The Trouble With Evangelism (Part 1)

Let me just say this at the outset, something I've said a number of times to people I know, have probably written about on several occasions, and will probable say again: I hate evangelism and all evangelism-brand products. I don't want to be contagious (ever notice how people want to avoid things that are contagious?). I don't want to be relevant, because if I tell you I'm relevant, or try to be, then I'm not (plus, there is nothing relevant about the gospel's call to die). I don't want to be postmodern, emergent, or ancient-future, because no one can agree on what that looks like or even means. If you have to try and convince people to follow Jesus then something is missing in how you are living because they haven't noticed anything extraordinarily different in you from themselves. That's one of my beefs with evangelism seminars/books/programs: they revolve around a formula of some kind that ultimately end up with Joe Christian convincing Ken Pagan that they need Jesus to cure all of life's ills and help them get a summer home in Vail. Sure, the program may be relational. Sure, the program may even "work" occasionally. But at its core I think it's missing the boat of Jesus' intent for his disciples and the spread of the good news that God has forgiven the totality of man's sin through the slaughter of his Son on the Cross; the good news that there is a new way of existence, a new way of being human (which is really the ONLY way to be human), shown to us through Christ; the good news that God is reconciling the created order back to himself, of which, we are a part.

I think we over-complicate evangelism. I hated when people would teach me how to evangelise: the Roman road, the five-finger exercise, cute, fold-out tracts depicting every step to avoiding hell. I recall with vivid horror and revulsion the feelings of guilt and shame I felt knowing that I was not leading the legions to Christ, that I hadn't "taken my school for Jesus." I was a failure of a disciple because I wasn't leading my lost, heathen, drunken/stoned schoolmates to the cool, quenching, cleansing waters of baptism. "What If I don't have the right answers?" I remember worrying.

So I didn't talk to anyone about my faith.

I know I'm not the only one with this experience. Many of you have been down a similar road with similar emotions, and you are in a similar spot asking the same question.

Now what?

That is the question I would like to take up as I begin a series of posts on evangelism. I'm not an authority on this, but by looking at what isn't working and what hasn't worked we can perhaps forge new ground towards a better definition of evangelism.

shalom, matt