Triumph & Tragedy in Evangelism

It’s now well known that evangelism is a process. Individuals are at various stages in the journey towards salvation in Jesus Christ…and even in the journey with him as new creations. However, this knowledge hasn’t yet made much of an impact in the way we plan for the process of evangelism. For the most part, any evangelism planning we do is done under the assumption that one event (or one style of event) will suffice. In doing so, we resemble a homeowner trying to paint his whole house, inside and out, with a two-inch sash brush. While he will be thoroughly satisfied with the results when he paints the windows and wood trim, he’ll grow tired and frustrated—and even do a poor job—trying to paint the exterior siding and interior walls with such a brush. Our world now requires us to be very deliberate about tailoring our evangelistic efforts towards people who are at vastly different stages in their spiritual lives.
An example: Along with several churches, we recently participated in a local evangelistic event at which more than 1,000 people attended. In the follow-up, I noticed at least 3 typical responses to the event. Christians loved it. They were thrilled by the opportunity to take friends & family to a quality event that would both entertain and provide a Gospel presentation. People I would label “active seekers” (those who attend church but have never made the life-altering decision to follow Jesus Christ) were equally positive. In fact, this event seemed to be tailor-made for this group of people. Many of them became followers of Jesus Christ on this night. In fact, in the church I pastor, one entire family joined the Kingdom on this night. As my British friend would say, “The night was ‘spot on.’”
There’s a third group, however, left less than enchanted. There are a small handful of people attending our church who have zero church background. None. One 20-something lady was never in a church before attending with a friend…with great fear and trepidation I might add. Several other people took friends with a similar vacuum in church experience. My conversations with these people have been significantly less warm. While they knew the event was sponsored by Christian churches, and that the performer planned to talk about Jesus Christ, they were unprepared for both the length of the presentation and the “arm-twisting” (her word) they felt. In fact, the reaction was universal distaste from this group: each, in one way or another, said they felt cheated, wanted to leave, and refused to “fill out that stupid card.” Ugh. I apologized.
Now, negative feelings should never cause us to back away from evangelism. This particular event was a great success for those familiar with the church and its ways. However, if we’re going to target people who are much farther away from the Church (not necessarily from Jesus!), I’m convinced our approach will have to be different. If we’re going to plan our evangelism with the process in mind, it’s going to require us to be much more deliberate about what (or whom) we’re trying to reach. Where in the process are we attempting to “land” with this event? Further, it probably isn’t safe for us to guess…I would have guessed wrong on this one! We’ll have to find a way to ask.

Revolution or Reformation?

Mark Twain in his short story, Was It Heaven or Was It Hell, exposes a well kept secret about many Christians and consequently many churches. That secret is that we have allowed a pious selfishness to substitute for a deep a connectedness to the heart of a God who seems less concerned about propriety and far more concerned about communicating his profound love for us. The story in its entirety is well worth the time to read through but this following excerpt makes the implicit explicit. Hannah and Hester are sisters caring for a niece who is very ill and her young daughter who has told a lie. This excerpt is an exchange between the doctor and the sisters after the sisters forced the little girl to confess to the mother.
"ALL lies are sinful," said Hannah, setting her lips together like a vise; "all lies are forbidden."
The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He went to attack this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin. Finally he made a venture: "Hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved injury or shame?"
"No."
"Not even a friend?"
"No."
"Not even your dearest friend?"
"No. I would not."
The doctor struggle in silence awhile with this situation; then he asked: "Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?"
"No. Not even to save his life."
Another pause. Then: "Nor his soul?"
There was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval--then Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision: "Nor his soul."
No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said: "Is it with you the same, Hannah?"
"Yes," she answered.
"I ask you both--why?"
"Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us the loss of our own souls--WOULD, indeed, if we died without time to repent."
"Strange . . . strange . . . it is past belief." Then he asked, roughly: "Is such a soul as that WORTH saving?" He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he urned and rasped out an admonition: "Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! RISK your souls! risk
them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!"

Since reading this story some years ago I have been haunted by the thought that much of what we say we do for God really has much more to do about our own sense of what we think God values than it does with what God really does want. We battle over all kinds of silly things that keep us busy and feeling pious but we are not transformed into Christ-likeness by any of this endless activity so much as numbed into compliance by fear of being damned or worse yet, judged by our fellow believers to be not spiritual or respectful of God.
The ironic thing about this mentality is that is stands in stark opposition to our theology which tells us that God in Christ Jesus has already saved us and is making us new apart from any action on our part save receiving the gift. But like Hannah and Hester we keep trying to figure out how to save our own souls.
In the process of telling God what is and is not acceptable we create environments in our churches that are not welcoming and instead are uninspiring at best and judgmental at worst. Growth in Christ-likeness is not measured by how much like Christ we become but how much like the surrounding church culture we become. The church, instead of being a light that shines in the darkness, becomes a little more than a service organization or dry repository of historical artifact.
In the face of this comes a movement that is now significant enough to be measured. George Barna in his book Revolution has taken a look at the people who are leaving the institutional/traditional church. These people are not leaving the faith in fact they say they are leaving to keep and grow in the faith. These people claim that the institutional church is no longer helping people to grow and so they leave and find people in their neighborhoods or job places or schools or coffee shops or wherever who feel similarly disenfranchised and they “become” a church, a group of people who want to grow spiritually.
What’s the church to do? Is this movement a legitimate one or not and if not why not? I would love to hear your thoughts on Revolution or Reformation.