There’s a great scene at the end of
the film, “The Big Kahuna” where Danny DeVito’s character counsels a young
co-worker about his heavy-handed mode of evangelism. He says, “It doesn’t
matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make
Money in Real Estate with No Money Down.’
That doesn’t make you a human being;
it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a
human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to
find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a
conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And
you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.”
That scene sums up, for me, how the
world sees the insincerity of our attempts to sell our faith the way a
door-to-door salesman sells magazine subscriptions. As a young college student,
I was very passionate about Christian Apologetics. I studied numerous books
that taught me how to defend my Christian faith using science, history,
archaeology, and logic. I got very good at constructing arguments designed to
convince the skeptic and the unbeliever that Jesus really was the Son of God
and that Christianity was the only way to believe. After several years of
learning, and even teaching others, about the basics of Christianity and how to
win those arguments of faith, I eventually came to a sobering realization. I
realized that, in all my years of study, in all my numerous arguments about the
validity of the Christian faith, I had never once argued anyone into trusting
Jesus. Along the way I did have some great theological and mentally stimulating discussions with people, but the
fact was that my apologetics had not won a single person to Christ. That’s when
I realized that the only apologetic that really matters is the apologetic of
your life. No one can argue with your actual, personal experience. I realized
that my life needed to reflect the transformational power of Jesus. If not, my
logical arguments and brilliant proofs were useless. The real proof of what I
was contending for was ultimately found in whether or not the Gospel had any
real, transformational impact on my actual, every day life.Anything beyond that
was just a mental exercise or an empty philosophical display. I’m certainly
much more secure in the grounding of my faith due to the hours spent studying
apologetics. There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you believe and why you
believe it. But what is best for others, and especially for my own personal
spiritual development, is for me to actually live out the Gospel in my daily
life. The best apologetic possible is for me to share my personal struggles,
failures, experiences and insights with others as I follow Jesus every single
day.
This is what the Apostle Peter had in
mind when he exhorted the early disciples of Jesus, in 1 Peter 3:15, to
“..always be ready to give an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within.”
This passage was written with the underlying assumption that the people he was
writing to were living radically transformational lives within the culture they
were part of. We know this is so because of what we see in both of Peter’s
epistles to the Church, and also in the book of Acts. We also know this by
looking at the first three hundred years of Church History.
The early followers of Jesus were
living lives that were extremely different from those of the pagan world around
them. Because of this, Peter encourages them to be ready to explain why they
cared for lepers, and fed pagan widows, and shared personal belongings with
anyone in need.
These days I fear we in the Church
have largely lost this sense of living a different sort of life from those
around us. We are not often found acting out such unbridled compassion to strangers,
or caught in the act of serving others as Jesus commanded. We have been given a
high calling to carry the Gospel of the Kingdom to the ends of the Earth. At
the very least we must begin by taking this same Gospel to the end of our
street, or to the house next door. We are the people God has chosen to carry
the message of hope to a dying world. We are all called to be ambassadors of
the Kingdom of God. We are expected to be salt and light wherever we are. How
are we accomplishing this?
Early on in my Christian walk I heard
the phrase, “The Gospel came to you on its way to someone else.” If so, the
very next question is whether or not the Gospel has traveled onward to the next
person in the chain. Have we passed the baton? Have we shared freely with others
what was so freely given to us? If not, why? What prevents us from sharing the
Good News? I suspect it has something to
do with the models we’ve been given. Most of us are not cut out to confront
people with clever witnessing tracts at the shopping mall. We do not feel
comfortable
approaching total strangers to sell
them something they probably don’t want in the first place. We are paralyzed by
our fear.
http://ablessedlifeinjesus.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_16.html
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a
more natural way to share our faith with others? Wouldn’t you be relieved to
discover that God’s expectation of you was simply to be who He made you to be?
Over the years I’ve learned to jettison the sales pitch version of evangelism
in favor of a more natural method. If we can become more effective carriers of
the Gospel message, if we can begin to live our lives as God intended us to
live, I believe we can have a greater impact on our world for Christ.
This book aims to clear up a lot of
misconceptions we may have about evangelism. I believe Jesus really had something
exceptional in mind when He taught His disciples to be salt and light to the
world and commanded them to go and make disciples. This is a journey I have
only just begun, but I invite you to come along with me and discover what it
really means to be a missionary in your
neighborhood, at your work, and in your everyday life.
