Thinking About Evangelism

I've recently been burdened about the posture the Church is taking toward the outside world. This is driving me to deconstruct some of the conventional thought in the area of evangelism and take a closer look. I have been helped by thoughts from Greg Boyd and also from Brian McLaren's book More Ready Than You Realize.

The central idea that is forming in my mind is based in II Corinthians, which I happened to be reading recently. In 4:2, and again in 5:11, we notice the theme of conscience. I think this is key. In evangelism, it isn't so much about what I think is true, or what you think is false; it's a matter of the conscience, both mine and yours. The miscellaneous shreds of truth that have collected in the bottom of my knapsack may be genuine, but they may not necessarily be the truth-key that will fit the lock on your heart. We have to stop dealing primarily with truths-falsities and get back to dealing with people. Jesus saw the questions, yes, but He also saw the people behind them, and sometimes this led Him to answer in a deeper way.

This has led me to reject most of the law-oriented confrontational evangelistic "formula," advocated by Ray Comfort and others. While I appreciate their passion, and think many of their premises are valid, I'm not convinced when it comes to the method. Boyd argues, and I tend to agree with him, that this approach hearkens back to Old Testament principles and is not necessarily a good way to build the Kingdom:

"The trouble with this approach, of course, is that despite the veneer of civil religion, most people in America aren't worried about whether they break one of the Ten Commandments now and then, and they certainly don't see the logic behind the claim that infractions of this sort warrant everlasting damnation. Just because the evangelist thinks this doesn't mean the person they're confronting thinks this, and the lack of shared presuppositions makes the encounter odd at best."*

Boyd talks next about why a proper understanding of accountability is so important, and then goes on to examine some of Paul's evangelistic methods. Paul quoted scripture to the Jews; it was something they subscribed to and so it made contextual sense. Paul didn't quote scripture on Mars Hill: he quoted pagan philosophy. In doing so he showed some simple consideration of, and appreciation for, his audience. These are basic communication principles! Where did we get this idea that we have some kind of moral wild card to play when witnessing? Why are we of all people exempt from the normative cultural standards of consideration? I wonder, supposing Jesus showed up for one of our evangelistic encounters, with all our talk of holiness and hell, if he wouldn't rebuke us like he did the disciples in Luke 9: "You know not what manner of spirit you are of."

What if, instead of judging and intimidating people, we chose to love them and listen to them? What if we took the time to build relationships and give people a reason to hear us out? Granted, there is much work to do, and time is short, but what if we someday find ourselves giving an account for what we thought were harmless shortcuts?

*Gregory Boyd, The Myth Of A Christian Nation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), p. 156-157

Addendum: To get the most from this post, you now must go here and read the comments.

Shattered

the world breaks in upon us
it feels like everybody’s against us
things goes wrong
we bleed; we hurt.
we’re left looking for a world
we can only long for

our hearts are bleeding
but it’s a tough world
so we smile and say
“me? i’m feeling fine”
we go through life much like robots
something isn’t quite real, but we do it all anyway
somehow we’ve been trained to just accept our lot

we trap ourselves in earthly prisons
we still hurt; we still long.
but we’ve learned to live despite it
we cruise through life and then
we wonder why others can’t just be ok
in our pain, we inflict pain
we shackle others in our chains

if only we could understand
this life is all a farce
this truly is a crooked world
there’s something that really is real—
but it’s a whole new dimension
and it doesn’t promise an end to seeking

so we’ve gotta keep looking
we need to keep fighting
skip the cheap and easy answers
and not look for systematic patterns to fill the gap
we’re gonna hurt; we’re bound to be vulnerable
but show me a better way to live in this crazy world.

-Javan Lapp, 2006

Aslan Is On The Move

The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of youth.

The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord at thy hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries.

He drinks from any stream he has to cross, winning victory after victory.

-Psalm 110

Languishing Language

As a hiatus from my usual spiritual/(un)political/theological/literary reading fare, I'm working through a number of business books, and it's not unlike the difference between a warm bed and a cold porcelain toilet seat on a winter morning. Intellectual freefall. Consider the excerpt below: clichés in red, surplus words in grey. This writing is so windy it makes me want to hide behind a tree.

"Once you're up and running, maximizing your profits is the name of the game. And it's an ongoing continuous process of improvement. How can I do this better and more efficiently? What it really boils down to is control. The more control you exert over every aspect of your business, the more profitable it will become. This requires you to pay close attention to all of the details so that nothing slips through the cracks."

These days anybody who knows anything about whatever can go write a book on it. I suppose I shouldn't let it get under my skin, I just feel writing should be taken seriously. We're making information king and degrading the noble art of communication to something you do on a cell phone.

English is deteriorating. The dictionaries are happy to tell you about all the great words we're adding - we never seem to hear about all the precise, descriptive, beautiful, archaic words we're flippantly discarding out the back door of civilization. Our public education system is in a tailspin; literacy among college students is slipping. Blogging and chat aren't necessarily helping either.

I don't think it is a deterioration we can stop, but I wonder if we can't slow it down a little - just a little. I'm no Clemens or Frost, but I like to think I have an appreciation, however small, for the succinct, the spicy, the sensitive. We need language that is real; language that shakes and stirs; language with wit and wonder; language that appreciates mystery, and beauty, and wind, and all those other unwieldy abstractions.

We need language that breathes.

My New Wallpaper

The best thing about National Geographic: the photography.

This shot of a Colorado fire was submitted by a reader and featured in this month's "Visions Of Earth." Pretty stunning.

Postscript On Boyd

Apparently not everyone is as excited about Greg Boyd as I am; I suppose that is to be expected. I'm sure he's not perfect, but I think he's on the right road and has a lot to offer, and the criticism only makes him taller.

The church there in St. Paul has made Greg's weekly message available as a podcast, and I'd encourage you to check it out if you'd like to supplement your own walk with some good solid real-time teaching. (Incidentally, 10/1, "The Temptation of Practical Goodness," is exceptional.) Let's do the Kingdom.

The Cross And The Sword

As I continue my quest to understand the social dimension of the Kingdom, occasionally I find a refreshing oasis amidst the wasteland of right-wing political religiosity. A prime example would be the teaching of Greg Boyd, an evangelical pastor from St. Paul, Minnesota, with a burden to see the Church return to the ways of Calvary. Prior to the 2004 elections, Boyd preached a series of six sermons exposing the errors and compromise of Christian nationalism and encouraging Christians, as "Kingdom-of-God-people," to trust "power-under," Calvary-type service, instead of worldly, "power-over," control. I don't know that I can recommend this series highly enough. While I'm still mulling over certain points (see my comments on duplicity below) and various sections seemed somewhat superficial, it remains a passionate cry in the wilderness that is both very strong and very gracious. (Greg's half-hour interview with Charlie Rose is a good introduction: skip past Rick Warren to Segment 2.)

In his teaching Boyd leaves room for some measure of political activism, (voting, etc.,) but only as over-and-against one's Kingdom calling, not as integral to it. I had believed even voting to be dangerous duplicity, and still do, but I am rethinking it through. Maybe it is healthy and desirable after all, as Boyd suggests, to "vote your conscience" on how the country runs, while still maintaining your distinct identity as a Kingdom-of-God-person. Quoted (unfavorably) in a recent AU blog, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl says "Politics and faith may mingle, because believers are also citizens. Church and state are home for the very same people." I'm not there yet, but I am conceding the idea, in a basic sense, as a possibility. But we must get our thinking turned around first, or we'll never be on the right foot.

Boyd's posture in the series is somewhat milder than it is in the book, (which is basically a transcription of the series): I noticed a distinct difference in tone between Sermon #6, "In But Not Of The World," and its parallel chapter, Chapter 9, "Christians And Violence: Confronting The Tough Questions." The book draws the lines a little more sharply. If you like to read, get the book; if you like to listen, get the sermons. If you don't particularly like either, flip a coin.

Being immersed in this controversy once again has only served to reinforce my feeling that these questions are at the crux of what it means to be Christian. I'm not denying anybody's salvation, I'm only saying that if you don't see these truths, (not necessarily as I see them, but for themselves,) I'm praying my heart out to God that you will. And for those of us who do see them, I'm praying that these truths would muscle their way beyond our minds and memos and into our lives, as we shoulder our crosses and follow Christ in radical, ridiculous, love-your-enemies faith.

"The distinct kingdom question is not, How do you vote? The distinct kingdom question is, How do you bleed?"
- Gregory Boyd, The Myth Of A Christian Nation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), p. 146