Essay #1
The key to evangelism is, simply put
- first experience Salvation and then share that experience. To be
rescued from death and given life so that the world may come to know the One
who gives life. Yet, if you do not know the Gospel nor have received
Salvation that is given to you by Christ, then you have no business or purpose
in evangelizing. Even if you do believe the Gospel to be true, you do not
really believe it to be Truth. Only those who have tasted of the Glory of
God can truly know it to be true. Furthermore - to have “tasted” is to
partake, and you can only partake through faith in Christ for none comes to the
Father but through Christ. Yet speaking apologetically, to partake in the
experiencing of God you must have faith not only that He exists, but that He is
who He says He is and is trustworthy. Additionally, you cannot know if He
is trustworthy unless you trust Him enough to find out. Thus, only those
who have faith in Christ can be certain of the truthfulness of the Gospel.
All other thought is that of a salesman, and we are not salesmen. We are
not in the business of sales, nor are we in any kind of business at all.
We are fishermen and we are messengers. This is a very important aspect
that is often overlooked, and not without a cost. If we look at
evangelism as a business of sales, we will inevitably look for new ways to
present the product, and over time, look for new improvements to the product,
for our mind is set on making a sale, not sharing truth.
If we are truly messengers, then tampering with the message changes
everything. No longer is it what the message originally said, but now it
even has a new sender. If we begin to give a message we ourselves
fabricated(even if the theme is the same) it is now not the gospel, only a
shadow of it. And no longer are people being saved by Truth, but are now
mislead to thinking salvation is what you say it is. In this case we can
honestly presume that we did not believe The Author and Finisher of our faith
is a good author at all, and that we, his new editors, needed to make some
adjustments to improve the message. With the analogy of being fishermen,
we can see this same concept applied - if we adjust our bait we will catch
a different fish altogether.
Secondly, when it comes to evangelism, it is most important to obtain the heart
of God. This means feeling what He feels, willing what He wills. If
we cannot attempt to begin to think as He thinks than we cannot truly
understand the most important commandments - to love God with all that we are,
and to love all others as ourselves. Let me explain further, if you
evangelize for the sake of completing a duty in which we are all called, you
have not begun to even comprehend the reason you obey any commandments.
We do not love because we are told to love; we love because we are loved.
(1John 4;19) To evangelize is to share the love which you are loved by,
not speak the gospel to complete a requirement. If we operate only in
“duty” we will treat God as a “duty” as well, not as our King but our boss, not
as our Savior but as a tyrant. To be sure that we do not fall into the
routine of doing things for the sake of themselves but for the sake of truth
and love, we must continually look to Christ. For in Him is the river of
living water. If we desire to feel what He feels, and to will what He
wills, we need only ask and seek. Yet, even this desire can also be taken
to the very opposite spectrum and fool us with our own zealousness to see salvation
come to the lost. This, of course, is dangerous; it is a zealous salesman
who believes the product to be a means to all ends, and the answer to
life. The Gospel is the answer to life; that is not the problem.
Zealousness is not the problem either; the problem lies in the salesman, who
should be a messenger. A question should then be raised, at what cost are
we willing to convert lost souls?
This is why salesmanship is so dangerous in evangelism. A salesman is not
concerned in delivering the truth of the product, but that the product is
purchased. He is not thinking beyond the sale into application of the
product, but only the sale itself. We must not allow ourselves to think
of the sale alone, (or even the sale at all) we must focus on the product, the
message. Our focus on the Message will inevitably pour out in our
presentation of the Gospel. If our focus is on the Cross we will find
beauty only in it, and not the sale. If the Cross of Christ is
truly beautiful to us, than to tamper with it would be a grave injustice to the
receiver. We would not be sharing a powerful work of art but a sloppy
sketch of our own design, even if we believe the sketch to be more affordable
that the painting of the Gospel itself. We have a responsibility to share
what Christ has done - not our smeared, pencil scratched version of it.
Truly we have come to a contradiction if this becomes somewhat of a
difficulty. For only those who have seen the Cross transform their life
believe that the Cross of a battered, cursed, mocked Christ is beautiful.
For it is not the Cross itself that is our message but the relief that comes from
the One who was hung on it; not to die, but to be raised and live
eternally. I speak of the Cross this way because it is our inevitable
fate as Christians. Not a physical
cross, but to care that our own Salvation given to us is beautiful and bloody
at the very same time. This is why I believe we sometimes fall so far
from sharing the true Gospel to unbelievers. I believe that we can be ashamed at the
brutality of sin and thus ashamed of the price that had to be paid for
it. No salesman could sell a thing like a cross -but a messenger doesn’t
have to. He only needs to give the
message, the dirty, harsh, bloody, beautiful, transcendent, transforming message
of the Cross of Christ. The plight of a salesman who looks to sell
something like the true Cross is to rely heavily on fear; to persuade only on
the concept that one should accept forgiveness lest the outcome be eternal
damnation. Not for the sake of salvation from ourselves and death, or for
the love of God, or the restoration of man, or the joy of the will of God, or
the inspiration of a King who wants to adopt street peasants, but only for the
far off comfort of a peaceful afterlife where God has no part but only to watch
us divulge our desires to be with loved ones from the past in a heavenly place
designed by our own imaginations. It sounds harsh, but here, in fear, we
find our first experience in what is now known in the Christian community as
“fire insurance”, which can only be sold by an insurance agent - a
salesman. But we know, as believers, that perfect love casts out all fear
(1 John 4;18), and that if we wish people to truly understand the Cross, we
must also speak of the reason for the Cross, not just the outcome of its
non-acceptance. [Now, for those whom are nervous of seeker friendly
messages as I am, it should be understood that hell should, in every case of
evangelism, not be void of mention (or even expanded upon). But we
covered the dangers of altering the content of the Gospel previously.]
To evangelize with the sole technique of fear, is to become the most dangerous
of Christian evangelist. For if we use the analogy of being fishermen we
know that one cannot scare the fish into the boat, but only scare them away
from the boat, into much darker water. In the extreme case we can show
that fear of damnation can lead into pluralism or universalism (the assumption
of truth in all religions and beliefs), or the broader version of the two -
agnosticism. The reason for this is simple; for those whom find security
to be their most prominent motivator will find that they are afraid of the risk
of being wrong; they fear getting it wrong by choosing a particular view
point. For if they choose the belief that ends up not being true they
will find themselves in a most unsavory place. Thus, the option of not
choosing holds hope for them for their greatest fear is choosing wrong.
The problem, of course, with this is the fear of being wrong now elects you as
opting out of any devotion to anything particular…making you wrong by default,
(by not putting in your wager, you have opted out of participating, and thus
opted out of choosing truth) an unfortunate circumstance for someone because
they were scared into it - which is now blood on our evangelistic hands.
It is my understanding, that when it comes to evangelizing, most of us, have an
easy time explaining the “What” and “How” of the Gospel. Meaning, we tend
to rely so much on what the Gospel saves us from and how the Gospel saves us
from it, yet give no in depth explanation as to why. Aside from eternal
damnation and the acceptance of the Savior from this eternal damnation, the
question should be raised as to why even save us? What’s the point of
heaven if we tend not care about why we’re there in the first place? And
the “How Christ saves us”, albeit important, does not quite testify to the magnificent
reason of “Why”? See, to ask why the Gospel even exists is not solely
found in the fact of heaven or hell, but in the fact of Love. Our
greatest challenge as Christians in not to convince unbelievers that hell is a
bad destination or that heaven is a good one, but to share the fact that even
before they considered heaven or hell, God loved them(even we were sinners
(Romans 5;8)). It has been my experience that most people find it hard to
believe that Christ died on the Cross, much less died on the cross for
them. See, the challenge is not in selling them heaven, but
telling them they are actually loved in spite of their wretchedness, and that
heaven is, in fact, a gift - a truth most have a huge
problem with. The reason “why” Christ died and rose again for our
atonement is the root to “how” and “what”.
We as Christian Evangelists must not make the mistake of being salesman.
We were born and raised to think as the “world” does, and the “world” thinks
business. We think of Love. It’s hard to sell something that has
been freely given out of Love. So I speak of an old simple truth that is
most applicable to this topic of Christian Evangelism. “Caring is
sharing”, so if you care, then share.
