Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Evangelism

Discipleship Before Worship?

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As I was reading something from the Gospels the other day it occurred to me that Jesus’ first disciples started following him long before they recognized his divinity or developed anything like a theology of incarnation or Trinity. They were disciples before they were worshipers, technically speaking.

We normally think of things the other way around, it seems to me. Typically we see the first step as “belief,” specifically, belief in certain facts: that I am a sinner, that I cannot save myself, that Jesus is fully God and fully man, etc. First (we think) people must worship Jesus as Savior and God, get a few theological facts straight, and then we can start talking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We don’t seem to talk much about following Jesus until people have “crossed the line” of becoming a worshiper of Jesus.

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Zacchaeus as a Person of Peace

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Just a few thoughts from this morning’s Daily Lectionary reading of the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19.

Jesus spotted Zacchaeus because of the ridiculous effort he took to see Jesus. Climbing a tree hardly seems a dignified way for a grown man to behave, especially a very wealthy man.

A man who climbs a tree to get a glimpse of you is a Person of Peace (see Luke 10). Jesus recognizes this and simply invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house! This means that Jesus is on Zacchaeus’ turf, where Zacchaeus is comfortable. Jesus is allowing Zacchaeus to serve him and show him hospitality. He eats the food Zacchaeus gives him and simply hangs out there for the afternoon.

Eventually the simple presence of Jesus brings Zacchaeus to repentance. He gives away half of his possessions to the poor and vows to pay back four times the amount of whatever he’s cheated others out of.

Jesus then announces what has just happened: “Today salvation has come to this house.”

To drive the point home, Jesus uses his interaction with Zacchaeus to illustrate and reiterate why he has come: “to seek and save what was lost.”

May we also continue to do the same things, following in the footsteps of our Master.

  1. Find the person of peace, the person who is open to you, interested in you, likes you, wants to be around you.
  2. Go to their turf, where they’re comfortable.
  3. Allow them to serve you, show you hospitality.
  4. Spend intentional time with them, and
  5. Be ready to do the works of the Kingdom and speak the words of the Kingdom (in appropriate ways).

Because if we love Jesus, and we love people, we’re going to want to make that connection. If we find ourselves feeling lackluster about helping people get to know Jesus, we are suffering from a lack of love. Either a lack of love for people (we’d rather maintain our pride than risk looking foolish), or a lack of love for Jesus (we really don’t think he’s worth knowing).

But if we believe that Jesus did come to “seek and save what was lost,” and that being with him to learn from him how to be like him is the path to human flourishing, we will want others to come to know Jesus. Jesus himself gives us a wonderful way to do that relationally, naturally, organically.

Got Good News?

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Sometimes in our efforts to distance ourselves from the insensitive and ineffective “evangelism” methods of the past, we forget that the gospel of Jesus Christ is, in fact, an announcement of great news. That is has content. That’s why I liked seeing this definition of the gospel from John Dickson (ht):

The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed his kingdom and opened it up to sinners through the birth, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return to overthrow evil and consummate the kingdom for eternity.

Of course it’s not simply verbally announcing this message. Dickson goes on to say that we must “promote the gospel with more than just our lips,” but I think the other ditch is also a danger: that we end up trying to “embody” the gospel without ever announcing anything. That we’ll keep a clear conscience, but but won’t have a comprehensible answer to give when people ask us about the reason for the hope we have (1 Pet 3:15-16). That we’ll do our “good deeds” but no one will end up glorifying God because of them (1 Pet 2:12, Matt 5:16), because we were too scared to communicate words about Jesus to people.

It’s also pretty important to think through which words we use to communicate the good news of Jesus, too. That’s why I am really enjoying following Jason Coker‘s weekly guest-author web series called “3 Questions About Jesus.” In 300 words or less, he is asking several people to imagine explaining Jesus to someone who really knew nothing about Christianity. The specific questions are, 1) Who is Jesus the Christ? 2) What has he done? and 3) Why does it matter?

In the realization that we need to be living this out instead of just talking about it, we can’t forget that it’s really important to keep talking about it, too. Because we need both the music and the words. We need service and witness. Proclaiming and promoting. Embodying and communicating.

Why Evangelism Gives Us the Creeps

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Ever wonder why evangelism gives you the creeps? If it doesn’t, don’t worry about reading the rest of this post.

A few days ago I wrote about where the story of the Gospel really starts, which is an important question. But for most of the kinds of people that populate our community, the mere mention of the word “evangelism” evokes nausea. It’s not because they don’t want to share their faith with others, and it’s not because they don’t think it’s important. It’s because they know it’s important, but they can’t shake the image of it that’s been burned into their minds by the way it’s been done in America for the past few decades.

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Where Does the Gospel Start?

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I few days ago I was talking with a friend who asked me, “How would you explain the gospel?” I shared with him what I saw as the essential “nuggets” of the story. He expressed surprise that I started my explanation with God created a very good world. This got me thinking about where people generally start when they are asked to explain the good news of Jesus.

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