Rick Richardson
ISBN-10: 0-8308-3342-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-0308-3342-9
Read: 2007 February 21 and the following few weeks.
Reviewed: 2007 June 8
As the Pasadena Covenant Church Trustee Board was constituted for the second year in which I would be a member, we were joined by Dr. Bruce Wear who would serve as Trustee for Evangelism and Outreach. About that time, an order that I had not placed mysteriously arrived from amazon.com. Presumably, Bruce bought copies of this book for all board members.
Nearly immediately after that boardÕs inaugural sessions, I traveled to Texas for a month to assist with my motherÕs bi-lateral knee replacement surgery. In an attempt to be faithful as a Trustee, this was one of the carefully chosen books that went with me. I began as I sat in Providence Hospital in Waco on the second day after the surgery while mother was sleeping.
Richardson also wrote the book Evangelism Outside the Box for which BruceÕs adult Sunday School class is named. The room, itself renamed the ÒGathering PlaceÓ is rearranged into more of an informal conversational layout than a lecture format. These are all BruceÕs attempts to break some of the old paradigms of our particular organized religion and bring some measure of freshness and relevance within some limits. Heaven knows, all a-biblical paradigms should be reviewed often and sometimes broken.
When you talk about evangelism in any context, you are talking about some sort of institution, in this case the Protestant Church, trying to reach people who are outside of itself in order to draw them in. The motivation is usually that we have something that those outsiders should have for their own benefit, in our case a relationship with the risen Christ. Indeed, evangelism is the Great Commandment of Christ, ÒGo tell allÉÓ
During my early life, in fact, during much of the 20th century, evangelism was practiced by Protestants in the form of an American sales pitch. IÕve often described it as analogous to being pressured to buy life insurance. The stakes are higher than just life insurance, of course, youÕre not trying to merely financially protect your spouse and children for the rest of their earthly lives, it is your own status in eternity that is at stake! In addition, evangelists, particularly the amateur ones, in their zeal, often see their mission as one of debating and convincing. They have a set of facts that they represent as true. Their job is to make you buy those facts. Once this is done, the logic of conversion is thought to be inescapable.
Among my first inklings that this was at best incomplete was one of my earliest exposures to an ethnically Jewish person. Our teaching assistant in ÒThe Human Situation,Ó the introductory course in the University of Houston Honors Program (now College) was Jewish. Interested in finding out what this meant, I asked her if she was observant. Her reply was puzzling at first, ÒNo, IÕm not Christian.Ó By this I believe that she meant that an intellectual who was a practicing Jew would have to acknowledge the culmination of Judaism in Christianity. Her path of faith was, however, different. On the other hand, perhaps this was her standard defense against evangelism. Houston is in the so-called Bible Belt after all.
The problem addressed by this book is that these approaches to evangelism are now quite stale. There may have been a time and place for them in the past, when culture was different, but debating and strong-arm selling techniques are so distasteful to Christians today that, in three of the last four years when I served on Nominating Committee at Pasadena Covenant, it was nearly impossible to fill the Evangelism and Outreach Trustee position simply because it had the word ÒevangelismÓ in it. Candidates for the job were clear that, while they had a heart and passion for outreach to those who need Christ, they were not going to have much to do with the old ways of evangelism: handing out Òfour spiritual lawsÓ tracts, cornering people in airports, debating with atheists, condemning the slothful, and so forth. Although I wasnÕt involved in BruceÕs nominating interview, it appears that he, too, was wary of the baggage of 20th century evangelism and its failures.
The problem, of course, is that if we are to ÒwinÓ people to our point of view and then to our organization, our technique needs to be attractive, not repulsive. Use of repulsive techniques, preaching, shaming, shouting, and so forth, is ineffective (never mind offensive). We have a strong cognitive disconnect if we think our ÒdutyÓ of evangelism is done by making harsh proclamations and not caring about their effectiveness.
Richardson spends the beginning of the book addressing this
problem. He needs to spend a lot
of time at it because first he has to convince the traditional Christian reader
(his most likely audience) that they
have a problem. He summarizes
nicely by quoting Rick Warren, ÒWe should stop praying, ÔLord, bless what IÕm
doingÕ and start praying, ÔLord, help me do what you are blessing.ÕÓ This is a paraphrase of what we have
been taught from our own pulpit.
Jesus came to save us from our own sins, not the sins of everyone else.
Richardson is surprised to learn, when he gets out of the Christian bubble into the real community, that lots of people already have religion these days and are happy to talk about it. This already goes against the Òthey need a life insurance salesman and will slam upÓ model from decades ago. They also know, pretty specifically, what they donÕt like about Christianity and plan never to have anything to do with it, this outmoded ÔevangelismÕ thing being a big part of it. The fact that this is a surprise to a professional pastor is telling in itself.
So, what do we do about this sad state of affairs? First, we give up on the approach of accosting strangers on the street with ÒtruthÓ and hope they do the right thing with it, though we may never care to see them again. This is the old ÒreptilianÓ approach, lay hundreds of eggs and hope that a few make it. The new approach is Òmammalian,Ó nurture those you have in the hope that most of them make it. This is more like what Paul would say, ÒBy all means, save someÉ.Ó
ItÕs all about relationship. ItÕs all about Òthe love.Ó
As he develops the idea of having friendships outside the faith with only one of the ends being to draw those people into the faith and into the church, the author goes so far as to suggest cutting church or committee meetings if thatÕs what it takes to be with those friends in their place that you have in common such as the golf course, the sailboat, the hiking trail, or even the ballgame. Preach it!
The core idea is that whenever we or any other person comes in contact with God, that is, Jesus, we become aware of our imperfection and impotence in the face of it. Only Jesus can, to put it tritely, ÒfixÓ that. Getting people into that process, that relationship, is not something that results from a debate, a lecture, or a brief encounter, it is something that results from a shared life. Start out with good things that you have in common and go towards other good things, such as that relationship with Christ, something that you should also have in common.
I must say that although I picked up a few good ideas from Richardson, I had figured most of this out and rejected traditional Christian evangelism decades ago. One of my justifications for significant leadership involvement in AMSAT-NA from 1988 – 1991, which would come at the expense of some religious exercise, or for working at a decidedly ÒsecularÓ place like JPL, was that those guys in those secular places needed some ÒsaltÓ in their Òearth.Ó Turns out IÕm not the only one. I was and am positioned to hob knob with other Christians, Mormons, Jew, agnostics, Athiests and atheists, Hindus, homosexuals, and who knows what else in these environments, most of whom I would never see in the church bubble. Amazingly, all of those people are human beings too. Amazingly, we can coexist in community with our respective faiths and failings, strengths and weaknesses. IÕm not really the ÒcloserÓ that the typical Christian evangelist is supposed to be. When asked directly or indirectly about spiritual matters or the nature of my faith, or when it just happens to come up among other topics in conversation, IÕll talk about it openly, as openly as IÕd talk about a programming concept or mathematical technique, a hiking trail, the weather, politics, management, medicine or law. Christian evangelism is in there and my acquaintances often move toward the truth, but it is not the sole end of all my relationships. The Great Commission is not the Only Commission. God, being omnipotent, has some role.
This approach, its efficacy, the extent to which my personality plays in, are all discussable. Am I right or am I shirking? Am I perfect in this (or in anything) or sinful? Are we keeping score? How is score being kept? One thing we could all be freed from is the concept of Òsouls saved.Ó There are those who are seeking God and sharing God where they are in their journey and there are those who are blind and lost. Life is a journey with an end at God, not a binding life insurance contract to merely be signed and initialed in five-dozen places.
With this new freedom, all I lack is a technique with which
to turn the tables on those pesky, pushy guys in airports! Ideas?