, then I'm with him 100%. If the Bishop of Hulme's concern to see good community relations is about smoothing church-mosque relations so issues like apostasy in Islam are never broached and doctrinal differences overlooked in favour of focussing on shared beliefs alone, then I'm not interested. But if his vision of dialogue helps churches and Muslims to disagree and still be friends then I'm up for that.

The thing is, we don't need traditional evangelism or traditional dialogue: we need dialogue that includes the sharing of faith and evangelism that is prepared to listen.

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[JAMES SASSE]

WEB SITE; GODWHOISGOD.COM IS A GOSPEL TRACT IN OVER 50 LANGUAGES FOR EVANGELISM TO MUSLIMS, HINDUS AND SIKHS FOR JESUS CHRIST. THANKYOU. JAMES AND HAMSA.