evangelism

i was asked last night if what my church emphasizes could be considered "servant evangelism." while summarizing my church's activities would be hard here, it includes things like handing out free drinks and our church's card to the opposing softball team, giving free food to show God's love to people out for the games next week, running a carnival for underprivileged kids in the community and cleaning up the community theater where we meet.

my short answer was "no" and there really wasn't time for a long answer. so i'd like to give part of an answer here since i think that there is something very valuable in this way of thinking i've begun to embrace here.

servant evangelism, like any good church term, means a lot of different things depending on your background. overall though we can probably agree that it means demonstrating God's love for people in hopes that we will be known by love and others will want to know more of Christ because of it. often though, it also is seen as a way to satisfy the "witnessing" requirement without saying things that people don't want to hear. people will hold a great many events almost without uttering Jesus' name and then expect a cross pendant or card or flyer to bring the person to church or hangout times when Jesus is presented by a leader. or it's expected that talk of Jesus will just spring from a person's mouth who has received this love. don't get me wrong. these things do happen, but the term has been seen as THE way to share Christ by some.

in our community we want to share God's love in practical ways. we say that we want to live lives of faith, be known by love and be a voice of hope to people who don't have the deep hope that God provides. so how does this differ from servant evangelism? it's different in that we think that believers need to be intentional about sharing their faith at some point in words as well as actions. we've met at a theater for a number of weeks now, giving our time to make it better and encouraging our people to patronize the theater. but just doing these things is not an end. what we found was that doing these things earned us trust. it's enough trust that we can now bring lunch for the staff one day and share our hope in Christ openly with them at that lunch.

my pastor has modeled this for me at Monday morning coffee. he doesn't just show love to the barrista by tipping well and talking to her. he's engaged her in serious conversations about life and marriage. this has led to a conversation in which she was invited to talk about what faith means to her. she trusted us enough to do so and now we have one more level of conversation open to this young lady who's beliefs fall into a general paganism (her word.)

i think this can also be seen in the way we "do" Sunday gatherings. we invite a lot of people to serve who aren't Christ followers. in fact, we don't mind if you want to play guitar and still be unsure of everything. we think that this service can be part of God's transforming work and we've seen it play out that way a number of times. we want sick people to taste what it is to love and to feel what it is to serve. these are God experiences that are a bit easier to grasp than the Christian metaphors that so many of our songs are bound up in.

how do i encapsulate that? i guess i'd like to call it "living life with people." this is no big movement or program. it's the simple thing we've been supposed to do for so long but were to silly to settle in on. as i mentioned to someone else, i really don't care a lot about your denomination short of some cults. i want to know if you really are trying to share your life with people outside the church. i want to know if you are sacrificing for those people and building bridges of friendship that aren't conditional. (Let's talk - if you're willing to read through this tract with me.) i want to know if you're willing to incorporate talk of your faith in your life and say the Gospel's offensive words in gentle ways so the truth is the offensive thing. i want to know if you're willing to let go of some pet church phrases so that people don't have to decipher your words.

now just so it's clear. that last paragraph is not pointed at any one person and it probably needs some conversation to be understood well but i think they are better marks of fruit than church attendance, church numbers or lists of current activities.