What's Your Take on Mission?

Thanks for the feedback on "secular friends with no needs."  We had some rousing calls to friendship as being the key thing.  And we had a few comments to the effect that it can feel weird or wounded to have to assume our secular friends are a pathetic mass of needs, whatever they may say.

I was intrigued to press this a bit further.  A fundamental tension for churchgoers is the distance between stirring calls like Jesus' to "make disciples of all nations" and the sense that we're not superior to anyone else and that it feels weird and non-relational to see all relationships with non-churchgoers as ones where, like an Amway salesman, we're only allegedly "befriending" them in order to serve our larger purpose of "making them Christians."  I suspect that reconciling that tension is a fundamental step in the life of everyone trying to follow Jesus and probably is not divorced from the conversation we're having here.

NOT reconciling that tension leaves two unappealing possibilities.  One is that we embrace that our mission is to "give people the gospel," that that's what "courageous' people do whether or not they every actually enjoy an actual friendship with such people.  We don't care if we treat people as objects to be acted upon by us or not.

Or: We regard objectifying people as such a serious and unavoidable risk that we blow off any sense of "joining Jesus' mission" and just mind our own business.

So it seems to me we need to embrace the tension and utterly reconcile it without taking either of those paths.  To my mind, as some of you pointed out, friendship with no strings is indeed important.  But so is the belief that God is actually alive and responds to prayer, thereby removing the need to "convince" our friends of anything.  I think we're helped by centered-set thinking in this. 

Let's talk!

Comments

[PB]

Wow, yes, I'm so glad we're talking about this. My wife and I have chatted about this one over and over, her taking the "Friendship with no strings attached," approach, and me taking a more refined and creative approach to the, "Yes, but what if they were to die TOMORROW?" point.

Then she tells me a pretty convincing story about one of her good friends whose centered-set arrow is noticeably and dynamically pointing more and more towards Jesus over the years.

She always wins.

Nonetheless, I do think the question we're getting at here is so important. Perhaps I could frame it like this:
"What is centered-set evangelism?"

I'd love to expound on my answers to that, but if I could be blunt, I'm terrible at talking about Jesus, no matter if it's centered set, bounded set, rounded set, it doesn't matter. I'm terrible at it. Praying for people secretly and with them on occasion is the only thing I am able to do in good conscience without the other person being offended or turned off.

[Annie Bierma]

This is a topic that is near and dear to me. I think something to keep in mind is that we cannot in and of ourselves "make disciples" of anyone. We are not God and we cannot change someone's heart.

If we attempt to be befriend people with the agenda of "winning them to Christ" we are missing out on the real benefits of a genuine friendship. Additionally such behavior suggests an underlying motivation of fear (albeit a fear of an eternity apart from God) rather than faith. If God is alive and responding to our prayers (and I believe He is) then we should be praying those close to us would be drawn to Jesus and backing those prayers with the faith that He can and will touch our friends' lives.

It seems another common fear among us church goers is the idea that we will never have the opportunity to talk about our faith. It has been my experience that faith and belief systems come up quite frequently and are fairly common topics among people who know each other. I have found that when my focus in relationships isn't caught up in conversion, I am freed up to be honest about what I believe instead of having to "sell" my ideas on God or faith in these moments.

As a side note, I have found that a fair number of my friends who once pointed starkly away from Jesus are somehow pointing more and more toward Him.

[Jason Refsland]

I think I just get confused what the "good news" is again. When I think of telling people about Jesus all I can think of saying is that Jesus died for our sins, but that doesn't seem like a relevant thing to say most times. And to be honest it feels void of meaning. I guess it comes down to genuine contextualization and sometimes I don't feel genuine and sometimes I don't know how to contextualize. That's probably why its the Holy Spirit's job to draw people and not mine.

[Paul]

This is so great...exploring the challenge of 'truths' in the Bible in terms of my own personal reality. So if I'm honestly doing that in relationship with others both Christian and non-Christian than it seems that's evangelism. If evangelism is all about being a catalyst in another's life (and mine at the same time) to see them pointed more toward Jesus.

And that's my personal experience...asking questions about what I'm interested (and well I'm interested in Jesus) and telling them my own questions and experiences. And by far most people are interested to engage...and through God's grace I've seen friends and family come to know Jesus more intimately.

[BMH]

If you don't listen to it regularly (and you should), download 'This American Life' for this week (called 'Bait and Switch') from iTunes. A cool story about evangelism that directly relates to this topic, and Ira Glass reveals that he has many good friends of deep Christian faith who he claims have absolutely no influence on his deep-seated atheism.

[Dissertation Structure]

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!

[John Kycek]

It's probably my A/G background coming through, but I must go back to Acts 1:8 for this one. Jesus called his disciples to be his "witnesses."

I agree that there are certainly times when God both uses us in a very direct and visceral way to speak the Gospel into others' life, while there are other times where he plainly uses us to befriend others and showing them how one who follows Christ can live their life.

Annie, you are right though - there is nothing that we can do to actually make disciples or to change hearts. That is God's job, and he is good at it. He simply calls us to bear witness to what he has done in our lives, and that can take on varying postures at different times in our lives.

[Brent]

Well, turns out it was last week's not this one, so you cannot get it.

Glass interview Jim Henderson, a guy whose written a few books about relational evangelism. Henderson explains to Glass that all his version of evangelism is about is getting Christians to get into real-life, deep relationships with non-Christians.

Glass asks him how that actually leads to any conversions.

Henderson says he's not that concerned about conversion numbers and statistics, but about building relationships.

Glass says that sounds great, but it is like all bait and no switch, and isn't it possibly that this approach just leads to nothing? That conversions just don't happen this way? Glass reveals he and his wife have very close, committed Christian friends, but he feels no influence from them to lean more toward Christianity.

And I think that's where I was really struck - as someone who calls myself an evangelical and who would definitely tend toward 'relational evangelism,' the question is poignant for me as well - does this kind of evangelism actually result in more people following Christ who otherwise wouldn't? Or is it just an excuse not to proselytize?

Henderson gets kind of stuck on the question, actually. He ends up saying that he doesn't know the answer, but that even if it does lead to nothing, he prefers his version of evangelism to the impersonal, sales-approach, bait-and-switch alternative.

[Jonathan]

Hello Mr Spam

[steven hamilton]

i think there is a piece of the call to "do the work of an evangelist" that entails living your life outloud, so-to-speak. and there is intention in me living outloud...if i am living my life outloud, i will be witnessing to Christ and His work in my life and all that i see Him doing whereever i am. there is a "real-ness" in doing that, to which people respond differently than if they think you are being manipulative. they may still think i'm wierd, talking about the action of the Unseen in my life and our world, but to tell the truth: i am wierd! it's like people getting onto a topic that they are really "into" and you know when you have stumbled on that, because people become more animated and excited...and some people take a step back and say: "OK, tell me how you really feel..." my experience is that people have grace for that sort of thing, and in fact ask more questions and do not dis-engage with that sort of thing, whereas grace evaporates when people in our culture who are mostly highly attuned and trained on media and advertising get a whiff of manipulation, then they turn cold, or merely withdrawal or dimiss us. this conversation makes me remember this great quote from AW Tozer: “It is a great reproach to us as Christians that we excite in the hearts of the unbelieving masses little more than plain boredom. They meet us with smiling toleration or ignore us altogether, and their silence is a portent and a sign. Well might it cause us nights of tears and hours of prayerful self-examination..."

[Luke]

I think you can stream it here: http://thislife.org/Radio_Archive.aspx

[Chip Decker]

Well said Steve!

[SteveA]

Just to echo what Steve says above, and to say that this reminds me of the section of 1 Peter, the verse often quoted out of context about 'being ready to give the reason for the hope you have'. Out of context: be ready to evangelise, to give the 5 points of creation, fall, redemption, forgiveness and one other, to share Bible verses (is there another topic here on the power inherent in a piece of the Bible quoted outright, or is the power all in understanding? Some people seem to hold that direct quotes have an internal power, like a magic incantation).

In context, the passage goes something like this: You'll be persecuted and life will get hard. Keep smiling, keep being honest and just and true and transparent. People will notice this and reason that you have some external hope not anchored in circumstances. Some people will ask you about this. Be ready and tell them.

[Dave Thom]

Okay, this topic is over with already but I might as well add this: every person in the body of Christ will be that witness or disciple in a special context. There is no one recipe for how to do/be that witness or disciple. A long time ago I learned in my "new staff training" days with Crusade that as novices we focus our witness on ourselves (my tone of voice, my clothes, my freaked-out nervous sweats), then we mature to where we focus on the message (use the four laws? just cite verses from memory? kegger for Jesus invitations?), then we mature to where we focus on the person we're sharing with (what do they need to see/hear/experience?), and by then we're mature enough to tailor-make our witness. It may be too snooty to add that there may even be a fourth level: we focus on Jesus and he might even tell us to not say a word. (It's snooty to say because I would never suggest that the novice isn't trusting Christ in his stumbling words...he may be making the biggest step of faith he ever has.) But in the long run, our mature witness is going to reflect our uniqueness in the body of Christ. There's no one recipe. And only you know if you're being a witness or hiding your light under a bushel.