cedDallas
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- Jul 10, 2006
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Good points. In my experience, you do not reach people through things like handing out tracts. The Churches problem is they look at Christianity as though it were some sentence like Community Service...something they can do on the weekends to fulfill a spiritual obligation without really having to invest in people. The sad fact is, handing someone a tract takes no real effort or commitment to the person. It is a vain and empty attempt to 'share truth' with them without doing any of the real work or having to be accountable for your actions or lifestyle to those close to you. For too many over zealous Christians, they don’t want to put in the time and effort to actually take someone into there life...cuz they don't like being around those horrid sinners or can't back up their belief with their lifestyle, so they shallowly go out and give people a tract and 99% of the time, they never see them again.seebs said:Joe, there is a wonderful article on a website which no longer exists about evangelism and why it doesn't work.
It's not that the Gospel message is bad.
It's that people have been showered with it for decades, and at this point, they have probably already decided to accept some variant, or not to. More significantly, no matter how nice you are, if you're saying something that has in the past been accompanied by screamed epithets, promises to hunt you down and kill you, or gleeful chortlings at how much fun the person "witnessing" will have watching you burn for millennia...
I don't think we have to look far afield for an explanation of why people react badly.
As Samuel Marchbanks (regrettably fictional) put it:
"August the 23rd. Answered the door to find it was a man giving out tracts that say things like Are You Ready To Meet God? Neatly disemboweled him with the butter knife. In the struggle of the Alone towards the Alone, I prefer not to be jostled."
(I am paraphrasing badly from memory, here.)
Seriously, I don't think the hard parts of the Gospel message are at issue in the negativity we face when we go out and evangelize. I think it's the history of presentation, which we are associated with even if we are personally being nice.
But thats ok, cuz they put in there time 'serving the Lord' so all is well! Right?
It is not that the Gospel message is unattractive or that people don't want to hear it...it is that they want people to live up to what they know the bible says about loving people and living your life as an example. And no matter what anyone says, you don't love the stranger you meet on the street as much as you do your friends you have over for dinner twice a week. If Christians want to disassociate themselves from groups like these...learn from the Mormons, change what the standard for reaching people is. Don't just go out and hope you can catch someone by surprise with a tract...but rather, commit to people. To loving them, to being there for them, and show them that God is love and as a people Christians represent that. If the Church could do that...the world/media would not group these nut jobs in with all of Christendom.
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