Someone like this deacon
named Philip in today's Scripture reading. Someone who shares the gospel with
people who don’t know about Jesus. Have you thought of yourself as someone who
tells others about Jesus?
Just the thought of that can
send shockwaves and rock our world. Very few of us warm-up to the word
evangelism. It seems to either make us feel guilty because we're not doing it,
or makes us cringe because there's no way we would ever want to do it.
A very large study was
conducted on evangelism in churches like ours. The conclusive finding was that
the vast majority of people would rather go get a root canal than talk about,
much less DO, evangelism. For the last forty years, most churches have been in
decline. It seems we’ve developed a life-threatening aversion to evangelism!
Right now, you might be
hoping that I change the subject. Maybe you would rather have me show you pictures from my trip to Arizona last week. Anything but a sermon on evangelism!
When my plane was landing this past Wednesday evening in Columbus, the flight attendant announced, "Welcome to Columbus, but I think you all made the wrong choice."
Seriously though, I want to thank so many of you who helped shovel and salt the sidewalks last weekend to make it possible to at least have one service last Sunday. And a big thank you to Rev. Ben Edwards and Dave Bayless for filling in for me while I was away. I was telling my sister and brother-in-law while I was visiting with them how much I enjoy serving as your pastor and what a great church you are.
See how I would rather talk about my trip than today's topic of evangelism?
When my plane was landing this past Wednesday evening in Columbus, the flight attendant announced, "Welcome to Columbus, but I think you all made the wrong choice."
Seriously though, I want to thank so many of you who helped shovel and salt the sidewalks last weekend to make it possible to at least have one service last Sunday. And a big thank you to Rev. Ben Edwards and Dave Bayless for filling in for me while I was away. I was telling my sister and brother-in-law while I was visiting with them how much I enjoy serving as your pastor and what a great church you are.
See how I would rather talk about my trip than today's topic of evangelism?
Why do so many of us have
such a visceral reaction to evangelism? There are all kinds of reasons why not
much evangelism is happening in most congregations. I'll give you some of my
own reasons.
I don't want to be anything
close to the stereotype that comes to my mind when I think of an
"evangelist."
I don't want to wear a fancy white
suit every Sunday or con people out of their money.
Nor do I want to offend
people by pressuring them with rhetoric about where they'll spend eternity.
Besides that, I wonder
sometimes what business I have telling people what they ought to be doing or
believing. I have enough trouble in my own life doing and believing what I
should.
I'd rather just do the best I
can, being the best Christian I can be, and hope that is a good enough witness
to others. After all, one of my favorite quotes is the one from St. Francis of
Assisi who said, “Preach the gospel at
all times and if necessary, use words.
I do fine talking faith
language with you here at church. I love talking about church things with my
church buddies, but when I’m with people who aren’t churchgoers, words seem to fail
me. I get nervous. And sometimes, I miss opportunities where I could have
shared my faith with someone.
But what happens when we meet
someone who obviously needs to hear some words about God’s love? Someone like
the Ethiopian eunuch from our scripture reading this morning. He is an African
man with an important job that came at a high price.
Most likely, he had been
castrated at some point in his life so that he could serve the queen of
Ethiopia. That’s why he's called a "eunuch." He was unable to be
married or have children.
Religious law at that time, kept
him from participating in worship services. Yet, somehow, he had heard of God
and wanted to know more about God. What do you do when you don't think of
yourself as an evangelist but you come across someone like this man?
Someone who bears deep wounds
inflicted by the world . . .
Someone who is not welcomed
by traditional religion . . .
Someone who looks successful
but feels empty . . .
Someone who is searching for
God, searching for something besides what she has . .
Someone who needs to hear
about God’s love.
Someone like a man named, Rick.
Rick was a successful businessman. He attended a church in the “Bible belt” of
our country. He came because he saw an ad they had placed on TV. The minister
of the church had been opposed to putting ads for a church on television. "Only fundamentalist mega-churches do
that," he said. "It costs
too much anyway. We should be using that money for caring for the poor.
Besides," he said, "What
kind of people pick their church from ads on television?"
But the church did it anyway.
They got dozens of visitors who had never before been to any church in their
lives. One of them was Rick. Rick brought his 8-year-old son, Andy, to church
one Sunday. The children's Sunday school happened to be studying Esther that
day, and Andy was part of the class.
Monday morning the minister
got a call from Rick. "My son is so
excited about this story he heard at church," he said. "He said the story is from the 'book of Esther.' Can you tell me where I can get a
copy of that book? I want to read it
to him at home. Can I buy it at the bookstore or would the library have it?'"
Rick, a college graduate and
successful businessman, had never owned a Bible. He had no idea that Esther is
one of sixty-six books in the Bible.
Here’s the reality. There are many people in our community who do
not know that Esther is a book in the Bible. This is increasingly true.
In 1910 only 3% of Americans
were growing up with no faith training, but in the 1980s 14.5% were growing up
with no faith training. And the number of people coming to adulthood in the
U.S. with no faith training at all continues to increase.
In our own county, according
to the Association of Religion Data Archives, the latest demographic study
shows that 68% of our neighbors have no religious identity. They are not
Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or Christian. They are not connected religiously at
all.
"What
is to prevent me from being baptized?" the Ethiopian man asked.
That’s a good question.
For people like Rick, the
obstacle to being baptized, to becoming a Christian, is simply that no one had
ever told them about God. Let me say that again. No one had ever told them
about God.
Friends, I wonder if we are preventing
people from hearing about God. Are we keeping people from hearing about God’s
love? Are we constructing barriers between the gospel and the people who desperately
need to hear it?
Is our fear of being like a
stereotype of a bible thumper a barrier?
Is our lack of confidence in
ourselves a barrier?
Is our desire to give people
their "space" about religion a barrier?
Could it be that for many
people like Rick, we are actually preventing them from knowing more about God?
Are we keeping people from becoming followers of Jesus Christ?
You know how tight lids on
sport’s drink bottles can be sometimes? These grip things are wonderful, aren’t
they? [Hold one up]
Can you imagine standing there
with one of these in your hand, keeping it to yourself, while someone, even
someone you know really well, struggles to get to that refreshing drink? Of
course not! You would gladly share what you had to make things better for
someone else. You wouldn't just keep it to yourself if someone needed it!
But this is exactly what the
church does when we do not share the gospel with those in need. We sit with the
keys to the waters of baptism in our hands. Meanwhile, neighbors around us are
desperately thirsty to know that God loves them through Jesus Christ.
Maybe that is easier said
than done. It certainly seems that Philip had it easier than we do. After all,
the Spirit of God seemingly transported him to the Ethiopian man's side and
compelled him to share the gospel! It seems like all Philip did was show up and
God did the rest.
If we were to be evangelists,
do you think it would be like that for us? How could we partner with God? How
could we be authentic to who we are, not trying to be some stereotype or push
something over on someone?
How would the Spirit work
with us? Where would the Spirit of God send us?
Who would be on our pathway?
Friends, I invite you to join
me in this New Year to reclaim the true meaning of the word, “evangelism.” I
know that the word has been hijacked by some shady Christian evangelists in the
past, but my goodness, we need to reclaim this word in our Christian
vocabulary.
What would it look like for
us to be evangelists in the best sense of that word?
Before, we embark on this
evangelism journey, let me offer some thoughts on what I don’t mean by
evangelism.
By evangelism, I don’t mean
that we go down to the student center and judge college students on the kind of
clothing they wear. I also don’t mean that we hand out religious tracks that
say something like, “Do you know where
you’re going to spend eternity?”
And by evangelism, I don’t
mean that we start a new prayer ministry where if you donate $500 to the
church, we’ll send you a ceramic angel that Pastor Robert prayed over.
Evangelism also doesn’t mean
that we try to convince people to accept God in their lives with our clever
arguments.
And lastly, being an
evangelist doesn’t mean that you have to put several Christian bumper stickers
on the back of your car that show the Christian fish symbol swallowing the
word, “Darwin.”
By evangelism, I mean that we
get back to its original meaning which is simply sharing the good news of our
faith with others.
And so, I am inviting us to
simply be willing to share with others how God is at work in our lives. We’ve
been calling these “Thin Place” moments where we are on the lookout to see how
heaven and earth overlap in our ordinary lives.
These “Thin Place” moments
happen all of the time. It’s just a matter of being attentive to their
occurrences in our lives and then sharing them with others. These experiences
are often not even that dramatic, but they are powerful moments where God is
present in a very real way.
Let me share a simple Thin Place
moment that happened to me. It was when our church hosted one of the university
choral concerts this past fall. It was during intermission and I struck up a
conversation with a couple of guys who were standing just outside our front
entrance. They wanted to get a breath of fresh air.
During the conversation, they
told me that they were from out of town. One of them told me that they don’t
attend any church because they said how churches often come across judgmental
toward others.
In the course of our
conversation, I pointed over to our outdoor prayer cross and I told them about
all the prayer requests we get in that box each week, mostly from college
students. And I said how we put that prayer cross there because we want people
to know that we are a church that cares and that we truly want to be a church
of open minds, open hearts, and open doors.
After our conversation, I
went back into our church entrance. A couple of minutes later, I looked
outside, and I noticed that these two guys were filling out prayer cards there
at the prayer cross.
Now, I didn’t do all that
much. I simply pointed to our prayer cross and it connected with them. In that
moment I felt God’s presence in a very real way.
See, I love sharing these
everyday God moments with you and when we share these with each other.
And it’s been my experience
that people inside AND outside the church are open to hearing us share these
experiences of where we see God at work in our lives.
That’s what it means to be an
evangelist. To simply share with others how God is at work in your life.
I love this prayer written by Josh
Thomas to encourage us to share our faith with others. Here’s the prayer:
Lord Christ, help your people
to seek opportunities to share a word about you with others. Move us beyond our
shyness and fear, so that we can speak the word you give. Guide us to speak a
true word and a good one, so we attract, not repel; and touch our ears that we
may listen first, before we trust our tongues to speak in your Name. Amen.
I love that prayer because it
prompts us to share the good news of our faith with others.
A family shared one of the
most memorable Christmases they ever had. It was the last Christmas they spent
at their grandparents' house. The grandfather had Parkinson's disease.
Soon, they would move to an
assisted living center. It had been their family's tradition to gather around
the Christmas tree and listen to the granddad read the Christmas story from the
Gospel of Luke.
This year, when Granddad
tried to read, he could barely move his Parkinson’s-locked jaws. He just
couldn’t manage to speak the words aloud. The family sat there and watched him
struggle. No one seemed to know what to do. Should they say something? Would it
hurt his pride if someone helped him?
No one did anything for what
seemed to be a very long time. But Emily, the 6-year-old granddaughter, had
just learned to read. She knew exactly what to do. She quietly tiptoed over to
his chair and plopped herself beside him. Then, taking his finger into her
hand, she helped him point to each word, saying them out loud with him as they read
along together:
“Unto
you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”
"Do
you know what you're reading?" Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch.
The man nearly begged, "How can I
unless someone guides me?"
So Phillip went and sat
beside him.
Who will God lead you to sit
beside?
[Based on the resource, "Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life
Evangelism," Chalice Press, 2008]
Faith Sharing
Small Group Questions
Acts 8:26-37 & Mark 1:4-11
January 7, 2018
The word, "evangelism" is often seen in a negative light today because people associate that word with being pushy, preachy, and judgmental.
What comes to mind when you think of the word, "evangelism?"
Our Acts scripture tells the story of how Phillip helped someone (the Ethiopian eunuch) who was considered an outsider hear the story about Jesus and receive baptism.
Why do you think Phillip was willing to take the risk to share the good news of his faith with this man?
If the word, "evangelism" simply means sharing with others about the good news of our faith and how God is present in our day to day lives, evangelism takes on a positive meaning.
What are the barriers that keep us from sharing how God is at work in our lives and who Jesus is to us?
Practice being an evangelist by sharing with a partner a recent time in how you have experienced God at work in your everyday life.
As a group, say this pray together:
Lord Christ, help us to seek opportunities to share a word about you with others. Move us beyond our shyness and fear, so that we can speak the word you give. Guide us to speak a true word and a good one, so we attract, not repel; and touch our ears that we may listen first, before we trust our tongues to speak in your Name. Amen.
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