I was talking through a book proposal with a friend today- no, not one for me to write, though I have no doubt I'll be involved someway if it happens. It's his pitch to a publisher on the conversations of Jesus with various people in the Gospel of John.
He needed a thread and I was glad to help out: The thread is that every conversation is radically different. Jesus, Good News, comes to us in our particular context, tearing down our particular idols and answering our particular questions. I really hope it gets written- as we spoke about it, I got excited...
Then I ran across this quote: "The old paradigm of evangelism was a transactional sharing of the gospel. I would try to get people to intellectually agree with me. But the new paradigm is different, an approach in which I invite you to walk alongside me, examine my life, and see evidence of the truth, and hopefully there will be something compelling that you see. It's a no-strings-attached invitation to enter my life as I follow Jesus."
-Ken Fong, the senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles.
I think this is something most of us emerging church types would wholeheartedly agree with, but something I might like to adjust slightly...
I agree: the transactional get-you-to-agree-with-me (or as I like to think of it "Pin 'em down until they say 'Jesus!'") model isn't particularly effective today. But...
I think examining MY life might get someone partially where they need to be, because they could see real impact, real change, real peace brought on by a real Jesus. But it's still how Jesus saves ME. Sure- there's commonality... but there's a reason why Jesus didn't tell the woman at the well to sell everything, give it all to the poor and come follow Him. And there's a reason why He didn't tell her that she needed to be "born again." Each needed to see Him as Good News in THEIR context, and that looked slightly different, depending...
The fact that Jesus has 25 significant conversations in the Gospel of John, no two alike, should tell us something. Real evangelism looks like doing what Jesus did- showing someone how Jesus, not their idols (or even just mis-conceptions of Jesus/God) can save them... that is, how Jesus is the answer to the questions/predicaments they themselves are facing in their particular context.
This can never happen if we 1. Don't understand the impact of the Gospel in our lives and work aggressively to tease out the implications of the Good News in progressively more and more areas of our lives, and
2. Are willing to help others go there as well.
I'm telling you, from having done this a bit over the last couple of years, it's a lot less difficult than the apologetics-heavy model of evangelism, but it takes more than simply saying "Watch me go!" to folks and hoping they intuit that it's Jesus who makes us different AND have the ability to formulate questions about "what makes us different"... and the nerve to ask them.
I hope that makes sense...
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