Rear View Mirror Evangelism
Recently, I have been thinking more and more about the topic of evangelism and am feeling sort of convicted. Though I regard it as extremely important to the church, it is not something at which I am particularly good. My own sense is that we in the mainline churches do much better at missions intended to alleviate physical suffering and needs, both at home and abroad, than we are at actual evangelism. Missions of mercy are certainly a part of the Christian's responsibility and ministry, but these don't take the place of evangelism. St. Francis of Assisi is oft quoted as saying, "preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary used words," and we rely on this as a crutch to keep us from actually doing evangelism. Unfortunately, this is a weak reed since this quote doesn't show up in any of his recorded writings and wasn't even attributed to him until centuries after his death. Over the next few weeks I will be devoting this space to things that hinder our efforts at evangelism as well as to the things that are essential for it.
The first thing that needs to be said is that it's impossible to be effective at evangelism while looking in the rear view mirror. It's impossible to drive a car while always looking in the rear view mirror, and it's equally impossible for a church to function well looking backward. People tend naturally to romanticize and glorify the past, and churches do as well. "I remember when we had forty youth every Sunday," "don't you remember when we had every children's room full," "don't you remember when____________," all become something akin to fish tales. At a meeting members may remember fondly the good old days when we had 100 kids in Vacation Bible School, while the dirty little secret is that in reality if they actually looked back at the records they might learn that they never had more than sixty. Once upon a time I was an academic student of history, not just a "history buff," so I am keenly aware that actual evidence, original sources, are critical, and that history gets warped and remade constantly in the popular culture. It does in churches also.
There is a time to look back, and it is in order to make the future better. It is healthy to critically and objectively examine the past to see where we made mistakes or what we did well so that we can improve what we do in the future. What worked well at last year's Vacation Bible School? What worked well about the Holy Week services last time? What do we need to do differently next time? These are helpful. However, exercises in nostalgia are enervating to evangelism and church energy. These exercises focus our attention inward on ourselves, rather than outward to the lost world around us. Our tendency to glorify the past invariably makes us look rather dimly at the present and the future. The romantic notion that at some mythical time in the past there were 75 children in church (of course almost certainly that number wasn't real to begin with) leads the church to devalue the twenty really awesome children that church currently has and to doubt what lies ahead.
Moving forward requires actually looking forward. It is helpful to examine past failures and successes, but always objectively and critically so that we can learn from the past. This is akin to the pilot of a boat quickly looking at its wake to make sure it's running straight. Romanticizing about the "glory days" of a church not only lead it to devalue what it currently has, it also leads it to doubt the future. For my own church, for any church, our eyes always have to be focused outward, not inward, with a firm faith in the One who holds the future.
The first thing that needs to be said is that it's impossible to be effective at evangelism while looking in the rear view mirror. It's impossible to drive a car while always looking in the rear view mirror, and it's equally impossible for a church to function well looking backward. People tend naturally to romanticize and glorify the past, and churches do as well. "I remember when we had forty youth every Sunday," "don't you remember when we had every children's room full," "don't you remember when____________," all become something akin to fish tales. At a meeting members may remember fondly the good old days when we had 100 kids in Vacation Bible School, while the dirty little secret is that in reality if they actually looked back at the records they might learn that they never had more than sixty. Once upon a time I was an academic student of history, not just a "history buff," so I am keenly aware that actual evidence, original sources, are critical, and that history gets warped and remade constantly in the popular culture. It does in churches also.
There is a time to look back, and it is in order to make the future better. It is healthy to critically and objectively examine the past to see where we made mistakes or what we did well so that we can improve what we do in the future. What worked well at last year's Vacation Bible School? What worked well about the Holy Week services last time? What do we need to do differently next time? These are helpful. However, exercises in nostalgia are enervating to evangelism and church energy. These exercises focus our attention inward on ourselves, rather than outward to the lost world around us. Our tendency to glorify the past invariably makes us look rather dimly at the present and the future. The romantic notion that at some mythical time in the past there were 75 children in church (of course almost certainly that number wasn't real to begin with) leads the church to devalue the twenty really awesome children that church currently has and to doubt what lies ahead.
Moving forward requires actually looking forward. It is helpful to examine past failures and successes, but always objectively and critically so that we can learn from the past. This is akin to the pilot of a boat quickly looking at its wake to make sure it's running straight. Romanticizing about the "glory days" of a church not only lead it to devalue what it currently has, it also leads it to doubt the future. For my own church, for any church, our eyes always have to be focused outward, not inward, with a firm faith in the One who holds the future.
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