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Too much of the evangelism that gets preached in the world fails to reach
its audience. Whether poorly planned or poorly delivered, it all too often succeeds only in turning people off
of the Christian message that the evangelist is trying to spread. This perverse outcome is the result of a few basic
mistakes that evangelists often make in spreading the word of God.
The first mistake is to spend too much time talking about Jesus. We all know
evangelists who urge unbelievers to love Jesus, sing to Jesus, pray to Jesus, worship Jesus, … and all the unbeliever
hears is "Jesus – Jesus – Jesus." It’s enough to make him think that Christianity is nothing more than a
big personality cult … that it’s just about this guy, sort of like Stalinism without the parades. I’m
not saying Jesus is irrelevant to Christianity, obviously. What I am trying to point out, though, is that Jesus told his followers
more than just "I’m cool." He also told them to follow his commands and to do as he taught. To harp on the person
of Jesus without getting around to his teachings is a great way to reinforce brand-recognition, but it’s like
selling Coca-Cola without saying it’s a drink. Not many people are going to buy the product if they don’t know
what it is for.
"So you’re saying to talk up the message, the Good News? OK, that’s
easy. The Good News is that Jesus brings us all salvation from sin, right?"
Sorry, that’s the second mistake. For somebody who is already a believer,
that may very well be "good news." But the unbeliever is going to stop you in your tracks and ask what "salvation" means.
Then you have to back up and explain the background – this means convincing him that without Jesus we would all be condemned
by God to everlasting torment because of our sinful nature. Now, you (the evangelist) aren’t planning
to stop with that grim scene at all – that’s just the background. What you want to explain is the
Good News that all this has been overturned by Jesus. But you’ll never get there. Frankly I have never in my life met
a non-Christian who can get past the "background" and listen to anything that comes after it. What is more, that background
has turned any number of undecided folk into lifelong anti-Christians. They find it so revolting that they want nothing to
do with people who believe it. I’m not exactly saying the doctrine of salvation is untrue, but I am saying that
it has no place in evangelism. Some things should only be discussed later, and this is one of them.
"How do we explain Jesus’s teachings without talking about salvation?
Do you mean we should talk about his moral lessons? The Good Samaritan, turning the other cheek, and all that stuff?"
Closer, but that’s a third mistake. It’s a subtle one, because
there’s nothing in Jesus’s moral teachings that is actually offensive to most non-Christians. The problem is that
there’s not a lot special there, either. The Golden Rule? Every society on Earth teaches some form of that; without
it, a community disintegrates. The Two Great Commandments? Those come out of the Old Testament; they aren’t original
with Jesus. You can comb through the Gospels looking for other moral teachings, trying to find one that doesn’t
show up elsewhere, but before you go to all that trouble consider this: in late Antiquity, pagan Romans who were familiar
with Christian teachings all agreed that the only special rules of Christian morality were monotheism and keeping the Sabbath;
all the other rules were familiar from the pagan philosophers and poets. You won’t drive away unbelievers by preaching
Christian morals, but they are very likely to ask, "Why can’t I do all those things and just ‘be a good person’
without being a Christian?"
To understand the heart of the Christian Good News, see what Jesus himself
says to describe the key features of his ministry. In Matthew 11:2-6, we read:
Now when John heard in prison of Christ’s activities, he sent and asked
him through his disciples, "Are you the Coming One, or should we look for someone else?" Jesus replied to them, "Go and report
to John what you hear and see: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the
poor are evangelized. And happy is anyone who does not lose his faith in me."
Now that’s Good News! I don’t know a single unbeliever
who would disagree. And it says in a nutshell what you should do when you go out to evangelize. Don’t worry about what
to preach, or whether you’ve suited the message to the audience in quite the right way. Don’t preach anything.
Just walk out among unbelievers healing the sick, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, casting out demons – that
sort of thing – and then if anybody asks how you did it you have a great opening to share your faith with him.
And nobody will resent it.
What’s that you say? You don’t know how to give sight to the
blind or raise the dead, and you’ve never quite mastered the knack of walking on water? No problem. I can make this
easier for you. Remember that there are many, many ways to heal the sick. Drunks can learn to be sober. Addicts can learn
to be clean. Homeless people can learn to rebuild their lives. Codependents in dysfunctional relationships can learn to free
themselves. And every single one of us can learn to face the day with less envy or anger or bitterness than we felt the day
before. None of these cures looks as flashy as raising the dead; but to the afflicted one who is freed from his affliction,
his cure can look just as miraculous. Jesus walked far and wide healing, and he taught his followers that they could
do it too, because the Kingdom of God was already within them. The "Good News" he spread was that the infinite power of this
Kingdom can heal our sicknesses and cast out the demons that beset us, no matter how many or how great. Go thou and do likewise.
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