Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Taking out the 'duty' in evangelism

I think one of the perplexity that one finds in evangelism is the lack of sincerity that we often combine with reaching lost souls for Christ. A lot of the time we just reach out in a simple presentation of the gospel and then ask if a person is ready to accept Jesus in his/her life and then walk away. Evangelism with this intent is just interested in numbers, like "how many people have you turned to Christ?" where the "how many" rings out more of our real intent instead of pointing people to Jesus. Soon it becomes a duty and gets impersonal. I feel though, that there is a better way to do 'evangelism' and it takes a so called longer route in some cases.

Instead of being impersonal, lets get personal with people. Lets care about people. The fact that every person is a reflection of God's image carries much weight to this so called argument. Creating friendships are more meaningful to people rather then just talking to them about Jesus and asking them to make a decision. How will they know Jesus when we can't even reflect him? Witness comes with both words and deeds both combined to make a powerful combination that has a strong effect on people. At some points, it is this kind of connection that counts. People do smell the lack of sincerity in our actions as well as our words and this is not good.

I'm not at all saying telling people is not the way. Not at all. I'm just saying that we have to be sincere with people. We have to care enough that they are human beings and not numbered tokens that we add up for points on who wins the best converter award.


2 comments:

Mason said...

“We have to care enough that they are human beings and not numbered tokens that we add up for points on who wins the best converter award.”

Great thoughts here Tremonti. Too often I have also felt that the tone evangelism takes treats people as number to be tallied, wins for a scoreboard, or barriers to be defeated with our wit and logic. Evangelism is incredibly important, but our motives are important as well. We need to always keep our focus on love for others and seeing them as valuable in and of themselves, not simply as a potential notch in our belt.

Anonymous said...

the culture has come to dictate our evangelistic practices as we strive to keep pace with a world that is byte sized and consumer oriented.

Hopeful Theo

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I'm a student of Theology (currently and will always be one). I'm a student of culture and a student of music as well. I guess you could say life is a never ending journey of learning. Because of that we never stop being students. Just a little something about this blog: Deconstructing The Monkey is all about being a safe space for emerging conversations