The E Word

Evangelism. Here's the story:

Four months ago, six young church planters sit in a room, feeling pretty intimidated by the prospect of talking to people about the thing they love most in the world. Overshadowing them is the mighty tension that looms over the dreaded E word whenever it is mentioned, in everything but the silently whispered prayer in which we articulate our longing for our closest friends to know Jesus....

-We know that people coming to know Christ is about a JOURNEY; one which can go on for many years. The journey is about friendship. And friendship doesn't shove the 'God solution' in the face of every problem; it doesn't push the friend to come to church, hoping that the 'worship time' will make the person cry and accept God, IT JUST LOVES THEM wherever they are at, in some magical paradox of expecting God to move in their friends life, but expecting nothing of their friend. It's beautiful and real and full of love and grace and genuine genuine friendship like the sort Jesus did. It is as far away from number crunching evangelism as you can get; it brings people into church community and promises to love them as unconditionally as it can.

The down side is: it's ultimately paralysing.

The people (it's us, if you haven't got it yet) begin to see the their 'friendship evangelism' lifestyle as being utterly opposed to evangelistic activities, which involve verbal proclamation of the gospel, particularly to strangers. So they don't do it, ever. They build fantastic church community, do brilliant discipleship with existing believers, and are fantastically welcoming to the few atheistics and agnostics who manage to connect into church community through believing friends; but ultimately, they never go out and preach the gospel.

So, to abruptly switch narratorial style and focus....
Four months ago, leaving university and seeing all my non christian friends disappear from my local community, I realised I was living in a Christian ghetto.

Nightmare.

Obviously, Christianity would always be my ghetto of choice; I love my church and this community is a powerfully transforming one, full of love. But in the Bible, Jesus did make quite a point of sending his mates out to tell people about him. And witnessing the chasm between the wonderful riches we have in our church community, the love and freedom which we have, even when we are so far from being perfect; and the crap in the world- the fear and the fakeness and pain, convinces me that we need to go out and start sharing this beautiful God we have found.

So God starts to teach me and the five other church planters about how preaching the gospel is both about going on people's journey's with them, AND about doing evangelistic activity. I think perhaps God just made us free. We started doing evangelistic stuff, talking to strangers in pubs, giving mince pies in the street, and running film nights; and it was fun. Genuinely, as in, I want to do this stuff. It's scary, but it's exciting. Getting in on people's journeys, seeing what God throws your way, knowing that at any moment He could use you to reveal something of the truth, but NOT FEELING RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TRUTH OR FOR COMMUNICATING IT. Not feeling responsible for people's journeys, just enjoying them for who they are; being free to experience them without any agenda, except to share a bit of the love you've grasped. Always knowing though, that you've got to be intentional in your loving; it won't spread out from your Christian communities unless you take it out.

It all gives me so much hope; hope that God can use us to get alongside people, loving them with everything with all the love we can muster, but without trying to control their story. Loving humanity like Jesus loved it.

Anyway, enough ranting. If you're into the practicalities, this is how the fellow church planters and I outwork our value shift through a pragmatic evangelistic strategy:
-On an individual level (praying for our friends, sharing about them, introducing them to each other and loving them; keeping each other accountable and encouraged)
-On a community level (recognising that introducing non christians into community and building it around them is an evangelistic strategy, and doing it. We are doing regular film nights to this end and we often attend the pub (purely for the sake of the gospel, of course.)
-On an activity level (acts of kindness like mince pie giving at christmas, then telling people we are christians if they want to know; chatting to strangers in the pub; listening to them talk about their lives etc).

To conclude then;
Thankfully, the six church planters did not wake up to find it had all been a dream. Instead, they continue to embark on an often intimidating yet always exciting journey of evangelism. Who would have guessed the mandate could ever have been this good.