I struggle with evangelism because it always seem so disingenuous.  The only people I know that have ever come to consider themselves Christians who were not born into it were not the direct results of any evangelism techniques that we muster together.  I desperately want people to come to know Christ and be part of the church.  I’m just not sure that “converting” people is what we are going for.  The church doesn’t exist to make converts.  The church exists as an alternative community that lives in such a way that makes living make sense and truthful.  You don’t just convert someone over to a different way of living life, especially a life of all they’ve known.  Changing your life is a slow process, one that takes your entire life.

I’ve thrown out most strategies of evangelism.  I find them to be inconsistent with who the church is supposed to be.  I do not think it is our job to sell our way of life and try to convince people that it’s a good way to live.  I do not think it’s my job to give altar calls, to catch people in their moments of weakness and lack of faith, and have people make cognitive decisions to ask Jesus into their heart.  I think it’s my job to live in such a way that makes their live incomprehensible to their own existence.  I think it’s my job to live a life so full of truth that they desire to be part of that kind of truth.  There is no room for empty conversion techniques, growth strategies or altar calls when you are a community of people radically committed to a way of life.  You just invite more and more people into this way of life and people will join you at their own pace, in their own way.

I don’t think the failure of our churches is because we such at evangelism.  I think the church is shrinking because the church isn’t the church.  There is no longer anything to be drawn into.  If you are stuck coming up with creative schemes or manipulative maneuvers to bring people into your fold, then I fear that you are no longer being the church.   Build communities that care about each other, the poor, God, the weak and are radically generous with who they are and that’s all the evangelism you will need.  You will create a lot of enemies being this kind of community (probably with other congregations) but this what it means to be the church.

I just finished reading a book called The Younger Evangelicals by Robert Webber. I really appreciated this book. All my life I have butt heads with the traditional church and with a lot of people who were in leadership over me. I haven’t been able to understand them and they don’t understand me. I usually get labeled some buzz word like emergent, postmodern, new age or heretic. This book is the best explanation I have ever read of the difference of approach to the Christian faith. I think he takes a very balanced view on how things are changing and what they are changing from. He gives a lot of hope for those that are changing and probably even more hope to those that are having a hard time understanding the change. You know that conversation that you’re getting in with your dad? Or how about trying to explain to your best friend’s uncle how you are viewing your faith? Don’t understand your son? Think the youth of your church are going in the wrong direction and can’t speak on the same level? You need to read this book. I don’t think he is arguing that one way is right and the other way is wrong. I think he is saying they are different and now we have to deal with it.

It just so happened that I just finished the book and the second last chapter had a lot to say about revivals or rallies and how the younger evangelical reacts to them. I thought it was quite timely. Without commenting on anything, I’m just going to leave a few quotes which I thought stood out and also put up a few quotes of people that he pointed to.

I grew up in a Baptist church where we called an evangelist to come and preach a revival every year. I believed that raising my hand, walking down the isle, and confessing Jesus as Savior was the only way evangelism was done. I still affirm the place of mass evangelism and would never deny that many people have heard God’s call through the words of traveling evangelists and, responding to that call, have experienced a transformed life. In the eighties, a new form of evangelism was introduced called seeker evangelism. This evangelism proved to be highly effective. Thousands have come to Christ in this ministry. Their broken lives have been restored, and new hope for the future has been born. However, as effective as these forms of evangelism have been, both are being questioned by younger evangelicals. They are looking for a third way to evangelize in a postmodern world.
Robert Webber – The Younger Evangelicals

Silence every radio and television preacher, stop everything evangelical book or tract from being published, take down every evangelical website from the net and simply ask Christians to show one tangible expression of Jesus’ love to another person every day. We would be far better off.
Bernie Van De Walle, assistant professor of theology at Canadian Bible College

The most effective way I have been used in evangelism is when I am available for relationships with people God brings into my life.
Dale Dirksen

Behind every conversion story is a story of relationship.
Bruce McEvoy

The new, younger evangelical approach to evangelism is more like a walk, a process on a spectrum. It happens through community, through accountability, it happens when we intentionally order our lives in such a way to be like Jesus.
Dawn Haglund

It’s a kind of evangelism that is more like that of St. Francis who advocated preaching the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.
David Di Sabatino

Evangelism: Gospelizing the Gospel

In light of the comments on my last evangelism post, I thought I should elaborate a bit and take it one step further. The main concern I think after reading through the comments is two-fold. One, that evangelism has always existed using words. Which Tom you are right, I worded that poorly. The point I was trying to make was that evangelism it seems has been separated from our actions. So before when it was words and actions, now it seems like just words are ok. The second was by Dom, and he concludes that if you aren’t willing or acting upon the gospel this isn’t a sign of weakness it is a sign that you are not following Jesus.

Great comments. I think both help them strengthen my point. Noticeable in movements such as that with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, evangelism has been separated from evangelism as a life. We train our students, our congregations how to defend the faith, argue people into the kingdom, but we fail at teaching them how to live the faith and love people. Obviously I’m making broad comments here. I’m not trying to pin every church down with these posts by any means. I still remember quite clearly growing up in church though how many people were telling me ways I could shut down the abortion, homosexuality and evolution debate. All so I could come out showing them the truth. If I got lucky I would be made fun of and feel as if I was being persecuted for the faith, and then I could run back to my church family and tell them the story and they would be proud of me for not being ashamed.

Dr. Penner at Tyndale in our Greek class last year taught us something that has always stuck out to me. I’ll do my best at explaining it. The Greek word for that we translate into ‘preaching’ euaggelizo (v) comes from the root of the Greek word euaggelion(n) which means the gospel. The (v) and (n) are for verb and noun. He said that when euaggelizo (v) is translated its almost always translated into ‘preach’ (the Greek word is found all over the New Testament. But in actuality, it needs to be thought of as not preaching, but if the English language would allow me to make up a word, well allow Dr. Penner to make up a word, he would say it would more accurately be translated as gospelizing. This is once again, not to discredit words. They come of great value, but I think we need to realize that words alone aren’t and will not cut it.

Instead of just preaching the gospel its time that we start gospelizing the gospel. That sounds awfully redundant but it makes sense. The authors using this word as a verb knew that they weren’t just invoking people to run around and preaching. The authors that used this word knew that what they were saying was directly related to the word that meant the gospel. The authors were not saying to simply go preach. They were telling people to go and gospelize the gospel. This means bringing the good news to the ends of the earth, and sometimes the good news is a lot more than a sermon.

Around apartment 109 (where I live) you’ll notice all kinds of trends. Most of them like darts, poker, James bond for N64, NHL 95 for Sega, the apartment 109 website, us believing Jon was actually going to leave chapters, homework, Google ads, a bar in our living room and the list could go on for quite a while, they will fade out after a while and last anywhere between one week to a few months. They all come to an end sometime. This might tell you that we are dreamers, or that we are inconsistent; whatever way you want to look at the glass. All this to say that there is one trend I notice that is quite prevalent in all of us since the beginning. It’s the need to defend ourselves. Not one of us really wants to take the blame, especially if we know if we weren’t alone in the crime. For instance, if you were to ask whose dishes were in the sink, even though every single dish was in the sink that we own, all five of us would deny it. We all then would go on to tell stories about how once we cleaned all the dishes even when they weren’t ours or exclaim that we always do the dishes. The list of reasons and evidence is always the same and no one believes anyone else. Then someone breaks and cleans the entire sink full of dishes. It’s usually me because I always do the dishes.

I notice this not as a pattern just here in the apartment anymore but of all around me. We all find the needs to defend ourselves if we can find the least bit of innocence, even though for the most part we are quite guilty. We want people to know the reasons why we would do whatever we did. We want people to know that we at least felt really bad about it. We want people to know that we didn’t have a choice. We want people to know that we weren’t really acting within our true intentions. We want people to know all kinds of things to give the best picture of us as possible. This is mere humanity I think. We desire to be as perfect as possible and make sure everyone knows how close we are to that point. We hide what we don’t like and we gloat about what we like. For some reason though we decided some where along the line that defence works and actually makes people believe us.

No one actually believes me when I say I always do the dishes. Our defence system in many ways is a great weakness of ours. You’ll notice that the only time that it turns on is when we are feeling insecure or ashamed about our position. Anyone who is confident in themselves normally finds no need to defend themselves to all their accusers (though sitting in court may be a bit different of a story). I find this trend within Christianity all to strong.

Evangelism has turned into an evidence based, defence based technique. We show people how to ‘defend the faith’ or show them ‘evidence that demands a verdict’ so that they are confident in defending themselves wherever they go. We teach people to defend the inerrancy of the Bible so they can defend all their doctrines. We teach students to be strong and defend their faith and not to be ashamed. Could it be that in all of our attempts to defend our faith that we have blinded ourselves to why we do it in the first place? Could it be that the reason we are defending ourselves so intently is because we are insecure and guilty of something?

The reason evangelism as a word-based technique found ourselves among us is because slowly our lives failed to reflect the gospel. So we needed to start talking about it so at least it was getting out there. The reason evangelism as a defence based technique came to be is because we needed to defend ourselves against the accusations that were all around us. We have to defend with words and tell everyone that Jesus really does love them because we certainly weren’t showing it. We have to defend the fact that the bible was inerrant because our lives don’t represent the living and active story of God in them at all. We have to defend Jesus’ life and death historically because we failed at showing his presence among us. We have to defend biblical morals because we don’t live by them. We are scared, we are failing, we are guilty and we are finding ourselves in a place that we are comfortable with. So what do we do? We ramble and start talking. We try to prove our theology with our words and books instead of with our lives and love.

It’s time to get back to a living theology. It’s not nearly as important to convince your neighbour that the bible is actually the word of God and the Jesus actually existed as it is to invite him over for dinner and help him re-floor his house. Sometimes I think we should just shut up and love people and serve them. The over quoted St. Francis of Assisi says it best “preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”