Evangelism Project
From Ikon
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Upcoming
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About the Evangelism Project
An analysis of human interaction over history teaches us that there are two dangerous temptations each of us face when confronted by a stranger, i.e. by one who thinks and acts in a way that is foreign to our cultural or religious practices. The first is a desire to transform that stranger into our own image, endeavouring to eclipse and replace their cultural and religious practices with our own. The second is to exclude and reject the stranger entirely, viewing them as a threat which must be guarded against. In one the stranger is rendered into a clone while in the other they are made into an enemy.
Against this violent binary of ‘consumption’ and ‘exclusion’ the Ikon evangelism project seeks to listen and learn from those who are different from us. As such the evangelism project is made up of various individuals who actively seek to be evangelised, recognising the deep insight that others can be an instrument of our further conversion. Consequently, instead of understanding ourselves as those who have mastered truth this experimental community acknowledges that we are heretics and students in the world who can learn from the beliefs and practices of those who seem foreign to us.
This is not a relativistic project claiming that all beliefs and practices are of equal value any more than it is a fundamentalist one which claims that what ‘we’ (whoever ‘we’ may be) believe is absolutely true. Rather, while each us continues to place a immense importance upon our own tradition, we acknowledge that divine truth can never be exhausted in any human custom and that, as a result, we can learn from the traditions of others.
Yet this is not merely a one-way road in which we offer nothing substantial to the other, for in the same way that a good instructor is not necessarily one who relays information to their students, but rather one who exhibits and inspires an openness to learn (indeed it is often the student who acts as if they know everything and the teacher who shows that the world is more mysterious than they realise) we endeavour to demonstrate how one may faithfully ask, seek and knock by making this a necessary part of our own lives. By following the words of Augustine when he wrote, 'God is He who gives God', we realise that we cannot give God but rather, by exhibiting openness and humility, create a space where God can give God. In this way an evangelist can be understood as one who is open to God at all times and encourages others in this way of being, thus helping to produce a clearing within which God is free to give God.
As such we endeavour to be both a symbol to those within our community, showing that we must be open and sensitive to those who have a different outlook on the world, and a sign to those who believe that religious participants are necessarily violent, seeking to proselytise and/or exclude at the expense of interacting.
It is hoped that, as part of our new programme of events, we can engage in some street outreach in which we invite others to evangelise us (what we learn will then be used in a future Ikon service).
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Maharaji
Hindu Temple
Church of Scientology
Jewish Synagogue
Baha’i Centre
Zen Buddhist Community
Russian Othodox Church
Quaker Community
Free Presbyterian Church
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