Faith Working In Love by Maxie Dunnam

In my last article I focused on the notion of mission as “making disciples who make disciples.” I introduced the term “discipleship evangelism”, as the essence of evangelism. I hinted at the claim that there is “no great commission without the great commandment”. We must nurture and cherish the bond between word and deed, ideas and consequences, beliefs and actions. Good works do not save us but are the evidence of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit and the fundamental nature of practical Christianity.

Faith Working Through Love

One of the best definitions of practical Christianity that you will find comes from the apostle Paul. It is this: faith working through love. In Galatians 5:6, Paul makes the case for the essentials of the Christian life, over and against the superficial claims of religious preference: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” J. B. Phillips translates this “faith which expresses itself in love.” The New English Bible reads “faith active in love.” Paul is saying that, in God’s judgment according to Christ, the question is not whether we are obedient to the law, whether we are circumcised or uncircumcised, whether we are Methodist or Baptist. The question is whether in faith we have been shaped according to the reality of God’s love expressed ultimately in his crucified Son. And when there is a testing of that faith, it will involve not the doctrinal positions to which we have given intellectual ascent, not even the doctrine of the uniqueness of Christ, but whether our faith has expressed itself in love.

The goal of every church should be to have a congregation of disciples who are on a mission of discipleship. Disciples making disciples, that is the essence of evangelism.

An Example to Follow: Pauline Hord

At the last congregation I served as lead pastor, we didn’t have a church-full of disciples making disciples but we had some, and the number was growing.

Let me tell you about one of our prize examples, Pauline Hord. She has now passed on to glory. What a remarkable woman. She is the most unique blending of prayer and personal piety, with servant ministry and social concern, I know. When grave needs arose in my life, Pauline was one of the first persons I called, inviting her to pray with me.

Pauline was always going to someone or some group to give herself in prayer. Hardly a week passed that I did not receive a call from Pauline, telling me about some particular need in our congregation or in our city – a need that may call for emergency housing, or transportation, or medical attention. I don’t know how she was in touch with all of this, but she was.

Pauline’s primary passion was literacy and prison ministry. Our state, Tennessee, had and has a tremendous literacy problem. Thousands of people in our city can’t read and write well enough to function adequately in society. Pauline  worked with our public schools, training teachers in a new literacy method. She gave three days a week, four or five hours a day, to teaching this new method of literacy through model programs.

But, also, once a week she drove over a hundred miles one way to Parchman State Prison down in Mississippi, to teach prisoners how to read and write. Along with this, she ministered to them in a more encompassing way as she shared her love and faith, and witnessed to the power of the gospel. Think about this, She was eighty-five years old.

During those years, then President Geoge Bush started a program, called “Points of Light,” calling for citizens to exercise positive and creative influence and service in the communities where they lived. I nominated Pauline and she was chosen and written up in the daily newspaper. 

A few months later, President Bush came to Memphis and wanted to recognize the seven “Points of Light” there at a luncheon.

But he made a mistake. He set the luncheon on a Wednesday. That’s the day Pauline spent at Parchman Prison, teaching prisoners to read and write, and witnessing to them the love of Christ. She would not give that up to have lunch with the President.

That says it, doesn’t it? 

The Essence of Evangelism

Disciples making disciples: this is the essence of evangelism. Real evangelism cannot happen except where disciples are being made. And those who are growing in discipleship become bearers of real evangelism. As I have claimed, all this takes place primarily in the local congregation.