Customer Reviews

Mystic Way of Evangelism, The: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

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This fall I had the opportunity to travel to Fayetteville, AR with my wife. While there she attended a conference while I worked on school related projects. She had a tremendous week. One of the first sessions she attended featured Elaine A. Heath, who is the McCreless Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, SMU. She was excited about what she had heard, and believed much of the presentation would resonate with me. Dr. Heath had recently published a book which contained some of the insights she shared at the conference entitled The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach. The next week I ordered the book from Amazon.com. When someone speaks to me with enthusiasm about a book, an author, or an idea, I'm usually quick to pounce. In this case I'm glad I did.

Heath's title is telling and reveals the nature of her project, which to some may appear enigmatic. What does the life of the mystic have to do with the life of the evangelist? Can the deep, inner, contemplative life yield fruit for sharing the gospel and bringing people to Christian faith? For Heath the answer is a resounding yes. After recounting her first exposure to Christian evangelism Heath astutely observes, "there is a striking absence in most contemporary discussions of evangelism of the wisdom of the great spiritual giants...to shape and lead our understanding of the theory and practice of evangelism."

Heath structures her book by utilizing the threefold contemplative path: purgation, illumination, and union. First, Heath claims that the church in American is experiencing "a dark night of the soul" and proceeds to describe the "dryness and fruitlessness" experienced by many churches, the "flailing, the striving, and the...loss of desire" present in the life of some leaders, and the emergence of a deep and holy longing for God which brings with it a new day. Heath describes the current malaise present in the church of today as a time of refinement and preparation for what God might bring about tomorrow. Heath states, "the church in America is in transition, with Christendom fading into memory and the religious accretions of the world, the flesh, and the devil, increasingly apparent for what they are...We are ready for a different way to think about our vocation as the church. It is time for us to discover a contemplative vision for evangelism."

In part 2 (Illumination) Heath examines five major themes of the contemplative life and exalts two major examples per theme to bring life to her argument. Heath discusses the experience of God's love (Julian of Norwich and Hans Ur von Balthasar), holiness exhibited in lives reflective of eucharist (Phoebe Palmer and Father Arseny), the discovery of home/identity in God (Thomas R. Kelly and Henri Nouwen), the church's collective need to confess her sins (Julia Foote and Mechthild of Magdeburg), and the healing of the earth (St. Bonaventure and John Woolman). Each chapter utilizes these biographical examples well, allowing the content of each individual's life inform the contemplative life of the church today. Heath also helps us remember both women and men who can be heralded as saints and followed as examples.

In part 3 (Union) Heath utilizes the fictional account of Sam, a divorcee and parent of a teenage daughter, who comes in contact with a church embodying the contemplative life Heath is proposing. Heath's chapter titles, "A Hermeneutic of Love," "Giving Ourselves Away," "Homing Prayer," "New Tongues of Fire," and "Your Will Be Done on Earth" are in themselves revealing, and each chapter tells how Sam learns of God's nature, the Christian life of service, prayer, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and what the Christian life has to do with the here and now.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to church leaders and mature Christians interested in evangelism. Heath's approach is uncommon. She goes beyond a way of packaging and presenting the Christian faith and instead calls the church to become holy, believing that the very life of the community has the power to draw and witness to the truth of the gospel. Her argument acknowledges that the good news about Jesus does indeed have content, but couples the importance of the message with the integrity of the life the church leads. Her emphasis on holiness and purity of character as primary is what I find so refreshing and increasingly vital for the church as she seeks to find her way.

Helpful for the lay person as well as the Christian leader, this book offers a substantive response to the decline of churches in the United States. Elaine Heath skillfully uses narrative theology as a window to the postmodern church, and it reminds me of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. In parallel, her clear and compelling exploration of Christian mysticism reconnects us to spiritual fathers and mothers like St. Francis, Julian of Norwich, John Wesley, Phoebe Palmer and Henri Nouwen. A source of hope and vision for churches everywhere, this book supports the Christian mission to the postmodern world, bringing good news of the kingdom of God.

More than any ther book I have read in the last several years, this one has helped me grow moe into a biblical minister. "Mystic Way" will help you develop beyond traditional ministry and into a transformative ministry powered more by God than by "success" and corporate models. A must read for ministers, vocational or not!

This book despite its faddish appearance with all things "catholic/orthodox" of the emerging church - is really a substantial read in evangelism/outreach and even spiritual formation.
The premise is that ontology precedes action - or being before doing. That as we engage in prayer as connecting with God we will become the kinds of people that "act."
The chapters on Balthazar dealing with love really frame the book. So often our evangelism is based on a hermeneutic of judgment i.e. the "culture" wars and we expect to do evangelism as such - when the we need to acquire what she calls a hermeneutic of love which has its basis in the Triune love of God. As we connect to God in prayer we acquire the "love" - real love to really reach others with the good news of the gospel. Whereas at places she seems to follow the Emergent(tm) party line of pseudo-social gospel - overall her book brings out many salient points. Highly recommended.

This book was recommended by someone who reads a lot, so I felt like this was going to be a worthy read. Maybe the expectations were too high, but instead of feeling that this book was transformational, it was just another book on evangelism. Now it was an interesting book. It was full of wonderful stories about the mystics of earlier days. Some of these lives and stories are amazing. These individuals sacrificed a lot in the name of God. Sometimes these expressions of services were odd, but you must respect the heart that desired these actions. The book focuses more on the character or ethic of Christian people than the approach. The author writes much on love and holiness as the means of attraction for unchristian people. She does this through a story about a certain man's journey into the church. Some of this story is reactionary as it seems to pit the old style churches against newer (perhaps) emergent churches. I think sometimes she goes too far in criticizing the churches of the past and exalting the churches of today. It almost seems that she feels that a conservative church cannot be loving and accepting. I am not sure this is the case as I have been in numerous conservative churches (all of Christ), and these congregations were loving. Maybe this book was not as radical for me because I have been spending much time on these issues and this approach, maybe the book was a little too emergent for me, or maybe I just expected too much. The book did have some excellent points, and some great insight, so it is worth a read, but maybe not a preeminent position on the bookshelf.