Evangelism as Storytelling

Problems of patriarchy and colonialism that have left traces in the history of evangelism and Christian missions have contributed to perpetuating marginalization and discrimination against women in church life in Asia. This book offers a reconstruction of evangelism that acknowledges and respects women's roles and thoughts. For this purpose, the author uses a postcolonial missiological feminist perspective that pays attention to the processes, models, roles, and understanding of evangelism and mission, and encourages women's voices in witnessing the trinitarian God in the world. This study confronts evangelism with discourses of power, leadership, gender, and understanding of evangelism and mission. This book uses the historical-narrative-constructive missiological method by combining several theories to show the complexity of missionary women's narratives, the marginalization of their narratives, and constructive missiological efforts to reclaim their narratives as a model of embodied evangelism. These theories are the social women mission theory, postcolonial feminist mission theory, martyrdom theology, the biblical-reconstructive approach to Matthew, and narrative theology. The author offers the idea of "evangelism as storytelling," namely witnessing the trinitarian God through embodied storytelling of the gospel which encourages the rediscovery of witness narratives in the form of testimonials that contain the voices, roles, experiences, and understandings of women in witnessing the gospel.

Auteur

Oinike Natalia Harefa is lecturer at BNKP Sundermann Theological Seminary and teaches missiology, feminist theology, and contemporary theology. She is an ordained pastor in Banua Niha Keriso Protestan (BNKP), in Indonesia.