A while ago, I was in a Renovaré Institute class exploring the treasures of the Streams — the six ​“great traditions” visible in the life of Jesus and his Church. We waded into the Evangelical Stream, which, as you’d expect, stirred up a lively conversation.

Carolyn Arends asked, If you had to rename the Evangelical tradition, what would you call it?

Some in the class voiced the importance of honoring historical words, especially ones with roots in original Biblical languages. But we all acknowledged language is fluid, and even the best words can be drained of their original meaning over time.

That’s certainly true for evangelical, which is now freighted with political baggage. Return to the source, and you’ll find the original Greek evangel; eu means good, angel means messenger. So at its biblical best, evangelical describes God’s generous communication with people — the divine message and its messengers in a joyful chain reaction of conveyance. 

If we think evangelical only means ​“Bible-focused,” we’ve lost hold of the Bible’s own use of the word evangel. It pops up in the New Testament hundreds of times, rendered as ​“glad tidings,” ​“good news,” and ​“preaching.” 

The Bible itself shows the evangel isn’t merely written, but embodied. It is the song of heavenly hosts, the prophetic words of Anna over the Christ child, the testimony of women who saw an empty tomb, the heart-piercing sermon of Peter, the shining face of Stephen before his persecutors, and the wise teaching of Priscilla.

Each of us has the capacity and calling to be a bearer of good news. And the way we bear it matters. 

God and Truth are not in danger. The Word of God is eternal and stands forever. The message is indestructible and alive in Christ, the Living Word. 

But how fragile are the manmade cups that carry and serve the message. 

Words matter. We must wrestle with them because they are containers for the Word. But we must also not become too attached to particular words because even our best efforts of expression are not the Word.

Just before Paul tells Timothy to carefully handle the word of Truth, he warns against trivial word-wrangling — a temptation both for those who argue preservation and those who press for change. 

This week on our podcast, Terry Wildman tells about his ministry to the Native American Navajo and Hopi people and how he began to craft new ways of wording Bible passages that would strike a chord with their natural ways of speaking. 

Terry’s work eventually became the First Nations Version — a Bible translation that uses the poetic style and descriptive phrases of indigenous speech to give the Bible a fresh hearing. As it turns out, this style makes an excellent container for the original Hebrew and Greek and cuts through the anglicized stylings that don’t work well for many indigenous people. 

His work is especially precious because of the history of evangelism to the First Peoples. Far too often, the good news was transmitted through messengers who didn’t treat native peoples with dignity and with an agenda to dominate and exploit. 

May we, like Wildman, find fresh ways to re-present the evangel of Christ as exactly what it is — good news.