Christian Living

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I'm writing a book.

How do I get from evangelism to the fact that I'm writing a book? Well, the book is called "New Heart Church," and follows a protagonist named Eli Radak, a non-Christian who moves into an apartment building and finds himself embraced, much to his bewilderment, by the Christians in the building, who meet in a house church on the upper floor, and who are determined to show him the love of Christ.

I'm writing the book for two reasons: first, to tell a story that I think is powerful and moving; and second, to offer a critique of the contemporary American church. Eli ends up coming to Christ because he sees the powerful difference that Jesus makes in these people's lives, he enjoys feeling the love and community that he has with them, and finally he decides he can't live any longer without it. I don't think anything could be further from the way that most people, and most churches, do evangelism today.

Most of the time, if we're really honest, the extent of our evangelistic contacts with a person will be approaching a stranger, sharing a certain set of facts about Jesus, and expecting that they will not believe us. Yet I don't think anything could be further from the way that Jesus evangelized.

Jesus spent three years doing miracles for people. During this time, he asked very few people to believe in him. Odder still, especially at the beginning of his ministry, he would often do miracles and then tell people NOT to talk about what he had done!

The point is that Jesus spent this time establishing his credibility. Once a person had witnessed his behavior, they had no choice but to admit that he was for real. John 10 even records Jesus saying, "Even if you don't believe my words, believe my miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father."

God did not design humans to be gullible, and he does not require an unreasonable "leap of faith" in order for us to believe in him. On the contrary, he designed us to be logical and reasonable, and he wants us to make a well-informed decision regarding matters of spirituality. This is why Jesus spent so long doing miracles to establish his credibility: so that, when he finally called people to belief, they had plenty of reasons why it made all the sense in the world to believe in him. Belief was the only reasonable reaction to the things that they had seen and heard.

I think that, when it comes to evangelism, God wants us to do exactly what Jesus did: establish our credibility so that, when we call someone to repentance and faith, they have seen from our words and actions that it is the only reasonable decision to make. We obviously cannot do the exact miracles that Jesus did, but we can be motivated by the same love and compassion that motivated him, and we can do whatever small things are within our power in order to establish credibility with the people around us. It is for this reason that I find that many of the contemporary tools of evangelism, from street preaching to sending out direct mailers to knocking on doors, simply do not work. I do not mean that nobody gets saved through them, because God often saves people in spite of our folly, but his mercy does not imply that he endorses our methods. On the contrary, when people hear our message in those settings, we have no credibility with them, and since God has designed them to be reasonable creatures, they are simply being logical in observing that they have no reason whatsoever to believe what we are saying. We must establish our credibility before we should expect to be taken seriously.

When the average non-Christian looks at the average church, he rarely sees displays of unconditional love, especially from the pulpit. What he often sees is moralism, denunciation of lifestyles that God (or simply that pastor) does not agree with, partisan politics, and other things that have no relationship to the gospel. This non-Christian's reasonable, well-informed decision is that he wants no part of Christianity if it is going to make him an angry and moralistic Republican, and he is quite logical in making the decision to turn tail and flee such a place. We have no one but ourselves to blame when this happens.

Imagine if, on the other hand, we were to embrace this person with Christian love, giving him gifts, mowing his lawn, taking him to coffee, inviting him over to watch TV. We do not even have to mention the name of Christ; our action is our witness. When the topic comes up (he may bring it up, or we may intentionally raise it), he will at least have no choice but to admit that this Christian love is real, and that belief in it is quite logical and quite reasonable.

The difficulty is if this person is someone on the margins of society, an alcoholic or drug abuser or homosexual or a member of a certain political party, who most church people would normally be friends with. We seem to have gotten it in our heads that loving someone means condoning what they do, but nothing could be further from the truth. Didn't God love us when we were still enemies with him, and take the most extreme measure in history to patch that gap and reconcile us to himself (Romans 5)? We have to understand that God has wired us to be skeptical, not gullible, and that he has instilled us with the ability to make reasonable decisions and pursue a logical course of action. In saying that we must evangelize by loving people rather than by words, I am in no way infringing the power of the Holy Spirit. I am merely saying that God plays by his own rules. He does not expect people to make unreasonable leaps of faith. He expects us to do whatever we have to do in order to make such a decision completely reasonable for these people.

Let's go back to my book now. Think how strange and unbelievable it would be if Eli Radak, an apathetic non-Christian, were to get a direct-mailer and suddenly decide to follow Christ. That would be unreasonable in the extreme. Imagine what happened if he answered the door to find a Christian who said, "You need Christ!" and instantly replied "You're exactly right!" Why do we think this is any more likely to happen in real life?

On the contrary, at the halfway point in the book, nobody has yet even told Eli the gospel, but he still feels in his heart that something is wrong with his life, and that he has to have more of the love and community that his friends are showing him. When the gospel is presented, it will be the answer to the thoughts and questions he already has, and belief will be completely reasonable for him.

The central rule of counseling is that you should never tell a client something if you can get them to realize it for themselves. In many ways, evangelism is the same. God can obviously convert people however he wants, and I have seen him use door-to-door, direct mailers, and street preaching to great effect, but I still don't think this is what he really intends to happen. He wired us to make reasonable, well-informed decisions, and I believe he wants us to bring non-Christians to the point where faith in Christ is the only logical decision for them. This is done not with words, but by establishing our credibility through them by living out our Christian witness and generously gifting those people with acts of love. Only then will they be forced to admit that they have a reason to listen to us, and only then will Christianity be the most reasonable, most attractive, and most necessary decision regarding the future of their lives.

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