Do you regularly express the supremacy of Christ in your daily conversations?
I don't know many people using the old confrontational evangelism like "Has anyone ever taken a Bible and showed you how to go to heaven?" The problem with this question is that it assumes that the person you are talking to accepts the Bible as a place to find accurate information, and it assumes that the person has an idea of heaven as a place that they would want to go to. I also think that this kind of method doesn't show the supremacy of and need for Christ from the outset, but it focuses on the supremacy of my being being able to do something in order to obtain "heaven" (which to me is a lot like the promise of 70 virgins in paradise for the Muslim Suicide bomber), anyway it seems like this kind of questioning seems to leave God out of the idea of Heaven.
Personally the fear of hell and the desire for heaven were very influential in my own accepting a "half Gospel" (which is no Gospel) when I was younger, and because of this I spent a long time living in sin, since the other half of the Gospel that I didn't "get" was repentance. One question struck me later in life. It was when I heard the question "Would you still want to go to heaven when you died if God wasn't there?". It occurred to me that it NEVER occurred to me that God would be there, or if it did it seemed like an insignificant part of the "heaven" experience. In my mind it was mainly streets of gold and mansions and the freedom from sin (no actually it was freedom from guilt), all things focused on me as the center.
To show that the culture is catching on to the ineffectiveness of this kind of evangelism you can look at this video at youtube by a user called "PaganWolf" who gives people advise on how to do "counter evangelism". (UPDATE: apparently a bunch of christians were "offended" by paganwolfs videos and got them removed from youtube, yeah christians...what a um...victory...up for the ... um gospel?)
The premise of all his videos is that the Evangelist has no real personal relationship with the person being evangelized and therefore the methods he describes are very effective and play on typical stereotypes of fundamentalist Christians.
What you have here with "PaganWolf" is not an unreachable person, but a person being reached the wrong way. "PaganWolf" is a person that Jesus died on the Cross for and loves, and if we were to relate to him in that way it would be much more effective.
I've been reading some about the new "Postmodern" culture and how they think. At first I thought that these people were totally unreachable, but the more I study the more I can find ways that I think in similar ways and the more I see inroads to the Gospel that can be really meaningful. It seems like the better approach is to appeal to their spirituality (because they are not ashamed of it) and also to their desire to find meaning in life that does not come from the receiving of rewards or physical goods, but instead of how to experience God in a meaningful way. Postmoderns also have to be more gently led into the premise that the Bible is a source of truth (because generally they are wary of anyone that claims that the have an absolute truth, they will see this claim as an attempt to control them and resist it). Postmoderns don't necessarily think they are free to define truth personally, but instead they value the idea that truth can be come to as a community. This notion should give great encouragement to the role of a healthy church body in reaching this generation.
If you'll notice, many times "PaganWolf" is not railing against the actual message of the Evangelist, and if you look at some of his other videos he actually presents some very good points on life in general that would be tremendous material for reaching him with the Gospel. It seems to me like he is more offended by the fact that the evangelist would engage him in these kinds of conversations without really getting to know him first. I do believe that if you first befriended "PaganWolf" you would be able to go along way in spiritual talk and find many inroads to his listening to the Gospel in a more positive light, but whoever took on this task would really need to see "PaganWolf" as a lost friend who needed Christ.
I think the result of the "heaven orientated" thinking that I mentioned at the beginning of this entery leads to this kind of rude evangalism that treats people like a "mark" who could be chalked up as "another jewel in my crown" when I forcefully and inconsiderately "evangelized" him.
If we will regain a sence of community, befriend the lost in our community and truly see the need they have for Christ, we will be able to reach them. The Postmoderns generation is nothing that the Gospel has not faced before, and nothing that God's Grace can't easily overcome.
Read Planting new Churches in a Postmodern Age and The Radical Reformission for more.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Evangersation
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4 comments:
Ok, this one is not nearly as easy to just make fun of. I think I'll have to leave an actual response this time.
I agree with the general daxology of evangelism. I think the easiest and most effective way to share the word of God is to live it. Do not read this statement to mean that you must live in a holier-than-thou manner where you must of abstain from all things "evil" such as... insert whatever... drinking, pot, caffeine, etc. What I mean by living the Word is living the Love. I mean genuinely respecting people for who they are.
Unfortunately, that means getting to know somebody BEFORE witnessing to them. I think one of the biggest dis-services done to the church are people that go out "spreading the word" without knowing the person first. I know that I personally don't care to hear a knock on my door at dinner time from some lady in a flowery dress who wants to know if I "know the Lord Jesus." See, I am a Christian and those people piss me off too. Imagine it from the perspective of those who are not Christians. These door-to-door folks or the people that feel the need to "share the gospel" with whomever they happen to run into that day are doing nothing but driving people away from precisely what they are trying to drive them toward.
Now to launch into one more piece of the evangelism pie. I also think that mission trips, when done with the wrong intent, can be very damaging. If you set a mission similar to a time share sales pitch where you get a benefit (i.e. medical care, finance, or home rebuilding) in exchange for someone sitting there and listening to your sales pitch, how many people do you think would take you seriously? My guess is not many! On the other hand, if you simply go into an area and give love on people without any expectations, I think that's exuding something that will interest people and get them interested in learning more about what the mission is about.
I think the key is context. There is a context where "Hell Fire and Brimstone" is acceptable such as in a public speaking forum where the speaker has the recognition and the "permission" by the crowd to speak. Also I believe that a speaker in this context can call people to task even though he has no relationship with them, because more than likely the people have come to hear him speak in order TO be called to task (whether they will admit it or not).
However, in personal evangelism relationship is key, and relationship is built by living the Christian life amongst the world so that they A) genuinely think highly of you because of your convictions and because of the love you show to those around you and B) have a good enough relationship with you that you can credibly enter into a conversation about Christ.
I also agree with your take on mission trips, I think they must be heavy on meeting physical needs and developing relationships. I believe this is especially true of the American church. We have lots and lots and lots and lots...(ad infinitum)...of MONEY. I think most of our "mission trips" should be spent going to places that don't have money and helping the indigenous Christians there to minister to the people of their own culture by building the churches, hospitals, orphanages, houses, etc. Provide them the means to spread the Gospel with the people that they already have the cultural context to reach.
If you look on the "Daxological Diagram of Missiology" where the black and green meet in the fuzzy area is where the "lost" develop relationships with the church and therefore become open to real evangelism. Then they move to where the green and blue meet as they hear the Gospel in it's entirety and see it lived out in the lives of the Church.
I figure most of the modern day casual church goers are actually in this area between the black and the green, and not actually saved. What is needed by the church is to develop these relationships so that the magnificence of Christ is realized by these people.
The big arrows that go directly from Black to Christ are where people hear the Gospel and respond to it without spending much time in the relationship process, such as evangelistic crusades like Billy Graham, or even the minimal effects of door to door evangelism when done with love. However you will see that even these people still have to come into contact with the Gospel in some meaningful way in order to respond to it.
The concept of going directly from the "black to Christ" is a tricky one because it opens up a fundamental arguement. This to say that you love Christ but sometimes in that process of loving Christ you more love the idea of Christ and not necessarily the true Christ. The reason this is such a tricky area is it calls into question the idea that you need to be knowledgeable of the gospels in order to know Christ.
I think that there must be some fundamental knowledge base to truly reach Christ. That said, you do not need to be a scholar or a modern day Pharisee to be a true believer, but that line is hard to draw.
I believe that there is a maturity process in learning Christ and I think that would be an interesting subset of the daxocologic diagram of coming to Christ. The diagram as currently drawn out focuses on society and the individuals that comprise it. I'd be interested to a see a the same diagram that focuses on the individual (concentric circle theory at it's finest).
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