I’m not sure whether Andrew is saying something new in his comments on evangelism, or whether he is restating something that has always been true: that ‘evangelism’ has always had a spiritual element (the inner change of people) and a practical element - in works of compassion: ‘doing good to all people’.

What seems to me to be true is that a new emphasis is being given here: on God’s corporate plans (instead of an individualistic focus), God’s plans for His people on this earth (instead of a focus on the life after death), and God’s plans for His people as part of an on-going narrative (instead of subscribing to this or that particular doctrinal package). None of these emphases should (it seems to me) deny the importance of the individual or the afterlife in evangelism, or even orthodox belief.

The emphasis on this earth seems to me to pick up on Isaiah’s vision of the future kingdom of God, which was reflected in Jesus’s practice (eg Isaiah 35:5-6/Matthew 11:4-6). If we are talking about the kingdom of God, we are looking at a phenomenon which has a distinctly earthward flow and direction - even if what we can experience in the ‘now’ will only be partial - a ‘downpayment of what is to come’. The scope of the kingdom is beyond the formation of God’s people, or the church. It takes in the whole earth - as it is now, and as it will be in the future.

If there is a problem with evangelism, it is not in the word itself - which contains the essence of the gospel as ‘good news’, but the associations it has acquired through attitudes (intolerance, maybe arrogance), practice, and theology (especially when contrasting ‘modern’ with ‘postmodern’ approaches), in which its scope is restricted to the individual, the ‘church’ is perceived through very particular sociological lenses, and a person’s spiritual experience of God is separated from the rest of the world. I don’t think Jesus would have recognised these sorts of distinctions. When I am sharing ‘the good news’ with a person, I want first to emphasise God’s unconditional love for them, and then to emphasise how Christ can change their lives on a personal basis. But I would also like to emphasise how that change is to become part of a people living in a new community, whose aim is to bring blessing to the entire world through a rainbow-coloured spectrum of means. The manifold wisdom of God, if you like (Ephesians 3:10 - where the ‘heavenly authorities’ are the counterpart of ‘earthly authorities’ - two sides of the same coin).