As the son of pastor, I have been brought up in church since the tender age of two weeks old.
During the last 33 years I’ve observed a lot of what goes on in Church, some of it truly awesome, some of it not so much.
Firstly, let me state clearly that I love the Church. It has encouraged and built me up, it is God’s bride and the only answer for the world until Jesus returns. But why do we often over-complicate things, especially when it comes to sharing our faith? In my experience, we spent too much time searching for a “magic formula” to put bums on seats, train our churches to be “Contagious Christians” or jump onto the latest DVD box set to bring revival to our cities. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact there are a plethora of helpful resources available and we should utilize them. But, should our perception of evangelism be challenged?
Growing up, I often felt like a failure at Christianity for not sharing my faith at every opportunity. I didn’t invite friends to the majority of our churches events and why would I? At times they were often humiliating, and doing so would have been social suicide? Don’t get me wrong, I now realise that there were times where I just needed to man up and take a leap of faith, but there were also occasions I thought, “phew, I’m glad I didn’t mention that to…”
As a result of what I learned and experienced, I ruled myself out as an evangelist. I wasn’t an extrovert, I wasn’t gifted at giving a three-point sermon and my bible wasn’t even leather bound! Ironically, today I work for a charity that “seeks to reach one billion people with the good news of Jesus”. Who said God doesn’t have a sense of humour?!
In Acts 17:16-34, Paul preaches to a group of philosophers and stoics in Athens. This group was about as far removed from Paul’s First Century Jewish context as possible. In verse 23 Paul does something remarkable and equally ordinary, he observed the climate of his surroundings: “as I walked around and looked carefully...” Why is this remarkable? Paul was intent on building a bridge to an audience that held a completely different world-view. He made the effort to learn and contextualize the gospel for his hearers, in order to clearly communicate the message of the gospel. I think this is what lies at the heart of an evangelist. Paul expresses his motivation for this in 1 Corinthians 9:22:
“To the weak I became weak, that I may win the weak; I have become all things, to all people, so that I may by all means save some”
I don’t for one minute advocate that you become social chameleon or compromise your beliefs so you fit into the crowd, but have you sought to do as Paul did in order to communicate more clearly to your peers? I encourage you to reflect on your unique context that you are placed in and pray, “God how can I most effectively communicate so I can reach as many people as possible with your good news in my sphere of influence?
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