More Ready 1

Evangelism as Dance
What do you think of when you hear the word evangelism?
Answers I received//
Missions, door to door. Street corner crazies, yelling and screaming, pat Robertson, conservative, tv evangelism, politics, preaching, radical, over the top, actively trying to tell other people about God, separate from other parts of the church, recognizing a need to have a relationship with God, added modern meaning, christianeese,
Why is there so much more bad imagery then good?
For Bruce: Television and televangelist and high pressure and money and scandal and big hair and then my favorite, one guys said pinky rings. What surprised me was that almost every one of their responses was negative. So much so that I asked, “Can anyone give me one positive image of evangelism?” And somebody said, “Billy Graham.” Yeah! We got one.
“On the street, evangelism is equated with pressure. It means selling God as if God were vinyl siding, replacement windows, or a mortgage refinancing service. It means shoving your ideas down someone’s throat, threatening him with hell if he does not capitulate to your logic or scripture quoting. It means excluding everyone from God’s grace except those who agree with the evangelizer. “
It’s tragic because the word evangelism is a good word. It comes from the Greek word evangel, which means “good news.” Evangelism is the process by which we proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to others. Evangelism is bringing the message of hope to a hopeless, hurting world. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The good news or the gospel as we call it, is that God loves us more than we can ever imagine and wants to enjoy a personal relationship with us and wants us to enjoy a day to day friendship with him.
McLaren introduces this concept in his introduction when he writes, “If you know anything about Jesus at all, you probably know that he was an amazing conversationalist. Unlike the typical evangelist-caricature of our day, Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations, short on answers, long on questions, short on abstractions and propositions, long on stories and parables, short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself, short on condemning the irreligious, long on confronting the religious.”

“This is the kind of evangelism we’re going to explore in this book, evangelism in the style of Jesus. Evangelism that flows like a dance and begins with something beyond yourself. Think of a song that comes to you somehow from somewhere. At first you may catch a note here, a phrase there, and it may sound strange. But once you really hear it, once you pick it up, once it finds its way into your soul and begins to play there, it feels so familiar, so natural, that you wonder if you have made it up yourself. Yet the song’s splendor and grandeur and mystery convince you that its origin lies beyond your own imagination. You find yourself humming the song, tapping your finger to it, whistling it … and you wonder ‘Where did this come from? Who wrote this song? How did it get into my head?’”
“Over time, your whole life begins to harmonize to the song. Its rhythm awakens you. Its tempo moves you, so you resonate with its tone and flow with its melody. The lyric gradually convinces you that the entire world was meant to share in this song with its message, its joy, its dance. If more people heard the music, their hatred would give way to reconciliation. Their greed would melt into generosity. Their grumbling would transform into gratitude. Their mourning would be turned to dancing. People would stop polluting and start planting gardens, if they lived by the song. They would stop fighting and start playing hilarious practical jokes on each other, throwing joyous picnics and parties, playing raucous games, dreaming wild dreams, and enjoying a good laugh every chance they got.”
“Anyone who hears the song – truly hears it – must dance. And all dancers seek to share their joy.

Evangelism is all about relationships. It’s not about arguments or having all the answers. It’s about genuinely loving and caring for people and getting close enough to them so they can see Christ in you, the hope of glory, so they can sing the song.
One of my favorite evangelism stories in the New Testament has to do with a reject named Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector, which in Jesus day was like being connected to the mob. He was a Jewish man who had sold his soul to the Romans and was employed by them to collect as much money from his countrymen as he could. And once he satisfied the tax obligations set by the Romans he could extort all the extra money he could get and keep it for himself. He was a licensed thief. And he was hated for it. Then he met Jesus.
And Jesus shared the song with him. And Matthew heard it and he embraced it and it filled his soul in a way that money could not and immediately changed his life. So he wanted to share the song with his friends who were other tax collectors and “sinners” and mobsters just like him.
His first thought was, “Maybe I can take them to church.” But “church” in his day meant going to the Temple or to the synagogue and listening to a robed rabbi read long, rambling sections of the Old Testament law. Not the best idea, at least not for the crowd that Matthew ran with.
But then he had another idea. He’d throw party. He was good at parties and his buddies loved to party. But this one would be different. He’d still put out a spread of food with plenty to eat and lots to drink and crank up the music, but he’d also invite Jesus and a few of his followers to show up and to rub shoulders with his crowd. And maybe some conversations would take place and some relationships would be birthed out of that. Maybe some of his friends would hear the song.
And sure enough, Jesus showed up at the party along with his disciples and they had a great time. But apparently they were having too good of a time because Jesus came under fire from the religious types who were looking through the window.

Listen to how Matthew records the evening in his gospel. Matthew 9:10-13 says, While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew 9:9-13
Mark 2: 13-17 He was eating and spending time with “sinners.” We all are sinners. We just deem certain types of sins as worse and the people who live that way to be worse than us. It is a type of pride. Gets close to them.
Luke 5:27-30

After shooting down some stale and offensive ideas of what evangelism has become in the 21st century. McLaren challenges us to think of it this way, “What if there really is a great and good and kind God, and we humans really are God’s creatures, though we lose our way sometimes? And what if our deepest dream is really true, that the God who really exists really loves us? And what if one of the best ways for God to get through to those of us who have lost our way is by the kindness and influence of those others who have been brought back to a good path? And what if for every obvious and sleazy religious huckster there are in fact a dozen subtle but sincere examples of spiritual authenticity and vibrancy whose influences would do the rest of us a lot of good? What if there really are “angels” out there -- not of the wings-and-halos type, but of the flesh-and-blood, laughter-and-tears type -- people who are literally sent by God to intervene, to help those of us who have mucked up our lives, to give us a taste of grace, a “rumor of glory,” as songwriter Bruce Cockburn says?”
“And what if you and I, who begin as wandering and confused people, could be so helped by our caring God-sent and love-filled friends that we could join them as messengers of grace, carriers of good news, secret-agent angels, case studies in God’s power to change, enrich, fill, and rescue lives that were being wasted, ruined, self-sabotaged? What if evangelism is one of the things that our world needs most?”
Are you ready for the adventure? Are ready to dance? I think you are. In fact, I think you’re more ready than you realize.


Where are some places that we can bring the music?

How does this fit together with Proverbs 24:1 and Psalm 1:1?

Proverbs 24
Do not look to the other side and say the grass is greener. And get rid of the “nice guys finish last” attitude.
Do not desire the company of wicked men.
This is different from Jesus hanging out at a party with Matthew.
Desiring their company is like desiring to be the friend of the cool kids. Wanting to be in with them. People would do or say just about anything to be part of the cool click. They will be mean to their friends. That desire to be their buddy can lead to doing things that are wrong. Know that their lifestyle is wrong and we have something to offer them. We don’t need approval from them, we have it already in God.

We go to parties and other places to “rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.” Psalm 24:11

And to love them. Because the greatest commandment is to love—God and others and our enemies. That is our first responsibility. The great commission is not the greatest commandment. I think that the greatest way we can love someone is to turn them toward Christ, but that does not mean that our goal is to convert them. Our goal is to love them and the commission falls in that.