Evangelism Rape

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.