As Gemma Margerison’s recent tribute shared with Challenge readers, Chuck Colson was the founder of Prison Fellowship, a ministry which has spread to over 120 countries including New Zealand (http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz/component/content/article/39-top-stories/2208-chuck-colson-legacy-.html). He was a great communicator of the Gospel, especially through radio and his 30 or so books and other writings. Colson is described “as one of the greatest social reformers of our time”, which is amazing as he was Richard Nixon’s legal “hatchet man” imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal. It was during this scandal that he converted to Christianity in 1972 thanks to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.
Colson came to mind recently when reading Mark 5:1–20. This is the story of ‘Legion’, a man infested with demons, who Jesus set free. Now, a legion was 6000 soldiers, and so he was one seriously busted-up man. This brokenness is reflected in that he lived among the dead and was violent beyond restraint. We can be sure he was a Gentile as he lived in Gentile territory and the people herded pigs (which Jews despised). After restoring this man, Jesus sent him to share what had happened at home to his people in the 10 Gentile cities of the Decapolis.
Now, if you look at the three Gospel accounts of this event, you see that it happens before ‘the sending of the Twelve’. So, the first mass evangelist sent by Jesus to preach is not a Jewish apostle, but a formerly broken ‘Gentile’. I find this stunning.
In John’s Gospel we find something equally fascinating. Aside from some personal evangelism in John 1, the first mass evangelisation is found in John 4, not from one of the Twelve. Rather, the evangelist is a ‘woman’ who was at the time an adulteress and a despised ‘Samaritan’. She tells her town-folk about Jesus, and “many” are converted. Amazing.
Then, after the resurrection, it is Mary Magdalene, a woman set free from seven demons who is the first evangelist of the resurrection. She is followed by others like Peter who denied Jesus, but after his restoration became the Church’s initial leading evangelist and leader. Not to mention Saul the persecutor, who after overseeing Stephen’s death and plundering the church, was chosen and called to be ‘the apostle to the Gentiles’.
Such are the people God calls. At Laidlaw we see ex-criminals, prostitutes, and sinners of all persuasion who God has called out of brokenness and sin to effective ministry. I myself was one such a broken man, set free by God, and now a teacher, writer and leader. Chuck Colson is a vivid modern day example as was Nicky Cruz and many others. This is our God — he delights in taking the unlikely, the sinners, the shattered, and making them ministers of the Gospel. We should not be surprised when he does so. May he do so more. Isn’t that a God worth following? Go deeper!
I am asking the question: what is the greatest heresy, to get it wrong on Israel and the return of Christ (on either side) or to fail to love? I think I know what the answer is. Show love, and go deeper!
By Mark Keown , lecturer in New Testament at Laidlaw College,
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