The Trouble With Evangelism (Part 3)

Okay, so now that we've stopped selling Jesus and have begun to love our own spiritual flesh and blood family, what do we do? What's the program, the formula, the recipe for bringing others into the glorious fold over yonder in Beulahland? First off, what does Beulahland mean and who came up with it? Does it sound like a land full of blue-haired, overweight women crocheting lace doilies and sipping Lipton Iced Tea, or is it just me? Secondly, stop looking for formulas. We are dealing with human beings, not cyborgs with automated responses. We are dealing with human beings with broken hearts, broken lives, broken relationships, broken families, real and definable problems with not-so-simple solutions. To gloss over the grief and heartache, the flesh and blood reality of their lives is to do a great injustice to their God-breathed humanity.

So, we agree then? No more formulas, right? Good. Let us away with ourselves to higher plains of conscience thought...or something less pretentious anyway.

I know when I talk about loving others as the key to evangelism, nay, to everything we do as Christians, people who have grown up with formulas tend to get glassy-eyed and start nodding off; or they get out the pitch-forks and torches and storm the castle keep chanting, "New Age hippy! New Age hippy!" Either response is what scientists would "bad." But if we read the gospel narratives carefully, picking over them with a fine tooth comb, we will find a God who, defining himself as love, incarnates himself into human flesh simply because he "so loved the world" (John 3:16). And it is this same love that compels Him to offer his own self as a once-for-all-forever sin atonement sacrifice. And it is this same love that drives the grace-for-nothing forgiveness that he foolishly and extravagantly endows to every breathing human being. And it is this same love that Jesus says we are to have for God--and for every human being on earth.

"You are to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength."

"You are to love your neighbor as yourself."

Told you so.

See why I said evangelism begins and ends with love? It's not a New Age thing. It's not 1960s free love residue clinging to my underarm hair (I wasn't even born in the '60s!). It's the way of Jesus: love. It's love that drove his mission; love that drove him to the cross; love that moved him to have compassion on the sick and insane, the criminal and creepy, the murderous and pathetic, the hungry and homeless, the least, last, lost and lonely.

This love is not a general sympathetic feeling for humans in general, like when you watch T.V. and see all of those starving African children with flies buzzing around their eyes and mouths, and you say to no one in particular, "Someone should help those kids; it's so sad," but you then change the channel over to TNT to watch old re-runs of "Everybody Loves Raymond," muttering to yourself how Oprah will get around to it eventually...or Bono...or BrAngalina. This love is specific and intentional, rooted and founded in relationship; it is dirty and involved, simultaneously painful and joyful, exhilarating and exhausting, so simply you smack your head and say, "Duh!" and yet so difficult that you could curl up in a corner and suck your thumb in frustration. This love is drenched in blood and guts and tears and mystery. It is infectious and transforming and I dare anyone to walk away unchanged by it, whether lover or beloved.


This is why formulas are so dangerous: they can be done without love, without relationship--and without effect.

"Yes? I see there is a question way up in the Mezzanine section. Go ahead...Yeah...Can you speak up, please?...You want to know about the Great Commission. You say it's a formula for making disciples. Okay, let me address that very simply and then expound upon it verbosely: not it isn't! It is not a freaking formula, thank you very much!"

My brother did some studying up on the Great Commission and discovered that the Greek word we translate as "go" can also be translated "as you are going." Stop and think about the implications for that difference in translation. We always read the Great Commission in such a way as to make it seem like a separate part of our life, like another compartment we open up at the correct time, such as during a mission trip or a VBS. We sequester it off from our real life, where it will make the occasional intrusion into our conscience in the form of guilt (usually) at having never "made a disciple." This is why we program evangelism, because it is not a realistic extension of who we are as Christians. It is something we do (a program), instead of something we live (a relationship).

"As you are going..." As you are eating, working, playing; as you're walking the halls of school or commerce; as you are driving or riding to work or school with someone, your family, a friend; as you talk and listen, love and serve, laugh and mourn--make disciples. Evangelism has to be a natural extension of the loving relationship we share with God, on down to our relationships with humanity. We can't put ourselves into a mode of evangelism, as if flicking a switch or engaging your 4x4 system on your Jeep. You can't go into evangelism mode. You can't jump into a phone booth and all of a sudden become "Evangiman," able to convert tall people with a single word. If it isn't part of who you are then it will be uncomfortable for you and awkward for whatever fish is (unluckily) caught in your evangelism net.

Here is a cuckoo thought: what if we actually trusted the Spirit to transform people's lives? What if we showed-then-told people what discipleship under Jesus is really like, honestly and completely? There is a distinct lack of trust among Christians when it comes to allowing the Spirit to work in HIS time. He doesn't work fast enough. He allows people the freedom to make mistakes. He allows people to be...well...people, individuals with a distinct and often dirty humanity. We don't like that. We want to create people in our image, who look and act like us. We don't want them to do un-Christian things (even though we did...and still do). We don't allow them the process of discipleship that we were allowed (and are still in the midst of). Esther de Waal in her commentary on The Rule of St. Benedict says this:

...the only person who has rights over the inner life of another person is God Himself...growth is not something which can be manipulated by human rules or ideologies; maturity cannot be mass produced. __From Seeking God: the Way of St. Benedict

We, generally, will wrest "control of the yolk from the Pilot and send the whole mess into the sea" (with apologies here to The Shins). We weary them with dogmatic declarations and legalistic rules and soul killing morality that strips them of their freedom in Christ and turns them into one more Spirit-starved pew sitter who looks just like us.

My friends, this cannot be.

Leave people in the hands of God. "As you are going" love people, serve people, rejoice and mourn with them, share your life with them, let God do His work, and, who knows, the kingdom may just grow by one.

shalom, matt