Evangelism That Is Not Awkward: Finding the Person of Peace

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Pastor Jesse

What if evangelism was a lot more like making a friend?

But I have to confess, evangelism was not my thing and I felt guilty about it.  In college, some friends invited me to go out with them to do some evangelism.   We were going to knock on doors to meet people and “share the gospel.”  Which meant, ask them the Evangelism Explosion question – something like: “If you died tonight, do you know for certain that you would go to heaven.”  And we’d take it from there.

“Oh,” I said.  “When did you say you were going?  I’m pretty sure I have to study.”

Five things: 1) I respected what they were doing.  Door-to-door stuff is tough.  I wished I had their courage and confidence.  2) My instinct told me there must be a better way.  This just seemed so high pressure.  I just didn’t know of an alternative approach.  3) It seemed artificial – not genuinely caring – to knock on doors and ask questions.  It didn’t line up with what I knew to be the gracious character of Jesus.  4) The whole things struck me as extremely awkward and guilt oriented – as in it made me feel awkward and my motivation for going would be to alleviate my guilty conscience.  And I did not like awkwardness or being motivated by guilt.  5) While the gospel can be spread widely this way, it may not be spread very deeply.   

And isn’t evangelism is supposed to be about good news.  Why should it be awkward at all?  Well, I have good news.  It doesn’t have to be awkward.  And forget about the guilt.    Evangelism is good news about Jesus and Jesus gave his disciples a good way to share good news that is as simple and natural as making a friend.  And maybe that is because it is about making friends.

In Luke 10, Jesus sends out his disciples to proclaim the good news – to tell others that the Kingdom of God has come near.    Jesus’ instructions include this: “When you enter a house, say, “Peace to this house.”  If a man of peace (person of peace) is there, your peace will rest on him.  if not it will return to you.  Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they set before…” (Luke 10:5)

When Jesus sends his disciples out to evangelize, he says find a person you are naturally at peace with and hang out.  This person will be open to your message and your method.  They’ll be interested in what you are saying.  They may or may not believe everything you are saying, but they will support you.  They may or may not come along with you, but they will want others to consider what you are saying and doing.  Basically, they’ll be a friend to you and lend their personal support and credibility to the work you are doing for the Lord.  They will help you bear good news into their network of relationships.

Mike Breen writes about two types of Persons of Peace: those you meet in passing, and those you with whom you will have a more permanent relationship.  The first type creates good stories that begin like “I met this guy on a flight…”  You meet them.  They open up.  You open up.  God arranged for your paths to cross.  If you reach out and they don’t open up – relax.  Let it go.  They are not a person of peace.  But the second kind is more interesting to me because I’m building a church.  I want to see people come into our missional communities and stay.

When you meet a person of peace, recognize this:  you are bearing Christ.  What attracts a person of peace to you is not you.  It’s Christ.   There are really three steps.  1) Pray. 2) Look for people of peace (and God will reveal them).  3)  Bear Christ as you build relationships with those people.   As you do so, it is likely they will invite you into their network of relationships.  You will be allowed to bear Christ and build relationships with the other people they know.  The good news of the gospel is spread deeply and widely.

In High School, I think I was a person of peace for my Young Life Leader, Ed Bonner.  Ed was bearing Christ and he built a relationship with me.  I thought Ed was one of the neatest people I’d ever met and I loved what he was telling me about Jesus.  Then he came to my high school.  Now, I liked Ed a lot and very excited about what he was doing, so naturally, I introduced him to everybody I could think of.  I wanted my friends to meet Ed, and I wanted Ed to succeed.  I was willing to do just about anything to make that happen.

Do you think my friends were more open to what Ed had to say as a result of my introduction?  You bet.  Ed invested in my life deeply for a couple of years – and in the lives of my friends, too.  His work had a long term impact.

God has led me to a person of peace named Roger at the rec center where I get exercise.  I’ve mentioned him before.   Roger is an retired man from Michigan.  He’s in great shape for 80.   He rides the stationary bike 30 minutes, and works his way through the weight machines.   He’s always happy and everybody seems to know him.  He was one of the first people I met there.  When he found out I was starting a church, he became very interested in what I was doing.   He started introducing me to his friends and telling them I was a pastor and what I was doing.   His interest sparked their interest and has allowed many of my conversations with people to go deeper faster than they might have otherwise.  I’m getting to know names and faces and concerns.  I’m getting the privilege of bearing the light and grace of Jesus Christ into some places much in need of grace and light.

And its not awkward and there’s no guilt.  Evangelism feels like going to the gym to work out with Jesus.  I get to look for friends and help them know a little more about Jesus.   And because I’m there long term, I am getting the privilege of bearing Christ and building a relationship.  I’m getting to know people really well – and even get opportunities to ask questions like … “So if you died tonight, where do you think you’d spend eternity?”

These days, I really love evangelism.

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Nine Time-ly Ideas for Building Up Your Missional Community

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Pastor Jesse

To build a missional community, spend time with one another.

That’s the number one lesson I’m learning. I haven’t been at this long, but this is what I am learning.  In addition to organized Up-In-Out activities, do this: Hang out.  Be together.  Do a lot of living with one another as you follow Jesus. Open your home.  Eat together when you can.    Initiate. Invite. Go visit.  Stop by.  Go see.  And make plans to do stuff together.

It makes sense and it is simple enough, but it’s still tough.  We live in a busy, hectic world with multiple demands on our time – so finding time is hard.  And for the time together to actually be quality time, eventually we will have to do more than just be together.  We will have to focus our attention and energy, listen and validate feedback so others know we’ve been listening.  Read through any of the gospels and you will notice Jesus doing life (spending time) with his disciples. If I want to build up disciples the way Jesus did, it will require figuring out how to spend quality time with people.  But it’s worth it.  A healthy missional community is a big blessing to it’s members and it releases boatloads of God’s love and grace into our world.

I think we can learn some things here from the world of marriage.  In that arena, quality time and energy devoted to one another is one of the big indicators of happy, healthy and enduring marriages.  The following is a list of quality time activities for building a stronger marriage.  (It’s from Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages material.)  I brainstormed a few activities a missional community might undertake that correspond.  And I’d love to know your ideas.

  • Marriage: Weekend getaway at a B&B.
  • MC: Weekend retreat
  • Marriage: Date night on a recurring basis.
  • MC: Once a month game night.
  • Marriage: Coffee together before work or before the kids wake up.
  • MC: Meet for coffee with a few members of the MC.
  • Marriage: Exercise together.
  • MC: Play together.
  • Marriage: Pray together.
  • MC: That’s easy: Pray together.
  • Marriage: See a good movie and talking about it after.
  • MC: Again, that’s easy: See a good movie and talking about it after.
  • Marriage: Complete a house project together.
  • MC: Do a physical OUT (mission project).
  • Marriage: Find a sport or hobby you can enjoy together (e.g., golf, dance classes, refinishing furniture).
  • MC: Find a common interest and working on it together.
  • Marriage: Work together professionally.
  • MC: Bring co-workers into the MC.

So what about it?  How would you translate these time oriented marriage builders into time oriented missional community builders?

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Three Realities About The Church Plus One

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Pastor Jesse

Pastor Jesse's avatarLearning and Launching a Missional Community

It’s pretty easy to misunderstand the church – and by church here, I mean the local church.   It is not a club, but it is certainly social.  It is not a business, but a church must tend to business matters.   And of course, “the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place…” and with apologies to Avery and Marsh, I don’t think we’re going nearly far enough when we sing the church is the people.  The church not is not service society, but the church is called to serve.  It is not a moral compass, and ethical voice, the defender of the weak, the promoter of justice, or the propagator of religious teaching – although the church does all of that.  And it is incomplete to think of the church as a center for worship, a house of…

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Three Ways Church Plants Can Be Pretty Awesome

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Pastor Jesse

New church plants can be awesome.  They may not be.  But they can be.   Here are three thoughts on that.

1) New church plants tend to be desperate for God.  On a lot of levels, that is a very good thing. Desperation for God drives us to seek God earnestly (and God says if we seek him with our whole heart, we’ll find him.)  Desperation for God drives us to our knees.  As Joe Alexander says,”faith may move mountains, but prayer moves the heart of God.”  We pray.  God moves.  We bless God!  Desperation also opens our eyes to look to see what God is doing.  Consequently, people in new churches tend to see God to work.  That stimulates faith and joy in a gathering!  Ultimately, desperation for God leads us into one of our great purposes: to glorify God.  At our new church, First Coast Missional Communities, we have a saying: “Only God can do this.”  When something goes right, we know where the credit goes.  We glorify God!

2) New churches are awesome places for the broader church to learn new patterns for ministry that work.  I’ve been active in a bout a dozen well established churches – I’ve been in leadership in a half-dozen.  So I mean it when I say that established churches have a lot going for them – resources, traditions, history, influence, etc.  But very often they get entrenched: stuck in patterns, unwilling to change.  I think the more successful a church was in the past, the more likely it is to get really stuck.  “We’ve never done it that way before…” carries a lot more weight when the way we used to do it worked really well.  But if culture changes (and ours is changing rapidly) the old patterns don’t work so well anymore.

One church I worked in ran a mid-week children’s program for about a dozen kids and a few volunteers and one discouraged (occasionally blamed) staff member.  Whenever we tried to change it, the old-timers remembered the good old days when dozens of volunteers led by an energetic staff member served more than a hundred kids dropped off by their moms after school every week.   Moms in our community don’t do that anymore.  Times changed.  But the church could carry the load of sustaining an outdated program.   A new church could not do that – and that is a very good thing.  A new church will either find a pattern that works or close because  there’s very little cushion to fall back on.   Frankly, that makes us a little more teachable.

Here’s a pattern we’re trying at FCMC.  The worship service is important – but it’s not the center of what we do.  We are a church of missional communities.  We are more interested in getting people in missional communities than anything else.  We believe worship services are important – but true worship is about glorifying God with our lives.  People learn that better, we think, by “living life like Jesus” with a highly participatory missional community than by singing songs and the listening passively to a sermon in a worship service.  I cannot imagine the established churches I pastored making a shift away from the worship service being the center of everything – unless I could point to another church that had tried it and succeeded.

3) Lastly, new churches are a awesome places to make disciples of Jesus Christ who make disciples of Jesus.  We have to teach discipleship so our people can make disciples – or we may not survive.   We can’t count on transfers from other churches.   But in making disciples, we are reconnected to the  movement of God in the world.  By contrast, established churches usually feel and act institutional.  (You can read a great article on movement vs. institution  by Tim Keller on that here.)  Now, I like institutions.  I enjoy the stability, security, comfort, and safety of a well established institution.  But there’s a problem when a church becomes too institutional.  That would be because Jesus – the Head of the Church – started a movement of discipleship.  And while I can only speak for myself, pastoring a church plant has reconnected me to that movement in ways that are, well, awesome.

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A Lenten Prayer for Today

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Pastor Jesse

O Lord, you desire truth in our inward being; teach us wisdom in our secret heart.  Send out your light, send out your truth, and let them lead us to our home.  Take from us the weight of our sin, that room might be made for the spirit of truth.  If we prepare a dwelling place, that spirit will abide within us, and the truth will set our spirits free.  Then shall we love not only in word or in speech; then shall we love in deed and in truth, and by this know that our service is faithful.  O Lord, you desire truth in our inward being; teach us wisdom in our secret heart.  Amen.  (The Worship Sourcebook, Lenten Prayer #5)

Friends, believe the good news of the Gospel: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven!

The habit of confessing our sins sets our hearts right to live in community.  Liturgical prayers can help.  If you are leading a missional community or a small group, try incorporating a prayer like the one above in one of your meetings.  It can stimulate healthy reflection and discussion.

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