BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—FOLLOW UP TO PERMISSION VS PERSUASION [F, 6-7-24]
Early in my campus ministry days, a prominent, non-denominational campus ministry unit advertised for students to attend an evangelism conference that they were sponsoring. The posters said that they would show you a way to convert anyone to Christ, guaranteed, within 38 seconds.
One of our students went. He reported that the method was getting people to answer a series of questions that were slanted in a way that dictated the answers. Within 38 seconds you got that person to say “Yes” to “So you agree that Jesus is the savior?” They called that evangelism.
Evangelism is not persuasion, especially by argument. “God is never found at the end of an argument.” [2]
Both in personal witness
and in preaching, I always tried to present the Christ story/option in such a
way that a person could find their own way of responding. I tried to give
people permission to experience God. As Jim Manley wrote in his wonderful “Palm
Sunday” song, “He must be a mad man, or publicity seeker, or… what we’ve all
been waiting for.” [1] In evangelism we give people a chance to see for
themselves that Christ is “…what we’ve all been waiting for.”
As D. T. Niles put it, in perhaps the best definition of evangelism ever, “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”
John Robert McFarland
1] On the “Raggedy Band” album.
2] People called “evangelical” these days, despite that designation, are often not very evangelistic. They are more concerned with keeping people out than bringing people in.
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I
probably should not use the title Christ In Winter anymore, since its
assumption is that the writer cares about the readers. In fact, the real title
now is Beyond Winter, which means the writer is an old man and beyond
caring. But I don’t know how to change the CIW title up above, and if anyone
looks for this column online, they’ll probably search for CIW, so…
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