Evangelism?

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Debbie: As I've done a lot of life in my 66 years, and I'm in this moment where my middle daughter had a baby on Friday, so we welcomed, we're holding the joy of new life in this little baby Bobby that was born on Friday. And I'll go out to celebrate my mother's day with my mom today who's in hospice. And that's really got me thinking just about the fullness of life and how we hold both joy and hardness.

And I look around this room and I know the stories. I know the mothers that this is a hard day because of loss of a son. I know the mothers that are so joy filled because they love having children and babies and that it can be hard too. And I know those that there's some heartache because they long so much to be a mom. And I know there's some of us that are navigating the loss of what we had hoped our relationships would be. Or maybe where our mothers are at in their life with dementia or in hospice and dying.

So all those things we hold together on this day, the joy and the hard. And what we know is that God is with us and all that and that we celebrate those that are like mothers to us. Some of us have been those people, mothers to others. So as we hold both that hard and happy because there's so much joy in that too, would you pray with me in this moment?

Holy and gracious God, why life is full and why life is beautiful and there's so much wonder and awe. And there's a lot of hard and sad too. Sometimes God, they're just our words for the losses in our life and those that we miss. But God, what we do know is that you promise to be with us through it all.

And so on this day, on this Mother's Day, when we do celebrate moms, we celebrate those people in our lives that have set themselves aside to love us well. Just as you love us, Lord. We hold that in our hearts. So we celebrate and we laugh and we spend time together and maybe we cry. But in the midst of all that, what we do know is that you love us. You love us. You call us to love one another. You call us to be those mother figures in each other's lives. And for that, we are truly grateful. God, we lift this day up to you and we know your spirit is alive and moving in more ways than we could ever have imagined. Pray all this in your name. Amen.

Justin: Good morning. Today, we are continuing in our series Rise Up, which is all about living out the resurrection in our daily lives. And today we're going to be talking about evangelism. If I'm being honest, I have a really uncomfortable relationship with evangelism. And I'm sure that many of you do as well. Growing up in an evangelical culture, there was such a pressure on us to save the souls of our friends and our family members. Their eternal destinies depended on you making sure that they said the sinner's prayer. And we were equipped to do that.

We had the ABCs of salvation: admit, believe, confess. We had the Romans Road. Anybody ever have an evange-cube before this or even the color-coded bead bracelet? The black one meant that you were a horrible sinner and the white one meant that there was hope that you could be made clean and pure again. So you would walk people through the different colors on the bracelet. And what I discovered over time was the relational damage that that did. Because it took true friendship and turned it into a mission project.

I remember the first time I met an atheist. His name was Randy and he went to high school with me. And when I found out that he was an atheist, I said, "Atheist? I thought atheists lived in New York." Like, it did not compute with me. I've never met one before. And so I was determined to win him over for Jesus. And so of course, I decided to get on MySpace and send him a bunch of Bible verses and argue back and forth with him over religion. It was super helpful for everybody involved.

And when I look back over those kinds of moments in my life, what breaks my heart the most is that I didn't see Randy as a person God loves. I saw Randy as a problem that needed to be fixed. And I think that's really unfortunate because I could have had a friend. But I was so wrapped up in trying to change him into something that he wasn't. That I... Did something happen back there? I was so wrapped up in trying to change him into something that he wasn't that I missed who he was.

And so these days I get a little sensitive around the language of evangelism because I know what it means for so many people. I know that it can be a targeted strategy because I've participated in it. And then as I've grown and changed over time, I've ended up on the receiving end of some of those strategies. I'm sure you have too.

The coffees that are just a meetup to check in on life that become a theological ambush. Or the kind gestures that you thought were a sign of friendship that was really just a tactic so that they could share the gospel with you. I don't like any of that. And yet I struggle because I'm still a Christian. I still find value in sharing my faith when it's appropriate. I still believe in the gospel even though it looks a lot different these days than it did for me a long time ago. I still believe that there's space to share our stories.

And I know enough of your stories to know that you have that same tension as well. Many of you do. And so we're going to talk about evangelism today in the context of what that looks like for Christians who have maybe deconstructed and reconstructed their faith.

And this is something that I am actively working through myself. So I just want to preface this sermon by saying that next month I could disagree with this. I don't think I will, but I could. But I do hope that there's something of value here for you to either wrestle with or to have peace about this week.

So our electionary text this morning comes from Acts 17:22-31. The Apostle Paul has been escorted to Athens after he's run into some trouble in Thessalonica. And so he's staying there because it's safer and he's waiting for Silas and Timothy so that he can continue on his missionary journey. And while he's there Paul ends up doing some evangelism.

Athens is a cultural hub of Greek philosophy and deep thought. It's named for the god Athena. Their mascot, if you will, is the owl because they pride themselves as a culture of wisdom and deep philosophical thinking. But that only goes so far because there's suspicion around people who would attempt to introduce new gods into the culture because the gods are so tied to the social order of the day.

There are gods for health. There are gods for prosperity. There are gods for military victories. And so this is the kind of tension of openness and rejection that Paul is kind of facing as he steps into Athens. And I want to say before we even go any further that I don't think Paul does everything right here. There are some people who believe that Paul is above critique. And then there are other people who believe that they have no use for Paul at all. And I don't really fall into either one of those categories. I just think that Paul is a human being like me and you. And I think sometimes he gets it right and I think sometimes he gets it wrong.

And this text is a great example of that. Paul brings his own assumptions to the speech that we're going to look at today. He assumes that the Athenians believe what they believe because they're ignorant. But the Stoics and the Epicureans that he's talking to today have really nuanced belief systems. I mean it's very complex. It's not simple at all. But Paul tells them that it's ignorant for them to believe that these gods could be in gold or stone to which the Stoics and the Epicureans would have replied, “We don't believe that anyway.” And so before we even read the passage I want to encourage you to always check your assumptions. What are you assuming about that person or that group's motivations, beliefs, worldviews? Because I think we all make assumptions and often our assumptions are wrong.

And if we at least know that and are willing to ask good questions about the assumptions that we have, I think that we will do a great service to ourselves and to our neighbors. And unfortunately that's not what Paul does here. But I'm going to read the passage for you. It's a little long but I'm going to read it and then we're going to talk about three things that Paul does really well here.

So here's Acts 17:22-31:

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Atheneans, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way.

For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription to an unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, He who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands. Nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

From one ancestor He made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and He allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live. So that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for Him and find Him, though indeed He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we too are His offspring.

Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed. And of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead."

So there are some things that Paul does here that I think we can appreciate and learn from. And the first thing that we pick up on is how Paul pays attention to where God is already present, to the work that God is already doing. He's looking at the surrounding culture and He's observing the longings of the people. He's gone through the marketplaces and He sees what they're buying and what they're selling.

He's heard the philosophical debates on the meaning of life, the nature of God, and whether this is all up to chance or whether there's a divine plan. He's seen the temples to Athena for wisdom and to Ares for protection in war, to Zeus for the weather. He sees what they value and how that shapes their lives. And for Paul, that isn't an obstacle. It's an opportunity to understand their search for God. Those values and longings point to a city that's already searching for God. He pays attention to what they value so that He can name where God is already present. He tells them if you fill around and fumble for God, you'll find God because God is already there.

And that's not how the church typically understands evangelism. The church often assumes we have God, they don't, so we have to take God to them. But I think if we in the church could learn to close our mouths long enough to open our eyes, we would see that God is already there. And perhaps one of the most faithful things that we could do as followers of Jesus is to simply pay attention to the world around us and name where God is already at work, what God is already doing.

The second way that Paul engages the Athenians is through seeking common ground. If you spent any amount of time engaging with Paul, you'll know that seeking common ground is probably not Paul's spiritual gift. He talks about unity a lot, but actually living it out is a little harder for him. And his gut reaction when he gets to Athens isn't good. In the story prior to this one, he shows up to Athens and he is amazed and shocked by all of the idols that he sees people worshipping. And it distresses him, it stresses him out so much.

Why is that? It's because of his upbringing. He was raised to be a zealot in the Jewish faith. He was trained under a well-respected rabbi and immersed himself in the Jewish culture, the stories of the Jews, the rituals of the Jews, and he wanted to protect it from outside influence. And so he could have engaged with these Athenians by getting really mad and starting a debate with them and calling out every character and Bible verse from the Old Testament that he could think of to prove his point. We've read his letters, we know that he's capable of doing that sort of thing, but that's not what he does here because he knows that that's not who these people are.

Instead of quoting Bible verses at them, he quotes poets and philosophers. And he can do that because, yeah, he grew up in the Jewish faith, but he also grew up in the area of Silicia, another hub of Greco-Roman culture, just like Athens. Even the poet that he quotes in this speech, Aratus, he's from Silicia too. And so this area that Paul grew up in was a cultural hub. So this was not new for him. This was very familiar territory.

God uniquely positioned Paul to have some of the conversations that he was able to have. Not everybody was able to do what he did. A well-trained Jewish man who grew up surrounded by Greek philosophy and culture. No, I mean, Paul used his background and the resources that he had to find common ground with the people around him. And I think that we have more in common with people than we sometimes think that we do. But we're so quick to jump to try to correct people on things that we miss connecting with people.

When I was a youth pastor, I had a student that I just really struggled to connect with. He was really into sports. I know nothing about sports. And he would tell me all of these stats and what happened to the game last night. And I tried to listen like I cared. And I know that my eyes just glazed over. But I tried really hard to listen to him. And I was wondering, "How am I going to connect with this kid? What am I going to do?" And I thought back to my days in youth. I didn't have a youth group at my church. So I went with some friends. And we always connected so well around the ping pong table. And so we had a ping pong table. And I said, "Hey, do you want to play ping pong?" And he was like, "Yeah, sure." And that was all it took. We formed such a great relationship around ping pong. We had faith conversations, conversations about girls and school. It was just such a great relationship that we were able to develop through ping pong.

The gospel can look like ping pong. It can look like delivering groceries to Park Place families. The gospel can look like gardening clubs and knitting circles. It can look like a shared passion over fair trade coffee or connecting in a grief group with someone who shares a common language of loss with you. And so what I would ask you this morning is what common ground do you share with those around you? What ways might God use your story to help connect with the people around you?

And the last way that Paul engages the Athenians is by sharing his hope in Jesus. Paul knows that his belief system is not the same as the Stoics and the Epicureans. And later in the text, I mean, they are relatively on board with everything that he has to say until he gets to the resurrection. That's just a non-starter with them. The Epicureans pride themselves on natural processes. And we know that people are not raised from the dead, right? So that's just a non-starter for them. And for the Stoics, they prided themselves on intellectualism in a way that Paul just didn't connect with them on. The Stoics believed that a personal God would not be involved in human affairs. It was just a non-starter. It was a primitive concept.

And so they even referred to him as a seed picker, meaning that he was lazy and he would just pick up any philosophical idea or concept that he could to put it all together. And we know from Paul's story that that's not true. We know that his coming to faith in Jesus was anything but lazy. And it was so profound for him that he was willing to look a little foolish in order to share his story.

One of my favorite authors is Rachel Held Evans. As I was struggling and wrestling with my faith, she was such a voice and influence for me. And before she passed away, there was a book that she wrote called Inspired. And there's a quote that she has that I want to share with you from that book that has always stuck with me. Here's what it says:

“I am a Christian because the story of Jesus is still the story I'm willing to risk being wrong about. I had forgotten the power of giving testimony, of publicly recounting our unique gospels according to. Jesus invites us into a story that is bigger than ourselves, bigger than our culture, bigger even than our imaginations. And yet we get to tell the story of Jesus with the scandalous particularity of our particular moment and place in time. May we never neglect the gift of that. May we never lose our love for telling the tale.”

I think that evangelism gives us the ick sometimes because we've almost exclusively seen it done through manipulative and abusive strategies. But there is still space for us to share our stories. And sometimes that's in the most unlikely of places.

I don't go to bars or clubs very often. The introverted side of me can only handle that for so long. But one night some friends invited me to go to a karaoke bar down in Charlotte for Charlotte Pride. And I had nothing going on. So I was like, sure, I'll go. And one of the guys who went with me was the music minister at the church that I was serving at. And so we go to this karaoke bar and without me knowing it, he signs me up for karaoke as Reverend Justin Bell. And when the DJ saw my name pop up on the screen as Reverend Justin Bell, he stopped the entire event. And he was like, “Are you really a pastor?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And he was like, “Give it up for the pastor!” And I I wanted to crawl under the table.

But I kid you not, I sat at the bar and people came up to me all night long and told me their stories. I talked about Jesus all night at that bar. I listened to their stories and they listened to mine. They wanted to know why in the world I would ever choose to be a pastor. And I don't know, there were tears and laughter shared over those stories. And I really felt the Holy Spirit in that karaoke bar.

It was so random. There was no evangelism strategy to that. There was just presence. What I've discovered is that sharing the good news is not about strategy. It's about presence. Some of the most sacred moments in our lives happen because we decide to show up fully, paying attention to the ways that God is already active in the world and finding common ground with the people around us.

It really can be that simple: Pay attention to how God is already working in the world. Look for the ways that you can find common ground with the people around you. And when the moment presents itself because it will, feel free to share the reason why you have hope. Feel free to do that because people want to know your story. They want to hear the good news. You don't need an evange-cube. You don't need a megaphone. What's needed in this world is your presence.

Let's pray: Lord, there's so much beauty in the stories that you're writing in our lives. We're grateful for the hope that we walk with each day in you. My prayer this morning is that you would open our hearts and our minds to the ways that you're already at work in the world and that we would have opportunities to take part in that. And whatever space we find ourselves in, may we rise up so that your love and your hope always shown forth. Amen.

Maggie: Justin's last story reminded me of the experience of representing the table at Pride every summer. It is my favorite weekend of ministry of the whole year, and I'm looking around this room and there's some of you that I met at Pride. It is such a gift to be a recovering evangelist as I also am, had the bracelets, did my time. And to show up at Pride and to just tell people that there is a space to be queer and a Christian right here in Minneapolis. You are welcome just as you are. You already belong. It's a powerful message and it's one that I never get tired of sharing. So that's my plug for Pride later this month when we need volunteers to help us staff the table. I pray…that's my prayer for all of us, that we would never get tired of telling the story of what Jesus means to each of us. And that's part of my story and I know that it's part of many of yours.

One of the stories that we insist on telling every week is the story of when Jesus gathered with his disciples in the upper room. And he shared a meal with them. And he took the bread and he gave thanks and he broke it and he gave it to them and he told them, "This is my body. It's been given just for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And in the same way he took the cup and he gave thanks and he said, "This is my blood and it's been poured out for you. Whenever you eat the bread, whenever you drink the cup, remember me until I come again."

And so we do that, we do it every week here at The Table. We take communion together. And it is our way of reminding ourselves of the sacred story that we walk in, that this cup, this bread, this table has been set for you, for all of us. So a couple notes on how we do communion here at the table. There will be servers in the front and in the back. We have this handy dandy orange tape line on the floor. You can look in the aisle. If you're in front of that tape line, you'll come to the front station beginning with the front row. If you're behind, you'll go to the rear station beginning with the back row. You can use this aisle to make your way to either station and you'll take a piece of bread, you'll dip it in the cup and eat it, and then return to your seat using the other aisle. And I pray that as you hear those words, "This is the body of Christ broken for you, the blood of Christ shed for you," that you would remember that this is a story we get to keep telling to each other. Additionally, we will have a member of our prayer team, Andrea, standing in the back. And if you need prayer today, you are invited to go and see her. So now, if you could stand in body or in spirit, we will say the prayer that Christ taught us to pray, saying, "Our God."