I’m writing this just hours after Luther Seminary’s “Rethinking
Evangelism” conference ended and thought I would write some initial thoughts (this is also my newsletter article for August), and hopefully in a few days I'll write a few more deeper thoughts and ideas that have come out of these past 3 days.
For the most part the old ways of doing evangelism were just
overall bad experiences both for those evangelizing and those being evangelized
to. Many of us can remember a time when
we have been asked something along the lines of “if you die tonight, do you know
if you are going to heaven?” and most of
the time those memories are followed by the awkward, frustrating or annoyed
feeling that questions like that bring up in us. We know of times when we have been encouraged
to ourselves to go door knocking or have had others stop by our door hoping to
win souls for Christ. The most often
prayed prayer of a door knocker is “Please don’t let anyone be home” and the
most often prayed prayer of the person inside is “Please don’t let them realize
that I’m home.”
Evangelism has become a dirty word. We avoided it, we don’t want to do it, we
claim it is the pastor’s job and even most pastors (including myself) wish that
it was not needed.
And this is why we need to rethink evangelism.
Because evangelism is not about door knocking, it is not
about winning souls for Christ, it is not about conversion, or getting people
to come to our church on Sunday. Instead
evangelism is story. Evangelism is about
telling our story, about why we are Christian, and about how Christ and the
Christian community has changed our lives. For how can we tell someone how
important Christ should be in their lives if we don’t know why Christ is
important in our own lives. And so we
must take time to learn our story, many Christians have never taken the time to
think about why God is important in their lives.
But before we ever share that story with the person we are
trying to evangelize too, we must first take the time to listen to their
story. Where are they at in their
lives? What are they struggling
with? What brings them joy? And then,
only after we have truly and authentically listen to them, then we can share
our own story. And this is evangelism –
sharing the good news, telling the good news, telling why God is important to
us. Not convincing them, not winning
their souls, not getting them to church on Sunday, but building community by
sharing our stories and listening to theirs.
