This is something I wrote for Advanced Comp. And my biggest fan, Anna Bartscher, asked me to put this on here. Hopefully you all realize my deepest sarcasm.
But seriously. Here's my thoughts on evangelism. Inspired by the best lifegroup I could ask for.
“It’s like evangelism rape! You
just give it to ‘em and run away!”
To
be honest, I was pretty proud of that one. Witty, just a little bit
inappropriate, and a surprisingly apt comparison. I had considered not sharing
it, simply because I wasn’t sure how the group would respond. Fortunately for
me, they found the edginess to be quite hilarious and we all got a good laugh
out of it. One of those great “I can’t believe she just said that” laughs that
make you think, “Way to go, self. That was a good one.”
It
was my college age lifegroup and the topic for that week, as you may have
surmised, was evangelism. It was our assigned task to delve deeper into that
week’s sermon by asking a series of questions provided to us by an associate
pastor. While the group is always enthusiastic and surprisingly insightful,
this week’s discussion was particularly high-spirited and my co-leader and I
were, I believe, beginning to feel quite good about ourselves. In fact, I think
the whole group was beginning to feel pretty good about themselves.
We
had just asked the question, “When have you been evangelized to by other
Christians and what was your reaction?” This sparked a lively story-time of
encounters with tract-carrying Christians and sign-waving crazies. It was a
time of much hilarity, complete with a nine-foot-tall, fire-breathing Jesus and
culminating with the above exclamation from my lips. It was all quite
entertaining until the gangly red-head in the corner spoke up.
He’s
the baby of the group, only a senior in high school, but we all love him
dearly. And this week, he spoke the words that cut through the laughter and
straight to our hearts. He said, quietly, so that some of us, still giggling
from the stories, barely registered his words as he spoke them, “This is all
funny because yeah, these people aren’t doing it right. They’re putting a bad
taste in the mouth of those they speak to. And yeah, we’re not doing that. But
the truth is… we aren’t doing anything good either. We’re not doing anything.
At least they’re doing something.”
And
with those words our attitude moved from smugly self-righteous to entirely
humbled. Because yes, it is easy to laugh at those who do wrong. It is far more
difficult to truly do good. If evangelism does not consist in tracts and signs,
in nine-foot-tall Jesus and million dollar bills, what does it consist in?
If you bring up the topic of evangelism
to the typical American protestant, they will probably either break into a cold
sweat or roll their eyes. I personally have done both. In the early years of my
faith as a well-intentioned but entirely works-driven teenager, I tended toward
the cold sweats reaction. I would attend such functions as Lifelight and Christ
in Youth conferences, listen to impassioned speeches of how nine out of ten
Christians will never share their faith and people are dying and going to hell
and feel the old familiar Christian guilt coming on. I still vividly remember
standing in a cold dusty field in rural South Dakota and hearing of a man who,
on his deathbed, broke down in tears because he only wished to, “Win one more
for Jesus.” This story shook me terribly. And did absolutely nothing to affect
my behavior.
As
I grew up, I became largely disenchanted with the established church and with
the constant feeling of guilt I associated with Christianity. As a result, I
began to shift solidly toward the eye-rolling reaction to the word evangelism.
Whenever the pastor would announce a sermon on evangelism I would sink slowly
down into my chair and prepare myself for the same cascade of clichés I had
heard a thousand times before. Mentally writing off the pastor and his message
tended to assuage my all-too-easily-guilted conscience.
It
would seem this is where we, as American Christians, have found ourselves. Either
we dread the word evangelism as a byword for guilt and not measuring-up, or we
tune it out in an effort to avoid the guilt and pretend to see through the
hypocrisy of those speaking. The problem with both is that neither group is
evangelizing. And as a result we are left with those that I so delicately
labeled evangelism rapists - those often perfectly well-intentioned Christians
who hand out tracts in a sincere effort to share the faith they have
encountered.
This
was, after all, how I was taught to evangelize. Growing up in a conservative
protestant household I learned such things as the “Romans Road” that walked
through our state as fallen, sinful man, and led through repentance,
forgiveness, and ultimately salvation, all courtesy of the book of Romans. I
learned all about tracts and how they could share the gospel clearly and
concisely. I constructed beaded bracelets whose different colors represented
different pieces of Christianity. I read books that praised the efforts of
those who went to the mall and simply asked people where they were at with God.
“After all,” they would say, “You never know when you will meet someone at
their point of need.”
This
was evangelism to me. And, quite frankly, it is not surprising that it scares
all motivation out of me and out of most other Christians I have encountered. I
think that is the fundamental problem with evangelism. That’s why we’re so
terrified of it, why we sit around in circles and make fun of it so we can
assuage our guilt. Because we’re scared shitless of all kinds of things. We’re
scared of what people will think of us, scared of the questions people will
ask, scared of rejection. Perhaps we’re simply scared to talk to people we
don’t know. Or maybe we’re just hesitant to share something as intimate as our
own personal faith, whether that be to complete strangers or to our closest
friends. Whatever the fear, it’s that fear that drives us and controls us, that
keeps us rolling our eyes and breaking into cold sweats, that keeps our mouths
glued shut and our feet planted exactly where they are. Where they’ve always
been.
Now,
before you get the wrong idea, this isn’t a call to get out there and hand out
some tracts. From my experience with dear non-Christians friends, I have come to
realize that despite the best of intentions, the vast majority of the time this
method is ineffective and even harmful. The non-Christians I have had the
pleasure of discussing this with are intelligent, sensitive, kind-hearted
people who are genuinely seeking truth. However, because of that fact, they are
not going to accept the word of a complete stranger when it comes to something
as important as claims of absolute truth. Such a person does not know their
story, does not understand their past, their experiences, their heart.
Furthermore, the person doing the proselytizing has no credibility. As a
complete stranger, there is no reason to believe her. She has not proved herself
knowledgeable, trustworthy, or credible. Rather, she has simply shown herself
to be domineering and pushy.
It
breaks my heart to hear my dear friends speak of such people. They speak of
them with no respect, and with disgust. They understand when they are nothing
more than a number, nothing more than a quota, nothing more than a box to be
checked off that says, “Well, I did my good deed for the day. I shared my
faith. I’m good for a while.” They also understand when the message is more
important than they are. If a person were to come and start a conversation,
simply asking them about what they love, what they are passionate about, what
makes their heart beat, they would gladly share. But the problem is we’re all
too eager to simply get words out, to simply fix people before we even
understand if or why they’re broken.
And
maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we simply don’t care about the people we’re
sharing our faith with. We care about sharing our faith, about assuaging our
guilt, about doing what we’re “supposed to do,” what we feel obligated to do as
Christians. We would probably say, “Of course I care about them! I’m sharing my
faith, sharing the truth! What higher form of caring is there?” There isn’t
one. That’s entirely my point, actually. That there is no higher love than
sharing the truth we have discovered. In fact, it would show the deepest kind
of hate to not share the truth we claim to hold with those around us.
The
only problem is we care more about our message than the person. It seems an odd
thing to say, especially since it would seem that the gospel is the most
important thing in our lives. But the gospel is useless without the person it
claims to save. And that person will never be saved unless they are known.
So
here’s my advice to those whose fingers itch to whip out a tract, and who feel
incomplete unless they ask everyone they meet if they know where they’re going
when they die. Forget about the message. Forget about evangelizing for a
moment. Forget about what you ought to do, what you feel you should do, and
simply know people. See people, really see them. See them for who they are, for
how beautiful they are, for their rich and complex stories, for their faults
and their desperate need. Hear their stories, laugh at their jokes, appreciate
their snarkiness, their grumpiness, their joy. Share pointless stories and belly-aching
laughs at the stupidest things in the world. Hear them complain, hear them cry,
take their calls at 2am and give them rides home when they’re drunk. Simply
put, be a friend. Be someone who actually cares about them. For who they are.
Not for a message you’re supposed to share, but for the simple fact that you
want to be their friend.
Set
yourself free from guilt and find yourself freed to do what you wished to do
all along. Love is a far more powerful motivator than guilt, than fear of
retribution. Love provides a reason to overcome fear. When our love for a
person becomes greater than our fear of what they may think, when they become
more than a number, more than a project, and become a beloved friend, it
becomes possible to overcome fear. It becomes possible to act in the face of
fear.
And
here’s my advice to those who have no problem making friends with non-Christians,
who are wonderful at first impressions, who love hearing stories, and who are energized by simply
meeting people, but who are paralyzed with fear at the first thought of sharing
your faith. To those whose mouths are glued shut and our feet frozen to the
floor, forget about the message. Forget the voice in the back of your head that
whispers, “You should probably say something about your faith right now.”
Forget about the pressure you feel, the guilt, the clichés. And in the process,
forget your fear. Let go of pressurized, stylized, compromised evangelism and
simply remember your faith. Remember the One who died for you, remember why you
love Him. Remember your own story, how you have been transformed. Remember
truth, remember weakness, remember failure. Remember honesty, remember you
don’t know everything, remember you don’t have to. Remember Him and forget the
fear.
Remember
the story, remember Him. Dig deep into Him, dig deep into your own story, not
as preparation to share it, but simply to know and understand it. Fall in love
with Him. I cannot say that enough. Understand the truth of what you believe.
Dig deep into your own faith. Seek Him, seek understanding. Come to a place
where you cannot help but speak of your own faith, where it simply overflows. To
where speaking of it makes your joy complete. That’s how John speaks of sharing
his faith in First John 1. He says that sharing the good news of Christ with
them makes his own joy complete. And to be honest, I have never understood such
statements. It always seemed like a typo to me, something that needed to be
amended as I read it. After all, it is the joy of the new convert that is to be
affirmed, right? What could possibly be more joyful than receiving good news?
Well, there is something more joyful,
and that is completed joy. Unshared joy is incomplete joy. Joy that has been
relished, internalized, made real, is manifested in being shared. Its natural
progression, its culmination, is in its overflow. To share, to evangelize, to
speak of the faith we have discovered is not a separate goal to be realized,
but the natural progression of the Christian faith. It is not a destination,
but simply a way of living the journey. It is not an agenda, it is an overflow.
To
return to where this story started, I want to end with something another member
of my group said. We had all been humbled by the challenge of the gangly
redhead, and now, as we sat and strove to understand how to overcome our own
fears, he spoke up, thinking out loud and letting the Holy Spirit speak through
him. He said, “Think about it in terms of what you already love, what you are
already passionate about, whether that be music or sports or art. Think about
the thing that you could talk about for hours, the thing that makes you
absolutely light up when you talk about it, when people ask you about it. You
want someone to know why that piece of art is sublime, why that 40 yard
touchdown pass was a work of nature, why that piece of music brings you to tears.
You cannot help but share about those things. That’s how it should be with your
faith.”
His
words, for us, solved the problem and answered the question. Such a love for
God, such a passion for our faith, such transformation as truth requires,
drives out any fear, overcomes any agenda, sets free any obligation. It is
simply the deepest part of us, the part that drives our entire lives, the part
that cannot be contained. It takes the fear from speaking, takes the obligation
from sharing. It unglues our mouths and defrosts our feet. Gives us courage to
speak and freedom to walk.
