Rediscovering the lost art of evangelism
[A 10-part series posted between February 22 and October 3, 2006]
Preface
Steve Knight, Minnesota native, blogger and long lost pal relocated to NC in the Billy Graham corporate move, pointed out a post by Guy Kawasaki last month that got my brain buzzing.
I preface this with a caveat about the dangers inherent in applying business principles or marketing tactics to church evangelism. I loathe applying businesses approach to church leadership, ecclesiology and outreach—put me on record. What struck me when I read Kawasaki’s post was how his 10 principles of evangelism surpassed business and marketing “tactics” and suggest an authenticity that rings true to me more than some of the ways churches are currently attempting to do evangelism.
So here goes--my first series. Take these for what they are worth. My opinions are based on my own experiences (with my own attempts at evangelism and as part of The Church at large), and as such they may be over-generalized comments or criticisms that don’t apply as broadly as I think or may be viewed as overly critical. Consider them food for thought—chew on them and spit out what you don’t like. I’m learning these principles personally as I am sharing them corporately via blog, and I definitely have a long way to grow as evangelist of any sort.
I’ll begin by bringing in the complete text from Kawasaki’s January 12 post, The Art of Evangelism (at the risk of not having official permission). Then, I’ll post an interaction with or reflection on each of them in a series of posts. Check back from time to time under the title: Rediscovering the lost art of evangelism.
Here is the original post by Kawasaki:
Out of curiosity, I went to SimplyHired, a vertical search engine for jobs, and looked for openings containing the keyword “evangelist.” Amazingly, there were 611 matches--and none were for churches. It seems that “evangelist” is now a secular, mainstream job title. Indeed, the first eight matches were for evangelist jobs at Microsoft--go figure.
As people hit the streets with this title, they need a foundation of the fundamental principles of evangelism. Fulfilling this need is the purpose of today's blog.
Create a cause. As the previous blog called “Guy's Golden Touch” explained, the starting point of evangelism is having a great thing to evangelize. A cause seizes the moral high ground. It is a product or service that improves the lives of people, ends bad things, or perpetuates good things. It is not simply an exchange of things/services for money.
Love the cause. “Evangelist” isn't simply a job title. It's a way of life. It means that the evangelist totally loves the product and sees it as a way to bring the “good news.” A love of the cause is the second most important determinant of the success of an evangelist--second only to the quality of the cause itself. No matter how great the person, if he doesn't love the cause, he cannot be a good evangelist for it.
Look for agnostics, ignore atheists. A good evangelist can usually tell if people understand and like a product in five minutes. If they don't, cut your losses and avoid them. It is very hard to convert someone to a new religion (ie, product) when he believes in another god (ie, another product). It's much easier to convert a person who has no proof about the goodness or badness of the evangelist's product.
Localize the pain. No matter how revolutionary your product, don't describe it using lofty, flowery terms like “revolutionary,” “paradigm shifting,” and “curve jumping.” Macintosh wasn't positioned as the third paradigm in personal computing; instead, it increased the productivity and creativity of one person with one computer. People don't buy “revolutions.” They buy “aspirins” to fix the pain or “vitamins” to supplement their lives.
Let people test drive the cause. Essentially, say to people, “We think you are smart. Therefore, we aren't going to bludgeon you into becoming our customer. Try our product, take it home, download it, and then decide if it's right for you.” A test drive is much more powerful than an ad.
Learn to give a demo. An “evangelist who cannot give a great demo” is an oxymoron. A person simply cannot be an evangelist if she cannot demo the product. If a person cannot give a demo that quickens the pulse of everyone in the audience, he should stay in sales or in marketing.
Provide a safe first step. The path to adopting a cause should have a slippery slope. There shouldn't be large barriers like revamping the entire IT infrastructure. For example, the safe first step to recruit an evangelist for the environment is not requiring that she chain herself to a tree; it’s to ask her to start recycling and taking shorter showers.
Ignore pedigrees. Good evangelists aren't proud. They don’t focus on the people with big titles and big reputations. Frankly, they'll meet with, and help, anyone who “gets it” and is willing to help them. This is much more likely to be the database administrator or secretary than the CIO.
Never tell a lie. Very simply, lying is morally and ethically wrong. It also takes more energy because if one lies, then it is necessary to keep track of the lies. If one always tells the truth, then there's nothing to keep track of. Evangelists know their stuff, so they never have to tell a lie to cover their ignorance.
Remember your friends. Be nice to the people on the way up because one is likely to see them again on the way down. Once an evangelist has achieved success, he shouldn't think that he'll never need those folks again. One of the most likely people to buy a Macintosh was an Apple II owner. One of the most likely people to buy an iPod was a Macintosh owner. One of the most likely people to buy whatever Apple puts out next is an iPod owner. And so it goes.
I know. I may be a Mac fanatic, but at least I'm trying to channel it into something with more eternal significance. Thank you for putting up with it. Look for the first in the series soon. My apologies in advance to Mr. Kawasaki.
Episode #1
Principle 1:
“Create a cause. The starting point of evangelism is having a great thing to evangelize. A cause seizes the moral high ground. It is a product or service that improves the lives of people, ends bad things, or perpetuates good things. It is not simply an exchange of things/services for money.”
In the context of a Christ follower, the question of having “a cause” may be too quickly and easily answered. After all, our cause should be very clear, right?
Mark 16:15 TNIV “He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.’”
But I don’t understand the great commission as my ultimate cause. Rather, I see it as an outgrowth of something far more profound. The great commission meets the great commandment:
Deuteronomy 6:5 TNIV “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Love is at the core of who God is. And so the cause, as I understand it, is love. It is a love that seeks to include me in the divine and triune bond of infinite love between the Son, the Father and the Spirit.
This is what I aspire to (and in fact have attained in Christ)—and this is what I must let drive me.
John 4:13 TNIV “Those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 6:35-37 TNIV “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
This is LIFE worth living both in the temporal and the eternal. Forget selling more fire insurance. Forget selling a more tidy and cohesive earthly life. Forget “selling” anything.
Let’s put it another way. If our 80 years of earthly life were to be all that we would ever have—no after-life in a heaven or hell of eternity, and no tangible earthly benefits—would we still choose to be bonded to Christ in love, versus a life spent apart from His love in the pursuit of our individual happiness?
Our own depravity and combatant evil powers may hold us down on this, but we can still recognize true love. You can’t sell it, but everyone knows it when they see it. And being “in love” is worth it, even without considering our own finitude. Whether we choose to respond to His love or not, we know this innately—I think because we were fashioned by Him to know this. We’re wired to want and need His love.
But do we live a life “in love” with Him, or in our evangelism are we selling something else altogether and just hoping we can develop a better, more effective marketing plan for it? Have we reduced our cause to “an exchange of things/services for money” hoping to convert as many units as we can so that we win a set of steak knives?
Indeed, this cause requires a re-think of the modern evangelism paradigm, where people are attracted by clever messaging, gathered in an auditorium for an event, presented with an entertaining sales pitch and given an opportunity to respond (with financial support, and with raised hand or repeated prayer). We ask people to come and “get saved”—but from what? And to what?
Instead, how should we best express this great love? Personally? Locally? Globally?
Love is our true cause.
As in Kawasaki’s principle of evangelism, our cause truly “ends bad things” (separation from our Creator’s love) and “perpetuates good things” (abundant life via infinite and eternal love).
I want to help save people from a life without His love, and to life made full by His love. I want to do it by following His example—His way of evangelism.
1 John 3:16-18 TNIV “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
You want to be a better evangelist? Here is any easy, two-step formula:
Step 1: Do love
Step 2: Repeat step one
This is part 2 of a series of posts that interact with Guy Kawasaki's 10 principles of "evangelism." Refer to my February 22, 2006 post for the set up.
Episode #2
Principle 2:
"Love the cause. “Evangelist” isn't simply a job title. It's a way of life. It means that the evangelist totally loves the product and sees it as a way to bring the “good news.” A love of the cause is the second most important determinant of the success of an evangelist--second only to the quality of the cause itself. No matter how great the person, if he doesn't love the cause, he cannot be a good evangelist for it."
In my last post I wrote about “doing love” as the primary (maybe even primal) means of evangelism. In the context of Kawasaki’s second principle, “love the cause,” we can take some steps away from this idea being a nice platitude and closer to making it an everyday reality.
I read two separate items in the past few days which helped me better define this idea of doing love as our chief cause.
The first was a quote of the week from Judith Hougen that went along with her January 29, 2006 post, “Knowing and Loving.” It comes from Parker Palmer’s book, To Know As We Are Known.
“The intimate link between loving and knowing is implicit throughout the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The Hebrew Bible uses the word ‘know’ to indicate the conjugal relation of husband and wife (as in ‘Abraham knew Sarah’), the same word it uses for our knowledge of God and of the created world. The most common New Testament word for ‘know’ is also used for lovemaking. The images that inform the biblical understanding of what it means to know--images of personal involvement and mutuality--are neither accidental nor antiquated. They reflect the quality of knowing at its deepest reaches.”
There was an interesting comment discussion after my episode 1 post in this series (link to those comments here), and reading this Palmer quote led me to make this observation: To love someone—especially to the point of having an overt evangelistic impact—we must be willing to know them. To love well, one must know well.
Take this to the utmost level, God knows and loves us infinitely and perfectly.
As His beloved adopted sons and daughters, we are called to play a part in God knowing/loving others, and in others beginning to know/love God as His children.
In simplistic and clichéd terms, to know people is to love them. And “loving this cause,” as Kawasaki puts it, is performed by striving to know people as God knows them.
Personally I am guilty of having completely wrong ideas about what love is. This has begun to change slowly as I have aged—more so now that I am a parent. And my long-held, dysfunctional ideas about love seem to be pretty widespread among Christians. This passage from Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz really captured this for me. He describes the prevailing economic metaphor often used to describe or define love and relationships.
“The problem with Christian culture is that we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. … If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and, perhaps we feel they are priceless. I could see it so clearly, and I could feel it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who didn’t agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.”
As I read that for the first time I found myself in violent agreement and deeply convicted. It was a personal revelation worth much more than the price of the book. Miller continues:
“I used love like money, but love doesn’t work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose. When the church does not love its enemies, it fuels their rage. It makes them hate us more.”
It’s pretty easy for an American, white-male, middle to upper class, conservative republican type like I am (or maybe once was in the case of the latter two) to embrace and live this economic model of love. It’s really emotional supply side economics. And in my observation this attitude is exhibited by such a large percentage of the evangelical church, that I believe there is a critical need for a real love revolution—a revival of love.
In another of Miller’s books, Searching for God Knows What, he makes this observation on Scripture’s defining metaphors of our relationship with God:
“Biblically, you’re hard-pressed to find theological ideas divorced from their relational context. There are, essentially, three dominant scriptural metaphors describing our relationship with God: sheep to a shepherd, child to a father and bride to a bridegroom. In fact, few places in Scripture speak to the Christian conversion experience through any method other than relational metaphor.”
More of this particular excerpt can be found here—additional food for thought on evangelism.
This knowing and loving is all relational—and can be exhibited at all levels when we think about doing love personally, locally and globally. The personal context is obvious, albeit the most challenging for me. Likewise, doing love locally means coming to know your surrounding community and culture. Rather than random acts of love (which are still positive things), knowing the personality, needs and issues of your communities makes expressions of love more intentional and effective from a Kingdom perspective. Globally it is the same idea, but at a macro level. Knowing your global community can help drive your political outlook and shape your democratic voice (if you have one) from the perspective of wanting to express love and compassion as a nation.
To “love the cause” of God’s love for humanity and truly begin to love others, I must first dislodge and discard my old defining metaphor for love. Love is not currency. Relationships are not a zero-sum game. This is not to say doing love and truly knowing others is without risks and the potential for pain. It most certainly is. Early church history is filled with accounts of such sacrifice—leading back to Christ’s ultimate act. But the Source of love is infinite, inexhaustible and true.
Episode #3
Principle 3:
"Look for agnostics, ignore atheists. A good evangelist can usually tell if people understand and like a product in five minutes. If they don't, cut your losses and avoid them. It is very hard to convert someone to a new religion when he believes in another god. It’s much easier to convert a person who has no proof about the goodness or badness of the evangelist’s product."
For much of my life I’ve had the mistaken idea that “witnessing” was a task accomplished by successfully arguing “the case for faith” to those that had heretofore not accepted the idea. This is not to say that some people don’t require or benefit from a well reasoned argument that they should believe in the gospel of Jesus. In my case, however, I always felt very uncomfortable and ill-equipped in this role. I think this third principle of Kawasaki gets at that for me. It’s really hard to argue your way to a conversion with an atheist. Kudos to those that do it successfully. It’s not my gift.
It took a long time for me to start to see another way to go about this.
While Christ spent some time talking about who he was, he never really debated whether or not there was a God. Most if not all of the people He spoke to needed no such convincing. And I’m not sure things are that different with people today.
Instead, I think today an agnostic is all about asking questions. And there are many places that offer them answers. Answers that all make well-reasoned arguments.
But answering questions isn’t limited to speaking or writing the words of truth as we know it. We need to become the answers with our very lives.
Col 3:8-11 “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
I love this passage. Here we have love and racial equality in a perfect blend.
While people may ask us many valid intellectual and spiritual questions regarding the faith, and we should stand ready to give an answer as we are called to (I Peter 3:15-16), we also must clothe ourselves with the answer to their deeper question: “If there is a God, does He love me?” In doing this, we are answering, “Yes, He does. And His love looks like this. His love looks like Jesus” Only then does what we say with our mouths matter. We are the proof.
If I persist in mentally disparaging the person I am trying to convey the Gospel to (as I am prone to do when I argue), I am doomed. If, instead, I put on love, and apportion them the worth that they have in Christ, I can play a role in the work of the Holy Spirit to draw them to Himself.
The attraction to Jesus while he walked this earth was not principally his well-reasoned arguments or superior logic (which he had in spades and primarily aimed at the religious elite), but it was about who He was. He loved. He healed. He told stories. He spent his time with everyday people. His time was limited, and he knew they were worth it.
I can’t be a rock star apologist. I can aspire to be like Jesus, and in doing that become the best answer to an agnostic’s questions.
Episode #4
Principle 4:
“Localize the pain. No matter how revolutionary your product, don't describe it using lofty, flowery terms like “revolutionary,” “paradigm shifting,” and “curve jumping.” Macintosh wasn't positioned as the third paradigm in personal computing; instead, it increased the productivity and creativity of one person with one computer. People don't buy “revolutions.” They buy “aspirins” to fix the pain or “vitamins” to supplement their lives.”
I’ve noticed something much more in recent months. I don’t know if I’m just more sensitive to it or what, but there seems to be a lot of marketing hype being used in The Church today. You see it the most in the advertisements that fill the pages of Christian magazines (which seem to be growing in number every day). Ads for ministry/evangelism tours (a showcase of several different preachers or teachers), various conferences (youth, worship, marriage, women, men, etc.) and other products in the Christian market.
Without passing judgment on specific ministries (or businesses), what they all seem to have in common is an extraordinary amount of marketing hype—the kind of lofty, inspiring language described above.
As a marketing and public relations professional I understand the motivation around this. They want to get their message out—and they want to cut through the clutter to get people to attend their outreach events. Attendance makes the endeavor both profitable and means that “people” are being reached with the message (which, at face value, would be the Gospel).
But what if all that hype, while successful in corralling the sheep that have already been tagged as part of the flock, was actually an inhibition to others that really need to hear this message?
Now, before I go too far here, I’m willing to grant that there are new converts reached by many of these ministries—and that some hype has its place. What I’m talking about is evangelism, and the process by which you either attract people, or maybe put them off, or confuse them about the Gospel altogether.
If we take Kawasaki seriously, and consider his experience in “converting” people to become deeply loyal customers, then I think this particular principle has something important to tell us: Effective evangelism also is about people’s pain.
All the hype and marketing spin in the world can’t connect with this core reality. What Kawasaki is saying is that people don’t necessarily look to buy into the grand and glorious messages of The Church or religion. They’re looking for deliverance. They’re highly motivated to find a way to end their pain. And if we are to connect them with the saving message of the Gospel, we need to understand this—and seek to understand their pain. This must, in turn, inform how we advance our message to the world.
While there were times Jesus was not all that easy to understand, I would never consider his words to be filled with hype. His stories, instead, involved the lives and challenges of everyday people. His message of the Kingdom and his acts of compassion were about healing and deliverance—the “signs” of the Kingdom. He came to end the pain.
We are charged with advancing this Kingdom of healing and light against the kingdom of pain and darkness.
So instead of spending so much effort on how to hype the message in an advert for maximum marketing impact, perhaps we should spend the bulk of our energy on getting to know people’s pain—and why the Good News of this advancing Kingdom is the Rx they are looking for.
Don’t interpret this to mean that we can promise people a pain free life in this war-torn world. But we have the ultimate answer—and this we can promise, through flickerings of the Kingdom life on earth today, to its final and culminating establishment over all the earth tomorrow.
Revelation 21:3-4 TNIV “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
More on this in my next post in this series.
Episode #5
Principle 5:
"Let people test drive the cause. Essentially, say to people, 'We think you are smart. Therefore, we aren’t going to bludgeon you into becoming our customer. Try our product, take it home, download it, and then decide if it’s right for you.' A test drive is much more powerful than an ad."
I’m going to focus on one aspect of this principle here because I plan to touch on the rest of it in the next two episodes (those two principles seem highly related to each other and to this one). I don’t want this nugget of insight to get lost in the shuffle.
Non Christians are not dumb.
I don’t know how often I’ve discerned the subtle ways in which we marginalize the intelligence of the lost—in my own language, in sermons, in Christian media, web posts, or even cheesy Christian radio morning show DJs. There can be a smug judgmentalism that creeps into our discourse. And when you listen to it with the ears of an outsider (and perhaps the ears of Jesus), it can be down right offensive.
Yet, we Christians can’t even agree on the details of the Gospel truth ourselves (unless you think some 33,000-plus U.S. denominations divided over theological lines something The Bride of Christ can be proud of).
Let me state the obvious: Faith does not signify superior intelligence, any more than superior intelligence produces faith.
Yes, we think we’ve found the eternal truth of the universe. Yes, it’s hard to see why this isn’t obvious to everyone. From personal experience, it can be a tad bit frustrating to see people who are undoubtedly smarter than I am reject this truth.
So does this threaten our faith? Are we worried that moving up the ladder of intelligence will produce the same result with us? I think for some, this is an underlying fear. All of our posturing about the greater truth we’ve found amounts to nothing more than a defense mechanism for our self esteem and transforms our walk of faith into the crutch so many outsiders judge us by.
This insecurity is not of God. How this insecurity makes us act—what it makes us say, likewise, is not of His Kingdom.
I John 4:17-18 TNIV “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
While I had this passage in my mind while writing this post, I didn’t remember what preceded it in this chapter until I looked it up. The writer spends the earlier portion discussing how to respond to those that reject Christ, or distort the truth—and what to conclude by it. It’s rather telling that he then moves on to talk about loving without fear.
So what is there to be afraid of? In our striving to ascribe worth to others (see prior posts), let us include a generous assumption of human, God-given intelligence as an act of love. This becomes a kind of golden rule of evangelism—which really should be modus operandi for The Church in all of its dialogue with the world.
You may even want to apply the aphorism my mother told me once in an effort to keep me from becoming too smug when I excelled at something in school: “Just remember, no matter how high your grades are, there’s always someone smarter.” (This was always preceded by a generous amount of praise and encouragement, of course.)
Assume intelligence, rather than ignorance. Like Kawasaki says to potential converts, “We think you’re smart.” As St. Thomas Aquinas prayed, “Lord, in my zeal for the love of truth, let me not forget the truth about love.”
Episode #6
Principle 6:
"Learn to give a demo. An evangelist who cannot give a great demo is an oxymoron. A person simply cannot be an evangelist if she cannot demo the product. If a person cannot give a demo that quickens the pulse of everyone in the audience, he should stay in sales or in marketing."
I hope that in reading this we all share a huge grasp of the obvious. We are the demo. Too often I find myself “giving” a demo, rather than “being” the demo. There is a not too subtle difference between those two.
Merely giving a demonstration, in the case of evangelizing the Gospel, is more akin to doing and saying the right things to show what a Christian is like, and what a Christian does outwardly. The trouble with giving a demo is that it only goes so deep. As one gets to know us more, who we are on the inside eventually becomes more important that the motions we are going through.
I used to be a writing and grammar tutor in college. My placement in this program was due to my landing in the advanced placement British literature course—part of the class was being a tutor. It was a gig I didn’t mind because the rest of my class was mostly made up of women. Yet, a grammarian and a tutor was definitely not “who I was” on the inside. I would feebly help students edit their writing assignments, and then proceed to make the same mistakes in my own writing later on. One read through this blog will testify that this remains true of me today. (A reader recently brought my attention to an egregious error on one of my pages that must have been there for months.) I was passably successful pretending to be a tutor since I had an arsenal of quick reference books at my disposal (the Cliff Notes of grammar), and was really good at seeing errors in someone else’s work.
Often that is what I have done in personal evangelism. I may be doing evangelism by having all the resources at my disposal and by judging the life of the one I am evangelizing. Therefore, I can give a demo of the Christian life by acting accordingly. But being a follower of Jesus—being the personal demonstration of that reality—is something more.
2 Co 5:17-20 TNIV “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”
Being the demo is a matter of a true inward transformation—with the “new creation” unconcealed.
2 Co 3:17-18 TNIV “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
I think this demarcation of doing and being is missed in the way many people view The Church’s role in evangelism. For The Church, giving a demo today often means inordinately striving to create an experience of God or The Gospel, whereas being the demo unveils the transformative image of the Lord upon His Bride in everything she does. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing the former, unless it is absent the latter. What’s more, I would argue that the tactical aspects of evangelism will take care of themselves if we operate out of an unveiled state of “being” continually transformed into His image—living “as though God were making his appeal through us.”
I will never truly be a grammar tutor, although I continue to pose as one from time to time. I am most assuredly a new creation in Christ, and I need to trust and live in this reality more and more often—thereby becoming the best possible demonstration.
I realize this is all horribly abstract, begging the question, “how do we live in such a way?” May I recommend TrueFaced, by Bill Thrall, John Lynch, and Bruce McNicol as a fine exposition of a 2 Co 3:17-18 reality.
Episode #7
Principle 7:
"Provide a safe first step. The path to adopting a cause should have a slippery slope. There shouldn't be large barriers like revamping the entire IT infrastructure. For example, the safe first step to recruit an evangelist for the environment is not requiring that she chain herself to a tree; it’s to ask her to start recycling and taking shorter showers."
Here’s where things might get a little bit controversial with me. For a long time now many evangelicals have embraced this concept of providing “a safe first step” by redesigning the Sunday worship service experience. The thinking is that The Church should make their buildings and worship times as comfortable and inviting as possible. It’s even been heralded by some church growth experts as “the showroom floor” principle applying a consumerist metaphor to spreading the Gospel.
We’ve invested loads of money in buildings, lighting, comfy seats, multimedia, cup holders, etc. We’ve redesigned the weekly service to be experientially satisfying for modern consumers, including current and individualistic pop worship music, dynamic video production, drama and comedy, and a life-practical sermon (often in a culturally relevant serial format) all presented within a carefully timed, one-hour package. Undoubtedly deciding to visit one of these services is about as safe as it gets. As a visitor (read: prospective customer), it’s all about serving you.
Aside from my obvious bias in how I wrote the above lines, I’m not going to dissect this approach right off the bat. Instead, let’s put it aside for a moment, and think about Kawasaki’s Principle 7 differently. How did Jesus provide a safe first step in his ministry on earth?
To be sure, Jesus wasn’t always a “safe” person. He often challenged the status quo in society, and his closest allies, the 12 disciples, must have certainly felt nervous about their own safety from time to time. It reminds me of the passage in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe where Lucy asks Mr. Beaver, “is Aslan safe?” To which he replies, “No, child, Aslan is a lion. He is not safe, but he is good.”
So instead of defining a relationship with Jesus in terms of risk, think in terms of what a safe first step towards His Kingdom would be. Here the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Here the economy of love is generous and free:
Matthew 5:45-47 TNIV “…He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
Brain McLaren writes in The Secret Message of Jesus, “[Jesus] loved to compare the kingdom of God to a party. He would demonstrate the open border of the kingdom of God by hosting or participating in parties where even the most notorious outcasts and sinners were welcome.”
Jesus’ first act of ministry (and sign of the kingdom) was making sure a wedding host didn’t make a major social mistake by running out of wine at his own wedding party. Jesus did this even though his “hour had not yet come.” (John 2:4 TNIV) A quiet act of kindness and grace: Jesus’ generous and kind spirit was the embodiment of His Kingdom message.
This was the standard mode of His ministry. Rather than set up a central venue or regular event (even though people gathered to listen to him teach in droves) in Jerusalem, he was perpetually on tour. He quite often traveled the fringes, met people on their turf, got involved in their homes and lives. And this also was his charge when sending out his disciples on their mission.
Mark 6:8-10 TNIV “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.”
In other words, be mobile. Step out. Go to them. You’ll be walking a lot, so wear sandals. But don’t be self sufficient. Be vulnerable. Be dependent on others (and God) to get on in life. Learn to accept generosity as well as extend it to others. Stay in a host home that welcomes you. I honestly believe these instructions were intended to help the Disciples learn how to conduct themselves in relating to people as much as they were to facilitate the logistics of their mission work.
The generous spirit of Jesus ministry was exemplified in his open invitation, table fellowship evangelism. His presence, conversation, friendship was the safe first step toward transformation. He took a step toward us to make it safe for us to take a step toward him.
McLaren continues, “By accepting and welcoming people into his presence, just as they were, with all their problems and imperfections, Jesus was exposing them to His example and to His secret message. In this way He could challenge them to think—and think again—and consider becoming part of the kingdom of God so they could experience and participate in the transformation that flows from being in interactive relationship with God and others.”
So what is the safe first step that The Church can provide for people in today’s world. I would argue that enough time, energy and resources have been dedicated toward creating bigger and better weekly, 1 hour experiences. It is possible to over invest in something—and I think we may have over invested our Kingdom resources in this single form for the past two decades (and likely longer). I’m not saying abandon the effort, but rather moderate the event emphasis and reallocate the resources. Instead, we need to take a step toward those on the borders of the kingdom (to steal another metaphor from McLaren).
What if all the money (read: tithes) spent on venues, sound systems, talent and media was funneled back through the congregation and spent on throwing extravagant and generous parties for our neighbors. Would that be heresy? What if 80 percent of the church budget was directly spent on connecting individuals with the safest first step of all: transformative friendships? What would that look like? I don’t exactly have the answer, but I’m willing to think differently about it. Can I exchange my cozy slippers for some tough leather sandals?
I served briefly on a mega-aspiring church’s marketing committee just a couple years ago. The ad hoc group was tasked with developing marketing messages and tactics to promote the weekly services or sermon series. While this can be a fun exercise for a PR and marketing professional, I began confusing people when I suggested that we take the church outreach (read: marketing) budget and look for ways to rain love and generosity on people in the community. Instead of a 4-color postcard mailer for the DaVinci Code sermon series, let’s develop local teams within our congregations that can create and give gift baskets to their immediate neighbors (with yummy home-baked goodies, free transit passes, or a new tree or plant, etc.). Then use the gift-giving as a means to invite their neighbors to dinner at home, or a small group gathering, or a back-yard barbeque. No church promotional brochure or flashy church service promo DVD inside. No marketing trinkets and trash. No buzz marketing campaigns or brand building tactics. Just something highly personal, generous and home-spun. Something leading to a lasting friendship. A safe first step.
They have since sent out two DVDs in mass mailings featuring their new worship center and worship team music at a cost I can only imagine.
My questions are these: Are we more interested in growing weekly church services or expanding the borders of the kingdom? Have we capitulated Christ’s calling to pursue transformative relationships (safer for the seeker) in favor of leveraging our event-based marketing strategies (safer for us)? Does this need to be an either/or strategy as it seems to be in many cases?
Jesus is calling us out of the safety of our buildings and on to the borders of the Kingdom to extend welcome to the world-weary immigrants who seek safe passage. If we want to provide a safe first step, we need to step out and get our sandals good and worn out.
Episode #8
Principle 8:
"Ignore pedigrees. Good evangelists aren’t proud. They don’t focus on the people with big titles and big reputations. Frankly, they'll meet with, and help, anyone who 'gets it' and is willing to help them. This is much more likely to be the database administrator or secretary than the CIO."
This is a great principle of evangelism. Pride has no role. Anyone can be evangelized—anyone who is willing to listen. Do not play favorites or be prejudicial.
I’m going to drill down into the topic of prejudice with this post. Sorry for the digression. But I think it will be worth it.
I finally got around to seeing Crash on DVD last night. With two kids, we don’t often make it to a cinema to see films in their initial release.
Watching Crash was like a two-hour gut punch. With so many characters—most if not all exhibiting some form of prejudice, stereotyping or racism—it was too easy to find something of myself on the screen. Very troubling.
Now, I have deep agreement with the racial reconciliation mission of my church. I believe in equality under God for every person. All are made in His image. All are equally injured by sin. All have unsurpassable worth. This is high truth.
Col 3:11 TNIV “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Gal 3:28 TNIV “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Granted, it’s not like this world is a safe place. It’s a war zone (quite literally in many places). There’s a lot to be afraid of. Fear drives the Sherman tank of this spirit warfare right through our souls. We often mistake fellow human citizens for the spiritual insurgents that prey on a fallen humanity. We put labels and judgments on fellow victims of this warfare. Mug shots and suspect descriptions are on the 11 o’clock news every night. We find ready reinforcements for our fear all around us.
This kind of fear is behind my own thoughts and words when I descend to anything less than love for my fellow humans. Of this I continue to repent—as often as I must.
Colossians 3:7-8 TNIV “You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.”
(Sidebar: Often Christians have defined “filthy language” in this passage as expletives, etc. I think this should be applied more broadly. “Filth,” as I choose to define it, must be any words or thoughts that degrade and devalue our fellow humans, even if we do it with G-rated or even biblical language. Crash is R-rated and full of filth, both in expletive and G-rated forms.)
Fear begets more fear. If I live in it, I will die in it.
Romans 8:12-16 TNIV “If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
There is that wonderful idea that we are God’s children—His offspring, each one with the complete and total worth He ascribes to us.
This terrified old man of sin inside of me—the one that resists leaving my secure suburban bubble, avoids certain parts of the city, resists interacting with other races and mutters shameful stereotypes in my mind—must be daily put to death.
I’ve posted about fear and evangelism before in this series (episode 5), but I think it is very central to the question of racial reconciliation on an individual level. What the film Crash exposed for me with painful clarity was the leading role fear plays.
But I know there is no fear in love. Fear is a manifestation of evil. As difficult as it may be to believe at times, this societal fear we are immersed in is connected to the sin that enslaves all of humanity. It was not God’s idea. But love is God’s answer.
1 John 4:16-18 TNIV “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear….”
How do I do it, then? How do I live in love and drive out fear every moment of every day?
I need to step out and go to where I can break through this enemy stronghold and tear down the prison walls. I need to live this out intentionally by building relationships across these societal divides. I need to put myself in a position to act in love and for love’s cause. Too often I prefer to avoid it instead.
It’s like having a phobia. One can either avoid the triggers or try to beat it. Often people undergoing psychotherapy to cure a phobia work towards a point where they confront and experience the thing that they are most afraid of: flying in a plane, riding in an elevator, listening to David Hasselhoff music—whatever it may be. They must ultimately act to break through the stronghold and gain victory over their fears.
So it is with my own fears. But I am not asked to act alone. I have my Father to embrace me as His child. I have the Holy Spirit to empower me. I have Jesus to show me how to live this way. I can act in love with great confidence knowing that I participate in dealing the death blow to the real enemy in the spiritual war to overcome the divisive evil that enslaves humanity. But I must act.
Romans 12:21 TNIV “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
[POST AMENDED 7/28/06]
A few days after I posted this is stumbled across this passage in James in reading to my Daughter. This pretty much drives it home (and writes me under the table):
James 2:1-10 TNIV "My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose someone comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor person in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the one wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the one who is poor, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it."
Mercy me.
Episode #9
Principle 9:
"Never tell a lie. Very simply, lying is morally and ethically wrong. It also takes more energy because if one lies, then it is necessary to keep track of the lies. If one always tells the truth, then there's nothing to keep track of. Evangelists know their stuff, so they never have to tell a lie to cover their ignorance."
One can’t really argue with Kawasaki on this one. Here we have commandment number 9 of 10 (Exodus 20:16). When it comes to evangelizing our faith, no one intends to lie. That would be completely counterproductive.
But that’s what sometimes happens.
In the quest to grow churches, we often end up become product evangelists for our church organizations rather than Jesus and his kingdom. In doing so, we can end up creating a proxy for the kingdom designed with a wide variety of ministry and life solutions. A mega-mall for Christian consumers.
And this is encouraged by mega-aspiring church leaders precisely because it helps grow their organizations. Recently one person was “selling” my sister-in-law (a believer) on their brand of church by talking about their exciting new family church program. “Think Disney,” she said.
We dress up the Bride in the latest fashions and expensive jewelry. We do her hair and makeup. We throw in all the frills to make the Bride attractive, desirable, hip and relevant to the popular culture. And boy is she a hottie. We end up saying, “Ask us out on date. We may be ‘the one’ you’ve been looking for all your life.”
Unknowingly we tell a lie. It’s not about the Bride. It’s about the Groom.
Let me step back and say that there is nothing wrong with large churches and extensive ministry programs with manifest creativity. If your church is blessed with these gifts, outstanding. You can serve people and build the Kingdom in greater and greater ways, praise God.
But we lie when these things are what we evangelize—when we make ourselves and our churches into the good news, rather than the person of Jesus.
David Fitch writes about it this way in Out of Ur: “…we have organized church life around the busy lives of Americans living the dreams of capitalism and democracy that leave little time for mission, community and worship. I fear the ‘church’ for evangelicals has, in George Hunsberger’s words, become ‘the distributor of religious goods and services.’ As a result, I fear we evangelicals are becoming less and less noticeable and barely distinguishable as a people from the rest of our society who live as if God does not exist.”
The goods and services, the brand that produces them (a church) become what we “market” and “sell” to consumers.
I think every long-time Christian has heard at one time or another that the newly saved are the most excited and most motivated to evangelize. And I’ve found that new Christians are usually the most focused on Jesus, and what he has done to transform them, rather than what a church has done for them.
Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing found the same truth about consumers. He concluded that the most powerful word-of-mouth advocates might be the customers who have only done business with you once so far. They are the most excited; repeat customers are probably accustomed to the great product/service and therefore, ironically, less likely to talk about it.
The problem with marketing-driven evangelism is that your product has to get better, cheaper and/or faster to keep driving new and exciting marketing fodder. That’s a lot of pressure. When your product is a church—when you have productized your church in order to market it—that becomes a real problem at some point. It can be exhausting to continue to impress and inspire your existing customers, as Sernovitz points out. Instead of making converts and disciples you have cultivated fickle consumers.
Fitch sees this pattern in the church today: “…The church in essence is left to be a sideshow to what God is doing for, in and through individuals. We no longer have a need for the church to be the social manifestation of His Lordship where He reigns over the powers of sin, evil and death, the very inbreaking of the kingdom of God, where His mighty works are made manifest and put on display before the world (1 Pet 2:9), where hospitality is such an overpowering ethos that the lost in this world are compelled by this invitation. As it is right now, we lack a way of life that people look at and see and say, ‘Look what manner of life has been made possible in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.’” (I recommend this entire post by David Fitch)
When the overriding goal becomes presenting Jesus embodied in our community—our local expression of The Church—the pressure to sell, market, persuade, etc. falls away.
Consider the well known verse, Co 5:17 TNIV “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
The truth of Jesus we are compelled to share need not be made new through our creative effort. It is already new—and continually so. In Christ all things are new. Our story to unbelievers comes out of living this life “in Christ” individually and as a community. We need not dream up a new Madison-Avenue-inspired church marketing campaign every Fall. Instead, we simply must live this life like we mean it, and tell our stories (yes, even in creative ways*).
Don't sell a new and improved Bride of Christ.
Don't sell anything.
Just be “In Christ.”
Honestly.
*I don’t want to confuse the creative evangelism of the gospel with what I am talking about in this post, which is the evangelism of a church, it’s goods and services. Creativity can help express our stories in wonderful ways. Marketing, on the other hand, can too easily contextualize our messages into products.
Episode #10
Principle 10:
"Remember your friends. Be nice to the people on the way up because one is likely to see them again on the way down. Once an evangelist has achieved success, he shouldn't think that he'll never need those folks again…"
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not think you are superior.” Romans 12:14-16 TNIV
“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. We should all please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: 'The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.' For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." Romans 15:1-7 TNIV.
I choose to end this series on a few very simple readings from Romans. Chapter 12:14-16 is a very direct confirmation of what Kawasaki is saying in his last point of the 10. Romans 15 points this idea in a very specific missional direction, to “please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.”
I’ve been thinking about this a great deal lately, spurred on by the most recent teachings at our church. It makes me remember the time when Sinead O’Connor performed on SNL (in the 90s) and finished her tune by holding up a picture of Pope John Paul II and tearing it in two, saying, “Fight the real enemy.” Sinead had the wrong picture, but the right idea. We are to fight the real enemy, and our fellow human beings are not it.
Too often we have these pictures of apparent human “enemies” we carry in our heads and our hearts that we like to expose and tear to shreds in righteous protest. They are politicians, celebrities, criminals, dead-beat dads, drunk drivers, drug dealers, or even the neighbor next door that you have been feuding with for 20 years.
When we stand up to speak out in indignation and judgment, who is our audience? Are we really railing audibly against the spiritual powers of darkness. Or are we more likely verbally tearing up the pictures of fellow sons of Adam and daughters of Eve that have been co-opted in the great rebellion.
They are not the enemy. They are the prisoners, the kidnapped, the lost ones suffering from a distinctly spiritual Stockholm Syndrome. They are our brothers and sisters gone missing.
They can even be evil, but they are not the enemy.
“Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” Matthew 39-42 TNIV
Jesus instructs us not to attack or retaliate. We are not the avengers. Instead, we are to join a rescue mission. We are to be a posse of compassion—vigilantes of love (with my apologies to Bill Malonee).
I like that idea: the vigilante justice of love and mercy riding out to fight the real enemy.
These very works become the guns and ammo of the spiritual war. While you are physically ministering to another human, you are dealing damaging blows to the real enemy.
It can be overlooked how Paul recalls the Proverb in Romans 12:20 for the New Covenant: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” TNIV
The burning coals reference is, of course, metaphorical. I’ve never seen third-degree burns on someone’s head caused by aggressive compassion ministry. But I don’t think it is incorrect to infer that the physical metaphor has a very real spiritual dimension. Burning coals connote warfare, as we read in Psalm 11:6 (and many other places), and purification, as in Luke 3:17. John the Baptist makes a direct link to the spiritual impact of our acts of compassion prior to verse 17:
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
"What should we do then?" the crowd asked.
John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Luke 3:7-11 TNIV
We should consider social justice, love and compassion as primary spiritual weapons in our arsenal—on the same level as prayer and worship. They are not merely some add-on to our lives and church communities designed to make Christianity more attractive and generate good PR. They are not nice-to-haves that are less important than evangelism, but rather an integral component of our mission constituting the spiritual ground breaking that must occur before planting and harvesting (I apologize for the mixed metaphors).
In closing
Are we clear on our mission? Are we are clear on the means. Are we clear on whom we are evangelizing? Do we know who the enemy is? And do we know how to fight this enemy? These are the essential questions that have engaged me as I have written this series. I think I’m starting to sort out some good answers—at least for me and my life. I hope this has been helpful for anyone else that has taken the time to read it all.