Evangelism Coach

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I’ve been reading Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.  The book looks at principles and practices of transformational development.

The book explores poverty, causes of poverty, and calls the church to action in engaging broken systems that cause poverty.  He lays forth a strong case that poverty is a “deficit, entanglement, lack of access to social power, powerlessness, and the lack of freedom to grow” (Myers 81). 

Poverty is a complicated issue that involves all areas of life — physical, personal, social, cultural, and spiritual.

I live and work in a country where poverty is more visible than the suburban America where I lived before. 

• I walk home from church and a single mother with children are asking me for money or food. 
• I walk to church, I see a unkempt homeless man with a distorted and twisted foot sleeping on cardboard next to the barbershop. 
• Walking home from class, I see people picking through the trash to recycle what can be salvaged.
• The building maintenance man lives on an annual salary of $6K a year, working 48 hours a week.

The gospel is relevant to people such as these.  But what difference does evangelism make in their life?  Can it lift them out of their poverty? 

This is the question that Myers seeks to get at in this book. 

For example, he presents a simple chart about solutions to the cause of poverty (p.81).

View of Cause	Proposed response
Poor are sinners	Evangelism
Poor are sinned against	Social Action, justice
Poor lack knowledge	Education
Poor lack things	Relief / social welfare
Culture of the poor is flawed	Become like us / ours is better
Social system makes them poor	Change the system

Certainly poverty has many causes and many possible cures.  

I’m simply wondering about the role of evangelism in transforming a culture, transforming a system.  Certainly the gospel can transform an individual, but can that transformation seek to change the systems of poverty?

Order your copy of Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.

Other books we are currently reading:

• Questioning Evangelism, Randy Newman
• They like Jesus, but not the Church by Dan Kimball
• Confessions of a Reformissional Rev by Mark Driscoll
• Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey, Rick Richardson
• Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism (Real Life Evangelism Series) by Martha Reese
• Discipling the Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures
• unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters

Let me ask you this?

What role can evangelism play in reducing poverty?  That’s a big question, but perhaps one we can discuss here.

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Today I read a post at 9 Marks about the corporate role of the church and its support of personal evangelism.

The writer asks: “What is the role of the local church (i.e., corporate witness) in our personal evangelism (i.e., individual, personal witness)?”

Consider the ethos of your church. Are you proud to invite a non-christian to attend one of your services? Do you love your local church?

Let me give you two examples, one good, another one not so good.

The good:
We attended a little Spanish language church for the last 8 months that welcomed us with open arms. We were adopted quickly by that church family and it was hard to leave when we moved. During my 8 months there, I was always telling people about my church. Christians, non-christians, didn’t matter.

Everybody knew where we were going to Church.

I had these little invitation cards written in Spanish that I could give to people. I knew that my church often explains the gospel as part of every service. I would give away 10 or so a week to people that I met on the street.

The church provided the cards, showed us how to use them, and we used them. The church has grown with people finding faith and joining.

The church supported our personal witness and we were proud to invite people to our church.

The Not So Good
I was embarrased to invite my unchurched friends to a church I loved and served. It was very inward focused and did its own good in its own way, but it was clearly geared towards mature Christians.

We were having a larger number of unchurched people attend our evening service. I was preaching simple biblical messages, and we were providing space for people to explore their faith. People were beginning to belong and build relationships. It was our church’s attempt at getting out of their navel-gazing.

Then they attended a morning service with the “normal” church. Every time, the sermons were inapprorpiate for people seeking faith. I can’t go into the details, but it killed every relationship that had been forming. Every seeker who went to the morning service never returned to our church.

I never invited my friends to retreats, because the topics were for mature Christians. I never invited my friends to the morning service because I was never sure what Pastor would ruminate on.

This church didn’t have an ethos that supported my work of personal evangelism.

Let me ask you this?
Are you proud of your church?
Can you think of someone you could invite to your church this weekend?

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Sin must exist for grace to mean something. Eli Dorman at Invite One raises a question about sin and grace in our cultural context.

One atheist encourages Christians to listen at the eBay Atheist.

Preachers Magazine gives a sermon about Peter and Cornelius, looking at all the conversion that occurs.

Glenn Hager has a good discussion happening about the church, doing vs. being. In fact, he’s written a series of articles called “Be the church.” Follow the related posts links.

Otto Ekk, in his first post on his new blog raises a question about the transforming work of the gospel. It’s just the beginning of a conversation, but he raises some good questions nonetheless.

Over at The Word on the Streets, the author is writing a series about Sin, God’s Love and the Gospel. Check out this entry on God’s love.

Have a great weekend!

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A few years ago, we had the privelege of backpacking in Peru, on the Inca Trail, to the old city of Machu Picchu. Along the way, we got to learn alot about the Inca culture that built the city, and some of its beautiful architecture, likely from the 15th century AD (1450s or so).

Like the apostle Paul in Athens, we got to spend the day wandering around the remains of the city.

We learned about their spirituality as we wondered among their temple ruins. History books and archelogists fill in the story that these stones tell. We were filled with awe at how their stones were laid together without mortar, and with gaps so small that a sliver of paper wouldn’t slide between. We awed over how these buildings had withstood earthquakes because of the way they were engineered together. We were amazed at how their spirituality and architecture intertwined with building placement and design.

Among the ruins, one paricular stone caught my eye. It has been named the Southern Cross stone. It is a stone (pictured here) in the shape of the constellation in the southern hemisphere called the Southern Cross. Etched into this stone is the cross itself (not visibile in the picture).

The slope of the stone, and the direction of its apex points right to the red giant star that is in the Constellation.

Here in an ancient culture, a hundred years before the Spaniards came, is a foreshawdowing of God’s witness in the cross. Make of this what you will. To me, it reflects some spiritual thirst they may have had and felt drawn to the cross. Maybe they didn’t know what it meant, but it was a part of their spirituality. This stone sits near one corner of the principal temple at the site of Machu Picchu.

When Paul saw an “Altar to an Unknown God” in Athens, he used it as a bridge to explain the gospel. He knew they were spiritualy thirsty and weren’t quite satisfied. Perhaps these Incas were not quite satisfied with their spirituality either and wondered what the cross might have meant. It’s something already in the culture that we could use to help explain the gospel of God’s grace.

In our evangelism, we can use bridges to the culture that are already there. There is a sense of spiritual thirst that every person has, but some realize it more than others. Our culture bears some witness to this thirst and to where satisfaction can be found.

Let me ask you this?

What kinds of spiritual thirst have you seen or heard in people?

So what?

Next time you are in a conversation, listen for a spiritual thirst.

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