Evangelism

I’ve been starting to have thoughts about this lately.  I love this summary by David Fitch:

“In post Christendom, people generally (even among those raised as Christian) come to God in Christ broken, often from homes of divorce, sexual abuse, places of despair. The gospel cannot be a concept, it must be the invitation into an entirely reordered way of life - the world of redeemed creation.”

Read more:

The Bad Habits of Christendom Evangelism

They Like Church But Not Jesus

“I want to subvert a culture that turns the church into an incredibly expensive and remarkably harmless spectator sport.”

Brant nails it in this post about the incongruencies at his job as the host of a morning radio show at a Christian station and the plain message of Jesus.

The Side Effects of Community

Recently I’ve noticed that our faith community is beginning to impact people who are not necessarily ‘full-timers’.  In other words, there are people on the periphery who hang out for friendship or something to do.  They also are not afraid to ask for help when they have a need, and we are not afraid to oblige.  The interesting thing is that these people often attend other churches and in some cases might not even like our gatherings.  But, just the nature of our relationship and our ‘life together’ is in some way encouraging or helpful to them.  While talking to a friend about this today I mentioned that I think this is part of our calling - to be an underground blessing to the Church and others.

I ran across this related quote today from Jean Vanier’s book Community and Growth:

“We shouldn’t seek the ideal
community. It is a question of loving those whom God has set beside us today.
They are signs of God. We might have chosen different people, people who were
more cheerful and intelligent. But these are the ones God has given us, the ones
he has chosen for us. It is with them that we are called to create unity and
live a covenant. We choose our own friends; but in our families, we do not
choose our brothers and sisters; they are given to us. So it is in community
life.” - Jean Vanier

Good stuff.

Recycled Change

Isn’t that a metaphor for American life?

I saw this while taking out the trash yesterday morning and I started thinking about the word ‘change’.  In presidential elections of course, it is a slogan that means “Our administration will be different than the last guy’s…so vote for us.”  Coupled with the right marketing, shrewd presentation of an alternative platform, and a personality that a diverse population can rally behind, you get ‘change’.  But what about our lives?  What does real change look like?  Can we measure it?  Should we even talk about it?

When most people talk about changing their life, they usually mean “I want to be different.”  Usually this has to do with an unfulfilling job, relationship, or something about their body.  But when Jesus announced the availability of the Kingdom of God to his followers, he wasn’t talking about tweaking our exercise regime or taking pottery classes on the weekends.  We typically equate the word ‘repent’ with individual sins - repent of your greed, lust, anger, etc.  But what Jesus meant by ‘repent’ was much more political and comprehensive.  He was saying, “Give up you agenda, your solutions to yours and the world’s problems, and follow me.” His call to repentence certainly had personal, moral implications, but it also required allegiance to Jesus - to in effect give up your life.

Surrender is something Americans don’t do very well.  We truly believe that if we work hard enough, we can fix our problems and then take on the world’s.  But Jesus’ idea of change is obviously quite a bit different from ours.  I’m not sure you can measure change, but I think I know what if feels like.  It’s not pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of stuff.  It identifies with the broken - the losers, the spit-on and shat-on, those without hope that anything of significance could ever be different. Jesus came announcing his Kingdom - a place where things truly are different and transformation is real.  Instead of recycled change, he promises resurrection.  And that’s got my vote.