Today our Network Leadership Team had a enjoyable meeting with Jim Henderson. He is the author of “Jim and Casper Go To Church” and “Evangelism Without Additives.”
In the course of our time together I thought Jim made several insightful comments:
- “We need to see evangelism as a spiritual practice of relationships, not a program”
- “If we filter our approach to evangelism by doing only what we would want done to us, we will find more authentic ways to share our faith”
- “A better measurement tool for a churches evangelism is how many people are in a real relationships with pre-Christians than only how many are saved”
He also shared three skills to the spiritual practice of evangelism:
1. We must learn how to notice people. We get so busy and insolated in life we often fail to see the people and their needs around us.
2. We need to pray behind people’s backs. That is, we need to pray for the things we notice in people’s lives.
3. We need to ask “How are you?” and then listen.
If we do these three spiritual practices, God will open the right doors to authentic conversations.
Tags: conversation · Evangelism1 Comment
These comments remind me of what Rob Bell wrote in his book “Velvet Elvis” when he said “The church doesn’t exist for itself; it exists to serve the world. It is not ultimately about the church; it’s about all the people God wants to bless through the church. When the church loses sight of this, it loses its heart. This is especially true today in the world we live in where so many people are hostile to the church, many for good reason . . .
. . . the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display.
To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories . . . Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody . . . everybody matters. And when there is an agenda, it isn’t real love.”