I distinctly remember the first time someone “witnessed” to me. My best friend and I were hired by a Niagara area family farm to pick cherries. As we were just 13 years old, the farmer’s son picked us up at my friend’s house to drive us to work. I didn’t know the family at all, so my first introduction to the young man was him saying, “Good morning” and “here”, as he tossed an evangelism tract over his shoulder without even a glance into the back seat. This may surprise you, but I was a bit of an intellectually arrogant teenager (yeah, ok, you’re probably not at all surprised.) I remember being completely unimpressed: dismissive of the tract, which I myself tossed onto the back seat; but also with the social awkwardness my chauffeur. Why would I take seriously the message he through at me when he seemed to take neither me nor his message very seriously himself.

I think many Christians cringe when the topic of evangelism comes up because it conjures up images of awkward “conversations” with strangers. Not surprisingly, a reactionary movement developed promoting something called “friendship evangelism” with the idea being to cultivate friendships with the ultimate hope that you may one day have an opportunity to share the gospel. Although the intentions were good my assessment is that friendship evangelism is neither authentic friendship nor effective evangelism. It treated friendship as a project, a means to an end; and all too often we never got to the gospel, trusting that living a “Christian” life before people would be enough.

A favourite verse of mine on evangelism is 1 Thessalonians 2:8:

“So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”

I like this verse because it challenges me to conduct proper biblical “friendship evangelism”. Listen to the relational language Paul uses: “affectionately desirous of you”, “share with you”, “you [are] … very dear to us”. Is there any question that Paul’s love and concern for these people is genuine? We also see the primacy of the gospel for it is assumed that one shares the gospel with people whom he loves: “we were ready to share with you not only the gospel…”, the “not only” implying the necessity of the gospel. Then he adds the beautiful, “but also our own selves.” Christian witness within biblical friendship evangelism assumes the sharing of life itself. In our context this probably means being more open about ourselves with those whom we have relationship. An openness that shows we don’t know everything, or have everything “together”. An openness that causes others to ask us of the reason for the hope that is in us.

This Sunday we are giving out bookmarks with the Missional Action Plan commitment to pray for and seek opportunities to share the good news of Jesus Christ with five friends or family members. As we continue through our Sunday morning teaching series “Believe and Live”, Pastor Andrew and I endeavour to train us all toward more natural, effective, and faithful evangelism through Life Group materials, workshops, the weekly e-bulletin, and putting to practice that which we learn! I am very excited for the opportunity this presents to us as a church to grow in our faithfulness to the witness of Jesus, and I hope you are too!

 

Much love,

Pastor Gary