Not more than 24 hours after this post, I happened upon a link to Issue 4, 2006 of the WCA News. The particular issue happens to be focused heavily on evangelism and affirmed everything that has been floating in my head lately. I’ll pull out some highlights, but please take some time to read the issue in your spare time.

The first article, titled “Evangelism in 3-D” highlights Willow’s 3-D philosophy: Develop Friendships, Discover Stories and Discern Next Steps. Here’s a quip about the root problem of evangelism today:

People hate evangelism. Christians shy away from it. They’re afraid of it, discouraged by it and feel guilty when they fail to drag a seeker across the line of faith. If Christians dread evangelism, non-Christians despise it. They feel pressured, preached at, cornered, judged, condemned and reduced to spiritual projects. “Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten what evangelism is really about and we’ve reduced the process to simply inviting people to a weekend service” says Willow Creek’s Director of Neighborhood Evangelism, Garry Poole. This is a problem.

This is a serious problem, folks. The statement “…they fail to drag a seeker across the line of faith” sums it up too plainly. This isn’t a task at which we can fail.

The same article also offers some responses to the question “what is your knee-jerk reaction to the word evangelism?” You can read for yourself to see some pretty scary responses. Poole also had this to say:

“We needed to shift from ‘doing community in the church’ to ‘doing church in the community,’”

And this:

Developing friendships is showing an authentic interest in their interests. “Don’t try to be interesting, just be interested”

And this:

And whatever you do, don’t view your neighbor as a project. No one wants to be reduced to a spiritual project just so you can check them off your list.

How many times do we write a name down on a card and… yeah. Poole said this, too:

Christians often view evangelism as getting the seeker to listen to us while we share a verbal witness – give our testimony in the hopes they will better understand the gospel… We’re omitting a critical part of the process – the other person’s story. Non-Christians are eager to tell their stories.

Amen, brother. I am in the midst of another amazing book titled The Revolutionary Communicator. The first principle in that book is that communication is about listening. People just want someone to listen and be authentic.

There is a great deal more to learn from that article, but let’s move on to one by Bill Hybels, the Senior Pastor at Willow. In Just Walk Across the Room (also the title of his new book), Bill describes a relationship he had with his son’s childhood soccer coach, Brian. It is a relationship that was Spirit-led and took years to yield a new believer, surprising no one more than Bill himself. He nurtured the relationship on Brian’s terms, serving him, listening to him and just being a friend. Relationships and serving others goes a very long way to expanding the Kingdom.

And finally, an article titled Connections: The Bridge to Grace, also highlights the importance of relationships with an interesting story. The author’s wife was in the middle of an evangelism course and had an assignment to have evanglistic conversations each week (what is an “evangelistic” conversation, anyway?). He describes a conversation where her close friend opened up and shared some things that completely redefined their relationship…

A soul connection was made. For the first time in many years, this friend saw Jesus and the church in a different light – a very positive light!

Interestingly, though…

…she flunked with an “F”… because she failed to present the plan of salvation… and that was the assignment.

Granted, this was an assignment for a graded class, but sadly, I feel like this is exactly how we view our role in evangelism — an assignment that gets graded.

While tracts, strategies and events are brilliant tools perfect for certain situations, evangelism is about “walking across the room” and building relationships. The Bible tells us to be prepared to answer questions, but not to shout those answers to those who are not listening.

I didn’t plan on writing this, but I felt the need. Who knows if there will be more. Stay tuned.

The same holds true in ministry as well. Too many times churches set lofty goals to reach their entire community for Christ, and they attempt to do so in only one or two ways. A block party here, a Christmas pageant there, etc. While these are great in Theory (I’ve always wanted to live there), there is no possible way to succeed with these goals in mind. While you may say “wait, dude, anything is possible with God, right?” I’ll respond with yes, but God also does things differently for different groups of people. The Corinthians, the Thessalonians, the Romans, all received very different messages that were relevant to their specific needs.

What we as A Church – a single group of God-fearing Christians – must do is to break the masses up into smaller groups of people and reach them in ways that are relevant to them. Church A then ministers to one group while Church B ministers to another. Why work against each other and expect Church A to be everything to everyone. It won’t work. If you encounter someone at Church A not being reached, let them know about Church B, or even better, Church C that just started around the corner.

We do this so well with international missions, breaking people groups up and providing materials in their language, storyboards, and dramatic presentations, how come we forget that there are multiple groups of people right outside our doors? Just because we all live in the same community doesn’t mean we all worship the same way.

If Church A happens to have two services, and is still missing their target(s – there could be more than one), maybe a third service, or modifying one of the existing two is in order. It isn’t about a single style of worship or about the music, it is how best to relate the message in away that is relevant to their target audience.

There has been an uprising of community churches with multiple campuses or satellites. This is not only to cover a larger geographic area (churches are all about numbers, you know), but is also to be more relevant to different groups of people in the community.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to be relevant in our presentation, because the distractions wouldn’t exist. Our vision of God would be clear and the desire to know Him would be inherent in all of us (it truly is, but we don’t realize it) from the start. Therefore we would already be at the point of “What can I do for Him” rather than the selfish, human “what can He do for me?”

The problem here is that the people we’re trying to bring into the church and minister to are not able to grasp a concept of “what can I do for Him.” That takes time. We must first be patient and understand that before they can get there, they need to understand “What can He do for me?”

Speak their language. Be relevant. Be passionate. Don’t be afraid to point someone in a different direction (not the same as turning them away) that speaks to them. Work together. If you want to be more things to more people, realize that it’s going to take time & effort and can’t be accomplished in one or two ways.