6 minute read
Engaging Evangelism
New Approaches to Meaningful Gospel Conversations
Cas Monaco, 2020 PhD in Applied Theology in North American Missiology
Executive Director of Gospel in Culture for Cru City, Durham, NC
A Muslim taxi driver, a nonreligious college student, a Wiccan and a self-proclaimed “social revolutionary.”
What do all of these people have in common? They represent the growing diversity of the American religious landscape. They also represent those with whom Southeastern PhD graduate Cas Monaco has entered into gospel conversations. Through her conversations with these and many others, she realized she was living in a society that was becoming increasingly pluralistic and yet altogether non-religious. Monaco remembers her shock when a farm girl from Oregon said she had never heard of Jesus or the Bible. This conversation alarmed Monaco and caused her to realize that the religious landscape of the United States was changing faster than she realized.
According to a Pew Research study conducted in 2019, Christianity is in rapid decline. From 2009-2019, the number of religiously unaffiliated adults grew by 30 million. This reality along with the rapidly changing demographics in America and the emergence of Gen Z raise significant and exciting missiological questions for evangelicals today. How do we adapt the way we share the gospel in our increasingly secularized culture?
This question is one reason why Monaco decided to pursue a PhD at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) in 2016 in applied theology and North American missiology. As the executive director of Gospel in Culture for Cru City, Monaco decided to focus her dissertation on reimagining Bill Bright’s (Cru’s founder) Four Spiritual Laws for a twenty-first century context. Four Spiritual Laws is an evangelistic tract developed by Bright in the mid-twentieth century as a simple, transferable tool for use in personal evangelism.
Monaco critically evaluated the effectiveness of this tool in an American 21st century context as described by cultural critics Charles Taylor and Philip Rieff. The two characterize the current era as secularized—exclusively humanist and void of sacred authority, an era in which Christianity is implausible and even unimaginable.
“I first met Cas Monaco about a decade ago when she was working toward her master’s degree,” said George Robinson, Southeastern’s Bailey Smith chair of evangelism. “Her lifetime of experience working with Cru and her passion for communicating the hope of the gospel bled through in our conversation about a potential thesis topic. From that day until her December 2020 graduation earning the PhD in Applied Theology, Cas has exemplified an impeccable work ethic, and an ability to think and write well about the intersection of gospel communication and contemporary culture.” Monaco began her research in conjunction with a research project Cru City initiated in partnership with Cyrano, a marketing research collective. The project included qualitative and quantitative analyses drawn from an audience of 400 men and women between the ages of 24-56, who represented diverse backgrounds and religious worldviews in cities across the United States. Significantly, over half of the people surveyed claimed no religious affiliation and most described Christianity as offensive, inauthentic, unsafe or simply irrelevant. Yet, 84 percent were willing to have spiritual conversations with a Christian but didn’t feel certain that Christians cared to have these same conversations with them. Instead, many experienced Christians telling them what to believe rather than having a meaningful discussion about faith.
The research revealed that everyone has three core longings of peace, prosperity and purpose. Cru City wants to help believers articulate and show how Jesus meets all of these needs. That’s why Cru began implementing five key factors to engage the lost: Be present and listen, find common ground, walk in their shoes, talk like a real person and communicate a better story.
Cru City compares the landscape of gospel sowing to that of a wild field rather than a greenhouse. Unlike a greenhouse, the wild field is unpredictable and uncontrollable. These often complex, external factors create new challenges for sharing the gospel in the wild field of the city. Cru seeks to equip believers to cultivate a growing awareness of the 21st century context and to engage in meaningful gospel conversations in dynamic and agile ways.
Monaco recognized the significance of the changing culture and through her research contended for a narrative approach to gospel conversations and proposed a theological framework that rested on the four overarching themes in Scripture: creation, fall, redemption, restoration/ recreation. Using these four themes, Monaco introduced four prominent features of faithful recontextualization for the 21st century.
These four themes and four features have helped to inform Cru City’s purpose, “To engage the curious and equip the follower to help them find their place in God’s story.” Consequently, Monaco in collaboration with her Cru colleagues is developing new approaches for meaningful gospel conversations for twenty-somethings, working professionals and co-workers in urban centers, neighbors and friends, church planters and artists. Cru City is seeking to engage with people who are not wondering if Jesus is real, but why Jesus matters.
Monaco and her husband have been seeking to minister to their own neighbors as well. In a heartbreaking year like 2020, instability wasn’t hard to find and continues to be a common experience worldwide. In response, they decided to initiate a weekly prayer meeting at their neighborhood gazebo. There they acknowledge the uncertainty and anxiety and pray for the people in their neighborhood. Every week from the neighborhood Facebook page they invite people to join them virtually or in person for 30 minutes of outdoor prayer.
On a more personal note, on September 10, 2020 Monaco’s father passed away at the age of 84—just one week after she submitted her dissertation for review. In the days following his death, she also learned that he had also trusted Christ. For years, Monaco had prayed for two things: that the Lord would bring her dad to faith and that her dad would live to see her finish her dissertation. The Lord answered both of her prayers. “It was really sweet that God would answer my prayers at the time that he did,” said Monaco.
After graduating from Southeastern in the fall of 2020, she looks back with a sense of gratitude for all that the Lord taught her through years of hard work. She is deeply grateful for the support she received from her professors and peers.
“The Lord has used [Cas] to both speak and train myriads of people in an approach to thoughtful, compassionate evangelism,” said Robinson, who also serves as professor of evangelism and missions. “I am thrilled to see how her research will shape Cru’s evangelism in the coming years by honoring Bill Bright’s legacy and furthering it so that Cru’s global impact can continue to expand in the 21st century context. Dr. Monaco and her insights will most definitely reverberate for years to come.”
Monaco is grateful for Southeastern’s ongoing commitment to champion women who pursue theological education. “I have watched the seminary change over the past several years in the areas of diversity and women,” said Monaco. “I really appreciate Dr. Akin’s leadership in that way. I have been encouraged as a scholar and as a woman, and I always felt believed in.”
This is Cas Monaco’s Great Commission story. She’s seeking to train others to better think and engage the lost in today’s secularized context.
Find resources on evangelism, devotional Bible studies and more from Cas Monaco at casmonaco.com
