While it’s already been established
that Jesus had no real formula when it came to evangelism, it does seem that
that there are several guiding principles that can help us in our pursuit of a
more missional way of life. The first thing we see is the absence of an “any
size fits all” approach to sharing the Gospel message. Instead, Jesus employed
a tailor-made, “this is just for
you” style of evangelism. He took the
time to get to know people. He listened to them speak first. He spent hours in
prayer with the Father, and when it came time to answer the question, “What
must I do to be saved?”
He communicated the necessary
information in a way that the person asking could understand and receive the
truth.The only formula I can see, at a very basic level, begins with conversation. We have to learn to communicate
well with others. The first and greatest secret of good conversation is simply
utilizing your listening skills. People want to share what’s in their
heart with someone who genuinely cares
to know. We have to develop a heart for others and that begins with knowing
them in an intimate way. We can’t learn to really know someone or
begin to love them until we’ve
listened to them. I’ve always loved the phrase, “Listening to someone is so
much like loving them that most people can’t tell the difference.” It’s true.
We can fulfill the command of Jesus to
love others simply by closing our mouths and laying aside our prepared speeches
and evangelistic jargon in order to listen to the people around us with sincere
compassion.
So, we begin with conversation, which
at some point leads to community. By this I mean that, as we listen to others
we begin to develop a sense of commonality. We identify the areas where we have
things in common and as we build on these we soon discover a bond which goes
beyond casual acquaintance and moves into friendship. Through this ongoing
relationship we
eventually earn the right to be heard
by them. Because we’ve spent so much time listening to what is in their heart,
we develop credibility with them. Our opinion, suddenly and miraculously,
actually matters to our new friend. Because of this new, genuine relationship,
the Gospel message finds the fertile soil necessary for conversion to take root
and germinate. Our role in this process then is simply obedience to God and the
practice of unconditional love towards everyone God leads into our path. So,
the pattern, if we must have one, would look like this:
1) Conversation
2) Community
3) Conversion.
Unfortunately, the pattern I believe
the traditional Church has long practiced and adopted has been to first try to
convert people so that we can have a conversation with them, and then, perhaps,
we might have community with them. At least I know that, over the course of my
own Christian experience this has been the pattern I’ve found myself falling
into with those who were outside of my faith.Somehow we’ve turned things
completely around. We’ve asked those outside of Christ to come to us on our
terms, on our day, and conform to our subculture so that we might engage them
in dialog and conversation.
Once they convert we are happy to
invite them into our community and befriend them. But this is not the way we
should relate to people. This is not the way that Jesus taught us to love
others or to communicate the message of the Gospel. If we can learn to engage
people in conversation first, and I mean real, honest conversation, we have a
hope to build a common
ground for establishing a relationship
based on love. To be honest, I am the worst at this. I think I’m the least
competent conversationalist I’ve ever met. If someone doesn’t immediately share
my interests, it’s difficult for me to continue in conversation. But, I know
down inside that there’s something wrong with this.
I should be able to relate to someone
simply because they are human and I am human. We are, at the core, all the same
on the inside. We hunger, we thirst, we laugh, cry, we dream, we imagine, we
breathe. Why can’t I relate to someone at the level of being a simple human
being?
Maybe I cannot engage people who are
unlike me in a meaningful conversation because I am too interested in talking
and not interested in listening?
Maybe I need to pray that God would
help me to develop a ministry of listening? There is a world full of people who
are desperate for someone to listen to them. Our senior centers and nursing
homes are full of people with amazing stories to tell, if only someone would
take the time to listen to them.People everywhere are starving for someone who
will take a genuine interest in who they are, or what they believe, or who they
hope to become. Will we take the time to listen to people? Are we willing to
surrender our time for an hour or two with someone with a story to tell? I once
had a friend tell me that she had trained herself to look at people in the eye
whenever she talked to them, long enough to remember the color of their eyes.
It helped her to make a human connection with another person, and to see them
as more than who they appeared to be on the surface.
Once in a while I will try to look at
a crowd of people and try to imagine what they looked like as children. It’s a
fascinating experiment really. It reduces everyone into the same virtual
elementary school class. You can see that, deep down, we’re all still the same
on the inside as we were when we were in grade school. We’re uncertain, we’re
lonely, we’re trying to fit in and be popular and make friends. I’ve wondered
if maybe being missional is really only the process of learning how to be a
human who can relate to other humans.
Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how
to really just relate to people as human beings, without first determining if
they think like I do, or if they believe what I believe.
For a Christian, this means
un-learning how to interact with people as either “non-Christians” or
“Christians”. It means loving each person for who they are. It means learning
how to see people as God sees them.
