Mark Lauterbach's Blog

The more I read, the more I continue to be impressed with Mark Lauterbach's blog. In his post today entitled, Relevance or Faithfulness, a weird example, he identifies a key factor in evangelism: real relationships. I know, I know, we have all heard a million times before all the different tactics that we need to adhere to when it comes to evangelism. His post got to the point a bit differently for me. I'll paste it here for your consideration:

Relevance is borne of relationship . . . and when we do not know lost people, we may do some pretty weird things . . .

Not too long ago the broader evangelical church enjoyed a craze over the evangelistic possibilities of The Passion. I have observed this kind of thing repeatedly -- most recently in The DaVinci Code.

Being relational in evangeistic philosophy, we took people to the movie -- friends of my wife's of many years. Our experience was not too positive with the folks we invited -- they were former church people, now quite secular, and they were offended. They did not want to go to coffee afterwards -- they said an awkward goodbye and we did not hear from them for a long time.

It was, after all, a two hour flick which involved cruel torture. It was about Jesus -- but they could not see how that mattered. The most common objection to Christianity in our day is its blood and cruelty -- why does God require such a sacrifice? The Passion simply reinforced this. I learned a lot that day about how I see evangelistic opportunities and how secular people may see them. I was "out of touch" with the way to bring the Gospel to these people.

There were multiple examples of being "out of touch" with lost people during that time. But the most bizarre was this -- a church with a "billboard" in the front -- one of those signs where you put cute sermon titles. The method is antiquated at best -- I have never met any lost person who read or paid attention to those signs. But the message on this particular sign was an example of being so out of touch with unbelievers that I was stunned. The sign was very simple: Go see The Passion. Then come ask us questions. Yes, I am telling the truth.

I had just had my experience of finding I was "out of touch" but the sign struck me as a metaphor. There was no seeking of the lost in it -- it was passive -- it was waiting -- it assumed so much. There was no relationship. It assumed people were interested. It was a picture of the way Christians tend to think of non-Christians. It was, in a simple word, irrelevant. It had no meaning to those who drove by.

Relevance comes from knowing people -- their names, specific circumstances, questions. It cannot come from books or surveys alone.