connecting is more than an event

Spent about four hours yesterday afternoon trying to develop an initial relationship with 5 law students from Austral University.  Please pray that God would begin to draw Jacob, Adolfo, Juan, Macarena, and Maria to Himself and that we can meet as a group more than once.  Both Jacob and Macarena had never even been in a church building before not even a Catholic one.  This seems to be quite common here among the students I am meeting. Going to a “church building” appears completely irrelevant to them. Since they are studying law at a private Catholic University they knew lots of information about Jesus and theology and were not shy about letting me know what they believed.  I was just excited that they were willing to meet with me and let me introduce myself.  They seemed to appreciate my laid back non-confrontational approach.  God leads people to Himself.  I’m just a listener and guide in this process who trys to ask relevant questions.

OK…On to my soapbox….One thing that concerns me as I try to get local Argentine students from local Baptist churches to introduce me with their lost friends is the fact that for the most part they do not have any.  With this in mind, how do we as believers take evangelism out of the religious box and weave it into real life at school or work?  This is a problem I dealt with in the States as well.  During the week most believers spend hours every day in the most high-impact mission field in the world: their classrooms or workplaces. A place where they are regularly in touch with people facing significant life questions. But to have an impact, they need a perspective that’s different from anything they’ve ever heard or read about evangelism. Real evangelism is a process. It’s organic–more like farming than selling.

There are two basic ways that we believers tend to reach out to the lost around us.  I come from a background that views evangelism as an event.  I was trained to view evangelism as a point in time when a person recites the gospel message and encourages non-Christians to “pray the prayer” and place their faith in Jesus.  This tends to focus on the actions of the person who is “witnessing.” This view on reaching the lost uses standardized, assertive, and sometimes intrusive methods of relating with people.  This can make people apprehensive about telling others about Jesus due to fear of failure or guilt feelings if the results are minimal.  At least this is what students are telling me and what I have personally experienced in my own ministry.

We should rethink our approach and see evangelism as a process much like farming, that cultivates hearts, plants spiritual seeds, and nurtures their growth.  We need to recognize that God typically uses a number of people to draw a person toward a relationship with Jesus. Each witness in the process seeks to discover what God is doing in a person’s life, then employs his or her natural gifts and abilities to join in that effort.  I have found that this creates more joy and enthusiasm as people realize how God can use them as one link in a chain of people who help non-Christians discover Jesus and take incremental steps toward faith in him.

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