How Many?

I talked today with a wonderful person engaged in evangelism in Abbotsford. She made the comment that we are only capable of having meaningful connection with a limited number of people. She meets regularly with about eight people that she is discipling and building relationship with. Some one she knows has a personal limit of five people. These are people working in part or full time ministry. I think we sometimes think that in "great evangelism" we are expected to be impacting hundreds or thousand of people and that we should be converting people in the first five minutes of talking to them or at least giving them a book or a tract...

Jesus in Acts 1 directs his apostles to faithful and empowered lives and testimony. Do we experience or see God's empowerment in our lives? If you have no responsibility for converting people, does bold witness and testimony become easier? I think the reality is that it has to start with one choice to wait on the Holy Spirit in prayer and one person whom God will place in your heart or in your life. The task is not to convert them, because we can't do that, but to love and pray that God's power be revealed in both our life and their own life. The task is to with bold humility talk about God's intervention and ongoing impact in our lives.

How many? It starts with one...

Instant Evangelism

Photographer: Monomov.com

In the age of instant oatmeal, tv dinners, digital photography, Shaw on demand, flash hard drives, and self serve checkouts, patience is a thing of the past. Our patience is so thin that to wait for a web page to load or for our friend to pick up the phone is a tiresome and burdensome task. I am an impatient person. I struggle to wait in grocery lines without becoming irritated. 

To practice patience I have recently taken up Polaroid photography. Instant analog photography may seem like an odd direction to turn to practice patience but Polaroid pictures, while instant in comparison to roll film, are like long grocery lines in comparison to the digital photography we have grown accustom to. I also got a camera app on my phone that makes the digital camera feel more analog. No instant picture or results. I am required to wait about thirty second before I am able to view the picture. A Polaroid in contrast takes 2-4 minutes to develop and depending on the temperature requires my attention during that time. These minimal lengths of time can be frustrating for friends, who complain, wanting to see the picture I took right away. These minimal lengths of time mean that if the picture was not successful I may be unable to retake it because the moment or subject is no longer available. But this required wait time also adds the magical quality of anticipation to my life as I wait for each picture and somehow make the pictures more valuable. 

 My reflections on our instant culture and my foray into practicing patience through pictures have led me to consider if our lack of patience is a primary hindrance to evangelism. Does our need and expectation of instant results lead us in odd and unhelpful directions? We want to be able reach our quotas and demonstrate effective input output ratios. We want to be certain that the time we are putting in is yielding the results we are after. Can we expect 5 conversions in 5 minutes? Are we more effective by witnessing in large quantity through sermons, or online ministry or books?

Does the reality that you are probably not going to experience many people giving their life to Jesus within the first 30 minutes of meeting and talking to them mean that we don’t bother meeting people or talking about Jesus? Has our instant culture destroyed our ability or willingness to patiently walk and talk with people? Have instant and digital results created unhelpful and unrealistic evangelical expectations?

When Evangelism Goes Wrong...

Has it ever happened to you that the people you desire to be a witness to, to love and share hope with and encourage actually end up farther away from Jesus? I have a couple of friends, who might even read this, who have gone from Christian to atheist in the time that I have known them. Do I create atheists? Or do I just like people with atheist tendencies? Have I failed my friends? Have I failed Jesus? Has Jesus failed my friend? Has the church failed? Is this just part of their journey?

Anyway this leads me to the question of how we count? If in a given evangelistic effort you have one or more decision to follow Jesus but during the same effort there are double the number of people pushed away, or negatively impacted, was it a success? To what degree should I be concerned about the possibility of negatively impacting others perceptions, thoughts or feelings toward Jesus or Christianity and how should I address that concern? How does one wrestle with the reality that what one person might experience as a message of hope another might hear as ignorant and dogmatic damnation? How do we count the social and communal cost of some evangelism tactics or presentations? With that being said I am not suggesting that we should water down or sugar coat truth... although what exactly the truth is beyond Jesus might lead even us into discussion and disagreement, hence denominations, never mind talking with atheists...

John 14:5-6a
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”  ⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life." 

How does it change things that we believe "the truth" to not be a fact or a tract or a law but a person? What does it mean for a person to be "the truth"? How does that truth relate to other truth? Is all truth Jesus? or God's truth? How do we discern truth? And finally in relation to evangelism how do we express truth? or our understanding of it anyway?


It would be my conviction that love and humility are required for all discussions, and actions, of truth. Love of truth and each other and humility  to recognize both personal and human limitations. I believe these ingredients will minimize evangelism blow back; they may also give people the freedom to become agnostic or atheists as they seek and pursue truth... Do we love people enough to give them freedom? We believe God does.

Faith Outreach

I got a letter recently from a SAC young adult doing a YWAM Discipleship Training School in Thailand. During her time there, she went on what was called a faith outreach. They got on a bus with a destination but with no plan. Upon arrival they prayed for direction and guidance, and stepped out in obedience, as they felt led, uncertain of where they were going or what would happen. That week they met a family who had never heard about Jesus and through their contact with this family the whole household has come to faith and put their hope in Jesus. The school will be returning to visit and follow up with the family in a few weeks as part of another outreach.

What would happen if we gave God our time like this? even just a day, an afternoon or hour... Why is it so difficult for us to step out like this at home?  Let's be more intentionally available and create open time for God to direct us.

Luke 10
 ¹ After this the Lord appointed seventy-two^[a] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. ² He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. ³ Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. ⁴ Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.    ⁵ “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ ⁶ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. ⁷ Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
   ⁸ “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. ⁹ Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ ¹⁰ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ¹¹ ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ ¹² I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

Is it possible that this could be our testimony?  Sent out with nothing, making incredible kingdom impact...

Priority Evangelism

If you could be involved in just one person deciding to follow Jesus  in 2011 who would it be and why? Would you pick Marilyn Manson or some similar anti Christian celebrity? Would you pick a politician like Kim Jong-il the leader of North Korea? Would you pick someone with a talk show like Ellen or Oprah? Or someone closer and less globally powerful like your neighbour? or your parents? kids? or spouse? Would you pick the homeless man or woman in downtown Abbotsford? the drug addict? or prostitute? Who would you prioritize? How would you prioritize?

My wife used to or perhaps still does pray for the salvation of celebrities like Marilyn Manson. For better or worse I have never done this. I think it is interesting to contemplate how we prioritize evangelism. Missionaries have often prioritized the "chief" or tribal leader in a community with great success. Mission organization currently often prioritize "least reached" people groups. Many Christians argue for a priority for the poor whereas others clearly prioritize those homogeneous to themselves.  I find it interesting to contemplate Jesus disinterest in pursuing those in power and repeated choice of the lowly person: fisherman, outcast, rebel, poor, sick, adulteress etc. In fact when Jesus had opportunity to engage with those in power such as the Chief Priests or Pilate or Herod he is mostly silent. Paul on the other hand almost seeks out those in power to preach to, although finds his way to them through condemnation and by being arrested rather than seeking audiences specifically. However, while Jesus spoke very little to Pilate, Paul is bent on taking his message to the emperor. Do we seek disciples among powerful leaders? or insignificant fisherman? How do you decide how to prioritize your evangelism? Is Jesus vs. Paul a false dichotomy?

Merry Christmas

The Christmas Season is a wonderful time to contemplate and reflect on God's ultimate act of outreach: the incarnation. Christmas is a time when we celebrate God's act of definitively identifying with us, entering into our world in order to bring healing, restoration, and reconciliation. May we celebrate our relationships this year with family, friends and God. May we find reconciliation and restoration and may we also bring these to others.

Misery, Happiness and Mission, Oh My!

How do we think about mission/outreach? Is it a program? Is it information? Is it relationships? Is it something else? Are we responsible? Are we called? Are we all called? Do we stay? Do we go? Where do we go? How do we go? How do we stay? 

There are a lot of questions and perspectives on mission and outreach. I have more questions than answers. But I will share some thoughts and things I have heard that make sense to me.

God is on mission. This is the foundation of my understanding of mission and outreach - that God is on a mission to restore all of creation, to restore goodness, to renew everything and that God is reaching out to all people to both be restored and live renewed lives, through the power of Jesus. 

God is on mission and we are called to join. My understanding is that part, perhaps event the main part, of being made in the image of God is a vocational call to represent God – to live and enact his will, his will for renewal, restoration, and reconciliation.

So yes, I believe we are all called to participate in God’s global mission and work of restoration and reconciliation.

Do we stay or go and how? I want to go. I have some Bible training, I have some video training, and I am willing to go. That what mission agencies want, right? That’s enough, right? Where do I sign up, right? I have a passionate relationship with North America. I am both reviled and seduced by our culture and society. I want to go or perhaps more accurately, I want to run away. Problem.

In my first year Intro to Missions class, Professor Bryan Born told us to pray for missions, to cultivate love and passion for other cultures, to long desperately to go, that way if God called us to stay we would be sure we weren’t just chickening out. (He didn’t phrase it quite like that) It’s not a perfect statement but it’s a challenge to comfortable Christians who claim the calling of pew sitting donors…

There is a sense in Christians sometimes, including myself, that the more horrible the idea seems, the more likely it is that it’s God’s will. If we do not want to go to Africa, God will call us to Africa. If we want to go to Africa, God will call us to stay. If we don’t want to be a pastor, we will be. If we want to be a pastor, we won’t be. Sometimes we are even afraid to verbalize our fears or thoughts as if a statement like, “I never want to go to Africa” guarantees us a one way ticket.  There is a suspicious idea in the subtext of our thoughts and speech that suggests that God wants us to be miserable. 

So how do we understand this? We can’t say God wants us to be miserable… I don’t think we can say God wants us to be happy either… I think I would be comfortable saying God desires our lives to be full, to be fulfilling… But full or fulfilling are not simple to define. Also, our ability to determine misery, happiness, or fullness prior to an experience is also open to question… Often things we do to make us happy make us miserable. 

This is my one thought on the paradoxical reality of finding oneself called where one did not intend or want to be. God’s strength is most visible in our weakness. Ambition is often a problematic part of the human condition because more often than not it is selfish and proud. I think that God’s call on our lives is explicitly a call out of selfish ambition and that often this call lived out by going places we did not think we wanted to be because it is in those places that God’s redemption is most profound, on our lives and in the lives of others. And that is what the mission is all about. Again the questions are: Will I become weak? And will I trust God?