Sometimes, evangelism seems like such a chore. Do we have to spend the entire afternoon knocking on doors so people can tell us to get lost? Do we have to sit at this booth all morning hoping someone will want to know more? How many more fliers do we have to distribute?
Sometimes, evangelism seems to others like an assault or a deception. People who aren't churched have described how they feel more like targets than people, as if we only want to know them so we can put another notch on our Bible.
Have I knocked on doors? A few times. Have I talked to people just to evangelize them? Nope. I'm way too lazy for that. But do I (or does my family) share the Gospel? You bet. And most of the time, even the unchurched actually thank us for the experience. How's that, you say? They *thank* us?
Many years ago, when we married, we decided we were going to be fertilizer, to be Christ in this world as much as we could. We have never worked specifically with the intention of making other Christians. Instead, we have just lived our Christian lives unapologetically and unpretentiously wherever and with whomever we find ourselves. And I've been told more than once that our family has the gift of evangelism. I still marvel at that, and yet the people speak for themselves.
Let me tell you a little about our family life. We have three teenage boys. They are quite normal in every sense of the word. We have our problems, our kids fight, our house is a mess, and our yard is the embarrassment of the street. Our pool doesn't work (so we put a couple of couches in it where the boys can hang out). Our paint is peeling. Tiles are coming off the walls in the bathrooms and we haven't managed to collect the money or energy to remodel them. There's cat fur from one end of the house to the other, and more days than not, we share a kitchen with the ants. Our house is most definitely "lived-in."
In addition to a consulting practice, we both teach (one in high school and one as an adjunct professor at two local colleges), we are active in Boy Scouts, and all five of us (parents and children) are avid gamers. One son is at a local community college and the other two are in high school. Three of us play multiple instruments (guitar, flute, saxophones, and lower brass). Four of us sing, and the two high school boys are in two vocal ensembles each in addition to their instrumental music obligations. I also dabble in drawing and painting, and in various places around you will find bags or boxes or shelves of colored pencils, charcoal and graphite, water colors, pastels, markers, or whatever the latest interesting medium is. Our house is much like we are: messy, eclectic, and very, very full.
But often we find our sons' friends making themselves at home. A couple of them even have keys. It is not unusual for me to wake up to discover three or four or more guests have spent the night, strewn about couches, beds, futons, and computer desk chairs like our cats, napping wherever they found a little space to get horizontal. School friends, scout friends, church friends -- as a parent, I have never found our lives boring.
I rarely know what I'm going to wake up to on Saturday morning. They stay up all night, go on wee-hours treks to the local Denny's or 7-11 or Wal-Mart, and cook (or bake) everything from homemade mac and cheese to fortune cookies with prom invitations inside them. We run a daytime teenage taxi service. All of us engage in quite colorful language more often than we probably should, and we laugh a lot and tease and joke. You will even occasionally smell the (legal) "medical" marijuana my son and his friends will use. We argue (and debate -- one of my sons is an accomplished debater), we get our pride wounded, and we annoy each other with frequent and predictable regularity.
Even more odd is that very few of the visitors who find themselves at our home are churched. One is LDS. One is Christian, but his family is going through some really hard times, and he finds himself at home with us. Most of them will tell you they don't go to church, or haven't been since they were a little kid. A couple of them are gay. Some have one parent, some two, some three or four with remarriage. All of them are most definitely teenage boys, and we have the phones, computers, consoles, and internet bandwidth to prove it.
How does this translate into evangelism? We just are who we are, and we do what we do, and whoever comes over is along for the ride. I have very few rules in my house ... no girls in the bedrooms, nothing illegal, and if you stay the night on Saturday night (even if that doesn't involve sleep), you go with us Sunday morning, because I don't want to miss Sunday School or church because someone doesn't have a ride or can't figure out what they want to do. When we go, you go to Sunday School even if you don't like it, and you have your fanny in a pew when the worship service starts. We pick up an elderly grandparent on Sundays as well, and because the care providers serve lunch early, we have to go to some kind of lunch every single Sunday if Grandma is going to eat. That means that we wake up whoever is there, roll them into the car (or sometimes two or even three cars), and off we go. Usually we aren't done till two or three in the afternoon after some random kind of food we've never tried before.
Oddly, there really isn't any pressure. I've made it clear to my kids that I don't want to have to sort everything out Sunday morning, so if their friends stay, they go with us, and everyone understands that. They're free to stay or not. When we go to church, they aren't subjected to pressured sales tactics, guilt trips, or emotion-laden altar calls. They usually all go up to the altar for communion, and we don't tell them what to do, but I've noticed that they tend to sort themselves out pretty well. Those who would consider themselves believers generally partake, and those who don't don't -- and we don't judge. No inquisition. No dictating. You go. You behave like a courteous human being. That's it. Then we all go to lunch, where we pray over the food and otherwise act like a relatively normal human family.
Does that even qualify as evangelism?
I would generally think it wouldn't, but more than once I've found that kids who come want to come back. They like the other kids. Even if they don't care about God, they aren't miserable. As parents we are very, very human, but we are faithful and affectionate (if sometimes cranky and argumentative), and the kids all somehow sense the difference between the fighting that leads to fear, disruption, alienation, or even violence, and the fighting that leads to sharp tones, annoyance, frowns, and lots of eye-rolling. More than one has described our house as a safe and healthy (if not particularly sanitary) place, and they all feel welcomed and comfortable. As a church we are equally messy and imperfect but also equally unpretentious and faithful, and the kids sense that as well.
Most of our sons' friends call us mom and dad, and if they're with us, we love them just the way we do our own kids. We don't coddle them. We don't tolerate things we find truly offensive. Quite a few of them have been shocked to hear f-bombs dropped (yes, even occasionally by the grown-ups) without comment because words are just words, but misusing God's name is disrespecting him, and that, I will not tolerate. When I have to tell someone this, they are often surprised, but always quick to be respectful. We're this strange bridge between the world and the church where everyone is welcome so long as they all play nice.
And in the end, isn't that what evangelism really is? The evangelist is nothing more and nothing less than a bridge between the world and the church, where people in the world can encounter Christ and Christians, and Christians can get to know people from the world and be their friends. True evangelism isn't door-knocking or stadium crusades or pressured sales -- it's loving the world as Jesus did and befriending it, sacrificially if necessary. It's called a sanctuary for a reason. We simply provide sanctuary for anyone who wants to come. Rest, welcome, food, safety, a laugh (or six), maybe even a bawdy joke or two, and prayer before meals together and Sunday morning expeditions as well, because that's just who we are. Jesus didn't challenge us to figure out how to be the salt of the earth or the light of the world. It's not something we do. It's something we ARE.
So love the people around you. Really LOVE them. Care about their pains. Hug them when they hurt. Joke with them and beat them at computer games. Laugh at the cats with them. Cram too many people into the car so they all have rides. Cheer for them at their concerts and tournaments. Don't shine it up and put a bow on it so they think you're "good" Christians. Let them see real humans who really sin and trust in a real Savior. Bridge the gap.
