Who Am I as a Bearer of Good News?


Abstract:
I don't really remember what the guy said, only that at some point I was on my knees, and my friend had put his hand on my shoulder, and I was crying because I knew what a horrible, horrible person I was, and that I didn't deserve grace, and I that it was somehow my fault that Jesus got nailed to a cross.

Body:
I've been struggling with the concepts of evangelism and missions for the past several years.

I generally point to an experience at summer camp when I was 13 as my first salvation experience - the point at which justifying grace snagged my heart and wouldn't let go. But I had an experience much earlier, when I was maybe eight. I went to a friend's church. We sat in metal folding chairs and listened to an evangelist tell us that we were all going to hell unless we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior.

I don't think I've ever even told my parents about it. I'm not really sure why. I suspect it may be because I felt it was something like child abuse. I don't really remember what the guy said, only that at some point I was on my knees, and my friend had put his hand on my shoulder, and I was crying because I knew what a horrible, horrible person I was, and that I didn't deserve grace, and that it was somehow my fault that Jesus got nailed to a cross. That evening I cried myself to sleep, saying "I want to be a Christian." I am sure that the evangelist was very proud of making a roomful of children cry. Perhaps he went home and told his wife "30 children got saved tonight." And then they thanked the Lord in prayer. I, on the other hand, didn't know how to talk about it. I felt terrible.

You know what? That event didn't make me a Christian.

So I tend to squirm a bit when we start talking about "evangelism." Of course, apologists could point to the experience and talk about all the things the evangelist did wrong. They could say that there is a difference between what he did and real or appropriate evangelism. But I suspect that most active proselytizing is based on similar principles of power and rhetoric. We could perhaps create a continuum: on one end would be a conversation of mutual power-sharing, and on the other a rhetoric of domination. As the power differential increases, we'd go from persuasion, to manipulation, to exploitation, to abuse.

As I mentioned, my real conversion experience happened when I was thirteen. I had had a miserable experience at camp. I was one of few people at camp who didn't go every summer. It was impossible to break into the closed circles of long-time friends who gathered during free-time, sharing soft drinks and gossiping. I remember that the theme of the camp was "building the body of Christ," and there were a lot of speeches and activities about unity and inclusiveness. At the closing worship service, everyone arrived wearing dress clothes - coats and ties and dresses. This was, apparently, camp tradition - and one which nobody bothered to tell new people. There were perhaps three of us wearing shorts and t-shirts. We were the geeks, the outsiders. There have been few times in my life when I felt so excluded. After worship, everyone gathered in a circle outside, sang songs, and got all huggy and teary as they said their goodbyes until next year. I stood on the outside of that circle. I hated all of those people. I wanted to die.

After the closing, I walked around the camp. A lonely anger made me feel as if my head were somewhere in space, looking down on the world, and I regarded all humankind with contempt. I found my way back into the sanctuary, which was empty. I knelt down with the intention of telling God I was through with him and all his people.

A youth counselor - I don't think I ever saw her face - came up behind me and placed her hand on my shoulder. The knot in my chest came undone, and I wept. I prayed simply that I didn't want to be alone anymore. As she prayed with me, she put it into words that made sense to me - that my value didn't come from the way I felt, or whose friend I was, or where I fit in the pecking order of the culture of cruelty. My value came from God's incomprehensibly powerful love for me. We prayed that God himself would take up residence in me, that I would never walk alone again.

That was a conversion experience.

My first experience was an expression of power in a domination system. My second was being freed from a domination system. The first involved a man speaking at us, in front of us. The second involved an anonymous stranger who came alongside me. One was bad news. The other was Good News.

I drifted away from being a Christian only a few months later, when I began to struggle with salvation issues. How could a good and loving God send people to hell simply because they hadn't had the same kind of experience I had? I decided that maybe Christianity wasn't for me after all. I wasn't exactly losing my faith. I was losing somebody else's faith. I described myself as an agnostic even as I went to youth group meetings at church.

I came back to embrace Christian faith, but it was largely an intellectual journey, and not one of the heart. Honestly, most of my heart journey, my spiritual conversion, has only been in the past 6 or 7 years. But that is a different story.

So it is that I've been struggling with who I am as a bearer of Good News. I do not come out of a culture of evangelicalism. I grew up in the United Methodist Church, which newspapers describe as "mainline Protestant," or even "liberal mainline Protestant," to distinguish the denomination from "evangelical" denominations. There are Methodist evangelicals, but my congregation didn't really fit that description. My experiences of the evangelical subculture have been mostly negative, as they have for many other people. I've been fascinated with discussions about the emerging church movement/conversation, because in many ways it seems as if those from evangelical backgrounds are rediscovering John Wesley. In a similar movement, I'm rediscovering the evangelical roots of Methodism. John Wesley was a pioneer of "Both/And" Christianity in the post-Enlightenment West - with an emphasis on both social justice and personal piety, on both the sacraments and preaching, on both small groups and corporate worship. The Methodist church joined with the Evangelical Brethren to become the United Methodist church. So there is something "evangelical" in my spiritual heritage.

A couple of years ago we took our first mission trip to Bolivia. It was an interesting experience for me as a preacher. I make my living with words - talking and listening, preaching and studying. What do you do when your words are no longer useful? When you don't speak the language?

I had the experience that so many others talk about when they do mission work. I've often heard missionaries say they went to "take Jesus to the natives," and they found that Jesus was already there. They went to be a blessing, and they were blessed. The hospitality and love shown to them humbled or even shamed them into realizing how thin their own expressions of love have been. All true. I know why they say that.

I've started thinking about evangelism the same way. You don't give Jesus to people. You find where Jesus is already working. People don't come to "know the Lord." They come to know that they already know the Lord, that Christ is in fact right there in front of them. Part of embracing Jesus is embracing the humanity of Jesus, that weakness, failure, and even death can still be redemptive when we allow the power of God to work through them. I think those are notions that many self-described "evangelicals" are uncomfortable with.

So who am I as a bearer of Good News? How am I to understand evangelism in light of my own experiences and what I find in the Bible? I'm still working on it.

Tags:
faith, conversion, evangelism

Posted: Wed - March 15, 2006 at 05:17 PM           |

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