Purposes of the Church, PT5: Evangelism

I have a lot of disclaimers about the purposes in my previous posts.
Evangelism sort shares a few of the conditions.

Like I said before, not all singing is worship, not all good deeds are ministry. 

The same goes for evangelism. 

There is a big difference between 'proclaiming the gospel' and making disciples.

Truth and Love, the Gospel can't have one with out the other.

I don't think a 'checklist' approach to evangelism will ever lead to real evangelism (as opposed to the other purposes where fun can lead to real fellowship).

But, I do have a style of evangelism that I came up with that can help Christians that don't do any evangelism to start in natural ways. 

THE ESSENCE OF EVANGELISM IS SHARING
Like all the purposes, evangelism is just another expression of the hardwiring shared with all mankind.
Everyone is a natural evangelist.
Every time I get into a car with my friend Jeff I am a prisoner to his solicitations of Swedish pop or rare Michael Jackson demos.
Everyone I talk to has something they want to talk about, something of interest to them that they are going to share with me.

Even my anti-social friends that are very selfish and never share anything have very strong opinions that they share when ever I see them.

What I learned from all my non-Christian evangelist friends is this,

passion is contagious. 

I'm more likely to give something like Swedish pop a chance when my buddy is obviously excited about it.
Back when I worked construction I would show up Monday morning and everyone would talk about what they did over the weekend.  What I did is I went to church.  Every Sunday our interim Pastor (a really old Marine) would tell a compelling story about war or survival.  The interim was an intimidating  guy, but he had great stories and I love telling stories.  Every Monday I would re-tell these amazing stories to my co-workers... and then I would make sure to tell them the spiritual application, the mind-bomb if you will.

SOMETHING FOR THE CRITICS
Sharing something new is sometimes about finding what is already shared between you and the other person, your shared views.
The common ground.
Rick Warren says that when someone tells him that they don't believe in God, he replies by asking 'what kind of God do you not believe in? I might not believe in that same kind of God.'

The civil rights movement taught us that we have more in common that we have differences.
Finding the common ground is the beginning.

WHY IS IT SCARY?
If I risk sharing something personal I'm risking rejection, and that hurts.
What's more personal that your spiritual life?
But lets face it, God shared his son with us and it was pretty much a guarantee that a lot of people were going to reject that gift and nail it to a cross.

I usually don't talk to my Step-Mom about comic books.
I make the assumption that she is not interested.
What we must understand is that by making that assumption we are by default making the assumption that they are not interested in us.
While it might be true, it is a judgement on that person that is not our place to make.

However, there is the 'pearls before swine' thing.
The point is, the decision of when and how much you share should be based on caring about people, not fear of rejection.

GETTING STARTED
There are many resources online about evangelism styles, so just Google it.
What you won't find is my own style.
It came to me when a student was telling me a story about a homosexual in the military.  Through the course of telling the story I learned all kinds of information unrelated to the story (what her brother eats for breakfast, what newspaper her dad reads, the social dynamic of her whole family riding in one car on the way to Church).  Every side detail was an opportunity to take the conversation in a different direction.
IS THIS WHAT ANDY STANLEY MEANT WHEN HE SAID 'KEEP THE CONVERSATION WITH NON-BELIEVERS OPEN AND KEEP IT GOING'?

In the old days, when talking to a friend, telling a story, I would edit out the details that revealed anything about my spiritual life.
Now, I make sure to keep any peripheral detail about my spiritual life in the story that I'm telling.
EXAMPLE

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with a friend making plans to see HP: The Deathly Hallows.  He suggested Friday night. I said I couldn’t, my church small group meets at my house on Fridays.

We were talking about movies, a nice safe conversation.  

Like everyone, I shared some information that was not directly relevant.  

I could have said, "I can’t do Fridays, Melissa and I have stuff on Fridays", that omission would have been accepted and natural but would not have led to anything else. 

Why is this powerful?

Any information we share (whether related to what we are talking about or not) in conversation becomes open for question or comment.
This is how all conversation works. Someone talks about movies and mentions babysitters, the conversation moves to babysitting and someone mentions how expensive it is, and then the conversation moves to the economy or something else. 

In this case my friend did ask questions about my small group.

“Is that the thing you do with teens?

No, that’s Sundays, this is people our age.

Oh, is it a prayer group?

No, it’s more of a book study.

Okay, is that the group that read Hunger Games?

Well, yea.. some of us have read it and we still talk about it, but officially we pick a spiritually based book and go a chapter a week and discuss.  I can pick you up if you want to hang out with us.”

Once we finally found a day to go see the movie, on the way to the movie, my friend asks me how someone can go to Heaven!

IS PRIVATIZATION A SIN?
I used to be pretty selfish when it came to my secular friendships. As a secret Christian I didn't want God messing with the only relationships where I could take off my puritan mask and put on my nihilistic mask. It sucked being a Baptist that didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus.  I had all these religious convictions without any of the divine acceptance that would have allowed me to be myself around church people and non-church people. Being a secret Christian I was able to observe how ineffectual other Christians were when they engaged my non-Christian friends, they had a adverse effect. The last thing I wanted, for the sake of my friends, was to sound as superstitious and offensive as the Christians that had turned my friends off of Christianity.

Withholding your relationship with Jesus is not about concise speech or tactfulness, this is spiritual compartmentalization.
We should be well spoken, but if we consistently censor out everything spiritual in our socializing, out of fear of awkwardness or a confrontation or whatever,  then we are not doing anyone any favors.  If we are worried about conflict and rejection then we are putting our short term comfort over other people's eternal discomfort. And we are really sabotaging the only purpose exclusively for this physical life.
There won't be any evangelism in Heaven.

One of these old friends I'm talking about was in the pornography business.
He wrote scripts (it's okay, you can laugh).

He wanted to branch out and do the soundtracks as well.  He hired me to record some songs that he wrote.
My recording gear was in my apartment.  During the session he commented on how many Christian books I had on my book selves.
He said that if he were God and wanted to get some message out to the world that he would make a movie.  He said, "like Terminator 2".
He said that it was successful all over the world, Japan, India, Russia, Africa, etc.
I told him that when someone releases a movie it becomes open to interpretation and in many cases people take it the wrong way.
If you are lucky enough to meet the director he can tell you explicitly what he meant.
That's why God came down to Earth in person, in the flesh, Jesus.
To tell us in person, the meaning of life and how to have it abundantly.

Bill Hybels of Willow Creek has a book that's a classic on evangelism.

We have a weekly evangelism spiritual habit, and it's going pretty good. 
I've done a few evangelism events that did not go well strategically.
I think the mistake is trying to get the lost to come to me. 
I've been meeting with some Young Life people recently. 
I like their missional philosophy, but I have questions about their efficiency. 
Admittedly, as an ex-punk rocker I have reservations about any ministry that relies on money. 
For the first five years in youth ministry I never used any money that the church budgeted. 
I guess I still have some of my own baggage to get over. 


How do you do evangelism in your ministry?