The Mystic Way of Evangelism Quotes

“The church in the night is being called to own and renounce its threefold syncretistic attachment to sexism, racism, and classism. These attachments have wounded the church and have caused the church to wound the world for far too long. Painful self-reflection, repentance, and much theological work are needed to retrieve the egalitarian ethos of the gospel. As the church is healed from this damaging threefold wound, it will regain the moral authority it needs to speak to a world hurtling toward chaos. Delivered of its demonic attachment to oppressive power, the church will find its God-given conscience toward all living things that have suffered under the centripetal force of domination. The earth and all its creatures will once again become primary foci of the good news, that God is redeeming not just fallen humans but the whole of creation.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“Holiness is a Godward posture, a complete belonging to God, a full commitment to the reign of God in this world, being set apart. Yet holiness is not a denial of one’s own humanity. Nor is holiness a matter of “purifying” oneself by removing oneself from the muck and mire of actual life. On the contrary, the holy life is one that is fully engaged in this world in the name and power of Jesus Christ. As the lives of so many great saints and mystics demonstrate, the more one advances in the way of holiness, the more one must wrestle with “powers and principalities,” for the same evil that opposed Jesus opposes those who live in the power of his name. Suffering of all kinds seems to mark the paths of many of the great saints and mystics, through illness, rejection at the hands of loved ones, persecution, and loss. But the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. It is precisely in the midst of such adversity that these holy ones become testaments of divine love.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“When we believe in and experience love as God’s meaning, love becomes our meaning, for we become like the God we worship.68 When love becomes our meaning, the ramifications for evangelism are immense. We are cleansed of legalism, judgmentalism, coercion, and exploitation. We are liberated so that we can now see the “total fact” of others, which is so much more than their guilt and sin, or their wounds. This is not a sentimental, soft love. It is a tungsten power that respects others, says “no” to injustice, and unflinchingly involves itself in the muck and mire of broken lives. We can love in this way only because God first loves us.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“Christian mysticism is about the holy transformation of the mystic by God, so that the mystic becomes instrumental in the holy transformation of God’s people. This transformation always results in missional action in the world. The idea that mysticism is private and removed from the rugged world of ministry is simply false. All the Old Testament prophets were mystics. Their visions, dreams, and other experiences of God were for the express purpose of calling God’s people back to their missional vocation.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“Evangelism is intrinsically relational, the outcome of love of neighbor, for to love our neighbor is to share the love of God holistically. The proper context for evangelism is authentic Christian community, where the expression of loving community is the greatest apologetic for the gospel. Holiness—being given to God and God’s mission in this world—is a way of life that is expressly concerned with evangelism.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“Excess wealth leads to power, Woolman says, which tends to lead to the abuse of power, which ultimately leads to war.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The early Methodist societies were in many ways semimonastic communities for ordinary lay people. The emphasis was on holiness of heart and life, a combination of personal piety and social activism, which was essentially a posture of kenosis. Methodism became the largest Christian movement in North America by the mid-nineteenth century because of the power of its class and band meetings to form Christian disciples. Class and band leaders were unpaid laity. Many holiness Methodists were unpaid lay leaders whose social justice advocacy reformed American culture. Palmer, for example, never received payment for her ministry, not even for travel expenses. This was a historic Methodist model of kenosis.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The hermeneutic of love is grounded in the belief that Jesus really does live in the people around us, that Jesus thirsts in our actual neighbors. Jesus is bound with eternal love to every person I encounter. This is the starting point. When I see people that way, everything changes. How I evangelize changes. My ecclesiology changes. Now I see people already being called by the Holy Spirit, already being loved and known by Jesus before I ever meet them. Now I understand that prayer and friendship are the foundation for my relationships with others, in the name of Jesus.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“What if we looked at our world as Julian learned to, “with pity and not with blame”? What if we heard God’s call to evangelize out of love instead of fear, hope instead of judgment? What if we saw sin for the complex mixture it is, grounded in wounds and unmet needs? What if we automatically tried to see the “total fact” of others? In short, what would it mean to read our world with a hermeneutic of love?”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The unholy alliance of science, technology, and industry has given birth to monstrous offspring that threaten the very future of the planet. From factory farming to the harvesting of human eggs, commodified science and technology comes with a utilitarian ethic. Life is cheap. Forests, animals, and people are raw materials. Everyone and everything is expendable.50 Whatever brings the greatest profit is worth the violence. God is calling the church in the night to retrieve the meaning of stewardship first and foremost as caring for the earth.51 Evangelism is not good news until it is good news for all of creation, for humanity, animals, plants, water, and soil, for the earth that God created and called good.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“To labour for an establishment in divine love where the mind is disentangled from the power of darkness is the great business of man’s life.”39 Left to our own devices, we are sinfully given to hoarding up wealth for ourselves and our descendants. If we used our resources with “pure wisdom” according to the will of God, Woolman writes, there would be enough to go around for everyone. The gospel, when truly lived, is enough.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The primary business of Christians, according to Woolman, is to “turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love.” Since the Creator’s will is to watch over all creation with love and mercy, the more holy one becomes, the more one will exercise the gracious love of God for creation.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The Christian’s vocation, according to Woolman, is to liberate people, animals, and the earth from oppression in whatever form it presents itself. “To labour for a perfect redemption from this spirit of oppression is the greatest business of the whole family of Christ Jesus in this world.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The nineteenth-century impetus for the right of women to preach and other women’s rights came in large part from holiness pneu-matology, such as that of Phoebe Palmer and Julia Foote. The argument for gender and racial equality came from a careful reading and critical exegesis of Scripture. Since the Holy Spirit had been given to all people, with Acts 2 describing sons and daughters, old and young alike receiving gifts for public ministry, all people were equally worthy in the eyes of God. The Holy Spirit, not men and not religious institutions, determines the distribution of spiritual gifts.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The church is harassed and helpless, in need of pastors who will live and move and have their being in what Kelly called the Infinite Center.43 But the pastor is often the most torn-to-pieces of all, frenetic, striving, trying to be all things to all people, timidly avoiding conflict or angrily stirring it up, restless and unhappy, living a surface life. Many pastors have told me they rarely ever pray. There simply isn’t time, they say, their eyes betraying the hunger of their souls. Their inner world is one that Kelly called a “whole committee of selves,” each clamoring for its own mutinous demands.44 The one thing necessary is a Divine Center, calling the scattered self into an integrated whole.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“Now more than ever, when so many pastors measure their success in numbers, buildings, and budgets, the church is starving for holy leadership. This kind of holiness offers a witness that doctrinal arguments will never provide. It is an evangelistic beacon that exposes, judges, and rejects all the false, exploitive, and manipulative forms of evangelism that have blighted the name of God’s church. Holiness of heart and life is the language that proclaims the good news to every culture in all times.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“Balthasar describes the life of discipleship as one of walking toward the eschaton, which “always involves taking along the world. Christ himself walked only in communion with others.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“The dark night brings about a necessary detachment so that God’s people may freely love all things in and through the love of God rather than in and of themselves. Religious activities, rituals, and practices especially are cleansed so that they are now, in the oft-quoted imagery of Thomas Merton, fingers pointing to the moon and no longer mistaken for the moon itself. The fruit of the night is about the transformation of relationships into expressions of love of God and neighbor, and love of self for the sake of God.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“But the history of God’s people is a history of life cycles, a history of clarity about call and identity, followed by complacence, followed by collusion with the powers, followed by catastrophic loss. Contrary to being a disaster, the exilic experiences of loss and marginalization are what are needed to restore the church to its evangelistic place. On the margins of society the church will once again find its God-given voice to speak to the dominant culture in subversive ways, resisting the powers and principalities, standing against the seduction of the status quo. The church will once again become a prophetic, evangelistic, alternative community, offering to the world a model of life that is radically “other,” life-giving, loving, healing, liberating. This kind of community is not possible for the church of Christendom.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach

“But what about mysticism and ecstatic experiences? The word “ecstasy” comes from the Greek word ekstasis, which means to go out from (ek) a standing or “static” position (stasis). Authentic Christian ecstatic experiences are God-initiated movements of the Holy Spirit that lead Christians beyond themselves to greater identification with God and God’s mission in the world. Genuine ecstatic experiences always propel the Christian (and the church) into mission.”
― Elaine A. Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach