The Trouble with Evangelism (Part 2)

Author's note: This was written several weeks ago while I was still a car salesman. I'm no longer a car salesman so you'll just have to pretend.

“It doesn't matter whether you're selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or 'How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.' That doesn't make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch.” --From the movie The Big Kahuna

I'm a "salesman." I use quotes because I'm a ghastly, horrendous salesman. The Bush Administration is better at selling Iraq to the nation than I am at selling cars. It's not just that I'm bad at selling cars, I actually hate trying to sell cars. People with Ebola or the bubonic plague are looked at with less revulsion. I am the Untouchables of India, the 1980's AIDS patient, the 1st century leper. No one likes a salesman. I'm not even sure my wife likes me anymore.

I used to hate salesmen; now, I pity them. They're just trying to make a living. But I understand why no one likes us: we pretend to be your friend, but we really only want to sell you something. No matter how friendly or interested a salesperson may seem in you, your hobbies, your family, your waist size, whether you can divide by pi, etc., the conversation always ends up with us trying to sell you something. We are trained to steer conversations, control the customer, moving them along a pre-determined path to an eventual sale. This is why we are shunned.

I'm bone-weary of Christians trying to convert everyone they meet. I'm tired of programmed evangelism turning disciples into Jesus-salesmen (he has a lifetime warranty, you know?). How many sermons have you heard extolling the benefits of becoming a church-going, money-tithing, baptized-in-the-baptistery Christian? Does it sound like a sales pitch to anyone else? Not that there isn't some truth to it all. But should we really be selling Jesus like we would an '08 Avenger or a Kenmore refrigerator?

"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Evangelism has to start here, deep within the community of Christ. There has to be love amongst the brethren or our message of God reconciling all things to himself, and us to each other, falls on its face, trailing off into pathetic, garbled attempts to convince a skeptical world of a reality that we don't even live out. Don't even bring up the Great Commission either until we get this lovin' each other thing down. Why try to bring someone into a community that hates, bickers, fights and backstabs as much as the rest of the world does? How many churches have destroyed themselves through lack of love and sacrifice? How many lives have been destroyed, how many souls damaged by the church's desire for supremacy, for bigger, better and more? How many teenagers have been forever turned off to the very idea of church simply because they saw through the facade of the church's business-driven, not love-driven, emphasis?

And this love cannot be a mirror of the cheap, fraudulent love that the world tauts as authentic. We've mirrored the world for far too long. Love must be sacrificial, willing to give up anything and all things for the sake of the beloved. It must be willing to give up the ultimate possession: control. Control over a situation, circumstance, an individual: to relinquish these is to pursue a Reality deeper and more beautiful than what the mind can conceive of or grasp--the Kingdom of God. Our love must be intentional, too, if it is to be dynamic and life-changing, unifying and freeing. Loving lives are not naturally habitual; they must be cultivated, grown organically in the garden over time, with care, patience, and a little bit of self-forgiveness along the way. We are intrinsically selfish (due to the annoyance known as the Fall) and seek our own best ends before others. It's why the Bible continually admonishes us in infinite ways to "do unto others as we would have them do unto us," to "love our neighbors as ourselves." We have to set out each day, with purpose and intentionality, to form loving habits, a gait of loving compassion for one another.

Love is the beginning of all evangelism. And true, authentic love (I dare say) ONLY comes through true, authentic relationships. The spread of the good news of free grace given without condition can only come within the context of a substantive relationship. You can't start a relationship with the idea of converting that person. Why? Because it will only be a matter of time before you start steering the relationship. It's a cheapening of all that loving relationships should be, Controlling the relationship to any designed end, no matter how noble or right, makes you a salesmen and dismantles the weak foundation the relationship is built upon.

You are not a salesman. You are a lover of God and of man. Let's being our move towards a new way of witnessing to the grace and love of God by being luminaries of love, shining brightly on our own brothers and sisters sitting next to us in the pew.

shalom, matt